Before a feast, a fast. Before a fast, a feast!

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The logic of liturgical seasons has always been that before a feast, there is a period of penance, prayer, fasting to prepare more worthily to celebrate the feast (Advent before Christmas, Lent before Easter….). And, in turn, before Lent, there’s a grand party- carnival, Mardi Gras.

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So, this past week saw Carnival, Mardi Gras, Rosenmontag/Fasching (in Germany) in many Catholic regions of the world, with particularly phenomenal ones in Rio De Janeiro (Brazil), Mardi Gras (New Orleans, Louisiana), Rosenmontag in Cologne and Fasching in Munich, carnival in Binche, Ath and Aalst (Belgium) and of course the Carnival of Venice.

 

                                                      

 

https://youtu.be/JNzO_n3UkxE       (Scenes from the Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans, 4 March 2025)

 

Several traditional themes mark these rambunctious celebrations: the first is the origin of the name ‘Fat’ Tuesday, or Mardi ‘Gras’ – to use up all the eggs, butter and other luxury foods that used to be banned during Lent (the Orthodox still observe these strict rules governing Lenten foods).

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The second theme is to celebrate, sing, dance, organize processions to bring people together (of course, eat and drink…) and show off costumes, brass bands (in New Orleans, each district has an association (‘krewe’) that spends the better part of the year preparing its floats, costumes and masks, marching groups and bands. In Binche and Aalst, they bring out their ‘giants’ – disguises in which people mount stilts and parade in vibrant costumes and wax masks.

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The third is something that was quite typical in the Middle Ages – carnivals and other ‘feasts of fools’ (such as was also observed on the Feast of the Holy Innocents after Christmas, April 1st or January 1st) allowed for a sort of ritual, temporary reversal of hierarchies. A young boy would be elected to serve as ‘bishop’ for the day, in a sort of inversion of roles where, at least for a day, the ‘last will be first’, the schoolboy or altar server will become bishop for a day, and a court jester or clown is crowned ‘king for the day’. These traditions often survive in Mardi Gras parades.

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Social historians and scholars of ritual have remarked that this kind of event served as a sort of ‘escape valve’ to defuse any social tensions or wishes to rebel against the established order. Making a boy a bishop was as humorous and implausible as making a prince a pauper, another standard theme in folk tales. After the day of fun and mockery, on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, everyone went back to a deferential and pious life, subject to the established social hierarchy.

 

 

Ash Wednesday

 

Since the theme of this liturgical year is ‘Jubilee’, as Pope Francis has declared 2025 a jubilee year, the Lenten reflections for this season will consider the theme of jubilee from a variety of perspectives.

 

 

Opening of Jubilee ‘Holy Doors’ at St Peter’s Basilica, 24 December 2024

The notion of jubilee goes back to the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), and while it sounds like it means celebration (like a golden jubilee of an institution, married couple, monarch etc., marking a 50th anniversary), in fact, it served in the Jewish tradition as another way of righting some wrongs and bringing a sort of ‘reset’ to the inevitable inequalities that creep into any society with time.

So, in Leviticus 25, God commanded the Israelites to observe a “sabbatical year” every seventh year (something still observed in academic life, by the way, where professors get a year off teaching every 7th year after tenure to focus on research and writing).

The sabbatical year for the Israelites was one when the land was left untilled and all agricultural work was suspended – in other words, a year to leave the earth ‘fallow’ to regenerate the minerals and nutrients in the soil (something that farmers have long known was essential).

After the seventh sabbatical year (7x7+1), there was to be a jubilee year. In that particular year, slaves would be set free, debts forgiven, etc.

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The biblical practice of jubilee might make for a fairer society, though it is hard to imagine today everyone returning to their own property, restoring everything to their original owners, reversing all ‘mergers and acquisitions’ and producing nothing but living only off what grows wild!

Nevertheless, the underlying spirit can give us a new perspective as to why we undertake certain practices in Lent: sharing with the poor so as to offset, at least to a small extent, the great inequalities in our world; living a simpler life, without as many luxuries (jubilee may mean celebration, but living off the land would definitely represent a step down from the abundance that farmers grown by planting and harvesting!), and keeping a ‘holy season’ of intensified prayer, spiritual reading, Mass attendance, Scripture study, the Rosary, etc. - whatever your preferred devotions may be.

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