Lenten blogging plans
For those not in the know, Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. I’ve been feeling in a religious rut for a while now so I’m going to be putting a lot of focus on fasting, prayer and repentance (not so much on almsgiving, I’m broke.). Lent basically lasts until Easter (technically it ends mid-day on Holy Thursday at which point the 2 1/2 day Triduum starts) which this year is April 16th. It is considered to be 40 days although technically it is 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter and there are various days that “don’t count” depending on who you talk to to make it an even 40.
In any case, I wanted to let everyone know that I’ll be fasting for all of Lent (this means basically one meal a day for the entire period) and blogging about how it is going and my reflections on growing close to God through suffering.
March 14th, 2006 at 3:54 am
I believe the six days that don’t count in lent are the sundays. There’s six sundays in lent, right?
March 14th, 2006 at 8:44 am
Yes, that’s true, there are six sundays in Lent. However, it is a popular misconception that the Sundays are not part of Lent. They are called “The Sunday of Lent” for a reason.
The Church officially states that Lent is from Ash Wednesday until Holy Thursday before the Mass of the Last Supper. That’s 43 1/2 days. If you were to subtract the Sundays, you’d get to 37 1/2, a few days short. The other “solution” to the problem is to say all of Holy Week is not part of Lent. That also takes off 6 days, but does so in a way that the 2 1/2 days are part of the 6 taken off. That is also incorret because the Church states that Lent lasts until Holy Thursday. So the reality is that Lent is symbolically 40 days but really 43 1/2 days long.
The history of people not considering the Sundays part of lent has to do with penance and fasting. For very good reasons, many people broke their Lenten fasts on Sundays as a way to ensure that they celebrate the Resurrection. This idea was then extended to mean that “Sundays weren’t part of Lent”. But that is an overstatement. We can start and stop any Lenten fast (minus the handful of manditory days) whenever we wish because they a matter of personal devotion, not Church law. Our decisions to break the fasts on Sundays is not an indication that Sunday’s are not part of Lent but that we also choose to honor the celebration of the Resurrection, even though it is Lent.
See http://www.jimmyakin.org/2004/03/the_length_of_l.html for a more detailed explination of Lent and the Church documents to support it.