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President: Kendra Ang,
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The season of Lent that started on Ash Wednesday, Feb17 this year, is a Christian festival in preparation for Easter. Many Christians have overlooked this important time of fasting and penitence, and need to be reminded of its origins and significance. Mrs Joyce Foster, who was Acting Editor of Methodist Message in 1970, shares this important information.
Significance of Lent
LENT – OR LENTENTIDE – extends over a 46-day period beginning on Ash Wednesday and ending on the eve of Easter. The word Lent probably comes from the Anglo-Saxon lencten, meaning spring, and the German Lenz meaning the time when the days lengthen.
The six Sundays in Lent are not actually a part of Lent, so the Lenten season itself is 40 days. Sundays, being weekly commemoration of the first Easter, have always been excluded from this fast season. The date of Ash Wednesday is determined by the date of Easter.
The day before Ash Wednesday, called Shrove Tuesday (from shrift or confession) was a time for carnivals in the Middle Ages. Feasting took place: to have a last fling before the fast started and also to use up such food as was prohibited during Lent.
The name “Ash Wednesday” comes from the medieval custom – continued in the Roman Catholic Church – of sprinkling ashes on the heads of penitents on this day. Originally these penitents appear to have been persons under church discipline who wished to be reconciled to the church before Easter. The ashes were a public acknowledgement of their penance.
Later the ceremony of the reconciliation of penitents fell into disuse and the practice arose of marking the heads of all the faithful with an ashen cross as a visible symbol of the penitential season which began on this day. Thus it became a general custom no longer confined to those under suspension or excommunication.
Lent developed from two sources. The first was a period of fasting which preceded Easter in the early church. The second was the period of preparation prescribed for candidates for baptism. Since the early church was an “underground movement”, candidates were carefully screened and there was a long period of preparation.
A fasting period of 40 days was required – the length of which was suggested by our Lord’s fasting on the way to the Mount of God. Eventually, this period of preparation for baptism evolved into a general period of preparation for Easter to be observed by all Christians. The Lenten season, then, is a period to prepare for keeping Easter worthily. – Methodist Message, February 1970, page 2.
By Joyce Foster
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READ: Psalm 32
Some years back, Frank Warren handed out 400 blank postcards bearing his address to strangers and asked them to send their untold secrets to him. Warren began receiving confessions like: “I haven’t spoken to my dad in 10 years, and it kills me every day” and “Everyone who knew me before 9/11 now believes I’m dead.” Today, Warren’s Post-Secret project receives over 1,000 postcard secrets every week.
Since then a plethora of online confessionals have followed. Many of the confessions posted are fabricated. But many are heartfelt—like the woman who confessed to cheating on her boyfriend and then wrote: “I’m sorry. I don’t believe in a god, but I feel I need to finally tell someone the truth, even if it is just the Internet.”
The human soul longs to confess its guilt. Three thousand years ago, King David wrote in a song: “When I refused to confess my sin, my body wasted away, and I groaned all day long” (Psalm 32:3). We don’t know what sin was on his mind, but we know how he felt before he came clean: “Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat” (v.4).
David finally confessed his sin to God and discovered the power of divine pardon. “And You forgave me!” he sings heavenward in relief. “All my guilt is gone” (v.5).
Confessing our wrongs on a postcard or Web site may be partially therapeutic, but it doesn’t go far enough. It’s not just confession we need, but cleansing. The Internet doesn’t “hear” our confession. A postcard can’t “pardon” our sin. But the personal God of the universe can do both.
“Therefore,” David sings on, “let all the godly pray to You while there is still time” (v.6). Confess and be clean, for the God of forgiveness is listening.
—Sheridan Voysey
Taken from: Our Daily Journey, 4 March 2010
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