Renunciation, reconciliation and healing are core issues of the preparatory weeks on the road to Easter. Every year again, Lent invites Christians to conversion and calls us to examine even deep-rooted personal habits. The perspective on Easter thereby opens the way for a new discernment among what is necessary and what is dispensable. And by means of this interest, Lent is also a challenge to creativity.

The Christian churches in Austria have proposed their own answer towards this vocation. Every year on Ash Wednesday numerous parishes encourage Car Fasting or Autofasten in German, an ecumenical Lent campaign introduced in 2005 by adapting a similar model from local initiatives in Germany.

In contrast to the situation in Germany, however, the initiators in Austria managed within a few years to implement their endeavour successfully. Throughout the land, more than 6,000 persons every year accept the invitation to leave their cars behind, to actively reduce emissions, and cut energy consumption. The numbers are still increasing. Car Fasting is an attempt to use the time between Ash Wednesday and Easter for an assessment of people’s habits of mobility, and to discover available alternatives, e.g. rail, bus, bike, feet or car-pooling.

Hemma Opis-Pieber, environment officer of the diocese Graz, introduced Autofasten in 2005.

“Most of our participants just follow their environmental awareness when they decide to participate,” says Hemma Opis-Pieber, the environment delegate of the Diocese of Graz, Styria region. Despite its impressive alpine landscape, its nature reservoirs and its high recreational value, Styria is affected by a surprisingly high air pollution. In many families, children suffer asthma. More and more people are therefore seeking their personal contribution against increasing emissions, fine dust stress and daily traffic jams. “Many are willing to check and to reform their habits, but what they need is a sort of community that sets incentives and co-ordinates related activities. And our idea is very simple,“ Ms. Opis-Pieber resumes.

- Thorsten Philipp

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Car fasting: Austria’s Green Lent campaign points the way ahead (Ecojesuit)