The Spiritual Meaning of Lent - Blaze

The Spiritual Meaning of Lent

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and technically ends with the evening Mass on Holy (Maundy) Thursday. The days which fall in between these two days amount to forty, representing the number of days that Jesus spent in the desert, where he was tempted by Satan (Mt 4:1-2, Mk 1:12-13, Lk 4:1-2). 

One shouldn’t be too precise, though, in calculating these 40 days. In order to add up to 40 days, the six Sundays of Lent are not counted - this gives one only 38 days. One can reach the magic number of 40 by including Good Friday and Holy Saturday. 

The number 40 has many biblical references: the 40 days that Moses spent on Mount Sinai with God (Ex 24:18); the 40 days and nights that Elijah spent walking to Mount Horeb (1 Kgs 19:8 ); God made it rain for 40 days and 40 nights in the days of Noah (Gn 7:4); the Hebrew people wandered in the desert for 40 years; God gave the city of Ninevah 40 days to repent (Jn 3:4). Traditional belief also has it that Jesus lay in his tomb, after his crucifixion, for 40 hours. The early Christians, therefore, fasted for 40 days before Easter.  

Fasting is only one of the three penitential practices that the Church recommends for Lent. Perhaps it’s not even the most important. Spending more time in prayer (justice toward God) should be a greater goal. And almsgiving (justice toward our neighbour) is another traditional Lenten practice. Fasting can be thought of as justice toward ourselves. Justice toward ourselves, though, can also take the form of giving up some of our small vices. Perhaps it’s not as common as it once was (unfortunately), but Catholics used to ask each other, “What are you giving up for Lent?” 
   
What’s wrong with giving up desserts for Lent even if part of the motivation is to lose weight? Or what’s wrong with giving up movies—especially considering the content of so many movies these days? We can all examine our consciences to come up with things we can try to give up for Lent.  Our parishes also make it possible for us to engage in more positive activities than usual, with prayer services of various kinds and the Lenten penance services. 

Lents of Yesteryear
 
Between the middle of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries it was believed that external forces could never touch the faith of the strongly Catholic population of the Maltese Islands. Many felt that popular devotions, sermons and liturgical celebrations were the best defence the Maltese had against all sorts of evil imaginable.

Ash Wednesday was a day of fasting and abstinence.  On this day women would turn all their saucepans upside down as a sign that they would not be doing any cooking.  Many would go to church for the liturgical celebration, during which the celebrant would mark the faithful’s forehead with ashes, symbolising mankind’s nothingness before God and the need for repentance.  

Hadd in-Nies (People's Sunday) was the first Sunday after Carnival. On the day “most of those persons who have masked (during Carnival), repair to the parish church of Casal Zabbar, called Della Grazia, by way of penance for their follies”.

The beginning of Lent was characterized by spiritual exercises or sermons, spread over the best part of a week, intended to make the listener repent of his sins and work on a spiritual conversion in preparation for Easter. The sermons were aimed at different categories of people: those in the early afternoon were for spinsters; those late in the afternoon for married women; and those in the evening for men.  Such spiritual exercises have always been popular and nowadays are conducted all over Malta, not only in parishes for various categories of the faithful, but also on a national scale and even at places of work.  

During Lent, the Way of the Cross was also celebrated in a more solemn way and the feast of the Via Crucis took place towards the end of this forty-day period.  Hymns were sung to the accompaniment of a full orchestra and sermons were delivered for each station of the Cross.  In churches where there were statues of the passion of Christ, a statue or two representing an episode from Christ’s passion would be taken out of their niches and placed in a prominent place in the church throughout Lent.  In some villages these statues would be carried in procession before placing them in church.

Just as cribs and figurines were sold at Christmas, during Lent small sets of statues representing the passion of Christ were exhibited and sold.  On Passion Sunday, the Sunday prior to Palm Sunday, all images of the crucifix, except those of the Way of the Cross, and other paintings were covered with a purple cloth, as was done in all churches of Latin rite.  The former were uncovered on Good Friday and the latter on Holy Saturday. This is still done today.
 
Id-Duluri (the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows) was celebrated on the Friday before Palm Sunday, as it still is. Up to the present day, this feast presents the occasion for an impressive manifestation of the devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows.  In various localities all over the island, processions are held in honour of Our Lady, but the most popular is the one organised in Valletta, in which people from the whole island participate.  The statue, accompanied by an unending train of men and women from all walks of life, most of them taking part in order to fulfil a vow, pass through the main streets of the city.  A few decades ago, on the same day and especially in villages, there was a special kind of penance called tas-seba’ bukkuni (the seven mouthfuls).  The individual undertaking this penance had to subsist on pieces of bread which he had begged for from seven different families.  The purpose of this penance was the humiliation suffered by the penitent in begging for bread and, of course, the fasting.  
   
(Taken and adapted from “Liturgical Renewal in the Maltese Islands: A Historical Study (1840-1963)" by Rev. J. Manicaro)