A Prayer for Less
Pleasure is vast, cheap, kaleidoscopic. Lent is the time to forgo it—and seek peace.
When I converted to Catholicism as an adult, I quickly became acquainted with Lent, the contemplative and solemn liturgical season of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving preceding Holy Week. It had been mentioned in my southern, Protestant upbringing, but was as insignificant a feature of the late winter as ice and snow: Where I grew up, the post-Christmas chill of the new year glided into the mid-60s before February was out, which meant that the crocuses and jonquils and buttercups crowned the grass long before Easter arrived. In New England, where I live now, winter is a long, gray, wandering season, fitting for Lent.
And so, a native give up; it was rather the ubiquity of pleasure.
