More Than Giving Things Up
Every year, as Ash Wednesday approaches, the same conversation happens in offices and schoolyards across the country: “What are you giving up for Lent?” The answers tend to be predictable — chocolate, alcohol, social media, coffee. The practice is so widespread that even non-Catholics participate, treating Lent as a kind of seasonal detox.
There is nothing wrong with giving things up. But if that is all Lent means to you, you are missing the point. Lent is not a Catholic diet plan. It is a season of conversion — a sustained, deliberate turning of the whole self toward God. Giving up chocolate is a fine gesture. But Lent is asking for more.
Why Forty Days
The number forty is not arbitrary. It echoes the great periods of testing and preparation in Scripture.
The rain fell for forty days and forty nights during the Flood (Genesis 7:12). Moses spent forty days on Mount Sinai, receiving the Law (Exodus 24:18). The Israelites wandered forty years in the desert before entering the Promised Land (Numbers 14:33). Elijah walked forty days and forty nights to Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19:8). And Jesus Himself fasted forty days in the wilderness before beginning His public ministry (Matthew 4:2).
In each case, the period of forty is a time of purification and preparation — stripping away the old to make way for the new. Lent places you in the same pattern. For forty days, you prepare yourself for the great event that gives the Christian faith its meaning: the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ at Easter.
Technically, Lent is forty-six days — from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday — but the six Sundays are not counted as fast days, because every Sunday is a celebration of the Resurrection. The season is one of penance, but even within penance, the Church cannot suppress her joy at the Resurrection for an entire day.
The Three Pillars
The Church does not leave you to figure out Lent on your own. She gives you three practices — the three pillars of Lent — that together form a complete programme of spiritual renewal.
Prayer
Lent is a time to deepen your prayer life. Not necessarily to pray more — though that may be appropriate — but to pray differently. With more attention. More honesty. More vulnerability.
Practical suggestions: add one daily prayer you do not currently say — Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours, the Rosary, a daily Examen, or simply five minutes of silence. Attend Mass on a weekday during Lent — even once a week. Pray the Stations of the Cross on Fridays. Read the daily Mass readings and sit with them.
The goal is not to exhaust yourself with devotions. It is to create space for God — to let the noise of your life quiet down enough that you can hear what He has been trying to say.
Fasting
The Church’s minimum requirements are modest: fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, abstain from meat on Fridays during Lent. But the minimum is a floor, not a ceiling.
The traditional practice — the one the saints commend — is more demanding and more transformative. Consider reducing your meals throughout Lent, not just on the two required days. Give up something that costs you — not just chocolate but something whose absence you will genuinely feel. Alcohol. Entertainment. Your phone for the first hour of the day. The evening news. The thing you reach for when you want comfort.
The purpose of fasting is not suffering for its own sake. It is freedom. Every appetite you deny loses a little of its power over you. Every comfort you surrender reveals how dependent you had become on it. Fasting teaches you that you can live without the things you thought you could not live without — and that the empty space they leave can be filled with something better.
Almsgiving
The third pillar is the one most often neglected, and it may be the most important. Fasting without charity is incomplete. The prophet Isaiah, in a passage read on Ash Wednesday, says it bluntly: the fast God chooses is not empty stomachs but loosened chains — feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless (Isaiah 58:6–7).
Almsgiving means giving to those who have less. Money, certainly — but also time, attention, and practical help. Visit someone who is lonely. Volunteer at a food bank. Write a letter to someone in prison. Help a neighbour. The specifics matter less than the direction: outward, toward others, away from yourself.
The money you save by fasting — the meals you skip, the coffee you forgo, the entertainment you cancel — give it away. Lent is not austerity for its own sake. It is austerity that bears fruit in generosity.
Ash Wednesday
Lent begins with ashes — a cross traced on your forehead with the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” or “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”
This is not a comforting start. It is meant to shock. You are going to die. The life you are living now is temporary. The things you cling to — your comforts, your plans, your self-image — will all turn to dust. The only question is what you will have become by then.
Ash Wednesday is not a holy day of obligation in most countries, including Australia. But attendance is remarkably high — higher, in many parishes, than on some Sundays. There is something about the ashes that resonates with people, even people who rarely come to church. The honesty of it. The directness. The refusal to pretend that everything is fine.
What to Give Up — and Why
The traditional Lenten sacrifice — giving something up — works best when it meets three criteria.
It should cost you something. If you give up something you do not care about, the sacrifice is meaningless. The point is to feel the absence — and to let that feeling remind you, throughout the day, of what you are doing and why.
It should create space. The best sacrifices do not just remove something. They create room for something better. Giving up your phone for the first hour of the morning creates space for prayer. Giving up evening television creates space for reading, conversation, or silence. Giving up alcohol creates space for clarity.
It should teach you something. By Easter, you should know something about yourself that you did not know on Ash Wednesday. Perhaps you will discover how dependent you were on a particular comfort. Perhaps you will find that you can live without it. Perhaps you will realise that the thing you gave up was filling a void that only God can fill.
Beyond Giving Up
Lent is not only about subtraction. It is also about addition. In fact, the tradition of “taking something on” during Lent is just as ancient as the tradition of giving something up.
Consider adding a practice: daily Mass once a week. A chapter of Scripture each evening. A visit to a church for five minutes of silence. An act of kindness each day, deliberately chosen. A weekly Confession — not because you have committed mortal sin each week, but because regular Confession sharpens the conscience and deepens humility.
The best Lent combines subtraction and addition: you remove something that distracts you from God, and you replace it with something that draws you closer to Him.
The Point of It All
Lent exists for one reason: Easter. The entire season is a preparation for the most important event in human history — the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
If you keep Lent well — if you pray, fast, and give with sincerity and consistency — you will arrive at Easter changed. Not dramatically, perhaps. Not visibly. But changed. Lighter. Clearer. More aware of God’s presence. More honest about your own weakness. More grateful for the mercy that meets you at the empty tomb.
The ashes on your forehead say: you are dust. The empty tomb on Easter morning says: but that is not the end of the story.
Lent is the space between those two truths — the forty days in which you let the first truth humble you so that the second truth can set you free.