Lenten bits

It's been fun this year hearing questions about our parish Lenten observance. Even long-time members come up with questions about language and customs that they have experienced for years.

"Lent" comes from an old Anglo-Saxon word referring to Spring. The name itself does not imply anything dark or harsh. Other languages, such as Spanish and the Latin from which it is derived, call the season simply "the forty days". "Forty" in Biblical number symbolism usually means simply "a long time", and comes up over and over in the Old and New Testament. Jesus' forty days in the wilderness spoken of in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke simply recalled that tradition. It's not really true that "Lent is forty days because Jesus was in the desert forty days"; that notion, although meaningful, was read into the season and not the other way around.

Lent's origins are complicated and go back to the earliest Christian roots. Fasting and more intensive prayer is used by the Biblical tradition as well as by most of the world's faiths to prepare for and to honor great feasts. Our Feast of Feasts is Easter, the focus of which is the "Great Three Days" or Triduum of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter. Christians always prepared for Easter fervently and with great anticipation. Easter was originally the one day for Baptism, for which adult converts prepared for as long as three years. We have restored Easter as the preferred day for Baptism.

As the Christian movement matured, the issue of how to restore people to fellowship who had removed themselves by publically renouncing the faith under pressure became critical. The period before Easter became the time when these folks would be prayed over and would prepare for their reconciliation and re-reception into fellowship. Hence new life in Baptism as well as new/renewed life in forgiveness were the notes of this season.

The spiritual intensity experienced by both baptismal candidates as well as penitents began to look like a good idea to everyone, and soon the whole Church lived this period along with those special few.

"Lents" were often longer according to region (the Irish started Lent earlier and, not being satisfied with a longer Lent, observed three Lents at three different times!). The "Western" Church, of which we are a part, settled on forty days and counted back from each Easter date, not counting Sundays which are NEVER "days of Lent". The "Eastern" Church, which we usually call Eastern Orthodox, count back forty days and do not count Saturdays or Sundays, hence their "Great Lent" is eight weeks as opposed to our six plus Ash Wednesday and the three days after.

The custom of receiving ashes imposed on Ash Wednesday is ancient and goes back to a gut-level sense of ashes representing humility and mortality.

We here at SPP drape most of our sacred images in church with an off-white "unbleached" cloth. We don't cover the hanging "rood" or cross simply because it is a Spiderman-worthy feat to even try! The unbleached cloth goes back to medieval Salisbury or "Sarum" Cathedral in England and the churches within its influence. In the Middle Ages different regions and even different cathedrals or abbeys used different color schemes for the seasons, and only in the 19th Century did the colors that many now think of as the "right colors" for the seasons begin to settle down. I like the "Sarum array" colors myself and prefer it to the purple favored by many churches. To me the unbleached white implies simplicity and suggests that in this season we honor the fact that in this life we see only in part, not wholly, "in a mirror dimly" as St. Paul says, and that we have a journey to make. Rather than a season of spiritual and psychological complexity, I have come to regard Lent as a season of simplifying and of getting back to bare basics of faith and of practice.

Our "Sarum array" Mass vestments are my favorite set and the bold T or "Tau" cross on the back of the priest's outer garment is a traditional sign of penitence and conversion, one favored by St. Francis of Assisi among others. The "Tau" cross is derived from the old Greek translation of the Book of Ezekiel which speaks of a "mark" ("tau") placed on the foreheads of those belonging to God.

A few years ago we began to leave a few of our Eastern-style ikons uncovered. Covering crosses and statues is a Western custom--the Christian East does not veil its ikons for which it has intense reverence and would regard doing so as strange at best. I prefer to have a few of our images of patron saints peeking out at us, as it were, as we go about our Lenten observance.

Western worship also banishes the Easter cry "Alleluia" (or "Hallelujah! in the Hebrew pronunciation) during this season. To me, this is a reminder that the great acts of God in Jesus Christ, his passion, death, and resurrection, are always new and astounding news and it is good for us to remember its gift and its surprise by "fasting" from the cry which expresses it. This makes the first use of the "Easter Acclamation" of "Alleluia!" at the Great Vigil service that much more powerful.

There is a lot to say about Lent and even more for us to share with one another about its practice and its impact on our lives. I'll stop here and will read with interest anyone's thoughts, sharing, and questions in the Comments section.