The dilemma of giving up caffeine during Lent

On the one hand, we feel ourselves a trial to others when we give up that fairly necessary morning cup of the restorative (i.e. tea but obviously coffee as well). I noted in passing (didn’t grab a link) a popular devotional source recommending that we choose a penance that isn’t likely to cause others to be disturbed by our resulting lack of self control, should we eliminate caffeine from our systems.

One Septuagesima, one of my daughters (then a young teen) pretty much forbade me to go that route. “It’s too much for you.”

Humbling, to be sure.

On the other hand, here is St. John Henry Newman:

“Instead of [Our Lord’s fast in the 40 days in the desert] simply arming Him against temptation, it is plain, that in the first instance, His retirement and abstinence exposed Him to it. Fasting was the primary occasion of it. ‘When He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterwards an hungered… ’”

He goes on to say,

“And this is singularly the case with Christians now, who endeavour to imitate Him… It is commonly said, that fasting is intended to make us better Christians… This is true, viewing matters on the whole… but it is not at all certain that it will follow at once.

“On the contrary, such mortifications have at the time very various effects on different persons… Some men, indeed, are subdued by fasting and brought at once nearer to God; but others find it, however slight, scarcely more than an occasion of temptation. For instance, it is sometimes even made an objection to fasting, as if it were a reason for not practising it, that it makes a man irritable and ill-tempered. I confess it often may do this.” [emphasis mine]

It’s very clear from Scripture that fasting was a temptation for Our Lord (not, as Newman points out, one to which He succumbed, of course). We forget that reality sometimes.

This irritability, and indeed not just irritability but actual spiritual warfare, he goes on to say, can indeed be the result of fasting.

But it is all in order that we

“might feel that we are what we really are, not bondmen of Satan, and children of wrath, hopelessly groaning under our burden, confessing it, and crying out, ‘O wretched man!’ but sinners indeed, and sinners afflicting themselves, and doing penance for sin; but withal God's children, in whom repentance is fruitful, and who, while they abase themselves are exalted, and at the very time that they are throwing themselves at the foot of the Cross, are still Christ's soldiers, sword in hand, fighting a generous warfare, and knowing that they have that in them, and upon them, which devils tremble at, and flee.”

I can’t say I’ve given up tea for Lent, though I have given up sugar and cream (settling for a little honey and some bitter milk thistle seed infusion to top it off). I suppose the weaker among us have to balance offering up our little pleasures with making it through the day.

But I will say that it’s better to get our spiritual advice from an older, stricter source than what we usually find today. I recommend this and all other sermons*of St. John Henry Newman, if you are looking for a little discomfort helpful spiritual reading, this holy season.

*affiliate link — a little cash comes my way when you use it, thank you!