Darkness Before the Light--Lent for Christians

Lent officially starts on what the church refers to as 'Ash Wednesday' and ends before the Mass of the Lord's Supper which is called 'Holy Thursday' .

There are 40 days of preparation for Easter.

The time of forty days comes from a number of references and symbolizes Jesus living for 40 days in the desert before his death and resurrection. They also symbolize the 40 days of the deluge, besides 40 years of the Jewish people's march through the desert and the 400-year-long stay of the Jews in Egypt.

Throughout this time, the Catholic faithful are called to strengthen their faith through various acts of penance and reflection.

Lent has five (5) plus Sunday Palm Sunday (six in total), whose readings of conversion issues, sin, repentance and forgiveness are dominant. It is a sad time, but also meditative and a time of recollection. . It is, par excellence, the time of conversion and penance of the liturgical year. Therefore, in the Catholic Mass is not sung the "Gloria" at the end of penitence (except on Holy Thursday, Mass of the Lord's Supper), or the "Hallelujah" before the gospel.

The liturgical color associated with this period is the purple , associated with mourning, penance and sacrifice except the fourth Sunday used the color pink and Palm Sunday which uses the color red refers to the Lord's Passion .

In the early years of the Church, the duration of Lent varied. Finally around the fourth century was fixed in 40 days duration.

That is, it began six weeks before Easter Sunday. Therefore, a Sunday-just-called "Sunday of the fortieth." In the sixth and seventh centuries became prominent as a Lenten practice fasting, presenting a drawback: since the beginning never fasted on Sundays to be holiday, the Day of the Lord.

How then to observe the Sunday, and once, being forty days actually fasting for Lent? To resolve this issue, in the seventh century, they added four more days of Lent, before the first Sunday, setting the forty days of fasting, to imitate Christ's fasting in the desert. They are exactly forty days ranging from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday , excluding Sundays.

Easter is closely related to the agricultural calendar and the time of renewal of the earth.

To calculate your celebration will take into account the sun and the moon (spring sun and full moon). In that sense, seek the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring. Once you find the Easter forty days are counted backwards to set the first day of Lent, ie for the so-called "Ash Wednesday" (Sundays, as explained above, are not taken into account in making this calculation).

The practice of Lent IV century, when there is a tendency to establish it in a time of penance and renewal for the whole Church, the practice of fasting and abstinence . Preserved with enough force, at least initially, in the churches of the East, the practice of penance of Lent has been increasingly lighter in the West, but it should be noted a spirit of penance and conversion.

According to St. Leo, Lent is "a collective withdrawal of forty days, during which the Church proposes to the faithful the example of Christ in his retirement to the desert, preparing for the celebration of Easter solemnities with the purification of the heart and a perfect practice of the Christian life "(This definition is derived from the analysis of the sermon 42).

It was therefore a time, introduced by the imitation of Christ and Moses, which the Christian community struggled to make a profound interior renewal. The Catechism of the Catholic Church takes up this idea and expresses it as follows: "The Church meets every year, during the forty days of Great Lent, the mystery of Jesus in the wilderness" (n. 540).

"Ash Wednesday"

The "Ash Wednesday", the first Sunday before Lent, is made the symbolic gesture of the imposition of ashes on the foreheads of the faithful Catholics.

The ash represents the destruction of the mistakes of the previous year when they burned. As the priest imposes the ashes says one of two expressions: "Repent and believe the gospel" (Mk 1.15) or "Remember you are dust and unto dust shalt thou return" (Gen 3.19)