There are
traditionally forty days in Lent which are marked by fasting,
both from foods and festivities, and by other acts of penance.
The three traditional practices to be taken up with renewed
vigor during Lent are prayer (justice towards God), fasting
(justice towards self), and almsgiving (justice towards
neighbor). Today, some people give up something they enjoy, and
often give the time or money spent doing that thing to
charitable purposes or organizations. Lent is a season of
sorrowful reflection that is punctuated by breaks in the fast on
Sundays (the day of the resurrection); thus, Sundays are not
counted in the forty days of Lent. In the Roman Catholic Church,
and many other liturgical Christian denominations, Maundy
Thursday (also called Holy Thursday, especially by Roman
Catholics), Good Friday, and Holy Saturday form the Easter
Triduum. Because Lent is a season of grief that necessarily ends
with a great celebration of Easter, it is known in Eastern
Orthodox circles as the season of "Bright Sadness".
The Lent semi-fast may have originated for practical reasons: in
old times food stored away in the previous autumn was running
out, or had to be used up before it went bad in store, and
little or no new food crop was expected soon: compare the period
in spring which British gardeners call the "hungry gap".
In the Roman Catholic Mass as well as the Lutheran Divine
Service and Anglican Eucharist, the Gloria in Excelsis Deo is
not sung during the Lenten season, disappearing on Ash Wednesday
and not returning until the moment of the Resurrection during
the Easter Vigil. Likewise, the Alleluia is not sung during the
Lenten season; it is replaced before the Gospel reading by a
Lenten acclamation. (On major feast days, the Gloria in Excelsis
Deo is recited, but this in no way diminishes the penitential
character of the season; it simply reflects the joyful character
of the Mass of the day in question. It is also used on Holy
Thursday.) Traditionally, the Alleluia was omitted at Mass
beginning at Septuagesima, but since the Second Vatican Council,
it has become customary to retain it until Ash Wednesday,
although many traditionalists continue to practice the former
custom.
The time period of the Lenten season is 40 days. We find Old and New
Testament examples for this time frame of prayer and fasting.
DIRECTIONS
Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, which is actually forty-six days before
Easter. We say that Lent is forty days in number because the six Sundays
are excluded from the rigors of Lent in order to afford the faithful a
time to pause and rejuvenate, gathering new strength. Since the
restructuring of the Liturgical Year after Vatican II, the Easter
Triduum, which begins on Holy Thursday, is not included in the Lenten
season, so the actual days of rigorous Lenten observance are
approximately forty days. The number forty is found frequently in
scripture to signify either a time of penitential preparation, or a time
of punishment and affliction sent from God. The Old Testament is replete
with examples of the use of forty: God punished mankind by sending a
flood over the earth that lasted forty days and forty nights (Gen 7:12);
the people of Ninevah repented with forty days of fasting when Jonah
preached the destruction of Ninevah (Jonah 3:4); Moses and the Hebrew
people wandered in the desert for forty years (Num 14:34); the Prophet
Ezekiel had to lie on his right side for forty days as a figure of the
siege that was to bring Jerusalem to destruction (Ez 4:6); the Prophet
Elijah fasted and prayed on Mount Horeb for forty days (1 Kings 19:8);
and finally, Moses fasted forty days and forty nights while on Mt. Sinai
(Ex 34:28).
In the New Testament we find Our Lord fasting and praying for forty days
and forty nights in the desert in preparation for the public ministry
that would end in his redeeming death (Luke 5:35).
He is the new Adam who overcomes the temptations of the devil and
remains faithful to God; the new Israel, who reveals himself as God’s
Servant by his total obedience to the divine will, in contrast to those
who provoked God in the desert.
The Church sets aside the forty days of Lent in order that we might
imitate Our Lord by our fasting, prayer, self-denial and good works, and
thereby prepare our hearts for an Easter renewal.
“By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to
the mystery of Jesus in the desert.” (Catholic Catechism, #540).
