Join us in this enlightening mini-episode as we delve into the rich history and profound spiritual meaning of Lent! In this video, you’ll discover the origins of Lent, what makes up it’s three pillars, and more about the traditions that surround this annual event leading up to the highest of Holy Holidays. Join us as we prepare our hearts for the celebration of Christ’s resurrection!
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Transcription
It’s a great time to take forty days to really focus on your prayer life, to think about have I been hospitable? Have I been generous? Who can I give to in this season as we come up on the highest holiday of the Christian calendar? Hello, friends. In this mini episode of Verity podcast, I want to simply welcome you to the season of Lent. While we won’t be doing any particular Lenten series on this podcast, I wanted to introduce Lent to you. If you did not grow up in a liturgical church environment or are curious what it is after hearing Christians talk about it. The Lenten season is a forty day fast, during which we lament and we dwell on the sacrifice of Christ, looking forward to his coming resurrection during the events of Holy Week, ultimately celebrated on Easter. Lent goes all the way back to the early church. In those first few hundred years of the church when it was developing and growing, what we saw was a forty hour fast leading up to the day of Easter or resurrection Sunday. On Easter itself, you would often see many new converts baptized.
And so what began as a forty hour fast eventually expanded into a forty day period of time where they would often train catechumens, or people who were hoping to be baptized on Easter. From what we know of the early church, it actually appears that many times they only baptized new converts on Easter, so it was a once a year event. So these forty days leading up to Easter were an opportunity to train these new converts on the fundamentals of the Christian faith, The basic doctrines that they needed to know before they made their public commitment and testimony to come into the body of Christ. And so what we now know as this season of fasting was indeed a season of fasting in the early church that carried through the medieval era to today, but it was also a time of reflection and meditation on the core truths of Christianity. Today, we often hear about Lent in relation to social media fasts or, you know, giving up chocolate or sweets especially because traditionally that is what Lent was for. We had Fat Tuesday, the Tuesday before Lent, also known as Mardi Gras, and then Ash Wednesday when Lent begins. And from Fat Tuesday to Easter, you would be fasting from things like sugar, sometimes dairy, eggs. This is actually where eggs came from in regard to Easter because many people were not eating them throughout the season of Lent.
And then on Easter, they were breaking their fast by finally having eggs. And so eggs became a significant part of the resurrection Sunday holiday. We see this first mentioned in the middle ages. There are three pillars to this season of Lent, and these are fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, generosity. Now many Christians who grow up in non liturgical environments don’t celebrate church holidays except for for Christmas and Easter. So they’re not familiar with the traditions and the rich history behind seasons like Lent, like Advent, things like Pentecost, and other church holidays like epiphany and candlemas. Now I talk about these on my Instagram, at Phylicia Masonheimer, but hopefully, in future weeks and years, we will be able to do more church holiday specific episodes as well. If you’d like to explore this, two resources you can use are in our shop, our book on the church holidays, seasonal celebrations, which goes through many of the main church holidays with a fun guide for practicing them and celebrating them in your home.
And then if you want a more robust guide to church holidays, sacred seasons is another great resource that’s much more in-depth. Now back to Lent. Prayer, almsgiving, fasting, these are the pillars of this season. And for forty days, we get to pursue spiritual disciplines that maybe we don’t really focus on the rest of the year. So during this season, whether you are fasting from something or not, it’s a great time to take forty days to really focus on your prayer life, to think about, have I been hospitable? Have I been generous? Who can I give to in this season as we come up on the highest holiday of the Christian calendar? Have I reflected recently on what it means to be saved? What did Jesus did on the cross and the beautiful gift of salvation that I’ve been given? All of these things are great things to think about and reflect on in this Lent season. If you want to go deeper, you can always pick up things like Sacred Seasons to study more about the Lenten season. I also love Anne Voskamp’s new book, Loved to Life and my friend Amy Gannett’s amazing Lent resource in her shop at the Bible Study Schoolhouse. All of these resources can help you in celebrating your Lenten season in a deep and more meaningful way, but you also don’t need anything but the Bible and your prayer life.
You can keep it so simple. Just stay in the word and talk to God throughout these forty days. Ask him to make it more meaningful to you as you get closer and closer to the celebration of his resurrection. When we get into April and we get close to Holy Week and help you to learn more about what happened on each day of Jesus’ life leading to the crucifixion and then to the resurrection. It’s very practical, easy to use, has discussion questions and scripture readings, and you can download it at phyliciamasonheimer.com/resources. This devotional is called Hope for Holy Week. It’s completely free. And again, that’s at phyliciamasonheimer.com/resources.
I hope that your Lenten season is a time of reflection and a deepening of your prayer life, and that you get to end it by celebrating with us as we go through the Holy Week devotional with our family, looking forward to the amazing power and significance of Resurrection Day.