The Season of Lent

What is Lent?

Lent is the forty-day liturgical season stretching from Ash Wednesday through to Easter Eve. This year Ash Wednesday falls on March 2, with Easter Day coming on April 17. The forty days, however, are interrupted by the six Sundays that come within this period, because Sundays are always resurrection days or “little Easters”.  Still, in our Sunday worship during Lent, we actually “fast” from singing or saying the word “Alleluia,” as a steady reminder of the larger season in which those Sundays fall.

How is it observed?

The tradition most people tend to associate with Lent is giving up some favourite food or drink for the 40 days: coffee, dessert, wine, red meat, or whatever. While that can be a helpful practice, it can also put a somewhat thin focus on the season.

In her book Amazing Grace, Kathleen Norris recalls a conversation she had with a Benedictine Sister on the evening before Ash Wednesday. 

We talked about Lent, and she told me that for most of her life she had considered it only in punitive terms, as a time of self-denial. “Now,” she said, “I still fast, but my reasons for fasting have changed.” She hoped to recover Lent as an aspect of spring itself, a time of waiting, but also of burgeoning hopes. For her this meant paying close attention to things like intake of food and the acquiring of possessions not in order to punish herself but to more fully honor the good things in life. (Norris, Amazing Grace, p. 34)

Framed in that way, it is interesting to ask what you might learn about honouring the good things in life by foregoing desserts or coffee, or by giving up clothes shopping, TV watching, playing the car stereo, plugging into your smart phone on the bus, or whatever else strikes you as being right to set aside for 40 days. Think on it, and see what you might come up with.

You see aside from fasting from something, there is always the option of taking on some sort of practice or discipline. You can pick up a daily Lenten reading book and commit to reading it each day, or read your way through a Gospel or some other biblical book, one chapter for each day. You might set a jar on the dining room table and commit to adding a dollar or two to it each day, and at the end of Lent give that money to Agape Table or some other charitable ministry or organization.

Or how about committing yourself to a weekly practice, in which you reach out to someone you think you might like to get to know better and arrange to meet for coffee or a meal? Or maybe commit to writing a letter (or decently long email!) each week, aimed at those people in your life who you’ve not been in touch with for a good long while.

Be imaginative as you ponder your Lenten practice for this year, and then just go ahead and do it. 

For our Wednesday evening Lenten series, simply click here.

For additional resources and the Ash Wednesday sermon, click here

To view Si Smith’s extraordinary cartoon series “40”, click here.