The Season of Lent

Welcome to the Season of Lent!

Beginning on Ash Wednesday and lasting for 40 days, Lent is a season of fasting and penitence in preparation for Easter. The Church year revolves around two “cycles,” one for Christmas and one for Easter. The Christmas cycle begins with a season of preparation: Advent. The Easter cycle begins with a season of preparation: Lent.

Lent lasts for forty days as it recalls Christ’s fasting during his temptations in the wilderness.

During the early centuries the observance of the fast was very strict. Only one meal a day, taken towards evening, was allowed. Meat and fish, and in most places also eggs, milk and dairy products, were absolutely forbidden. From the 9th century onwards in the West, the practice began to be considerably relaxed.

These days, among Protestant churches, Lent is usually observed with a heightened commitment to daily prayers, Bible reading, some forms of fasting or abstinence and involvement in serving others. Fasting or other forms of abstinence (i.e alcohol, Netflix) can help increase our focus on the other “positive” disciplines, whether personal prayer or serving others.

It can also be a season where one ask God to search his heart regarding some besetting sins or bad habits. One can have a renewed determination to pull out from it. Some may need to be intentional in seeking for help as some addictions can be very hard to break without opening up to another.

Here in MPCC, are offering daily written and spoken devotions. Following them can help to consistently remind us of our Lent commitments. For example, we will get to pray the Ash Wednesday Collect regularly as one sustained prayer which can mark the entire season.

Lent ends on the day before Palm Sunday. One can say that the Lenten lifestyle should hold true for other seasons as well. While this is true, accentuations in life is one way to bring focus to certain areas of our spiritual life. The Church calendar with her seasons help us to do that.

I end with the collect for Ash Wednesday:

Almighty and everlasting God,you hate nothing that you have madeand forgive the sins of all those who are penitent: create and make in us new and contrite hearts that we, worthily lamenting our sinsand acknowledging our brokenness,may receive from you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,who is alive and reigns with you,in the unity of the Holy Spirit,one God, now and for ever.

Amen.