The Church Year, 2025

LENT: Lent is a time for preparation for the celebration of Easter. The Liturgy prepares the catechumens for the celebration of the Paschal Mystery by the various stages of Christian initiation; as well as the faithful, who recall their baptism and do penance in preparation for Easter.

Lent is the penitential season of approximately 40 days set aside by the Church in order for the faithful to prepare for the celebration of the Lord's Passion, Death and Resurrection. Works of penance include prayer, fasting and alms giving. (1)

During Lent, the faithful willingly submit to fasting and self-denial in imitation of Our Lord's forty-day fast in the desert. It is in these dark and still nights, these desert times, that the soul experiences its greatest growth. There, in the inner arena, the soul battles the world, the flesh and the devil just as the Lord battled Satan's triple temptation in the desert. His battle was external, for Jesus could not sin; our battle is interior, but with a hope sustained by the knowledge of Christ's Easter victory over sin and death.​ His victory is our renewal, our "spring" - which is the meaning of the Anglo-Saxon word, "lengten" or Lent. In this penitential season we have the opportunity to make an annual spiritual "tune-up", a 40-day retreat with Our Lord. (2)

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[Ref. (1) Ordo, 2019-2020, pg29; (2) CatholicCulture.org ]