Supermarkets may well have stacked the shelves with Easter eggs long before the last chocolate reindeer had been knocked down to half-price but for Christians the shift from celebrating Christ’s birth to remembering his death is a little more strung out. This week, for example, sees the start of Lent – a six-week period of reflection and preparation, starting on Wednesday and marked by the sort of abstinence which has little appeal for those out to make a fast buck.
It’s not hard to understand why Lent fails to rouse the sort of enthusiasm we have for other events in the Christian calendar. It doesn’t have the warmth, generosity and conviviality of Christmas, the excited anticipation of Advent, the abundance of Harvest or the clean freshness of Easter. The time of year it falls does little to recommend it – coming more often than not in late winter, rather than early Spring, when we’re all pretty fed up with cold, dark mornings and long evenings wrapped up in a collective sense of misery and gloom.
While we’re instinctively craving six weeks, possibly meditating, on a sunny beach, what we’ve being offered is six weeks of mental slog and physical austerity, just when we’re still feeling tender about our failure to stick to those New Year’s resolutions beyond week one. Key words are fasting, penitence, self-denial, discipline and abstinence – even the word “Lent” has a mean, lean, almost shifty look about it.
As a season, it’s a struggle to sell, admits David Wilbourne, the assistant bishop of Llandaff.
“As a boy I hated Lent, because everybody looked so miserable. There were no flowers in church to brighten up the place, the hymns dragged on about forty days and forty nights of starvation, cold, and temptation, preachers ranted about giving up stuff and denying your self.”
That experience inspired him to give the season a make-over when he became a parish priest. Lent, he believes, should be seen as a glorious opportunity to declutter and refresh – to spring-clean our lives.
“When I became a parish priest, I resolved to lighten up Lent and make it positive rather than negative. Lent is old English for Spring, and Spring is a time for dusting ourselves down after a dark winter and bracing ourselves for the thrill of new life. Just as we spring-clean our homes we can spring-clean our spiritual lives, clearing the clutter so that we can concentrate on the things that really matter.”
This year, Bishop David will be livening up Lent by giving it a West End .beat Taking his cue from the rock musical, Jesus Christ, Superstar, he’s doing a series of talks based on the songs every week at three venues in South Wales- St David’s church, Neath, Llandaff Cathedral and St Elvan’s Church, Aberdare. He hopes they will inspire people to find new energy for their faith in Lent.
All over Wales, churches will be encouraging people to give things up – to declutter – or take on new challenges during the six weeks of Lent. Even the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, is not let off the hook. Among his other Lenten duties, which include visiting all the clergy in his diocese, he’ll be giving up something he’s particularly attached to – chocolate. “I am a chocoholic,” he confesses. “I am giving it up as a reminder that I am in control of my own life and however strong the attraction I cannot let it be stronger than my own will. The money saved I will give to charity so that someone else will gain.”
The idea that one person’s Lent abstinence is another person’s gain is one which is growing in popularity. Many churches run Lent appeals and encourage people to donate what they would have spent on the likes of Crunchies and Chardonnay. The Bishop of Monmouth, Dominic Walker, for example, is calling people to join him in going without a meal on Ash Wednesday and Fridays in Lent and to send the money to his appeal for homeless people in Newport. He hopes to raise £20,000 which will be divided between the Newport Churches Night Shelter and in providing 2,500 bibles for new Christians in China. Meanwhile the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, John Davies, has launched a Lent appeal to raise money for Bollobhpur Hospital in Bangladesh and for the Disasters Emergency Committee’s appeal for earthquake relief in Haiti.
Prayer is also important in Lent as a way of renewing faith and drawing strength. The Bishop of St Asaph, Gregory Cameron, is asking clergy and church members to stop whatever they are doing at 6pm every day and share in a common prayer. He says, “People often like an extra challenge during Lent, and there is part of me, at least, that thinks that a common diocesan prayer, said together across the diocese at the same time every evening might be an instrument to draw us more deeply into our common life.”
By letting go and giving things up or by taking on new challenges, we will emerge as stronger individuals, more aware of what makes us tick and our relationship to the world around us, says Bishop David.
“Lent is a time to reflect on Jesus’ journey from a sunny Galilee to an angst-ridden Jerusalem, and the trial and death which awaited him. That reflection shouldn’t be morbid, but rather offers us tremendous insights into how to cope with the losses and deaths which are on every life’s screen.
“Giving up things in Lent is a bit of a rehearsal for that day when we will have to give up life itself. Charles Wesley, the founder of Methodism, wrote of Christ emptying himself of all but love – rather than self denial, emptying our lives of the clutter enables us to focus on the loving selves God wants us to be. A love which, according to the Christian Gospel, survives even death itself, as joyfully letting go rather than tenaciously holding on proves to be the very gateway to eternity.”
It’s a brave pitch to make and not perhaps one the supermarkets will jump at. But in these days of recession when there may not be much more we can afford to give up, Lent could just be the time to focus our minds on what really matters and to change the rhythm of our lives accordingly.
Lent – Your Starter for 10
1. Lent lasts 40 days, counting from Ash Wednesday to Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, calling to mind the 40 days Jesus withdrew to the Judean Wilderness to prepare himself for his ministry and reflect on his priorities.
2. Christians similarly use Lent to home in on the things that really matter in their faith and lives, freeing themselves from clutter and distractions.
3. Modelling themselves on Jesus who fasted for forty days in the wilderness, Christians aim to make Lent a time of abstinence, trimming their diet or giving up other luxuries or even essentials. Money saved is often donated to good causes.
4. In medieval times, Lent coincided with the final days of the Winter when food stocks were low, so eating less for spiritual reasons had the added benefit of rationing food, eking it out until the spring.
5. The tradition of having pancakes on Shrove Tuesday , the day before Lent, arose out of using up stocks of eggs and milk and honey prior to the period of abstinence.
6. The name Shrove Tuesday comes from the tradition of making your confession (shrive means to confess) before the start of Lent, so you would begin the period with a clean slate.
7.The name Ash Wednesday comes from that day’s special service, when those attending church receive the mark of the cross in ash on their foreheads, with the minister saying the words ‘Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.’ Traditionally the ash is made from burning palm crosses from the previous year, as a sort of continuity, one Lent ends, another begins.
8. In the Early Church the season of Lent, with its penitence and fasting, was primarily kept by those preparing for baptism on Easter Eve, when symbolically by baptism they were buried with Christ to be raised to new life on Easter Day.
9. During Lent Christians also reflect on the journey Christ made through his ministry, starting in sunny Galilee and culminating in an angst-ridden Jerusalem.
10. The fourth Sunday in Lent (mid Lent) was nicknamed Refreshment Sunday, when those fasting took some sustenance. The Epistle for that day alluded to the Church being like a mother, probably giving rise to the practice of folk giving thanks for their own mothers on that day, and taking a rare holiday to visit them on what became popularly known as Mothering Sunday.
