OSBSERVANCES OF HOLY LENT & CHRISTIAN CONVERSION

In the Collect of the First Sunday of Lent the Church “Grant, almighty God, through this yearly observances of holy Lent, that we may grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ, and by worthy conduct pursue their effects”, thus underling the sacramental character of this great season and the centrality of the mystery of Christ. It is this that we should turn to as we journey the forty days of prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Lent gets its meaning and significance from Easter celebration of the passion, death and resurrection of Christ which is the full celebration of the fullness of the whole action of salvation by God through his Son Jesus Christ. Easter celebrations produce purification and sanctifying renewal in the Church. That is why Easter requires ascetic preparation which is the Lenten season. Lent, therefore, is the beginning of the celebration of the great “Paschal sacrament”.

The whole of Lenten asceticism is ordered to prepare our souls to receive with greatest fullness the Paschal sacrament. Lent is given to prepare Christians to a singular annual encounter with God’s eternal plan of salvation, which is made present in all its extension and fullness to the Church every year at Easter. When the liturgy speaks of the “Paschal sacrament” it includes, therefore, not only the passion, death and resurrection of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit, but also Lent as a sign of the first aspect of the Paschal Mystery.

Then how is Lent a sacrament? The Church lives this period of forty days as an action structured in gestures and word whose meaning is given by the Word of God and the active presence of Christ. All sacred actions performed by the Christian community, gathered in a liturgical assembly is a “sacrament”, it is an expressive sign of the sacred reality brought about by God in relation to and in continuation of the salvific events culminating in Christ.

Lent as a whole, made of words announcing the event of our salvation, rites and ascetic practices is a great sacramental sign through which the Church participates in faith-conversion to the mystery of Christ who for us experiences the desert, fasts and is victorious over temptations, choosing the path of messianism of the humble and suffering servant up to the Cross. Consequently, Lent has a Christ-sacramental-ecclesial character because it is a liturgical celebration and, as such, it is the action of Christ and of his bride the Church.

Lent is not, therefore, an archaeological residue of ascetic practices of other times, but the time of a livelier experience of participation in the Paschal Mystery of Christ “we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8: 17). This is the law of Lent. Hence its sacramental character: a time in which Christ purifies his bride the Church (cf. Ephesians 5: 25-27). The emphasis is, therefore, placed not so much on ascetic practices, but on the purifying and sanctifying action of the Lord. Penitential works are a sign of our participation in the mystery of Christ who becomes a penitent for us by fasting in the desert.

At the beginning of the Lenten journey, the Church is aware that the Lord himself gives efficacy to the penance of his faithful, so that such penance acquires the value of liturgical action, that is, the action of Christ and his Church. This is why the Church qualifies Lent a “sacrament” (“annua quadragesimalis exercitia sacramenti”) the American English Edition of the Missal translates “the yearly observance of Holy Lent”.

~Fr. Justus