Lenten Fasting Regulations
DIRECTIONS
1) Abstinence on all the Fridays of Lent, and on Ash Wednesday and Good
Friday.
* No meat may be eaten on days of abstinence.
* Catholics 14 years and older are bound to abstain from meat. Invalids,
pregnant and nursing mothers are exempt.
2) Fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
* Fasting means having only one full meal to maintain one's strength.
Two smaller, meatless and penitential meals are permitted according to
one's needs, but they should not together equal the one full meal.
Eating solid foods between meals is not permitted.
* Catholics over 18 but not yet 60 years are bound to fast. Again,
invalids, pregnant and nursing mothers are exempt.
3) Friday Abstinence Outside of Lent.
* It should be noted that Fridays throughout the year are designated
days of penance. The Code of Canon Law states that Friday is a day of
abstinence from meat throughout the year. The American Bishops have
allowed us to choose a different form of penance rather than abstaining
from meat, but there must be some form of penance, for this is the day
we commemorate Christ's suffering and death. The bishops stress that "[a]mong
the works of voluntary self-denial and personal penance...we give first
place to abstinence from flesh meat".
We enjoy celebrating Palm Sunday. The children get to make paper palm
branches and for many is one of the few times they get to take an active
role in "big church." We wave the palm branches and celebrate. And we
all love Easter Sunday! It is a happy time, with flowers, new clothes,
and the expectation of Spring in the air. But it is too easy and
promotes too cheap a grace to focus only on the high points of Palm
Sunday and Easter without walking with Jesus through the darkness of
Good Friday, a journey that begins on Ash Wednesday. Lent is a way to
place ourselves before God humbled, bringing in our hands no price
whereby we can ourselves purchase our salvation. It is a way to confess
our total inadequacy before God, to strip ourselves bare of all pretense
to righteousness, to come before God in dust and ashes. It is a way to
empty ourselves of our false pride, of our rationalizations that prevent
us from seeing ourselves as needy creatures, of our "perfectionist"
tendencies that blind us to the beam in our own eyes. Through prayer
that gives up self, we seek to open ourselves up before God, and to hear
anew the call "Come unto me!" We seek to recognize and respond afresh to
God’s presence in our lives and in our world. We seek to place our
needs, our fears, our failures, our hopes, our very lives in God’s
hands, again. And we seek by abandoning ourselves in Jesus’ death to
recognize again who God is, to allow His transforming grace to work in
us once more, and to come to worship Him on Easter Sunday with a fresh
victory and hope that goes beyond the new clothes, the Spring flowers,
the happy music.
Though originally of pre-Christian content, the traditional carnival
celebrations that precede Lent in many cultures have become associated
with the season of fasting if only because they are a last opportunity
for excess before Lent begins. The most famous of pre-Lenten carnivals
in the West is Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras (trans. Fat Tuesday). But it
begins in ashes. And it journeys though darkness. It is a spiritual
pilgrimage that I am convinced we must make one way or the other for
genuine spiritual renewal to come. I have heard the passage in 2
Chronicles 7:14 quoted a lot: ". . .if my people who are called by my
name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their
wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin
and heal their land." This usually is quoted in the context of wanting
revival or renewal in the church, and the prayer is interpreted as
intercessory prayer for others. But a careful reading of the passage
will reveal that the prayer that is called for here is not intercessory
prayer for others; it is penitential prayer for the faith community, for
us.
It is not to call for others to repent; it is a call for us, God’s
people, to repent. It is our land that needs healed, it is our wicked
ways from which we need to turn, we are the ones who need to seek God’s
face. Perhaps during the Lenten season we should stop praying for others
as if we were virtuous enough to do so. Perhaps we should take off our
righteous robes just long enough during this 40 days to put ashes on our
own heads, to come before God with a new humility that is willing to
confess, "Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner." Maybe we should be willing
to prostrate ourselves before God and plead, "Lord, in my hand no price
I bring; simply to the cross I cling." That might put us in a position
to hear God in ways that we have not heard Him in a long time. And it
may be the beginning of a healing for which we have so longed.
