Ashes to Glory

Details: 04 March 2011

Forty Days

For many centuries the English-speaking world has used the word "Lent" to designate the penitential period of the year in preparation for the annual celebration of Easter, our Lord’s glorious resurrection from the dead. That word comes from the Anglo-Saxon word "lengton" or "lencton", which means springtime. This is an appropriate term, since, as Father Pius Parsch observes, "Lent is the springtime of the ecclesiastical year. From the dying kernels of divine wheat a wonderful harvest will come: first, souls ripe for Baptism, second, an interior purification of cleansing by means of penance, a sort of second Baptism for sinners, and third, an opportunity for all the faithful to be reinforced and strengthened by necessary mortification and self-denial in their life’s journey toward the final happiness that awaits them in heaven."

The official liturgical term which the Church uses for this period of time that begins with Ash Wednesday is the Latin term "Quadragesima" ("Forty Days"). Our Holy
Father, Pope Benedict XVI, points out how the Church by this term "uses a typological exegesis to enclose us in a spiritual context. Israel wandered forty years in the desert. Elijah walked forty days to Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. Jesus fasted forty days in the desert. What is the meaning of this series of forties?"

The Pope explains, "At a later date in its history, Israel came to regard the forty years of its wanderings in the desert as the time of first love between God and Israel. The years in the desert seemed to them to be a time of special election. But, the Bible also depicts those years as a time of extreme danger and temptation, a time when Israel murmured against its God, when it was dissatisfied with Him and wanted to return to paganism." The Holy Father asks, "Is this not also a description of our own time? The Church today finds herself relegated once again and in an entirely new way to the forty days, to a time in the desert... The Church of our day is also threatened by the mirages of the desert, by its temptations." Like the Chosen People of the Old Testament in biblical times, so there are certain Christians, the Chosen People of the New Testament, who sometimes think "the distant God is beyond reach" and so they "must cooperate with a nearer god and (falsely) declare worldliness itself as Christianity and immersion in the world as the true service of Jesus Christ." However, each Lent gives to the Church and her children, if they "wander on with patience and faith, a new day" dawning "out of darkness, and then God’s bright world, the lost world of images and sounds, will be bestowed upon us anew, and we shall experience a new morning of God’s creation" at Easter.

Prefaces

Pope Benedict XVI has mentioned that one of the fine ways to enter into the spirit of Lent according to the mind of the Church is to notice the words of some of the Lenten prefaces currently in use in the Latin Rite and to use those words as the starting point for some Lenten reflections and meditations. Addressing God the Father, for instance, we say: "Each year You give us this joyful season, when we prepare to celebrate the paschal mystery with mind and heart renewed. You give us a spirit of loving reverence for You, our Father, and of willing service to our neighbor. As we recall the great events that gave us new life in Christ, You bring the image of Your Son to perfection within us." Again we say, "This great season of grace is Your gift to Your family to renew us in spirit. You give us strength to purify our hearts, to control our desires, and so to serve You in freedom. You teach us how to live in this passing world with our heart set on the world that will never end."

Other prefaces state to the Almighty Father: "You ask us to express our thanks (to You) by self-denial. We are to master our sinfulness and conquer our pride. We are to show to those in need Your goodness to ourselves. Through our observance of Lent You correct our faults and raise our minds to You. You help us grow in holiness and offer us the reward of everlasting life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Those words of the Lenten prefaces help us "to come to realize our need for that reality this is expressed in the word "fasting". Granted certainly people fast today in many different ways, for medical, aesthetic, and other reasons. And that is good. But such fasting is not of itself sufficient for Lent because the purpose of such fasting is always one’s self. It does not free the individual from self because it is for the self that it is done. But men need unselfish fasting, a renunciation that frees them from themselves, that frees them for God, that frees them also for other people. The demand that this fasting makes upon us is certainly uncomfortable, but anyone who is even slightly aware of the situation of the human race today, and of his own situation, also knows how much we need this call to a genuine fasting that does not have self as its object."

Special Time

Father Parsch says, "Lent then is the time of salvation "par excellence", not only for the catechumens and penitents, but for all the faithful as well. The catechumens are getting ready for their reception of Baptism on Holy Saturday, while the penitents are preparing for a good Confession and are already doing penance to repair the damage they have done by their sins to the Church, to themselves, and to many others. However, all the faithful are given a commission in this season to enhance, enrich, and perfect the divine life within them, an opportunity to draw nearer to the cross of Jesus so that they, along with the catechumens and penitents, will be able once more to stand on Holy Saturday evening clothed in their baptismal innocence, free from all attachments to sin, cleansed of all guilt, in the unsullied perfection of sanctifying grace." The Catechism of the Catholic Church remarks, "By the solemn forty days of Lent the Church unites herself each year to the mystery of Jesus in the desert (Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 4:1-13)."

Warned against vanity and egomania in carrying out our Lenten practices by the Gospel passage proclaimed during the Ash Wednesday Mass (Matthew 6:1-6), we must go forward each Lent to work on gathering and amassing heavenly treasures for ourselves through more intense and devout prayer, fasting and other forms of spiritual and bodily penance, and through almsgiving, not only in money, but also in smiles, cheer, and in sharing our faith (Matthew 6:19-21). Saint Benedict, long ago, told his monks, "In these days of Lent let us add something beyond our usual measure of service... Let each one, over and above doing what is prescribed for him, offer to God something extra of his own free will in the joy of the Holy Spirit."