In case you had missed that yesterday was Mardi Gras (French term that sounds better than Fat Tuesday), today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent.

For those who missed the opportunity of being raised Catholic, Lent is the time when we are supposed to give something up—to make a sacrifice.

After Vatican II, the fish on Fridays portion of Catholicism was limited to Fridays during Lent, and for some people this is main portion of their Lenten sacrifice (my family did fish on Fridays and meatless Wednesdays, although I’m not precisely sure where the Wednesday bit came from, since my parents never really told us). One of the priests at the church where I grew up would give up smoking every Lent, only to take it back up after Easter, although I believe that he eventually gave it up permanently. In other words, Lent entails making a sacrifice of some sort, preferably something that you enjoy. (Personally I’d like my grandmother to give up high blood pressure for Lent, but I don’t see that a likely.)

I never really got the point of Lent when I was little. I knew that you are supposed to make a sacrifice during Lent, but I never understood why. It was only later, after I was older, and to be honest after I’d walked away from the Catholic church, that it finally made sense to me. The point of the sacrifice should not be our suffering, and what we are doing, and how much we are giving up, but should instead be on the suffering of others, those whose lives don’t contain the things we have come to appreciate.

In other words, giving up chocolate and sweets may be a nice sacrifice, but is it really helping anyone? Are you taking the money you save from your Lenten sacrifice, and donating it to charity?

Which brings to mind the question of why must we set aside just this one portion of the year to sacrifice for others? One answer would seem to be that we can get caught up in ourselves and our lives, and thus forget about others, and Lent serves as a reminder to us to think about others. But I wonder whether we would be better served if each Lent, instead of giving something up, we started some small act that we continued throughout the year. Perhaps a donation to a charity, or spending some time volunteering. Something that goes beyond the forty days that Lent lasts.

Of course I’m one to talk—I’m not longer sure of my faith and what I believe, but it still seems important somehow to me. That we acknowledge the suffering of others, that we make even a small step to alleviate the suffering of others. I know that I could do more, but I suppose that perhaps a yearly reminder of this isn’t such a bad thing after all.