Lent, Ramadan, Tisha B'Av...virtually every religion has its own version of a time set each year during which adherents deny themselves some of life’s ordinary pleasures as penance for their failings of the year past. For Christians and Muslims, it is common during Lent and Ramadan to refrain from eating foods and forego indulging in other favorite passions. It's their participation in a collective mea culpa, mea maxima culpa; a shared act of atonement for sin. The weeks leading to the Jewish days of Tisha B’Av and Yom Kippur include certain rites of purification when orthodox Jews ritually cleanse themselves. It is to make clear the change of state from sin to grace using the cleansing power of water as exteriorly revealing an inner change. During Lent, individual acts of abstinence and penance undertaken by Christians of various denominations seem to take on greater significance when joined by sharing the experience communally. Attendance at daily mass rises as practicin...