The practice of having a Lenten resolution is still very much alive in our American Catholic culture. Given that many penitential practices in the U.S. have fallen by the wayside, Lenten resolutions are all the more commendable. Each year brings another time of discernment for the faithful who want to make a sacrifice to mark the preparatory and penitential season of Lent. The traditional triad of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving can be conceived of broadly enough to allow for everything from giving up soda or chocolate to keeping a gratitude journal to volunteering at the parish food pantry.
Even putting a smartphone on grayscale can fit with this traditional Lenten triad!
The diversity and multitude of Lenten penances in contemporary American culture can be misleading, however. It can give the appearance that Lent is only, or primarily a "me and Jesus" type of thing. Lent can be mistaken as an individualistic pursuit of proving one's willpower to oneself. That is far from the meaning of Lent.
Prior to the Lent of 1967, Catholics shared a common penance for the season of Lent. That penance involved daily fasting, as is now obligatory only on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. It also allowed for meat only once a day, excepting Friday, which was a day of complete abstinence throughout the year. This may seem a difficult penance, but the ordinary faithful were able to do it, in part because they did it together. Because daily fasting was required, it was a common experience with social expectations and practices in place that supported it.
Partly because it was obligatory, over the years this Lenten fast became routine for many Catholics, who fasted out of habit but perhaps were lacking in the spiritual meaning behind Lenten fasting. For this reason, the bishops in the U.S. decided it might be better to let individuals exclusively make their own Lenten resolutions that would be more meaningful.
Thus the social nature of Lenten penance was largely lost, to be replaced by the faithful discerning their own individual resolutions. This gave rise to the situation of also having to discern whether to conceal these resolutions from friends and family or share them. Hiding them might seem to prevent pridefulness, but it could actually add to it. Sharing them might bring the support of others, but a comparison might make one person or another feel their resolution was inadequate. Not telling others the resolution would prevent embarrassment if the person failed, but telling others might help keep the person more accountable. Suddenly the internal struggle seemed to convey that Lent is an individual, competitive pursuit, rather than a team sport.
If Lent had, in the past, tended too much toward an unthinking, routine, social penance, Lent now tends too much toward this overthinking, individual, competitive penance. In fact, the social nature of penance is crucial for the Catholic Church. Why?
1. Biblical reasons. When Jonah approached Nineveh, he was sent to a people. So also, throughout the Old Testament, we see the Hebrew people performing penitential acts together, as a people.
2. Traditional reasons. Throughout Christian history, the faithful have partaken of penance as a group, at times simply out of custom, and at other times due to official regulations, i.e. canon law.
3. Effectiveness. Most people have experienced the ability to stick with something difficult because they are surrounded with others doing likewise. Sharing a penance with others who are doing the same sacrifice can be both inspirational and helpful in surmounting difficulties and maintaining the Lenten resolution.
4. Meaningfulness. Social penance gives people the opportunity to be supportive of others. Although each person may have a unique experience of the penance, he or she does not feel it as a solitary pursuit. We know we are ecclesiologically linked in the mystical body of Christ.
5. Individual resolutions. There is nothing inherently wrong with individual resolutions. In fact, when people are part of a penitential culture, knowing that penance is something shared, as a team sport, they are better able also to commit to individual penances as well.
6. Loving Christ and his cross. The mystery of Christ's love for us to the point of his death on the cross inspires in us a response of love for Christ and for that cross, which we must take up daily as individuals, but which we also take up together, as the body of Christ.
Smartphones are perhaps at once the epitome of individual and social. They are personal devices, often carried around on the person, with unique settings and apps tailored to the individual. But they are inherently intended to be social in nature, connecting us to each other through phone calls, messages, and social media.
It is fitting, then, that going grayscale for Lent is something best done together. Its impact on the individual may be remarkable or not, but the shared experience of going grayscale has the potential to link the faithful to the biblical and traditional social penances, to help people to stick to the penance, finding it to be meaningful while also encouraging other individual penances and to grow in love of Christ and the cross.
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