THE HOLY SEASON OF LENT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 10, 8 March 1900, Page 28

THE HOLY SEASON OF LENT.

The 40 days' fast which we call Lent (says the Catholic Church Calendar) is the Church's preparation for Easter, and was instituted at the very commencement of Christianity. Our Blessed Lord sanctioned it by His fasting 40 days and 40 nights in the desert, showing by His example that fasting, which God had so frequently ordered in the Old Law, was to be also practised by the children of the New.

Very little reference appears to have been made to Lent by writers of the first century. In the second century. a 9 St. Irenseus says, it was the custom of several congregations to prepare themselves for Easter by mortification and fasting.

By the time of the Council of Nice (325 A.D.) it had been extented to 40 days, with the exception of the included Sundays, which were never included as fasts. Gregory the Great in 590 directed that the season should begin on the sixth Sunday before Easter, and that on all the intervening week days fasting should be practised. Afterwards, either by him or Gregory 11., four days of the preceding week were added to make the whole fast 40 days. The Council of Laodicea (held in the fourth century) allowed only 'dry food,' that is, bread and water, and forbade the celebration of the festivals of martyrs, marriages and birthdays daring the whole of Lent St John Chrysostom, whose life extended from 347 to 407, says that 'as many persons used to come to Communion thoughtlessly, especially at the time of the year when Christ first gave it to His disciples, our forefathers appointed 40 days for fasting, prayer, preaching, and holy assemblies, that all men being purified by prayer, alms-deeds, fasting, watching, tears, and confession might come with a pure conscience to the holy table.' After a time fasting ceased to be a voluntary exercise. Laws enforoing it were passed in the sixth century by the Council of Orleans, and in the seventh century by the Eighth Council of Toledo.

THE MYSTERY OF LENT.

Lent is lioh in mysteries. * • • During Septuagesima we had the number seventy, which reminded us of those seventy years of captivity in Babylon, after which God's chosen people, being purified from idolatry, were to return to Jerusalem and celebrate the Pasch.

It is the number forty thit the Church now brings before vs — a number, as St. Jerome observes, which denotes punishment and affliction. Let ua remember the forty days and forty nights of the deluge, sent by God in His anger, when he repented that He had made man and destroyed the whole human race with the exception of one family. Let us cons'der how the Hebrew people, in punishment for their ingratitude, wandered forty years in the desert before they were permitted to enter the Promised Land. Let us listen to our God commanding the prophet Ezechiel to lie forty days on his right side, as a figure of the siege which was to bring destruction on Jerusalem. There are two in the Old Testament who represent in their own persons the two manifestations of God : Moses, who typifies the law, and Elian, wh >is the figure of the prophets. Both of these are permitted to approach God — the first on Sinai, the second on Horeb — but both of ih<-m have to prepare for the great favour by an expiatory fast of 40 days.

With these mysterious facts before us, we can understand why it was that the Son of God, having become man for our salvation, and wit-hing to subject Himself to the pain of fasting, chose the number of 40 days. The institution of Lent is thus brought before us with everything that can impress the mind with its solemn chara ter and with its power of .ippeasing God and purifying our souls, .bet us, therefore, look beyond the little world which surrounds us and see how the whole Christian universe is at this very time offering this 40 days' penance as a eacrifice of propitiation to the offended majesty of God ; and let us hope that as in the case of the Ninivites, He will mercifully accept this year's offering of our atonement and pardon us our sins.

ASH WEDNESDAY

Ash Wednesday is so called from the services of the day, when the Church through her priests signs the forehead of her children with ashes, whilst saying to them those awful words wherewith God sentenced ns to death : ' Remember, O man, that thou art but dust, and into dust thou shalt return !'

The making use of ashes as a «ymbol of humiliation and penance is of a very early date. We find frequent mention of it in the Old Testament. Job, though a Gentile, sprinkled his flesh with ashes, that thus humbled he might propitiate the divine mercy. (I. Job xvi., 16.) The Royal Prophet tells us of himself, that he mingled ashes with his bread because of the divine anger and indignation.

It is probable that when this ceremony of Ash Wednesday was first instituted it was not intended for all the faithful, but only for such as had committed any of those crimes for which the Church inflicted a public penance, and these alone received the ashes, bat dating from the eleventh century the discipline of public penance began to fall into disuse and the holy rite of putting the ashes on the heads of all the faithful indiscriminately became so general that at length it waa considered as forming an essential part of the Roman liturgy. Formerly it was the practice to approach barefooted to receive this solemn memento of our nothingness. The Church no longer lfquires this exterior penance, but she is as anxious as ever that the holy ceremony should produce in the sentiments she intended to convey by it when she first instituted it. The ashes are made from the palms which were blessed the previous Palm Sunday. The blessing they now receive in this their new form is given in order that they may be made more worthy of that mystery of contrition and humility which they are intended to symbolize.