As today is Ash Wednesday, I found myself reflecting on the lessons at the start of Lent and how the Christian ethos stands in stark contrast to the irresponsibility of modern leftism.
The Old Testament reading for today in the traditional Catholic liturgy is from the second chapter of Joel's Prophecy: "Return to Me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning." The Gospel is from Matthew 6, where Christ instructs His disciples how to fast and lay up for themselves eternal treasures in Heaven. Most modern Americans reject the idea of fasting unless it's a "diet" and they celebrate selfishness rather than sacrifice. As Ven. Fulton Sheen once observed, Westerners want Christ without the cross. But in fact, that is exactly what leftists want people to think — that one should never deny oneself anything, especially for a spiritual reason.
Both the popular success and societal destruction of modern leftism is based on the victimhood mentality. Leftists provide people with endless excuses as to why the problems in their lives are not their fault. Now, of course, some people do in fact suffer catastrophes for which they bear no responsibility, but all of us at some point in our lives have made a foolish decision and had to deal with the consequences. Leftism says that you cannot be blamed for any problems you have because white people or men or Christians or Jews or homophobes or Islamophobes or Nazis or Trump supporters are responsible for all evils.
This, naturally, encourages a sense of entitlement. The more a person sees himself as a victim, the more he will believe himself justified in demanding favors and harassing or outright attacking his "persecutors." Near my house are multiple grocery stores with massive theft problems, not because we have a starvation crisis in my town, but because welfare recipients and others trained by leftists in entitlement believe they are clever if they steal food and other goods. The mentality of the SNAP recipients who said they'd steal if they didn't get their payments during the government shutdown is very widespread, in one form or another, among leftist acolytes.
Related: Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Pancake Tuesday, or Carnival
How different this is from the Biblical ethos, both in the Jewish Old Testament and in the New Testament that gave birth to Christianity! Indeed, the early Church had multiple seasons of fasting throughout the year.
Lent, particularly in its historically rigorous form with daily fasting and penance as still practiced by traditional Catholics and some Orthodox Christians, has the exact opposite mentality to that of leftist victimhood. The focus is all on what I myself have done wrong, how I have sinned, how I can make reparation to God, how I can become more holy and more in union with Christ. The sorrow of Lent is that each one of us sins and falls short of the glory of God in so many ways (Romans 3:23), and the hope of Lent is that each one of us has the power to change his life.
There are too many Christians who have blended leftist error with their religion; and, in fact, the desire to throw off all responsibility for one's ultimate fate, to look for shortcuts that "guarantee" Heaven despite the Biblical injunction to work out our salvation "with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12), have long plagued Christianity. But true Christianity has always emphasized fasting and prayer. Indeed, as we struggle in the culture war against leftism, which seems straight from Hell, perhaps we should take to heart the words of Jesus (Mark 9:28), "This kind [of demon] can go out by nothing, but by prayer and fasting."
