by Don Palmer
Let’s begin with the last day of revelry before Lent, Shrove Tuesday, also (and more widely) known as Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday. To shrive is to confess one’s sins and to be forgiven. Mardi Gras celebrations have effectively replaced the expression and indeed the significance of Shrove Tuesday. Maybe the revelers didn’t have any waywardness to confess, or maybe they were too busy. Oh, well. Lent begins the next day.
Lent—almost too late to write about it. Save it till next year. The word comes from an ancient word meaning springtime, lencten, and related to lengthen and long. The days are lengthening, and have been, of course, since the Winter Solstice, December 21, the shortest day of the year. The lengthening of days after awhile becomes a harbinger of spring—and Lent. The lengthening continues and we come to the Spring Equinox, on March 21 or so, when the days and nights are of equal length. More on the Spring (or Vernal) Equinox in a few minutes.
The period leading up to the most important day of the Christian year, Easter, has traditionally been one of penance and penitence, self examination and preparation for Easter. New Christians were traditionally baptized on Easter Even, at the Great Vigil of Easter, or on Easter. The period of preparation has not always been 40 days. In the earliest recorded observances, Lent lasted only two or three days. Fasting was pretty much limited to the baptismal candidates, who really fasted in order to focus their attention, so to speak.
At the Council of Nicea in 325 (from which we also get the Nicene Creed) in 325, the Church discussed a 40 day period of preparation and the custom spread. The number 40 has biblical significance. Noah and his crew and passengers were at sea for 40 days. Moses journeyed with the Israelites for 40 days. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness resisting temptation. Pope Gregory later set the beginning of Lent on Wednesday 40 days before Easter, not counting Sundays, which are always feast days in commemoration of the Resurrection. Gregory is reputed also to have established the practice of the imposition of ashes on that day. Traditionally these ashes are from palms of the previous year’s Palm Sunday, with the symbolism of repentance (“sackcloth and ashes”) and of mortality in the words of the imposition, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return”. Clergy wear vestments that reflect the sackcloth theme during Lent.
Sackcloth and ashes. Sackcloth, a coarse fibered cloth, was in Biblical days made out of camel or goat hair. Garments made of sackcloth were traditionally worn as symbols of penitence—and discomfort.
The observance of Lent, of course, varies with the church and with the individual members. The principle remains: preparation for the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, Easter, the holiest day of the year.
