LENTEN OBSERVANCES

IBIYEMI VICTOR 

Counting days, months and years is an integral part of what we do and who we are (Scott Hahn). Indeed, it is a human thing to keep records of events and to mark days and months. It is technically called calendaring. In calendaring, we mark anniversaries, feasts, birthdays and sad days.  And so the world goes in and out with the momentous rotation and circulations of days accumulating as months and years. A similitude of this is present in the Catholic Church. She has her own calendar that marks her own feasts too and thereby creates her own history even in the midst of the secular history of the world. The Liturgical Calendar is therefore the year-long record of activities in the Church. In the course of the Liturgical Year, Christians receive repeated exposure to the major events of salvation history.

Now is the tide of the commemoration of the Lenten season in the Church. This is one important season in the Church. Its importance is due to many spiritual packages the season presents for the militant Church. It is in fact, the prolegomena to the μεγαλο μυστηριο- the solemnity of solemnities that stands at the heart of the gospel. More to that, it is a time for serious spiritual observances that should be cultivated as habits into the spiritual life of every Christian individual.              

Lent is a solemn observance in the Liturgical Year of many Christian denominations, lasting from a period of approximately six weeks leading to Easter. (Wikipedia). It begins with Ash Wednesday and ends with Holy Saturday, the Easter Vigil. It is approximately a period of forty days excluding Sundays since the Church forbids that one should fast on the Lord’s Day. Quoting Nehemiah the Church warns that “this day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep….” (Nehemiah 8:8).  

The number forty is primarily symbolical and richly unique. In the Old Testament, we notice the reoccurrence of the number 40 indicating solemn events in the life of the Jewish nation. Hence, in the chronicling of God’s intervention in the lives of his people, Noah’s flood was for forty days, the journey of the Israelites in the wilderness was for forty years, Elijah fasted for forty day on his journey to the mountain of the Lord, Horeb- just to mention a few. In the New Testament, Jesus fasted for forty days and nights and more importantly, Jesus Christ laid forty hours in the tomb before his resurrection. This idea has been with the Church fathers since the first century of Christianity. The number 40 means complete, fullness. Lent is therefore a period of complete abstinence or complete detachment for the sake of embracing the risen Lord.

What do we do during lent? The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer through prayer, penance and repentance, almsgiving and self-denial. The most pronounced tradition of the Lenten season is Fasting. During Lent, many faithful fast and give up certain luxuries as detachment and self-denial.       

The process of giving up something and taking up another is central to the observance of lent. The real definition of fast in this period is essentially “giving something up”. It means letting go- the Greek- αφιημι.  Giving up something you find pleasure in doing for the sake of detachment and denial. Nevertheless, this giving up something extends to sacrificing and letting out those habits that are not befitting of a believer. If there are habits you have been looking for how to purge away, this is the time for that purging. Once you can deprive yourself of some vices for 40 days, be sure you can live the rest of your life without them. Psychologists have argued that once you do something repeatedly for 21 days, it becomes a habit. Therefore, purge yourselves of that vice for 40 days, you would have unlearnt that obsession.   

Sequel to this letting go of vices is the need to take in new ones. The mind or heart cannot exist in vacuum of actions. So an individual succeeds in purging these vices, he is oblige to inculcate virtues to replace the evils he has purged.     

Furthermore, the season of lent is a time also to remind ourselves that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Those are the words of Ash Wednesday. The awareness of this fact should prompt in us to be closer to the cross for which all of us should always look to- “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32).  No matter who you are, or what you have acquired- you are dust and of necessity you will return to dust- it is not an option, it is of utmost necessity- that is why we are contingents.  

These special forty days are meant for full time preparation for the celebration of Easter. Hence, the resurrection of Christ is in focus. Through fasting, we prepare for the feast of the resurrection when our hopes will be rekindled. Such that in this dry preparation accompanied with almsgiving and prayer we may make ourselves worthy to eat of the holy Passover in Jerusalem.

With all these in place, we must remember something dearly; that during the period of Lent we must give up something, something which must be a vice to our soul. We cannot do this if we think lent is like any other time of the liturgical year. Thus, we must embark on some observances that will yield positive fruits for our souls- however, we must be pharisaic. If you have not started yet, you must give yourself some principles to guide you during this season. You must pick some actions that must show mortification of the flesh in order to purify the soul. For instance, you might concede to sleeping on bare ground for the rest of these forty days, you may abstain from fish and meat; you may abstain from rice and other things that will continually remind you of the focus of this liturgical period.

If this is not done, these forty days might be a waist, but that will be too bad if one cannot make good use of this treasured time in which Jesus himself in the gospels used and benefited greatly from- that consequently launched his public ministry. It was a time he used in preparation for his ministry in the world. He has set a clear example for us; we must follow in his steps to resist the tempter who is always prowling round looking or someone to eat.