The age-old tension of whether we should drink is not unique to Lent, but the Lenten season does offer a way of thinking theologically about our relationship with alcohol.
Brits are forever questioning their relationship with alcohol (and not without cause). This year especially so, with Lent following so quickly on the heels of so-called Dry January. The secular press has been awash with testimonials from those who have sworn off the hard stuff for good. Others decry the new puritanism and champion the joys of grape and grain.
Lenten fasting is a practice in part encouraged to build virtue and self-mastery; enabling us to more fully say Yes to Christ. One priest advised choosing a Lenten penance by asking yourself the following question: If Christ’s second coming happened tomorrow, what thing would stop you saying a wholehearted yes. What is that worldly thing you are attached to more than your Lord. Your stomach? Your taste for fine merlot?
The age-old tension of to drink or not to drink runs through Scripture. It affirms that there is nothing inherently evil about alcohol: the psalmist lauds wine as a gift from God to gladden the heart. Yet the Bible gives no illusions as to the havoc alcohol can wreck: St Paul counsels strongly against drunkenness while Genesis depicts with grim detail the depravities that afflicted Noah and Lot as a result of drink.
Second perhaps only to sex in it capacity for being a blessing and a curse, it is crucial that we try to understand the mixed blessings of the grape theologically. The crucial question we should ask ourselves is whether drink stops us from saying Yes to Christ. To examine this question we should consider how drink can turn us in on ourselves and become our idol, but also how it can be an icon and point us toward the divine.
Christ’s first miracle happens at the Wedding of Cana. Wine runs out and, at his mother’s behest, Jesus turns water into fine wine. Readers who like a drink or two may react with joy and cry: Look, the Lord himself wants us to have a good time and enjoy a drink. Why would Jesus produce wine if it is an evil?
John 2:11 comments that this was the first of Jesus’ signs that manifested his glory. His act was not simply one which helped the newly-weds out of an embarrassing fix. It was a sign that pointed towards the glory of God.
The theme of the wedding banquet saturates the New Testament. Ephesians emphasises: It is Christ’s desire to marry us. Heaven, Revelation states, is a wedding banquet: where the Church is wedded to Christ the bridegroom. If this is the end goal – a wedding – then there is a beautiful parallel in it being a wedding here on earth during which Christ chooses to first reveal a glimpse of his glory.
That delicious wine at Cana offered guests a glimpse of the wedding feast that awaits Christ and his Church.
Fast forward three years and we are presented with another wedding sealed with wine. This time the occasion is not one of joy and heady pleasure but rather the agony and suffering of the cross. And yet, as Bishop Fulton Sheen explain, here too we are witnessing a wedding: on the cross is the bridegroom; at the foot of the cross is Mary, the bride.
This agony serves as the nuptials of Christ wedding himself to the Church. And what is it Christ asks for before he gives up his spirit? A drink. How apt that what Christ receives is vinegar: a sour wine to correspond to the nuptials of the cross.
Christ’s side is pierced and water and blood flow out, redeeming the world; redeeming blood we consume when partaking in the eucharist – the words of transubstantiation taking the fruit of the vine and changing it by the words of Christ into our saviour’s life-giving blood.
By situating our understanding of wine within that of a wedding feast we begin to see how wine and our consumption of it can be properly ordered. It should point us to heaven, a taste of the heavenly wedding banquet and a sign of God’s glory.
The association of wine with weddings illuminates this mystery. The newly-weds consummate their marriage by becoming one flesh. They thereby participate and imitate divine love; giving themselves to one another as do the Father and the Son. In their openness to new life, they invite into their marriage the Lord, the giver of life: the Holy Spirit. Sexual union, as John Paul II taught, is a sign of heaven.
Wine can also point us toward heaven. It delights the senses and, in our lowered inhibitions, we taste the uninhibited communion of the saints.
It is clear, however, from the wretchedness and misery wrought on our communities by drink that alcohol often proves, not so much a taste of heaven, but an unmasked encounter with hell.
And so, we are presented with a conundrum. How to make sense of the idea that God gave us wine to gladden the heart and manifest his glory when it so frequently proves a curse? For every delighted wedding guest there sits a shaking soak whose taste for drink has destroyed almost all that is good.
Yet, the horrors wrought by drink do not detract from its iconic purpose. The connection between the wine of the wedding feast and the sexual union on the marriage bed sheds light on this.
Sex can point a couple to heaven. But it is frequently not used as such. Instead of being an icon to point us to the divine, sex becomes our idol: an object of worship. We adore the creature, not the creator. When this happens, the act turns in on itself and we seek to objectify and dominate others for our own pleasure. Sexual immorality turns us away from God and we create our own special hell.
Similarly with drink: at its best it points us towards heaven – we enjoy a taste of the new wine that is to come, and in our diminished inhibitions we enter into a deeper communion with friends. At worse, we idolise it and the drink – our pleasure from it and the obliteration it offers – becomes our chief goal.
When this happens, rather than see wine as pointing us towards communion in heaven and the pleasure of the wedding banquet, the alcoholic drink becomes itself the procurer of connectedness and itself the pleasure that we seek. When we do this our drinking turns in on itself. Rather than connect us, it alienates us from those we love, rather than joy it brings misery and suffering.
What does this mean for us as enter Lent? Do we embrace the grape as an icon and risk it becoming our idol, or do we swear off it completely?
Perhaps the words of our Lord offer the best advice. If your eye causes you to sin, it is better to gouge it out. Drink can be a wonderful gift and always has – but if it leads one to hell, better to pour it down the sink.
Angus Milne teaches Religious Studies at a Catholic School in the South East of England.
Photo: bread and wine. (Photo credit: mizina; iStock by Getty Images.)
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.