Forty Days of Light
History
Ash Wednesday
40 Days of Light
Holy Week
Meditations Selected Readings Articles
Meditations Selected Readings Articles
Lent, is the forty day liturgical season before Easter. The forty period begins on Ash Wednesday and continues till Easter excluding Sundays. Lent is traditionally observed by fasting and prayer. The forty days represent the time Jesus spent in the desert, where, according to the Bible, he endured temptation by Satan.
The purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer—through prayer, penitence, almsgiving and self-denial—for the annual commemoration of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, as celebrated during Holy Week, which recalls the events linked to the Passion of Christ and culminates in Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In the Orthodox, Byzantine, and Eastern rite churches the forty days are calculated differently and the season is known under different aliases, but all these branches still observe a forty day period before Easter.
There are six Sundays which occur during the Lenten season but are not counted among the forty days of Lent for various reasons. Sundays in general commemorate the Ressurection of Jesus Christ since according to the bible it was on a Sundays that Jesus rose from the dead. The season of Lent looks forward in anticipation of the death burial and ressurection of Jesus, and therefore it makes no sense to number such a commemoration among the forty days of fasting.