Carnivale!

In Ireland we call it "Pancake Tuesday" where the hottest thing on the menu is a flat bread cake smothered in butter - hardly Catholic at all.  In other Catholic countries Shrove Tuesday is Carnival - the last day before Lent when they celebrate for the last time and then cease at midnight to begin the observance of the traditional fast for forty days or so.   Now I know modern celebrations of Carnival are hardly edifying and Lent doesn't figure for most of those jousting in the streets, but the idea of this great feast is still a good one if we mean to take Lent seriously.

The feast and the fast is very much a Catholic thing.  Our holy mother foundress St Teresa of Avila famously said that there is a time for penance and a time for partridge (she was particularly fond of partridge) and she is right.  Many think being Catholic is being prudish and a killjoy - teetotal and miserable - and perhaps many are.  Jansenism and, here in Ireland, the influence of dreary Victorian morality, has dampened our Catholic identity so we are more Calvinistic than Catholic in our approach to the faith, and mix that with a fondness for the drink and you get a strange creature.  

Being Catholic is, in reality, more joyous and riotous.  I think true Catholicism, when lived in its authentic dimensions, has a balance of feast and fast, faith and fun, observance and irreverence which is refreshing.  Just look at some of our great Saints and figures: Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, Pier Giorgio Frassati, G.K Chesterton, Thomas More, Philip Neri - none of those could hardly be described as boring.  Teresa loved her partridge and was well know for her wit, Therese spent recreation taking people off, Pier Giorgio was pushing carts through the streets of Turin with a gang of lads for the craic and climbing mountains, Chesterton was a laugh a minute shocking the straitlaced British establishment, Thomas More couldn't go to his martyrdom without a wry smile and a funny remark, and as for Philip - well he had to be seen to be believed!  I tell you, brothers and sisters, heaven is going to be some riot with that lot up there waiting for us!

So, for your Lenten penance, fast, pray, give alms, read Scripture, and for today - celebrate Carnival  - the Catholic way.  Forget the pancakes, if the heart can take it, eat cake - lots of creamy cake and then at midnight, sackcloth and ashes!  As for pious reading for the season in preparation for the feast of Easter (seven weeks of celebrations!! That's Catholic!), together the usual edifying stuff, this book: The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living - with lots of good inspirational ideas within.  

Now I'm off to do the samba on the roads of Rathkenny - I'll probably be doing it on my own, but at least I'll be having fun...until the men in the white coats arrive.  Happy Carnival!