"A Catholic Mardi Gras" Feb 17, 2023

A Catholic Mardi Gras

The Catholic Faith when it finds itself in a culture that does not know or has forgotten God, it does not castigate, but rather, Catholicism helps the culture to find Him. By finding seeds of goodness in what already exists, baptizing, and even preserving important holidays and cultural elements by imbuing them with new Christian meaning, Catholicism elevates and presents as a sacrifice to God the best elements and the Love of the people! Since “taking back” presents a valid method of restoring worthy traditions to God, let us call for and practice the re-Christianizing of the ancient Catholic tradition of Mardi Gras!

Mardi Gras as a Catholic celebration tradition extends far back into the mists of time of Christianity. It first became a holiday when Pope Gregory placed it on his Gregorian calendar in 1582 as the day before Ash Wednesday. With the French claims on Louisiana in the late 17th century, Mardi Gras established itself in North America and found a home. No matter where one goes, revelry, feasting, and celebration of the eve of Lent ensues.

Wild bacchanalia and immorality welded to Mardi Gras by popular culture often overshadows the original intent and how the Catholic faithful celebrate it. Fun and faith are not at odds with each other when the jubilation falls within the bounds of Catholic and Christian morality and behavior. Family, friends, acquaintances, Church community . . . prepare through jubilance, not excess, the bonding of individuals, families, and groups for the cleansing self-sacrifice and repentance to be contemplated in the forty days of Lent. 

It is good-bye to the often-muddled faith of ordinary time and hello to a rich intentional bonding to the Love of Jesus our Savior and Lord! It reminds us that although the richness of the earth that the Father has provided brings happiness, Lent will bring and teach the true joy of discipleship with Jesus. It also reminds us that God does not enforce a period of self-punishment or extreme hardship but calls for a more solemn self-sacrifice and intent to bond with the sacrificial Love of Jesus that saves and redeems!

We know, quite rightly, that if some things are true, other things are not. We know, quite rightly, that if some things are good, others are definitely, indefensibly bad. But we are sometimes too interested in keeping away from bad things just in order to keep away. We forget the reasons for which we do penance, the inevitably joyous reasons. We forget the happy frame of mind in which Robert Herrick said: “Hail, holy feast of Lent.” Sometimes, we almost seem to forget the Church’s audacious, uncompromising championship of the belief that only the Resurrection can explain the Crucifixion. It is particularly ironic when one sees how rapidly she is becoming the only unembarrassed champion of this truth.

Yes, Mardi Gras must end; and yet its joys are right and good, in their time, in their place. Lent faces fairly, unsentimentally, with calm, examining eyes, the small sorrows and the bigger ones and, ultimately, the biggest of them all, pain and death, and with no Pollyanna sweetness, but with an awful and splendid conviction. Lent finds that death has been destroyed and that pain, rightly used, leads to joy. And, in this mighty buildup, Easter names the joys that have no term and makes Carnival seem to have been a feeble little squeak of happiness—but a good feeble little squeak.

Fr. Robert T. Cooper, Pastor
Divine Mercy Parish and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School