Use Lent as a reminder of all the things you wanted to do to make a better year. Because grief is good. Part of Lent observance is mourning. You lost a job, a spouse, a friend, or even a period of time in your life that you enjoyed is over. Did you properly grieve it? Express how you feel about it and how you miss the good times.
Share any hurt or pain its loss has caused… Then throw it away. When you do that, you release yourself from its weight and you can truly move on. It takes a brave person to admit he or she is wrong. Be that brave person this season. It could be a kid who was mean to you in school more than 30 years ago or an ex-spouse who still causes you trouble.
Lent is a time of forgiveness, so let go. The bitterness you hold in your heart for that person hurts no one but yourself. The Didache and the Apostolic Constitutions were written in the east, which denies it ever recognized the institution of the papacy. Egeria was a Spanish nun, but her writings also describe practices in the east. All of these documents came to light years after it was too late for the groups who had already discarded Christian holy days.
In many cases, Rome was the last place to observe the holy days. For example, the idea of moving All Saints Day to November 1 did not reach Rome until years after it originated in England, and the idea of celebrating Holy Week as Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday, was quite elaborate in Jerusalem before the early fourth century but did not spread to Rome until the 11th century.
Advent began in medieval Gaul and spread to Rome from there. Lent, on the other hand, appears to have originated in the apostolic age. The Apostolic Constitutions attribute the observance of Lent to an apostolic commandment. The Puritans, who were Calvinists, had similar views on worship, which is why they made Christmas illegal in Massachusetts at one time. Some Mennonites, however, never rejected the Christian holy days. Like yoga or meditation, Lent has, for some, become divorced from its explicitly religious roots.
Is Lent about self-improvement, or self-denial? Lent is far less obvious a period than Advent for secularization. Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research, suggested that while holidays like Christmas provide opportunity for celebration and familial togetherness, the demands of Lent — a period of self-deprivation and reflection — are far less desirable. In fact, in , a study of Lenten fasts posted on social media found that Twitter was the third most likely vice to be given up.
This kind of spiritual period is not unique to Christianity. Lent is a period of sorrow, but also of self-reflection, not entirely unlike, say, the period of Yom Kippur in the Jewish tradition or Ramadan in the Muslim world. Its purpose is to help believers come to terms with the more difficult aspects of their faith, and to disentangle themselves from worldly vices or distractions that turn them away from God.
The dogma of Lent and its outward expressions are inextricable from one another. After all, Lent is fundamentally not about living a better life, but coming to terms with the inevitability of death, and through it a new life in Christ.
This ash has a symbolic purpose. The cyclical nature of the liturgical year means that Christians in some sense participate in the life, death and resurrection of Christ: each year, they become part of an eternal story, in which there are times of hope and renewal Advent, Easter as well as times of sorrow.
What does a period of fasting and penitence mean in an increasingly secular world? In a culture that increasingly prizes positivity and hope, what is the purpose of a period that mandates self-denial and despair? The practice of secularizing Lent has proved unpalatable for some.
The irony of the secular Lent of giving up chocolate etc is that it turns a period of self-denial into one of self-regard It makes it all about me, and most especially, the cultivation of my own beauty or sense of worth.
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