I’m hungry.
The celebration is over.
Fat Tuesday is past.
Ash Wednesday is here.
Lent has begun.
Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, marks the end of the Winter Celebration which began on Epiphany with the arrival of the Three Kings to Bethlehem and ends at midnight of Fat Tuesday when Mardi Gras ceases in cities around the world, the festivities stop and Lent begins.
The first day of Lent is Ash Wednesday.
Lent is a remembrance of the 40-day period that Jesus of Nazareth is recounted in the three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) to have spent fasting in the desert after his baptism in the Jordan River. Observers fast from food and abstain from meat. The fast is formulaic: one regular meal and two smaller meals, which combined do not equal the larger meal. You cannot combine the smaller meals and have two full sit-downs during the day. I ran this by the regulators, who applauded my creativity and said: “No. Eat light. He fasted. We fast.”
Abstinence is another matter. It means to abstain from meat, but not all meats. Hamburgers, steaks and chicken strips are off the menu. Fish and shrimps are on the plate. I grew up with this each Friday. In those old days, every Friday of the year was a day of abstinence. These days only Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are days of both fast and abstinence, while the other six Fridays of Lent are days of abstinence but not fasting. I guess there wasn’t much meat in the desert. Fish either. So, the practices of abstinence appear to be more symbolic in suffering remembered and less direct in historical derivation.
Ashes go way back. On Ash Wednesday, ashes are drawn on the foreheads of the recipients. We can blame Adam and Eve for this one. After their transgression in the Garden of Eden, the book of Genesis recounts the first couple’s reprimand, which ends with these words: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” A sign traced in the dust from the burned palm fronds (branches) of last year’s Palm Sunday reminds us, like our original parents, to turn from our mis-steps and resolve to do better and treat each other better. Personal resolutions to abstain and improve are another practiced tradition of the Lenten season.
The forty days of Lent have begun: 40 days to Easter. Only, it’s not exactly forty days. It’s 46 days: 40 days to recall the fast in the desert and 6 Sundays. I think the extra 6 Sundays were necessary, in part, to align Easter with the sun and the moon. In current practice, the celebration of Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal (spring) equinox.
When the computations are completed and the backtrackings accomplished, the march of time yields for any given year a date of Ash Wednesday between February 4 and March 10, with a mid-point around February 22. The 2015 spring equinox (this year’s first day of equal light and dark, and by tradition the first day of spring) is March 20, 2015. The means the 2015 Ash Wednesday is February 18. So, this year’s Ash Wednesday is a few days earlier than normal, and Easter on April 5, 2015 will itself be a few days ahead of the norm.
No one every said these things would be easy, which is, I think, why we have Ash Wednesday.
Perhaps there should be a time to slow the body and increase the mind and will in thought, memory and resolve?
Spring is not far off, and Easter soon will follow.
Enjoy the quiet.
Grandpa Jim