Chaplain's Message
February/March - Beginning of Lent
Dear friends, since yesterday, the Ukrainian Catholic Church is in a new liturgical period – Lent or the Great Fast. The Roman Catholic Church will begin this tomorrow. Although there are some differences in how this liturgical season is observed in our Churches, there is a common beginning, which I would like to address.
In order to find the common ground on the true meaning of Lent and its purpose in our lives, we need to go back to its origin and see how the first Christians developed and observed it. If we now take for granted that Lent is a 40 day fast before Easter in imitation of Moses’, Elijah’s or Jesus’ fast, it was not so originally. It all began with the celebration of Easter, or the Christian Passover. It was a one-day celebration preceded by a one-day fast, held on a Saturday. However, besides celebrating the death and resurrection of our Lord, this time of the liturgical year was also connected with the preparation and celebrating of Baptism. By the 3rd century, the rite of Christian Initiation had already become associated with the Paschal Vigil, the evening service on Holy Saturday. Another development in the Church since the 2nd century, was the establishment of Wednesdays and Fridays as days of fasting. So the final days of preparation for Baptism at that time, Friday and Saturday were fasting days for those who were about to join the Church. In the 3rd century it would be however, not two but already 6 days, the entire week that would be spent in fast, something which laid the basis for the development of a full Holy Week.
Lent, as we understand it today, came to be observed by other Christians out of devotion, who being in the presence of catechumens joined them in their asceticism. It is only by the fourth century that the fast before Easter was generally observed throughout the Eastern Churches and probably as late as the 7th in the Western Church.
Fasting in the early centuries was observed strictly. Only one meal a day – in the evening – was allowed; meat, fish and dairy products being absolutely forbidden. But as the centuries passed and perhaps in answer to constantly changing cultural, industrial, and national situations, the nature of Lent became less severe. So we are today where we are – observing it differently.
I would like to end with a few words taken from the Papal Message for the Great Fast 2009, which addresses the present day situation of fasting. Our Pontiff wrote: “In our own day, fasting seems to have lost something of its spiritual meaning, and has taken on, in a culture characterized by the search for material well-being, a therapeutic value for the care of one’s body. Fasting certainly brings benefits to physical well-being, but for believers, it is, in the first place, a “therapy” to heal all that prevents them from conformity to the will of God. In the Apostolic Constitution Pænitemini of 1966, the Servant of God Paul VI saw the need to present fasting within the call of every Christian to “no longer live for himself, but for Him who loves him and gave himself for him … he will also have to live for his brethren” (cf. Ch. I). Lent could be a propitious time to present again the norms contained in the Apostolic Constitution, so that the authentic and perennial significance of this long held practice may be rediscovered, and thus assist us to mortify our egoism and open our heart to love of God and neighbor, the first and greatest Commandment of the new Law and compendium of the entire Gospel (cf. Mt 22, 34-40).
As you enter Lent tomorrow, I wish you all that it be a blessed and spiritually enriching time.
Father Andrij.
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