Dispatch Faith:  Make Asceticism Great Again?, by Michael Reneau (Managing Editor, The Dispatch) & Nadya Williams (Ph.D., Princeton; Managing Editor, Current; Author, Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity (2024)):

Michael Reneau
This week marked the beginning of Lent, the 40-day season leading into Easter. While many Catholics and Orthodox Christians observe formal fasts during this season, in recent years Christians of various traditions have begun observing fasts of one sort or another.

Scholar and writer Nadya Williams writes this week that those practices have as their root the asceticism practiced by early Christians, some of whom retreated into nearby deserts to forgo convenience and strengthen their spiritual health. But a focus on seclusion and piety may teach Christians the wrong lessons about Lent, Williams argues.

Nadya Williams
One morning in Egypt, sometime around AD 270, a Christian man quietly departed into the desert. In Egypt, of course, the desert was ever near, relentlessly encroaching with its dry winds threatening the fragile crops around the narrow fertile band of land around the Nile River. This oasis of life had been Rome’s bread basket for centuries, surrounded by thousands of miles of merciless sand. Walking into an abandoned Roman fort on the edge of civilization, the man shut the gates from the inside for the next 20 years, subsisting on a few loaves of bread lowered down to him twice a year.

So it was that a fort built centuries earlier to protect the edges of Roman territories from unromanized tribes beyond the frontier became the willing prison of this ascetic, Anthony, whose deepest longing was time alone with God, without the company of people or any comforts to distract his mind or flesh from this goal.

Ascetic desire in the age of plenty.
The movement that Anthony set off involves figures we now refer to as Desert Fathers and Desert Mothers. Living for decades alone on pillars, in caves, in hermitages, their stories seem formulaic—repeating many of the elements of Anthony’s life—yet no less spectacular. Reading their biographies, one is struck by their desire to deny their flesh various comforts—food, drink, sleep, clothing, speech, any kind of communion with other people. These ascetic practices did not begin with the desert saints—we could name such famous pagan ascetics as Diogenes the Cynic, a philosopher who lived on the streets of Athens in the late fourth century B.C., sleeping year-round in a large wine jar he had adopted as his home. Still, ascetic practices attained a new purpose and popularity because of the desert saints, who felt that these acts brought them closer to Jesus Christ and allowed them to imitate him.

With the season of Lent now underway, many Christians of various traditions adopt practices that aspire to the asceticism of ancient saints, but in an obviously milder form. Most of us cannot (and should not) give up our jobs and families for 40 days, which would be both unloving and irresponsible in the extreme. We can, however, make small sacrifices, carefully selected and curated, much as we do with other aspects of life and faith in the 21st century.

This is why “What are you giving up for Lent this year?” is a common question in the weeks leading up to the beginning of the season. The process becomes the season’s equivalent of the gift lists for Santa and his helpers in the weeks leading up to Christmas, with the notable exception that gift lists involve listing what we’d like to gain, whereas pre-Lenten preparation involves lists of things we would be willing to give up. This latter category often involves foods—like chocolate or coffee or meat or even Anthony’s staple, bread. For those unwilling or unable to give up one of those, other types of fasts are available as well—consider a social media fast, or a fast from movies for this season. I once heard a sermon from a pastor whose wife encouraged him to give up complaining for Lent. He admitted that this was the hardest fast of his life. …

For most of us, asceticism and isolation from community is a sure path to spiritual weakness rather than strength. Few are the saints whose desert moments could lead to true spiritual growth in a world where we are more apt to turn every “desert moment” into a self care delight. For most of us, rather, it is the local church, community, and of course, our homes filled with loud and disruptive image-bearers where both service and growth happen. This is no coincidence. True sacrifice of the self lies in giving something up in service to others, rather than the act of giving up something in the abstract. While giving up sleep to train my flesh sounds like a self-improvement project, giving up sleep to take care of my children really does point my sleep-loving heart to God.

Every night, parents of small children engage in foot washing—and much more besides—as they bathe those who cannot take care of their needs entirely on their own. It is a simple and mundane task, yet it is also an echo of sorts to Christ’s humility in washing his disciples’ feet in the final days before his crucifixion. And every week in many churches, Christians lovingly prepare meals and deliver them to shut-ins or others. It is in these works of tenderness and care and mercy, often done while our own bodies and minds are weary, that we too can most closely live out the virtues of self-sacrifice that Jesus modeled throughout his time here on earth.

If we look closely, we will see that we do not need to chase ascetic practices after all, because reasons to sacrifice our comfort and desires—even if just a little bit—are all around us already. Lent offers a chance for such service—whether you give something up or not. 

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