Some Thoughts For Lent

Details: 12 February 2010

Ash Wednesday

Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, says, “Ash Wednesday is the liturgical door opening unto Lent. The texts chosen for the celebration of Mass on (this coming) Wednesday sketch for us, but only in outline, the structure of the entire season of Lent. The Church takes care to indicate to us the necessary orientation for Lent we should have, and she provides for us the divine assistance to make decisively and courageously the special spiritual journey which we begin each year on Ash Wednesday so that this annual trip of ours is illuminated along the way by the brilliance of Christ’s paschal mystery.”

The Successor of Saint Peter teaches, “Lent is a propitious time in which the Church invites us Christians to be more intensely aware of Christ’s redeeming work and to live our Baptism more profoundly. With its duration of forty days, Lent tries to recall some of the events that marked the life and history of ancient Israel, presenting us again its paradigmatic value. The Lenten season too is an invitation to relive with Jesus the forty days He spent in the desert praying and fasting, before undertaking His public mission. This is the authentic and central program of the Lenten season: to listen to the word of truth, to live, speak, and do the truth, to reject the lies that poison humanity and are the door to all evils. It is urgent, therefore, during these forty days, to listen again to the Gospel, the Lord’s word, the word of truth, so that in every Christian, in each one of us, the awareness will be reinforced of the truth that has been given to us, which Christ, the incarnate Word, has given to us, that we might live this truth and be witnesses to Him. Lent stimulates us to let the word of God penetrate our life and in this way to know the fundamental truths of who we are, where we come from, where we must go, and what path we must take in life. Thus, the Lenten season offers us an ascetic and liturgical journey that, helping us to open our eyes in the face of our weaknesses, makes us open our hearts to the merciful love of Christ.”

Preparation

The Supreme Pontiff remarks, ”In the forty days of preparation for Easter, we endeavor to get away from the heathenism that weighs us down, that is always driving us away from God, and we set off toward Him once again.” The Pope says that we can, if we want, find an entire program for Lent in the words written in Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. Saint Paul, he notes, teaches that everything in us that is good is the work of divine grace. Yet, the Apostle to the Gentiles is also clear that a Christian must also freely adhere continuously to the supernatural life that has been gratuitously bestowed on us by God, “in accordance with the baptismal perspective which marks the Lenten season.”
“Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal bodies to make you obey your passions. Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God as people who have been brought from death to life, and give your members to God as instruments of righteousness” (Romans 6:12-13). The Holy Father suggests too that we take personally the exhortation of Saint Paul we hear in the second reading in the Ash Wednesday Mass: “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God!” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

The Gospel passage proclaimed every Ash Wednesday is also of importance for us who should be resolved to take Lent seriously and sincerely each year. In it “Jesus warns us against the canker of vanity that leads to ostentation and hypocrisy, to superficiality and self-satisfaction, and He reasserts the need for us always to foster uprightness of heart in our Lenten practices. At the same time, Christ shows in those words in that Scripture pericope the principal way to grow in purity of intention, that is, by cultivating a continuous intimacy with the heavenly Father.”

Penitential Time

For some centuries, the arrangement of the order observed in the Sacrament of Reconciliation was different from what it is today in the Catholic Church. In those olden times people would examine their conscience, be sorry for their sins and transgressions, and then confess them to an authorized priest. However, then they would usually receive their penance to do, only returning afterwards to receive absolution after completing their penance. The penances imposed in those days were often lengthy and more severe than the token and symbolic penances that are usual today. Even when this arrangement of the order for Confession changed to what is more familiar to us today, the penances continued for many years to be rather lengthy and severe. This is why the custom arose in many places for the faithful to go for their Easter confession in the period before Lent began, which was called “Shrovetide”, the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday being called “Shrove Tuesday”. Then, the penitents would use the fasts, almsgiving, and extra prayer time designated in Lent to carry out the penances imposed on them.

Even now Lent provides Christians with a grace-filled opportunity to make reparation to God for the damage, visible or invisible, material or spiritual, to oneself or to others, that may have been done by our sins, damage that needs to be repaired, either in this life or in purgatory, even though our sins which caused the damage may have been absolved and we are forgiven for them. A fresh awareness of sin and its baleful effects in our personal lives and in our culture and in larger society, of its residual and destructive force, as well as for the urgent need to oppose and eliminate it, should be one of the great spiritual benefits that could be obtained from a devout and persevering practice of Lenten mortification and self-denial. This should, of course, be balanced by an emphasis on the love God has for humanity despite its sinful condition and by our special Lenten meditations and reflections on the suffering and death of Jesus Christ, our divine Lord, for our salvation.

Not Forty-Six

Although there are forty-six days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday, Sundays have never been counted as days of Lent, since every Sunday, even if in Lent, is considered a celebration of the Lord’s resurrection in some way, and thus sorrow and penance are excluded. Pope Clement XIII wrote that Bishops should see to it that the faithful observe the holy fast of Lent, because this is recommended by the law and the prophets, consecrated by the practice the Lord Jesus Himself (Matthew 4:2) and handed down to the Church by the Apostles (Mark 2:18-20; Acts of the Apostles 14:22). In Lent we are called to walk together with Christ through His fasting toward His cross and resurrection. These days, says Peter Celano, are the fullest expression of what it means to be a disciple, a follower, of Jesus.