This is good to know. Question: Lent, the period of prayer and fasting in preparation forEaster, is 40 days long, but there are 46 days between Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent in the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar, and Easter. So how are the 40 days of Lent calculated? Answer: The answer takes us back to the earliest days of the Church. Christs original disciples, who were Jewish, grew up with the idea that the Sabbath—the day of worship and of rest—was Saturday, the seventh day of the week, since the account of creation in Genesis says that God rested on the seventh day.Christ rose from the dead, however, on Sunday, the first day of the week, and the early Christians, starting with the apostles (those original disciples), saw Christs Resurrection as a new creation, and so they transferred the day of rest and worship from Saturday to Sunday. Since all Sundays—and not simply Easter Sunday—were days to celebrate Christs Resurrection, Christians were forbidden to fast and do other forms of penance on those days. Therefore, when the Church expanded the period of fasting and prayer in preparation for Easter from a few days to 40 days (to mirror Christs fasting in the desert, before He began His public ministry), Sundays could not be included in the count.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 00:00:51 +0000
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