Welcome to Lent 2021

Here we are at Lent, those 40 days that start with Ash Wednesday and end on Easter. February 17 is fairly early for Ash Wednesday. Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday following the full Moon that occurs on or just after the spring equinox, so Easter in 2021 is on Sunday, April 7.

The day before Ash Wednesday has known by various names throughout history. When people used to forgo dairy products and
meat during Lent the day before the season started, they consumed all the milk and eggs. What better use for these ingredients than fried batter cakes? Thus, we now have “Pancake Tuesday.” Also the same lines, the word “carnival” in Latin means “farewell to meat.” All the meat was also devoured, making the day “Carnival Tuesday.” The devout asked to be shriven of their sins, and that is how we get “Shrove Tuesday.”

The Book of Common Prayer and our priests invite us: “in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” But Lent is really not about hair shirts, grave faces, and self-scourging. It can be an affirmative, strengthening spiritual season, when we can grow in love of God, self, and neighbors. People usually enjoy prayer and reading spiritual matter, but have a harder time fasting.

As our former priest Fr. Francis Walter used to instruct: for abstinence in the time of Lent, you lower the quality of food by eating less meat and rich foods. To fast, you don’t have to starve: you can lower the quantity of food by eating a small breakfast, one half-meal, and one full meal daily. The total time of Lent is really 46 days, but Sundays are weekly celebrations of the death and resurrection of Jesus. And so, on Sundays — considered days of joy — good Christians refrain from fasting.

In 2020, with the Covid-19 CoronaVirus pandemic, most of us went through nine-and-a-half months of self-denial, renunciation, self- sacrifice, and deprivation, which continues through the early months of 2021. This Lent, may we all find ways to joyfully repent, cheerfully pray, gladly abstain, hopefully fast, enthusiastically read, and hearteningly meditate.

Barbara Sloan, Lenten Book Editor

Thanks to Linda Foster who gathered the submissions this year, and to Elin Glenn who designed the book.