Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent. Those of you new to the Church, or coming from other traditions, may be wondering how other Episcopalians observe Lent. If so: then this is the post for you!
Lent is a forty-day season leading up to Easter, reflecting the forty days Jesus spent after his baptism being tempted in the wilderness. (If you count, you might notice that there are actually more than forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday — this is because Sundays, which are always feasts of the Resurrection, aren’t technically counted!)
“Lent” isn’t the most helpful name. The English word “Lent” comes from the “lengthening” days of the spring season. In other languages, it’s often some variation on “forty,” like the Spanish word cuaresma from Latin quadrigesima.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Episcopal Church doesn’t prescribe many specific rules for observing Lent. But traditionally, Lent is a season of repentance, fasting, and prayer.
The emphasis on repentance during Lent encourages practices of reflection and self-examination. The prayers and Biblical readings we hear during Lent have more of an emphasis on sin and forgiveness than they do during the rest of the year. It is a good season in which to reflect on your life, thinking about what needs to change for you to grow in love of God and love of your neighbor.
If you want to embrace this penitential aspect of Lent, you might decide to spend 10-15 minutes at the end of each day thinking back over the events of the day, and asking yourself, in the tradition of the “Examen”: Where was God present with me today? What happened that I was grateful for? What happened that I regret? What’s my prayer for tomorrow?
People are often familiar with practices of fasting during Lent. In some traditions, this includes the following of relatively stringent rules, such as abstaining from meat or fasting entirely on some days of the week. In the Episcopal Church, as in other Protestant churches, there are no prescribed dietary rules for Lent. However, many people choose to fast in the sense of “giving something up” for Lent as a spiritual discipline. Fasting is not about giving up something that is bad; that’s repentance. It’s about temporarily giving up something that’s good, in the joyful knowledge that you’ll enjoy it again at Easter.
If you want to embrace this practice of fasting during Lent, you might consider whether there’s one good thing that you might give up for forty days. How will this help you understand your own willpower, and your own ability to resist temptation, as Jesus did?
Many others choose to “take something on” for Lent, which can often involve adopting a new practice of prayer. If you’re looking for a new spiritual practice to “take on” this Lent, I’d invite you to consider how you could dedicate 15 minutes a day to spending time with God. What would that look like for you? Is it silent meditation? Reading from the Bible or a spiritual or devotional book? Simply sitting and drinking a cup of coffee without doing anything else? Or maybe volunteering with a community program, offering some of your time to see God’s face in the people you encounter around you?
Lent is a penitential season. It sometimes can feel somber or heavy. (Especially if you’re giving up caffeine.) But I would encourage you to approach it as a season of wilderness joy. Lent is a chance to step back from the noise of the world, and take a breath. It is an invitation to simplify your life, and as hard as it can be to simplify, to give things up, sometimes less is more. And however grim its early weeks may be, Lent leads inevitably toward the joy of Easter: it is, in the end, a season of lengthening days as the light of the Resurrection grows.