Penance in a Festive Season?

Even as we enter a penitential season, I’d like to reflect on penance in a festive season.

This topic does have an application to Lent. Every Sunday celebrates the Resurrection, but Sundays still remain part of the Lenten season. Today is the First Sunday of Lent, for instance, not a day of the Easter season dropped into Lent. Catholics did not fast on Sundays during Lent in the past, but they did still abstain from meat and animal products throughout the entire forty-six days, including Sundays. With that in mind, I’d like to address another question.

I work as the Director of Content for Exodus, known primarily for its 90 day exercise leading up to Easter that draws men into a daily holy hour, a number of ascetical disciplines, and weekly fraternity meetings. This combination has proven effective at leading men to greater freedom from vice, technological domination, and isolation. Exodus 90 begins 90 days before Easter and so the start date varies each year. This year many people wondering how we could begin on January 1st, the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God. Isn’t it wrong, they asked, to practice disciplines and penance on a solemn day?

In a way, it seems like a silly question as many people in our culture follow daily disciplines for health, work, and athletics, but taking on a spiritual discipline on a holy day almost seemed sacrilegious to some, as if we can only celebrate on those days. It also strikes me as silly in the sense that Christians would abandon all spiritual practices on holy days. If it’s a holy day shouldn’t I refrain from secular things that would pull my attention away from the mystery of the faith being celebrated?

I am a big advocate of festivity–the important notion of truly celebrating feast days through communal eating, drinking, and other cultural practices, such as music and traditional dance. From that perspective, yes, we should embrace certainly worldly things on feast days, but in a way ordered toward God by honoring him through the good things enjoyed as an expression of faith.

But, does that mean that there can be no penance or discipline in a festive season? Let’s look at the example of Christmas, which occasioned the criticism of Exodus.

America magazine, for instance, featured an article on Exodus by Terrence Sweeney:

Exodus 90 substitutes an exercise regimen for a liturgical one. We see this lack of connection with the liturgical calendar in a particularly acute way this year, when Exodus 90’s scheduled time of fasting begins within the octave of Christmas. Catholic life is and should be a liturgical life. The shape of our feasting and fasting should be shared according to the calendar of the church. The purple of Advent and Lent summons us all into a season of asceticism. However, while pegged to Easter, Exodus 90 departs from the shared life of the liturgical year and thus from the full ecclesial life. It portions away its participants from the ecclesial community in such a way that expresses more commonality with conservative men (for example, note the participation of Jordan Peterson) outside of the Catholic Church and less with the women and men in the church.

While pegged to Easter, Exodus 90 departs from the shared life of the liturgical year and thus from the full ecclesial life.

If we look at the Christmas octave itself, it contains a Friday, which, if it does not fall on Christmas Day or January 1st, would itself be a day of penance, as every Friday of the year when not a solemnity. Ok, but is it wrong to start Exodus on January 1st which was a solemnity? Well, every Sunday is a solemn day but we fast before receiving communion. Even in this case, Exodus did not ask men to fast on January 1st, but simply to embrace other disciplines, such as not drinking alcohol or spend time on social media. How is that improper or out of tune with the Church?

It is not wrong, by any stretch of the imagination, to exercise discipline and self-control on a solemn day. When this discipline is ordered toward God for the control of our passions and growth in holiness, we call this penance. Penance is fully in accord with solemn celebration and even reflects the kind of interior freedom needed to celebrate with the faith with a glad and generous heart.

It is an error to say that no penance should be done in festive seasons. This could lead us to absurd conclusions, even that excess is somehow a means to virtue. In fact, St. Benedict spoke of a monastic fast that would run from the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross in the middle of September until the end of Lent. Is that out of tune with the Church? St. Francis Paola went further and kept the Lenten fast all year round. How un-liturgical! On a solemn feast, monks do not sleep in, watch as much TV as they can, and overindulge in food and alcohol. Why would any Christian do that? This is why I called the criticism of spiritual disciplines on a solemn day just downright silly.

Feasting and fasting are bound up in the Church’s life and we must find the proper balance. Without a doubt, we live in a time of great laxity. Calling men to embrace penance 90 days up to Easter will help them to throw off many bad habits and be ready to feast in Easter. Embracing real asceticism throughout Lent will do so as well. Let’s take up our Cross this Lent so that we can practice self-restraint throughout the entire year, including on holy and festive days of celebration.