For Catholics and many other Christians, the season of Lent
began with Ash Wednesday, with ashes that symbolize human
mortality. Lent is a time of repentance for sin and of
preparation for an intense remembering, at Easter, of the
passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. The Jesus who is
remembered and celebrated is a generous Jesus, the one who laid
down his life for others. Lenten penance and preparation have
often taken the specific form of three things: almsgiving,
fasting and prayer. I would like to suggest that all three may
serve especially well as antidotes to a lack of generosity, that
is, to greed or avarice, one of the Seven Deadly Sins. That
greed abounds seems all too evident. In the United States, Lent
2012 is a time also of political campaigning, and of a politics
in which a candidate has not hesitated to boast about his
wealth, his minimal payment of taxes, his firing of workers, and
his disinterest in the very poor. Other candidates call
relentlessly for ever more tax cuts for the people who