No Short Shrift to Lenten Season

Spirituality Column #171
February 16, 2010
Current in Carmel - Current in Westfield - Current in Noblesville
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

No Short Shrift to Lenten Season
By Bob Walters

Shrovetide? Fastnacht? Pancakes, anyone?

How about … Mardi Gras, Carnival, aka Shrove Tuesday?

This week begins the ancient Christian season of Lent, 40 days of fasting, self-examination, prayer, and penance observed by Roman Catholics and traditional Protestants beginning Ash Wednesday (Feb. 17) leading up to Easter. Orthodox Christians begin Lent two days earlier on “Clean Monday.”

“Shrove” means “give a full hearing” or “hear confessions.” The faithful cleanse their souls by confessing their sins Shrove Tuesday prior to Ash Wednesday (“short shrift” means “not fully hearing”). “Fastnacht” means “night before fasting” and also is a German/Dutch yeast donut. Eating pancakes in Shrovetide used up fat and eggs which were verboten during Lent. “Easter eggs” likely originated to celebrate fasting’s end.

What some of the faithful often did (and still do) – human nature being what it is and with 40 days of abstinence looming – was party their brains out during Mardi Gras (“Fat Tuesday”) or Carnival (“end of meat”), misbehaving on a magnitude worthy of 40 days of penance.

Easter in 2010, for everyone, is Sunday, April 4. Western and Orthodox Easters usually are on separate dates. This has to do with the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, Hebrew, Julian and Gregorian calendars, Passover, ecclesiastical dates of the Vernal Equinox, and the Paschal Moon. Google “Easter Date” if you’re thirsty for more.

In the West, Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox March 21. This year April 4 follows a March 30 full moon.

Scheduling Easter would have been easier if someone had simply written down the date Christ was crucified. Scholars tend to land on April 3, 33 AD. No one is sure.

But that brings up a huge point: the New Testament never mentions observing dates, feasts, seasons or holidays, or even the Sabbath, as a condition of salvation.

Humanity’s great gift of eternal communion with God through the fully-divine, fully-human person of Jesus Christ is not a matter of temporal festivals. Redemption, salvation and eternal life are entirely matters of 24/7/365 faith in Christ, which we exhibit by obeying the two great commandments – loving God and loving others.

That could explain why dates for Christ’s birth and death aren’t known. Christ very plainly tells us salvation is about faith (Luke 7:50, Ephesians 2:8), not records.

I believe God hides – and can be found – in our hearts, not on our calendars.

Walters (www.believerbob.blogspot.com, email rlwcom@aol.com) isn’t knocking church traditions and urges Bible Christians to study more church history, even though reason suggests there are no dates in eternity.

Lent Symbolic of Christ's Sacrifice

Current! In Carmel - #15 - Lent
February 20, 2007

Lent Symbolic of Christ’s Sacrifice
By Bob Walters

Today is Mardi Gras, French in reverse for “Fat Tuesday.”

The resurrection of New Orleans, while laudable, is not the reason for the holiday.

Tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, begins Lent, the Holy season of Christ’s last days on earth. To Christians it is a season of denial, fasting, self-examination and repentance, once, of course, they get home from New Orleans.

Lent represents Christ’s 40 days of denial and resisting Satan’s temptation in the desert. Tradition among many Christian denominations is to “give up” something for lent, symbolic of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

The idea is to give up something important, to honor Christ’s command that we must “die to ourselves” to serve God and serve others. Too many people give up watermelon or something that doesn’t constitute much of a sacrifice.

Lent isn’t in the Bible but was known in the early centuries as the quadragesima pasche, “40 days before Easter,” mentioned in the writings of the famous Council of Nicea in 325 AD.

Fat Tuesday was about having a feast the day before the Lenten fast. On Ash Wednesday, which became common tradition in the 11th century, ashes representing our sin are placed on the foreheads of penitents, those who are sinners before God.

Um, that’s everybody.

The ashes look like a smudge but are administered by a priest with his thumb in the sign of the cross. You’ll see them on people’s foreheads tomorrow. It used to be they didn’t wash them off until the Thursday before Easter, aka Maundy Thursday, the day of the Last Supper of Christ.

If you count the 40 days of Lent on the calendar you’ll note that Easter is April 8, which is actually 46 days away. The six intervening Sundays are already Holy and don’t count as days of Lenten fasting.

Walters, a Carmel resident, hopes New Orleans hosts the Super Bowl in 2012, right after Indy hosts it in 2011. Contact him at rlwcom@aol.com