REDEFINING LENT

We are approaching the days of Lent and Easter. Days that are of great value
to us who are expected to have a healthy relation with the body of christ, the
church and the domestic church, which are our families.

Most Catholics seem to be aware that the forty day period before the feast of
Easter is Lent, which in turn comes from the Anglo-Saxon word lencten
meaning “spring”; is a time marked by particular rituals, such as the reception
of ashes on Ash Wednesday.

In first three centuries of Christian experience,preparation for the Easter feast

usually covered a period of a day or two, perhaps a week at the most. St
Irenaeus of Lyons (AD 140-202) even speaks of a forty-hour preperation for
Easter. First reference to Lent as a period of forty days preperation occurs in
teachings of the First Council of Nicae in AD 325 only. By the end of fourth
century, a lenten period of forty days was established and accepted.

In its early development, lent quikely became associated with the sacrament of
baptism, since Eater was the great baptismal feast. Lent is often porttrayed as
a journey from Ash Wednesday to the begining of the period known as the
Triduum (Triduum begins with the evening Mass of Last Supper on Holy
Thursday, reaches its high point in The EASTER Vigil) Those who were
preparing to be baptised participated in the lenten season with extreme vigor
as in most parishes(although not common in India); Rite of Christian Initiation
of Adults (RCIA), a program of baptismal preperation is conducted.

A popular understanding of lent is that people of God become, are made,

more sensitive to the role of sin in their lives. This in turn leads lent to a
penitential period within the individual, the family and the society as a whole.
The seductive thing about any kind of penitential practices—giving up candy,
eating fish instead of meat, not eating anything that is non-veg, going to
weekday masses, saying a rosary everyday—is that they’re measurable. You
can count them. People can see you doing them. At very least, there is a kind
of personal satisfaction, a sense of achievement, a comfort, that comes from
knowing that we’re really doing something to make ourselves ‘holier people’.
The spiritual tragedy lies in the fact that we can say fifty Hail Marys a day and
at the same time do nothing for the family next door who can’t pay their
electric bill, or those who can, grow a beard, abstain from shaving , but we
continue to ignore a family restrained from admitting a dear one in a specialist
care center, due to their inability to pay hospital bills. Regular pious practices,
as important as they are to the awakening of spiritual consciousness in us, are
not what the spiritual life is really about.

During this lenten season, let us redefine spirituality from theory into practice.
Think over again and again asking the question: Are we of help to the needy
when they are in need that is when they want a helping hand and not when we
can. It is not only during lent that we are to be involved in penitential acts or
support for our neighbour in need; but through out our life.

Each lenten season brings in joy within us as there is our resen Saviour ready to
embrace us in hope and love.

Wishing all a meaningful ...prayerful....peaceful....faithful season in our risen

Lord.