Articles
The Season of Lent
Opinion | Articles | Benjamin Chang | 22-Feb-2023
Ash Wednesday marks the onset of the Lent, the 40-day period of fasting and abstinence. Ash Wednesday is so called because of the imposition of ashes on the foreheads of the faithful, marked with the shape of a cross, which serve as a reminder of the call to repentance and to believe in the good news. It is a season for repentance and of grace. The Catholic Church maintains a token of this moving ancient custom as an element of the rite for Ash Wednesday. On this day, the first day of the penitential season of Lent. Catholics express remorse for their sins. The blessed palm branches used in the festive Palm (or Passion) Sunday procession of the year before have been dried and burned, and the ashes are then blessed. Joy gives way to sorrow, when the priest imposes the ashes on each penitent's forehead-a form of sacramental. The ashes are considered as an appropriate expression of penance, because they are "dirty". They humble us by reminding us that however proud we may be of ourselves, our accomplishments, and our possessions, in the end (as the words of the Ash Wednesday rite recall), we are just a dust , and to the dust we shall return (Gen3:19). At the same time, having dirty faces reminds us that sin stains us, and we need to be cleansed of it through God's grace (Ps 51:3-5, 9.11-12).
The opening chapter of Baruch tells, how on one occasions the Jewish exiles in Babylon "wept" and fasted and prayed before the Lord, and collected such funds as each could furnish" (1:5-6). That one sentence summarizes the common penitential disciplines of God's people since ancient times. In life of ancient Israel, God himself set the precedent for designating special days for penance. Through Moses he commanded the people to observe an annual Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur)" on the tenth day of the seventh month" (lev16:29). On this day, the people were to "mortify" themselves (that is, eat no food) and do not work, so they could devote the day to repentance and prayer, asking God to cleanse them of their sins (Lev16:29-034). In later times, the Jewish people set aside additional days and seasons of penitential fasting (Zec 8:19). The practice of penitential days and seasons was continued by the early Christians (Acts 13:2-3) and became an established tradition in the Church. Lent, observed in the forty days before Easter, developed as a way of recalling our Lord's own forty days and nights of fasting in the wilderness while he prayed and battled with the Devil.
Job's contemporaries would have immediately recognized the meaning of some of his behaviours that seem strange to us today: tearing of his cloak, shaving off his hair, prostrating himself on the ground, sitting amidst ashes (Job 1:20-21; 1:13-19). Many ancient cultures interpreted all these actions as gestures of mourning. They were an exterior form of expression for an interior grief. Sometimes the mourning ritual reflected sorrow over personal loss, as it did at first in Job's case. He had just received terrible news about several calamities, including the sudden death of all his children (Job 1:13-190). At other times, these were gestures of remorse- that is, of sorrow over sin. In this case, the wearing of sackcloth and ashes in particular became a common ritual of penance before God and petition for his forgiveness and help (Dn 9:3). Job later used ashes in this way as well, when he felt sorrow for questioning God and decided to "repent in dust and ashes" (Job42:6).
The period of Lent is also a reminder of the forty days that Jesus spent in the desert before taking up the mission He received from His Father. Immediately after the six antitheses (Mt 5: 21-48) in the Sermon on the Mount, there follows instructions on three practices that were common among the Jews, as a sign of closeness to God namely prayer, fasting and almsgiving. All three, though only a means to reach God can be made ends in themselves. Almsgiving can be ostentations, prayer can be used to show-off and fasting can be used to point to one’s self. Jesus cautions the listeners about these dangers and challenges them to make them all internal activities that will lead the way to God rather than being made ends in themselves. The focus thus is on the motivation with which one does what one does. If the motivation for doing good is to win the admiration of human beings, then that action is selfish and self-motivated and does no good at all. If the action is done out of a sense of duty or obligation, it cannot be called pure and is instead diluted. However if one does the action and accepts that the reward is in the performing of the action itself, such an action can be Salvific. This is the challenge not only of Ash Wednesday but of the whole season of Lent "to give and not to count the cost, to labour and to look for on reward".
Why should we set aside special days and seasons for these activities? Shouldn't we be doing such things as a way of life? Of course, but with our human nature being weak as it is, the Church recognizes that if we have no time set aside especially for these disciplines, many of us will be tempted to neglect them altogether. There is absolutely no obligation in the Christian way of life, except the obligation to love. When there is love, then all our actions come from our hearts and spontaneously without counting the cost, almsgiving becomes generous and spontaneous, prayer becomes union with god and leads to action and fasting is done in order to show our dependence on God and not on earthly things. Some months ago two brothers having between them a huge amount of property and wealth, killed each other over a small property disputes. Instead of thanking God for what they had and sharing the blessings with the less fortunate, they fought with one another just because they wanted to have more and even more. They were both cremated together and so they literally 'turned to dust'.
The Lenten season therefore reminds us not only of our undue and lustful attachments to worldly things, which we are all going to leave behind but it is a season that fills up with grace to look at things from the perspective of God. It does not say that we should not enjoy what God has blessed us with but it tells us not to be over duly attached to the things that in reality obstruct our relationship with God and with fellow human beings.
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(The Author is a Priest in the Diocese of Kohima, and can be reached on Benjamin.chang24@gmail.com. Views expressed are his own)
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