| 7:24 am ↑ | 5:51 pm ↑ | Sunrise and Sunset, February 14, 2024 |
Lent is a season of forty days, not counting Sundays, which begins on Ash Wednesdayy and ends on Holy Saturday. Lent comes from the Anglo Saxon word lencten, meaning “lengthen” and refers to the lengthening days of spring. The forty days represents the time Jesus spent in the wilderness, enduring the temptation of Satan and preparing to begin his ministry.
Ask the UMC --United Methodist Church
I'm one of those people you hear hootin' and hollerin' on the Winter Solstice because the next day there will be an unnoticeable increase in daylight. This begins to stretch out in the days and months leading to the Summer Solstice in June. The weather guy on the TV station we watch keeps tellings us that the light is increasing by two and a half minutes per day now, which was exciting the first time but is wearing a little thin. As you can see, I've included the sunrise and sunset times for Ash Wednesday this year.
During most of my life the season of Lent has been recognized for the reasons listed below, all of them important for Christians. I've noted before that even evangelical Christians who used to be dubious and even hostile toward the liturgical year are observing Lent. Hardly anyone considered making the connection with lencten, the Old English word. Can you imagine what this preparatory season meant for Christians in the time before widespread availability of electric light? Each day of the 40 (plus Sundays) would be a gift, as the seasons changed and people emerged from their human equivalent of hibernation.
In this time of environmental crisis -- it's already upon us folks -- and impending collapse of what sustains life on Earth we would do well to reconnect with the earthy and heavenly Lent and Easter. This past weekend broke high temperature records and our limited snow has disappeared.
The commencement of Lent roams around the calendar because Easter is the first Sunday following the full moon of the Spring Equinox. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness, the reason for a 40-Lent On the night he was betrayed Jesus spent lonely hours in an orchard. Even Ash Wednesday relies on the burnt ashes of the previous Palm Sunday for the smudges on our foreheads. Hello, how can we not make the connections?
I'm not sure what I need to do to make that Lencten/Lent more meaningful as a Groundling, but I'm going to work on it. How can the description above and its continuation below be integrated? There are an increasing number of resources out there, for which I'm grateful, but I want to make this my own, at the heart of my faith, as reverently and positively as possible.
Lent is a time of repentance, fasting and preparation for the coming of Easter. It is a time of self-examination and reflection. In the early church, Lent began as a period of fasting and preparation for baptism by new converts and then became a time of penance by all Christians. Today, Christians focus on relationship with God, growing as disciples and extending ourselves, often choosing to give up something or to volunteer and give of ourselves for others.
2 comments:
When I was a child, growing up in the Salvation Army, we had a period of "self denial" , just prior to Easter (we had little boxes to deposit our sacrifices ), but the term LENT was never taught to us... we collected money for missions, from whatever special thing we decided to give up. It was like a huge epiphany to me , when I became an adult, and started going to other churches that observed all of the holy days, that I learned about the season of Lent, and the significance of ASH Wednesday.
(Now, the SA observes Lent, too)
Few of us in the United Church grew up with any sense of Lent either and certainly not Ash Wednesday -- how Catholic! Lo and behold, there were some things we Protestants could learn from the RCs about structure and rhythm in the liturgical year. Thanks Judy.
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