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Lent - Why 40 Days?
Interesting fact of the day (that you just might already know): the date of Easter was decided at the 1st Council of Nicaea (325 AD) to fall on the first Sunday, after the full moon, after the March equinox (March 20th or 21st). This means that Easter can fall as early as March 22nd, or as late as April 25th. Now, the dating of Easter, while interesting, won't be the topic of this post, rather I wanted to take a look at the 40 days that make up the season of Lent.
In most romantic languages (as well as Greek), the word describing the season we call "lent" is in fact a word meaning 40 days - Latin: quadragesima, Italian: quaresima, Spanish: cuaresma, etc. In Slavic languages, the word typically means something like "fasting time" - Czech: postni doba, Russian: vyeliki post, etc. But, in English, we just get the word "lent", which just means "spring", deriving from earlier words which have something to do with the days lengthening.
Alright, so the English word "lent" is pretty boring, but the background behind the 40 days of Lent is nothing of the sort. Lent, as all of you know, is 40 days long, and started last Wednesday (Ash Wednesday). Liturgically, it only lasts until Holy Thursday, at which point the Easter Triduum begins with the Mass of the Lord's Supper. If you include Sundays, between Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday there are 42 days, not quite the 40 that we are looking for. However, if you subtract the Sundays (-6) and add Ash Wednesday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday (+4), you get 40 days exactly, which, as far as I could tell, is how the duration of Lent has been calculated (at least in the West) since the 4th (or maybe 6th) century.
So, there we have the history of how Lent has gotten the structure it does, but why 40 days? Of course, we see the number 40 all throughout the Old and New Testaments. It rained for 40 days during the flood of Noah, Moses spent 40 days on Mount Sinai, the Hebrews spent 40 years wondering in the desert, Jonah prophesied that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days if it did not repent, Our Lord spent 40 days fasting the the desert after His baptism, and is traditionally thought to have spent 40 hours in the tomb after His death (Good Friday afternoon until Easter morning).
This still leaves us with the question of why 40? Sure, 40 is a number that obviously has significance because it keeps showing up, but why? 7, as you may know, was considered in the Old and New Testaments to symbolize completeness and perfection. Thus, the 7th day of creation is after God finishes creating the world and forgiving your brother seventy times seven times indicates that you must always forgive (not just 490 times). Alright, so back to my question, why 40? An idea that I had never heard of, but seems to make some sense, that I found on the catholic gentleman blog (and elsewhere later on) was that this number 40 comes from the number of weeks that a woman is pregnant before she gives birth. The 40 weeks of pregnancy are marked with difficulty (on the part of the mother), but afterward she is blessed with the incredible gift of new life in her child. Just so, the 40 days of Lent, the 40 days Our Lord fasted in the desert, and the 40 years the Israelites spent in the wilderness, are all times of denial and some sort of suffering before the new life that we will hopefully find at Easter, that came with Jesus' public ministry, and that the Israelites found upon entering the promised land.
Certainly there are other ways of meditating on this season of Lent, but I found this particular comparison as beautiful and insightful. It reminds me of Blessed (soon to be saint) Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body. Unfortunately, I haven't yet read JPII's addresses themselves (at least, not many), but I have been working my way through Christopher West's summary, Theology of the Body for Beginners, and have found the connection that John Paul makes between the spiritual and biological, the love of God as reflected in the love between husband and wife, as incredibly interesting and compelling. That will have to be a topic for a future post because I haven't finished the book yet, but it's pretty cool anyway.
I've been working on multiple posts simultaneously, which seems to slow down the process of finishing them. I hope to get a few others done before the end of spring break, but I don't know how much time I'll actually have... Either way, have a wonderful Friday!
In most romantic languages (as well as Greek), the word describing the season we call "lent" is in fact a word meaning 40 days - Latin: quadragesima, Italian: quaresima, Spanish: cuaresma, etc. In Slavic languages, the word typically means something like "fasting time" - Czech: postni doba, Russian: vyeliki post, etc. But, in English, we just get the word "lent", which just means "spring", deriving from earlier words which have something to do with the days lengthening.
Alright, so the English word "lent" is pretty boring, but the background behind the 40 days of Lent is nothing of the sort. Lent, as all of you know, is 40 days long, and started last Wednesday (Ash Wednesday). Liturgically, it only lasts until Holy Thursday, at which point the Easter Triduum begins with the Mass of the Lord's Supper. If you include Sundays, between Ash Wednesday and Holy Thursday there are 42 days, not quite the 40 that we are looking for. However, if you subtract the Sundays (-6) and add Ash Wednesday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday (+4), you get 40 days exactly, which, as far as I could tell, is how the duration of Lent has been calculated (at least in the West) since the 4th (or maybe 6th) century.
So, there we have the history of how Lent has gotten the structure it does, but why 40 days? Of course, we see the number 40 all throughout the Old and New Testaments. It rained for 40 days during the flood of Noah, Moses spent 40 days on Mount Sinai, the Hebrews spent 40 years wondering in the desert, Jonah prophesied that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days if it did not repent, Our Lord spent 40 days fasting the the desert after His baptism, and is traditionally thought to have spent 40 hours in the tomb after His death (Good Friday afternoon until Easter morning).
This still leaves us with the question of why 40? Sure, 40 is a number that obviously has significance because it keeps showing up, but why? 7, as you may know, was considered in the Old and New Testaments to symbolize completeness and perfection. Thus, the 7th day of creation is after God finishes creating the world and forgiving your brother seventy times seven times indicates that you must always forgive (not just 490 times). Alright, so back to my question, why 40? An idea that I had never heard of, but seems to make some sense, that I found on the catholic gentleman blog (and elsewhere later on) was that this number 40 comes from the number of weeks that a woman is pregnant before she gives birth. The 40 weeks of pregnancy are marked with difficulty (on the part of the mother), but afterward she is blessed with the incredible gift of new life in her child. Just so, the 40 days of Lent, the 40 days Our Lord fasted in the desert, and the 40 years the Israelites spent in the wilderness, are all times of denial and some sort of suffering before the new life that we will hopefully find at Easter, that came with Jesus' public ministry, and that the Israelites found upon entering the promised land.
Certainly there are other ways of meditating on this season of Lent, but I found this particular comparison as beautiful and insightful. It reminds me of Blessed (soon to be saint) Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body. Unfortunately, I haven't yet read JPII's addresses themselves (at least, not many), but I have been working my way through Christopher West's summary, Theology of the Body for Beginners, and have found the connection that John Paul makes between the spiritual and biological, the love of God as reflected in the love between husband and wife, as incredibly interesting and compelling. That will have to be a topic for a future post because I haven't finished the book yet, but it's pretty cool anyway.
I've been working on multiple posts simultaneously, which seems to slow down the process of finishing them. I hope to get a few others done before the end of spring break, but I don't know how much time I'll actually have... Either way, have a wonderful Friday!
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