According to the church calendar, the year looks like this: the year begins with Advent, then goes to Christmas (12 days), Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and then "ordinary time" until the end of the church year.
Lent -- the forty days leading up to Easter -- is supposed to be a time of reflection upon our own unworthiness and our consequent need for a savior. Traditionally, people fast as a part of their penitential reflection and as an imitation of Christ's 40-day fast in the desert. Catholics (and some "High-Church" protestants) give up meat on Fridays during Lent, and some Christians ("high-church" or "low-church" and even no-church) give up something else for Lent - chocolate or television or whoknowswhat. The idea is that you're fasting from something that is allowed but that might be a distraction from your spiritual life. Perhaps you'll even kick the habit for good (they say it takes 30 days to establish a new habit, so 40 days should really do it). Instead of giving something up for Lent, other Christians add something ostensibly good for them to do, perhaps one of the other Christian disciplines – charity, meditation, prayer, etc.
It's interesting to me that Lent coincides with spring, that time of year when men's thoughts (young men's especially) are easily distracted. They turn their devotions away from church and piety and towards another obsession: basketball. March Madness is a time-waster par excellence. It continues the extravagance of Mardi Gras clear through to holy week, giving us one more opportunity to ignore the call to reflection.
For Lent last year, I gave up the NCAA tournament. I always have enjoyed the excitement of college basketball, and I’m sure I missed some exciting games and some fabulous performances, but I can’t say that I missed it. And I think I’ll do it again this year. Instead of being glued to my TV watching the #16-seed University of Small School Undertakers get trounced by the #1-seed Big-School Leviathans, I’ll make sure I get my work done and done well, tempting though the round ball may be.
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I may join you in this, not as a spriritual act, but because I have no means to actually watch the Tourney. OK, I just changed my mind. I probably won't give up March Madness because it really doesn't consume much of my time. It would sort of make a mockery of the concept in that it would akin to me giving up sky-diving or riding camels for lent. Not much in the way of an act of sacrifice. Just my 2 cents.
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