Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Quadragesima


Somewhere in the deep recesses of time, some Christian community decided that setting aside a particular day to celebrate the Resurrection was a good idea. The early Christians considered each Sunday a kind of mini-celebration of the Resurrection, but some group wanted to commemorate the actual anniversary, if you will, of that event. When and where this happened is lost to us, but we know that in the mid-second century the first direct evidence of such a celebration can be found. Since dating it is tied to the Hebrew calendar, it might date back to the earliest period when followers were still largely Jewish. But, as tempting as it is to push the date farther back, there is no solid evidence for it.

As the Church has often done, it reads history with a biased eye, and by the end of the second century was teaching that this custom had been started with the Apostles. What can be proved is that different communities celebrated Easter on different days. The First Council of Nicaea in 325 established the date, which is movable and tied to a full moon, which the Western Church still uses today. The Eastern Church bases its calculations on the Julian Calendar which differs from the western usage and also count the forty days differently. Some parts of the Western Church didn’t follow the practice that Nicaea decreed until the seventh century, particularily Iona in Ireland.

Once Easter became an important celebration, some parish somewhere, began to incorporate the idea of preparation for full participation in the celebration. Evidence suggest it had to do with preparing  people to be baptized and then spread as all Christian in a community were invited to join those to be baptized in this preparation. We know that by the late second century, some Christians set aside various amounts of time to prepare, largely through fasting. As Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon wrote the bishop of Rome in 203, "The dispute is not only about the day, but also about the actual character of the fast. Some think that they ought to fast for one day, some for two, others for still more; some make their 'day' last 40 hours on end. Such variation in the observance did not originate in our own day, but very much earlier, in the time of our forefathers."

In 325, the western Church decreed that the period of preparation would be forty days, counting backwards from Easter and omitting Sundays. The idea of forty was likely tied to Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness after his baptism. The Hebrew number forty was also tied to the days of the flood and the years of the Exodus. Today, Catholics end the period of Preparation on Thursday of Holy Week, making their Lent thirty-eight days. The period was not always called Lent. After 325 it was call Quadragesima [fortieth] in Latin and tessarakoste [fortieth] in Greek. Lent is an Anglo-Saxon, that is, English word which means “lengthen” which is associated with Spring when the days increase in length. 

Whatever the length, the Church has almost always seen the time as one of personal preparation for the experience of Easter. Since the very early Middle Ages, the ingredients of preparation include prayer, repentance, acts of charity, and self-denial. Many believe that a true celebration of Easter and a deep understanding of what happened for us because of the Resurrection requires keeping a Holy Lent--a Lent where the four things mentioned above are taken seriously.

Peace, Jerry 

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