Today is the first
day of the Catholic season of Lent - the 40 days leading up to Easter - which
are typically filled with different types of self-sacrifice. As a child, I was
always confused why Lent was such a big deal in the Catholic Church. It seemed
to me that the truly celebratory days were Easter - Christ's resurrection from
the dead, and Christmas - the birth of Christ. These were joyous days,
victorious days. If we really believed Christ
has come, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, then it seemed to me
that that mantra was pretty perfectly summed up between the joyful holidays of
Christmas and Easter.
On the other hand -
Lent, and really all of Holy Week leading up to Easter, was hard. It's a lot of
church. A lot of sacrifice. And a lot of dark, sullen music. I couldn't see how
being asked to make sacrifices - to fast, to give up meat on Fridays - could be
the pinnacle of anything, much less the holiest days of the year.
But as I've aged
I've come to realize why we see Lent as such a Holy Time. That realization
really came not through study of Catholic teaching, but through observation of
other religions. If you look specifically at the original three Abrahamic
religions - Judaism, Islam, and Catholicism, there is a
critical common thread that they share when it comes to observing the Holiest time of the year: Sacrifice. Muslims celebrate the holy month,
Ramadan, by fasting entirely from dawn until dusk to celebrate the revelation
of the Qu'ran. Jews celebrate Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, with a 25 hour
fast. Catholics celebrate Lent, the period leading up to Easter, with fasting
on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, plus additional sacrifices of our own
choosing. Sacrifice, not celebration, is
what we choose to commemorate our holiest of days. That is not to be looked
over lightly.
I think this tells
us a lot about faith, life, and happiness in general. When it all comes down to
it - life (and religion) - are not about
the pinnacle experiences, the mountain, the highlights and the celebrations. Religion and life are defined by sacrifice and self-discipline - the
struggle, the valley, the conflict points of growth.
This is hard for us.
We live in a culture of self-service and immediate gratification. We have at
our fingertips every piece of information and any good or service we could ever want almost
instantaneously. There are a plethora of benefits to this. But with it also comes
a lack of struggle that previous generations grew accustomed to. As a society
we expect immediate satisfaction and joy, and we base our happiness on how it
makes us feel in the immediate moment.
But that immediate
satisfaction doesn't last. It's fleeting. It doesn't bring us the lasting joy that
we truly seek. That's because life isn't about self-gratification. Life, when
you really boil it down, is about sacrifice and discipline - it is only in training
ourselves to put off immediate gratification to work towards a higher purpose
that we can achieve a lasting joy and satisfaction.
This has many names
- intrinsic motivation, grit, self-discipline. Call
it whatever you want - but they are all sacrificing immediate satisfaction for
a greater goal or purpose. And according to the famous Stanford
Marshmallow test, not only does that lead to higher reported happiness
later in life, it also leads to healthier, more successful lives.
As a way to further
prove this conjecture - I challenge you to think about the pinnacle experiences
of your life. The moments you were happiest, or ecstatic, or celebratory - and
ask yourself where the joy truly came from… I'd be willing to bet that most of
these experiences are actually the culmination of a difficult experience of
sacrifice rather than a single joyous event. The highlights of my career come
through letters from students, thank-you notes form parents, and lightbulb
instances for students who were struggling. But those peak moments of joy in my
career weren't really a celebration of a
single instance - they were a joyful celebration of months or years of hard
work and sacrifice on my and the student's part.
But these moments of
joy at the end of sacrifice can often be misleading. Because sacrifice isn't
always about the end of the road. It's about
finding joy in the experience of sacrifice itself. Teaching has its
moment of absolute and total frustration - low moments where you feel totally
burnt out and don't feel like you can sacrifice anything more. Any teacher who
tells you otherwise is lying to you, or not trying hard enough. But what faith
does for us is it allows us to take joy in those moments as well as the highs.
Going to weekly mass
is not a highlight of the week for me, many weeks it only brings frustration or
annoyance at giving up valuable time from my weekend. But I've come to take joy
in the spiritual grit necessary to make
it to church every week, even if I don't take anything away from it that day.
Waking up at 4:45
3-4 days a week to work out is awful most days. And though the end result of 2
years on this path has led to great results, the real joy that I find comes in
the repetition. The discipline necessary to keep getting up and working hard. The
goal is good - but the journey can itself be a source of joy. It is difficult
to see that in a culture of self-serving immediate gratification.
So my challenge for
you all this Lent, and for myself, is to embrace the sacrifice. Embrace the
grind. Find joy in struggle. It may be the only common thread connecting human
existence. I think that's why it's such an integral part of the religious experience,
and why we celebrate our holiest time of the year, not with celebrations and
festivals, but with sacrifice.
0 comments:
Post a Comment