LENT IS HERE WITH US AND WE JUST CAN’T REMAIN THE SAME

“Sin has four characteristics; self-sufficiency instead of faith, self-will instead of submission, self-seeking instead of benevolence, self-righteousness instead of humility”. (E. Paul Hovey)

The Feast of Easter

The Gospel tells us that Jesus rose on “the first day of the week” (Mt 28:1). This is why the Christians began meeting together for their weekly celebration no longer on Saturdays, lie the Jews, but on the following day (Acts 20:6-12; I Col 16:2), which the Romans called the “day of the sun”. Such a name was soon changed “to the day of the Lord”.
The early church did not celebrate Christmas Day or feasts in honour of our Lady or any other feast for that matter. There was only the weekly celebration of the Lord’s resurrection.
A few decades passed like this. Then the need was felt for celebrating the central events of our faith in a special way. Time was set for the first of their feasts, Easter Sunday, which was considered “the mother of all Sundays”, “the mother of all Feasts”. They looked at it as the queen of all the most important feasts, of all Sundays and, as a matter of fact, of all the days of the year.
By the beginning of the 2nd Century all the Christian communities were celebrating the Resurrection. The celebration was thought so important that a famous Christian writer of the time, “Tertullian, speaking of the difficulties a Christian girl might encounter if she married a pagan, asked himself: ‘will her husband allow her out the night of the Easter Vigil?”

What is the Origin of Lent?

The success of a feast depends mostly on how well it is prepared. About 200 years after the death of Christ, the Christians, wanting to reap the spiritual fruits of Easter in abundance, introduced the custom of preceding it with three days of prayer, reflection and fasting, to express their sorrow for the death of Christ.
This great feast, though, did not need a preparation only; a way had to be found to prolong the period of rejoicing. That is why they instituted the “seven weeks”, the 50 days of Pentecost. That period was to be celebrated in a joyful mood since, as the great Bishop St. Irenaeus said, “These days are just like a single day of feast and have the same importance as a Sunday”. During the Pentecost day’s people stood up instead of kneeling for prayer, fast was forbidden and baptisms were administered. It was as if the Easter Day lasted the whole period of 50 days. One hundred and fifty years went by and towards the year 350 A.D., the Christians thought that three days of preparation for such feasts were rather too few, so they increased them to 40. This is how lent began.

Why 40 days?

The figures that we come across in the Holy Scripture have a symbolic meaning, so we should not give them their arithmetical value. Therefore, when we come across the figure 40 or multiple of it, it may not stand for the same 40 we use when specifying a sum of money. It stands for a symbolic period of time, which may be short or long. When counting money, one has to be exact! Take for instance the case of Moses: we find it difficult to believe that he passed 40 days and 40 nights on the mountain without touching food or water (Ex 34:38); we can say the same for Jesus (Mt 4:2). Then we have also the figure of 4000 given for the men that witnessed the multiplication of bread (Mk 8:9).
Among the various meanings the biblical peoples applied to the number 40, there is one of particular importance: it stood for a period of preparation (without specifying the length) for a great event. For instance the flood lasted forty days and forty nights…in order to prepare for a better race of people; the people of Israel passed forty years in the desert… in the preparation for entering the promised land; the inhabitants of Nineveh did penance for forty days… before receiving the forgiveness of God; Elijah walked for forty days and forty nights… to reach the mountain of the God; Moses and Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights to prepare for their mission.
Then how many days you think we’re going to be necessary to prepare the greatest of all the Christian feasts?... 40, of course! But try 40 hours of prayer and see if God will not answer your needs.

What to Do During Lent?

Lent from the very beginning is a time set aside for renewal. In this season three things have to be done: praying, struggling against evil, fasting.

Prayer: - to beg God to change our ways and believe in the Gospel

Struggling with evil – this is the essential part of Christian life for controlling passions and selfishness.

Fasting – Evil cannot be won without self-sacrifice, without giving up some of the things we like.

The big question could be how can suffering be considered a good thing? Is God pleased with sorrow and pain? Certainly not! If we are willing to give up something from our wardrobe for the needy will it hurt us? Others it will, because of being stingy (Mkono gamu), but generally there is a heart of generosity in each of us.
During fasting days, we eat bread and drink water so us to be in solidarity with the less privileged in our society. It’s not time to save the money so that it can cater for Easter shopping No! A great pope of the early Church, St. Leo the Great, said in a homily “we order you to fast, reminding you not only of the need to abstain from meat, but also of the need to do works of mercy. In this way, what you have spared on ordinary expenses is changed into food for the poor”

Lent a Time of Reconciliation

In the early church when Christians committed very serious sins, they were excommunicated, that is, they were sent away from the community. If these people repented and wanted to reconcile with God and with the Church, they were not readmitted immediately into the community. They were first expected to do public penance because their sin was public and known to all. Penance was not a matter of days, but was a prolonged period of time. When the lent period came to be observed, it was also used as time to prepare for reconciliation. On Maundy Thursday, during the Mass presided by the Bishop, those ‘excommunicated’ presented themselves to the community once again, wearing sack cloth (a sign of penance) and ashes on their heads, declaring their will to convert. The bishop would then go to meet them and embrace them. The use of public penance slowly disappeared (partly because we cannot say that one who can keep his sins secret is less a sinner…), but the meaning of lent as a period of time to prepare for the sacrament of Reconciliation remains for all Christians.


“Self-promotion can never replace God’s promotion” – John Maxwell”