Why We Need Lent: Advice from St. Benedict

Lent shouldn’t be necessary. That’s what St. Benedict of Nursia, the great father of monks, thought, at least.

Jesus commanded us to deny ourselves and take up our cross daily. In response, Benedict thought the whole year should be Lenten in nature, a time of penance and renewal. He even made conversion one of his three vows, along with stability and obedience. He lamented the fact, however, that due to our weakness, we generally do not have the strength for it. We need a time of renewal to throw off our negligence and begin to take up the Cross anew. If we don’t make deliberate space in the calendar each year, it might fall out of our minds completely.

Lent offers us the chance to pick up our spiritual slack and return with renewed vigor to the core practices of the spiritual life. Here is how St. Benedict described the practice of Lent in the monastery in chapter 49 of his Rule:

The life of a monk ought to be a continuous Lent. Since few, however, have the strength for this, we urge the entire community during these days of Lent to keep its manner of life most pure and to wash away in this holy season the negligence of other times. This we can do in a fitting manner by refusing to indulge evil habits and by devoting ourselves to prayer with tears, to reading, to compunction of heart and self-denial. During these days, therefore, we will add to the usual measure of our service something by way of private prayer and abstinence from food or drink, so that each of us will have something above the assigned measure to offer God of our own will “with the joy of the Holy Spirit” (1 Thes 1:6). In other words, let each one deny themselves some food, drink, sleep, needless talk and idle jesting, and look forward to holy Easter with joy and spiritual longing.

In Benedict’s mind, the core of Lent constitutes giving up our evil ways and our attachment to things that distract us from God or lead us into sin. It’s hard to do that in and of itself, so we need to embrace penance to root out this evil and engage in good practices to take their place.

In addition to denying ourselves things like food and sleep, Benedict also would like us to add extra time for prayer and spiritual reading. This will help us to look forward to the coming of Easter with greater expectation.

Therefore, St. Benedict recommends two primary ways to make a good Lent. The first involves increased fasting, and the second concerns spiritual reading.

In chapter 41 of the Rule, he specifies how the monks should engage in the Lenten fast. In St. Benedict’s time, the entire Church embraced a fast of one daily meal without any meat, animal products, oil or wine. He desired that his monks would eat only once daily for much of the year, but he specified, as was common, that this single meal should take place near the evening during Lent:

Finally, from the beginning of Lent to Easter, they eat towards evening. Let Vespers be celebrated early enough so that there is no need for a lamp while eating and that everything can be finished by daylight.

In the winter, the monks go to sleep earlier with the sunset and then rise in the middle of the night to begin the Opus Dei, the Work of God, that they perform through the chanting of the psalms and other readings from the Bible in the Liturgy of the Hours.

Secondly, in chapter 48, Benedict describes how the monks should engage in additional spiritual reading. The practice of lectio divina, the prayerful reading of Scripture and other holy books, forms an essential component of the monastic life. As they slowly and carefully read the text, the monks meditate upon it, use it as the basis of a prayerful response to God, and allow it to simmer in contemplative silence.

During Lent, the increased time should enable them to engage an entire book, Benedict says:

During the days of Lent, they should be free in the morning to read until the third hour, after which they will work at their assigned tasks until the end of the tenth hour. During this time of Lent, each one is to receive a book from the library and is to read the whole of it straight through. These books are to be distributed at the beginning of Lent.

The holy season of conversion should be one of soaking in the wisdom of the saints that gives additional life to enliven the fasting and penances performed.

We may not be monks, but St. Benedict’s admonitions also apply largely to us. God gives us this holy season as a time to make up for the sloth we have fallen into the rest of the year.

We can follow Benedict’s two-pronged approach of taking up greater fasting and penance on the one hand, getting up earlier to pray, cutting back on how much we eat, and, on the other, devoting ourselves to holy reading, attuning our minds to Christ and allowing his Spirit to permeate us, preparing us to enter into his resurrected life.