Septuagesima. 70 days ‘till the Resurrection. Let the annual pilgrimage towards Holy Week begin.
But notice this: it is not yet Lent. What is the season between Septuagesima and Ash Wednesday? Generally speaking this is the time in which the historical season of Carnival ran ruckus in the Christian community. And for today, I’ll just give a few thoughts on what it might look to redeem Carnival and why it is worth redeeming.
Carnival is a word composed of two other Latin words: caro [meat/flesh] + levare [to lift, to remove]. It is the count-down to Ash Wednesday when all of the “meats, sweets, and treats” are suspended, waved between heaven and earth like the shoulder of the ox in Leviticus. They aren’t gone, they are raised, lifted-up into the glory cloud of God before being given back to us as a better and more glorious meal. But, of course, while we may understand the divine purposes of their annual suspension during Lent, we still miss them.
Thus, Carnival as a Christian practice (before the floats down Bourbon Street and the licentious beads, and all those post-enlightenment additives) was a time of communal joy sprung from the fountain of Christmastide, flowing over the twin cataracts of Twelfth Night and Candlemas. Carnival reminds us that joy is what leads us downstream into the depths of Lent. We observe Lent from a place of Joy, not from a place of worry or shame.
Contemporary practices surrounding Carnival (again, think Bourbon Street at 1 AM) do get at least one thing right: Carnival is a time of boldness, of embodied joy, and of not being ashamed. What they miss, however, is that, paradoxically, shamelessness is not the road to freedom from shame. License, lechery, depravity, and all the other ways we invent to proclaim “I have no shame!” do not actually produce freedom from shame. Like all those hair-of-the-dog drinks served after a night of drinking too much which only beckon ultimately worse eventual headaches, so also trying to answer our shame and regret by doing more shameful things we will regret only compounds our condition.
Carnival, these next few weeks before Ash Wednesday is a time to dig deep, to begin the work of going deep into the darkness of our person with God, to do so joyfully aware that because of what Christ has done becoming our sin, we might become his righteousness (2 Cor. 5.21), we can lift our heads up and laugh as members of the truly shameless community.
What the exposure of certain body parts during Mardi Gras plays-on (preys-on) is the God-given desire to be known, enjoyed (delighted-in), and accepted. There is a deep Freudian truth in the heart of the childlike question “do they like me?” Let us then take this season as a time to address the deep-down question by doing three things:
Find ways to encourage your friends, your household, and those in your parish –find ways to answer their question “yes, I like you, you are enjoyed and embraced; here’s why…”
Find ways of exposing yourself in healthy ways, of laughing at the things that should be laughed at and not being ashamed at the things you have no reason feel ashamed of, by gathering with friends, family, and members of your parish, to tell goofy and funny stories about yourself. For the human person, among the many other things we are, are jokes told by God in long-form —winding stories at times painfully tragic, which grow deeper and richer and funnier over the course of time, confected in their telling, which culminate in the joyous laughter of deep heaven and the sudden twist of redemption.
Confess your sins to one another confess them to your priest. Go and have your shame exposed and absolved; be ashamed of the things you ought to be ashamed of, and then confess them and be free of them. Carry that shame no longer. Find all of your secret wickednesses laid bare only to find them forgiven in the long shadow of the Cross. This, the forgiveness of sins, is the true path to being unashamed.
The riot of Carnival, in its truest form, is the Gospel of Jesus; and the hope of the promise that we shall know fully even as we are fully known (1 Cor. 13.12).