An old joke has a father asking his son what he will give up for Lent. The kid replies “spinach,” to which the father says that the purpose of the exercise is to deny oneself something enjoyable, like candy.
“Your mother and I have given up alcohol for Lent,” the father says.
“But I saw you drink wine with dinner last night,” the son rejoinders.
“Yes, well, we gave up hard liquor,” says the father.
“OK,” says the son, “I’ll give up hard candy.”
Beyond this joke and a vague awareness of the concept, I can’t say that I was ever really conscious of what Lent is all about, or notice any of my friends behaving differently during this period.
But I’ll admit it was a bit jarring for me the first time I saw people walking around with crosses drawn on their foreheads with ash. It is a tradition I had never encountered before a couple of years ago, when some outreaching Catholics decided to celebrate the beginning of Lent in a public way, by offering passersby the ancient rite.
Ash Wednesday — this year on Feb. 18 for Catholics — marks the beginning of the Lenten season. Lent is a 40-day period of repentance, prayer, fasting, confession and other preparations that Christians undertake in advance of Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the most sacred days in the Christian calendar. (That calendar, of course, differs between Christian groups, primarily the Eastern Orthodox, who use the Julian calendar, and Roman Catholics and other “Western” Christians, who follow the Gregorian.)
The traditional ritual on Ash Wednesday is that the faithful come forward during the celebration of mass and a priest dips his thumb in ashes (made from the palm fronds distributed at the previous year’s Palm Sunday services) and creates the sign of the cross on each forehead, while saying something to the effect of “Thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.”
The intention is clear: to remind the faithful of their mortality as they begin six weeks of contemplation and repentance. Believers will leave the ash cross on their faces all day as a sign of humility.
Even now that I understand its roots and meaning, I admit I still find it odd and fascinating to see a human being with an ashen cross drawn on their forehead. It is such a primitive act, using the most basic of tools — a thumb and some ash — at once so overt, yet evocative of an apparent spiritual devotion most people do not wear so openly in contemporary society.
According to the Christian Gospels, the 40-day period of Lent symbolizes, at least in part, the 40 days that Jesus is said to have spent fasting in the desert and being tempted by the devil. The word “Lent” in English basically means simply “spring,” based on a Germanic root word for long, in the sense that this is the time in late winter when the days begin to lengthen.
Because this 40-day period involves abstinence and fasting, many Catholic societies initiate a last hurrah before the beginning of Lent. Most familiar may be Rio’s Festival or Mardi Gras in New Orleans, which means simply “fat Tuesday,” the last day before the observant cut back on food, particularly meat, and some other joys of life. Eastern Christians tend to be stricter, generally speaking, some eliminating all animal products from their diets for the Lenten period.
Each Sunday in Lent has special meaning, as do several other days, with the intensity increasing as Easter nears. In Britain, the fourth Sunday has become Mothering Sunday — what we call Mother’s Day — a derivative of a 500-year-old celebration of the “Mother Church.”
Then Holy Week is the culmination, leading up to Easter Sunday on April 5.
For observant Christians, the coming weeks are a time of reflection and self-denial. For others … well, don’t be surprised if, later this month, you see a neighbour walking by with a cross on their forehead. They are perpetuating an ancient ritual that outwardly symbolizes the beginning of a significant spiritual journey.
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