Lent: Does Voluntary Suffering Make Sense?

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I wrote in a previous blog about my visit as a young man to London’s famous Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. Anyone can get on a soapbox there and talk about any subject. Sometimes the speakers draw crowds.

The day I visited back in the 1960s, a man was spewing hatred of Christians, specifically Catholics. He particularly detested the crucifix, saying that Christians wallowed in the gore and reveled in its cruelty. He had drawn an enthusiastic crowd of about 30 people who largely seemed to agree with him.

I’m sure many people share his confusion, if not his hostility, about the cross, and about Christians’ attitude toward suffering in general. Personally, I don’t believe in a God who wants us to suffer because it doesn’t square with the idea of God as a loving parent, the traditional view of the God of Christians and Jews. The last thing parents want is for their children to suffer, and God is no exception.

An Instrument of Torturous Death

As for the cross and suffering, people searching for God should understand that there’s nothing holy or uplifting about the cross itself. It was an instrument of torturous death, a cruel device commonly used for executions at the time of Jesus. So the speaker in Hyde Park was on the mark in his horror of the cross.

But he missed the point, of course. Christians honor the cross or crucifix not because it’s worthy of praise as an instrument of death, but because it’s a symbol of Jesus’ sacrificial death, which Christians view as salvific. In other words, his suffering and death had a purpose.

The self-imposed deprivations of Lent, which is now more than halfway over, also have a purpose. 

Like the cross, there’s nothing good in itself about depriving yourself of what you want, as in fasting, or in giving away your stuff, as in almsgiving.

But let’s face it. Many of us who are searching for God have never known real suffering, hardship or deprivation. For us, it’s easy to be smug about our lives, to be apathetic and feckless. Leading a Godlike life isn’t easy. It requires a certain amount of moral strength and courage.

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My daughter, Maureen, has been training for a marathon these last few weeks. She’s a regular runner and has run in half marathons, which cover half of the 26 mile run that comprises a marathon but has never run the full 26 miles. The training, she says, has been exhausting, resulting in exhaustion and aches and pains, but she wouldn’t dream of doing a marathon without such practice.

Lent, and its traditional practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, is spiritual training for the marathon of life.

A recent article in America magazine quotes spiritual writer and Benedictine nun Joan Chittister, writing about the Lenten advice of St. Benedict, the sixth century inventor of western monasticism. It's for those of us who don’t live in monasteries.

“Lent is the time for trimming the soul and scraping the sludge off a life turned slipshod,” Chittister writes. “Lent is about taking stock of time, even religious time. Lent is about exercising the control that enables us to say no to ourselves so that when life turns hard of its own accord we have the stamina to say yes to its twists and turns with faith and with hope.... Lent is the time to make new efforts to be what we say we want to be.”

Better To "Be Better"

In the last few years, there has been more emphasis on Lenten practices that reform our lives rather than self-deprivation. In other words, better to “be better” than to “give up” something for Lent. Pope Francis recently had something to say on this subject, making reference to the Jewish tradition of “rending garments” to show grief, including the grief of “failing” God.

“It is not the time to rend our garments before the evil all around us, but instead to make room for all the good we are able to do,” he said. “It is a time to set aside everything that isolates us, encloses us and paralyzes us.”

People searching for God should embrace Lent, including striving to “be better” as well as the traditional practices of self-deprivation. The two approaches are not mutually exclusive.


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