The Season of Lent
Forty days of fasting prepare Christians for Easter
During Lent, fasting, prayer and almsgiving prepare the Christian worshipper for the sorrowful days of Holy Week, which ends in the joy of Easter.
During the Season of Lent (“cuaresma” in Spanish or “carême” in French), Christians prepare for the “Holy Week” or “Passion Week”, of which Easter is the culmination. It lasts forty days (not counting Sundays), beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending on Holy Saturday, the last day before Easter. The observance differs among Christian churches.
The preparation consists in prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Today, fasting is the main component, but it is no longer as stringent as it used to be (cf. Carnival as Anti-Lent). For instance, on Ash Wednesday Catholics are allowed to eat one full meal and two smaller meals which together should not equal the full meal. One of the more popular customs is to temporarily renounce something enjoyable and to give the time and money that thing usually requires to charity.
Lent is generally sorrowful. It prepares for the hardest part of the Christian year: it commemorates the Crucifixion of Christ as well as his Resurrection. The sharp tension between these two events is not the least part of the hardship. To complicate matters, on the Lent Sundays, which are not counted in the forty days, fasting is considered inappropriate, because Sundays commemorate Jesus’ resurrection and are thus days of joy. Thus the Eastern Orthodox Church appropriately calls Lent the season of “Bright Sadness”.
Ash Wednesday is a special day to consider one’s sins and repent. At Mass, the priest or celebrant blesses the worshippers by applying a cross of black ashes to their foreheads. Usually it is only washed off after sundown. This signifies the ancient habit of throwing ashes over one’s head to show repentance to God. It also serves as a reminder of Genesis 3:19: “Remember, man, that you are dust / And unto dust you shall return."
Lent lasts forty days in emulation of the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness, fasting and overcoming demons and temptation. Jesus in turn followed the examples of Moses and of the prophet Elijah. Forty is also the number of days God made it rain days while Noah was in the ark, and the Jews wandered in the desert before returning to the Promised Land for forty years.
The ancient custom of fasting around this time - at the end of winter (the name, “Lent”, is the Germanic word for spring and the Anglo-Saxon word for March) but before the new crops are available - may have been a way of stretching the last of the stored away food. And perhaps Carnival was a way of quickly finishing food that was going bad in storage.
Lent dates:
- 2007: 21 February (Ash Wednesday) – April 8 (Easter)
- 2008: 6 February
- 2009: 25 February
Related articles:
- Carnival as Anti-Lent
- Lent Days of Forgiveness
- Detailed Lent and Easter Timeline
- Detailed Timeline of Easter: Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday
