This year’s Lenten season has come to a close after 40 days of fasting, prayer, meditation, penance, repentance and reflection on the life, passion and death of Jesus Christ on the cross.
Lent ushers in the celebration of Easter, the most important feast in Christendom and as expected, Christians in Nigeria today join their counterparts across the world in the shouts of alleluia in celebration of the risen Christ after this year’s Lenten season.
Lent, a sober religious observation in which Christians embark on fasting and other pious activities in commemoration of Jesus Christ’s journey into the wilderness where he fasted for 40 days and was tempted by Satan before the inception of his earthly ministry as narrated in the gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke.
The period also serves as a reminder to Christians about Jesus’ suffering, crucifixion and death on Calvary for the salvation of humanity.
The highlights of the period is abstinence and fasting, abstaining from festivities, drinks, food and foregoing luxurious lifestyle and pleasures while imbibing the virtue of holiness almsgiving and humility.
Lent which starts on Ash Wednesday and ends on the eve of Easter Sunday, is observed by various church denominations including the Catholic; Anglican; Lutheran; Presbyterian; Eastern and Western Orthodox churches; Methodist and some African instituted churches such as Cherubim and Seraphim; Celestial Church of Christ; and Church of the Lord (Aladura), among others.
On the other hand, some Pentecostal, Evangelical and Charismatic denominations do not observe the Lenten season.
Some of the denominations like the Catholic and Anglican churches forbid meat consumption during the season particularly on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
During the 40 days period of Lent, Sunday services and masses are solemnly observed as clapping of hands during praise/worship session and the use of musical instruments as well as shout of alleluia are suspended. Crucifixes, status and other spiritual symbols are often covered with purple clothes while church decorations are minimized.
According to researchers, the period of fasting preceded the Easter celebration in the early church but the practice was not observed for a long period before Easter until Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. The period preceding Easter was then used as a stage to prepare candidates mostly adults for baptism and for penance for sinners.
At the time, fasting rules were said to be one meal a day (at sunset) while meat, fish, eggs, use of wine, oil, butter and dairy products were forbidden throughout the period.
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However, these rules have been relaxed as emphasis is now more on repentance from sin, work of charity, prayer, reconciliation and giving up pleasures among others.
Researchers, however, traced the origin of the 40 days Lent to the fifth century as early as 461 when St. Leo exhorted his followers to abstain and fulfill their fasts according to the apostolic institution of 40 days.
The examples of some of the Major Prophets like Moses and Elijah and Christ’s 40 days fast, according to scholars, must have influenced the arrival to the 40 days Lenten period that is currently in practice in Christendom across the world.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “There seems much to suggest that the church in the apostolic age designed to commemorate the resurrection of Christ, not by annual but by a weekly celebration. If this be so, the Sunday liturgy constituted the weekly memorial of the resurrection, and the Friday fast represented that of the death of Christ.
Such a theory offers a natural explanation of the wide divergence which we find existing in the latter part of the of the second century regarding both the proper time for keeping Easter and also the manner of the paschal fast.
“Christians were at one regarding the weekly observance of the Sunday and Friday, which was primitive, but the annual Easter festival was something superimposed by a process of natural development, and it was largely influenced by the conditions locally existing in the different churches of the East and West.”
However, it is important to realize that Lent goes beyond mere abstinence; it should be an opportunity to imitate Christ who has given Christians the opportunity to be like him in all things.
An American theologian, Archbishop Fulton Sheen,(1895-1979), captured the importance of Lent thus, “Lenten practices of giving up pleasures are good reminders that the purpose of life is to attain to perfect life, all truth and undying ecstatic love, which is the definition of God.
In pursuing that goal, we find happiness. Pleasure is not the purpose of anything; pleasure is a by-product resulting from doing something that is good. One of the best ways to get happiness and pleasure out of life is to ask ourselves, ’why am I not better?’ It is the pleasure-seeker who is bored for all pleasures diminish with repetition.”
As Christians celebrate the end of this year’s Lent and the resurrection of Christ, it is expected that the rite of the season will increase brotherly love among humanity.