02/14/2024
Happy Valentine's Day Everyone and first day of Lent! Love you All!🥰❤❤🥰
SO WHAT IS LENT?
Lent is the 40-day period preceding Easter that focuses on remembering the death and resurrection of Jesus. Sundays aren’t included, but it’s actually 46 days if you count them. This six-week period includes a renewed perspective on baptism, which often means a recommitment of faith. During Lent, people often fast or give up something special to them (perhaps a food indulgence), which is supposed to prepare their hearts and minds for Easter.
A similar time of fasting and prayer is seen in the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament, when Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days. Each “temptation” was a test of Jesus’s faith, an effort to get him to doubt that he was really the son of God or to renounce his devotion in exchange for wealth and glory. But instead of succumbing to temptation, Jesus answered Satan each time by quoting Scripture from the Old Testament. As the story goes, the Devil then left, and the angels surrounded Jesus as he began preparing for his ministry.
That’s where the Lenten fast comes in. It hearkens back to these ideas of temptation and sacrifice, and its goal is to help Christians achieve a deeper understanding of their faith. Instead of a 40-day fast, however, Christians might engage in shorter fasts or abstain from things they particularly love, like soda, alcohol, desserts or social media. When they feel hungry or miss the thing they’re abstaining from, they should acknowledge that and turn to prayer and the Bible.
Lent always begins on Ash Wednesday, and Lent 2024 falls on Feb. 14. On this February holiday, you will notice many people walking around with ashes in the shape of a cross on their forehead, a mark that symbolizes death and repentance. Many churches hold an Ash Wednesday service, during which the priest or pastor will dip a finger into ashes and mark a cross on each congregant’s forehead, saying, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” A second admonition offers a reminder to stay on the right path: “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.
Symbolically, the end of Lent is the day Jesus celebrated his final Passover, the day before Jesus was crucified (which was the Thursday before Good Friday). During this time, Jesus ate the Last Supper with his disciples, washed their feet and gave them a mandate to love one another. This is where the word maundy comes from—it’s an abbreviated form of mandatum in Latin, which means command. Many churches offer a Maundy Thursday service, during which their congregants can take communion and observe or take part in a foot-washing ceremony.