BY SUE FARR
On Tuesday, it’s Pancake Day, hooray! I like mine thin, like French crepes, with apple sauce and cinnamon and lemon and sugar. But what is Pancake Day all about? Many cultures celebrate this day as Mardi Gras. (In French, this is “Fat Tuesday”.) In Brazil it’s Carnival, and in New Orleans, and many other parts of the world, it is a big festival. We in the church sometimes call it Shrove Tuesday. It was traditionally the day when all the best foodstuffs in the house were used up in readiness for the season of Lent, of self-denial. Shrove, what’s that? It’s the past tense of shrive. OK, shrive means to present yourself to a priest for confession and absolution. So if you are shriven, you have confessed your sins and been forgiven. It’s so that you can start Lent with a clean state.
So what’s Lent for, then? It starts the day after the pancakes, on Ash Wednesday. The ash on the forehead is to signify our repentance and forgiveness. Lent is traditionally a season for giving something up. But why? To lose weight, become more healthy? Could be. But fasting in the biblical sense was not about losing weight, it was about becoming more spiritually healthy, coming closer to God. To focus less on the world and more on our loving Creator, our Lord, our God.
So enjoy your pancakes, but remember to seek God’s forgiveness too. If you give up something for Lent, make it something which will help you draw closer to God. And then celebrate all that Jesus did for us on Good Friday and Easter Day!