► What are the main moments of Lent?
The Lenten season begins on Ash Wednesday, this year on February 14. That day the priest said: “Repent and believe in the Good News. » He places a little ash on the foreheads of the faithful, a sign of human frailty but also of hope in God.
Lent lasts forty days, which recall the forty years of exodus to Sinai of the Hebrews after their flight from Egypt, as well as the forty days spent in the desert by Christ after his baptism.
A tradition allows a day of break in Lent on the fourth Thursday after Ash Wednesday. It’s Mid-Lent (March 7, 2024).
A week before Easter Sunday, Christians celebrate Palm Sunday (March 24), which commemorates Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem before his arrest and sentence to death. In memory of the palm leaves waved by the inhabitants as they pass by, Catholics bring to the church branches of boxwood or other species depending on the region of the world, which will be blessed and then preserved all year round. They will be burned to obtain the ashes at the start of Lent the following year.
Palm Sunday marks the start of Holy Week, during which we remember the last days of Jesus. This week culminates in the Easter Triduum, the last three holy days before Easter: Holy Thursday (March 28), which recalls Christ’s last meal, Good Friday, his arrest and execution, and finally Holy Saturday, the “day of great silence”: no celebration takes place on this day.
Lent ends when the Easter Vigil begins, on the evening of Holy Saturday.
► What do Christians do during Lent?
They are preparing for Easter by refocusing on their life as baptized people. To do this, they are invited to free up space in their interior space to welcome Christ and the good news of his resurrection. Several ways to achieve this are recommended.
– The young. Traditionally, the Church requires that we fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, especially abstaining from meat. But it doesn’t force you to do anything. Many deprive themselves of anything other than food, if they feel that it is cigarettes or social networks that are taking up too much space in their lives. Practicing a certain asceticism by fasting is like “tidy up your living room to make room, in order to welcome a guest who is God”, explains Jesuit Étienne Grieu for Croire. Finally, experiencing hunger and thirst helps us remember that man also hungers and thirsts. “of every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Mt 4, 4).
– Prayer. To pray is to make time for God, to renew contact when we tend to lose it, it is to take care of our relationship with God. Lent is a privileged time to acquire or regain a taste for prayer.
– The sharing. Lent is also a special time to take care of one’s relationship with others and to become more attentive and available to those who need it: one’s loved ones, but also the most fragile and the poorest. Praying for them, fasting in solidarity with those who are hungry, donating money or time to charities… This is the ideal time.
► How to make Lent a success?
It is not a question of succeeding in Lent like passing an exam or a competitive examination, nor of accumulating good points to please God and deserve his approval. The Dominican Adrien Candiard explains it for Croire: “We never deserve God, as Jesus reminds the Pharisees. If Lent is an opportunity for us to become Pharisees, we will have it completely missed. »
The meaning of Lent is welcome and decentering. Concentrating on one’s virtues, seeking a form of heroism in asceticism, means on the contrary remaining centered on oneself. On the other hand, reassures Father Candiard, “If we have failed to keep our resolutions and this humiliates us, we can use the humiliation to live the virtue of humility and return to God. If our look at our weaknesses and our difficulties leads us to return to God, we will certainly not have missed our Lent. »
Finally, how can we not think that a “successful” Lent is perhaps a Lent which permeates and colors the rest of the year? If one has practiced for forty days, with more or less success, sobriety, generosity, prayer, if one has taken care of one’s relationship with oneself, with others and with God, and if we have acquired a taste for it, why stop there?
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