Word of the Day: Lent

LENT. The season of prayer and penance before Easter. Its purpose is to better prepare the faithful for the feast of the Resurrection, and dispose them for a more fruitful reception of the graces that Christ merited by his passion and death. In the Latin Rite, Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and continues for forty days, besides Sundays, until Easter Sunday. Ash Wednesday occurs on any day from February 4 to March 11, depending on the date of Easter. Originally the period of fasting in preparation for Easter did not, as a rule, exceed two or three days. But by the time of the Council of Nicaea (325) forty days were already customary. And ever since, this length of time has been associated with Christ's forty-day fast in the desert before beginning his public life. According to the prescription of Pope Paul VI, in revising the Church's laws of fast and abstinence, "The time of Lent preserves its penitential character. The days of penitence to be observed under obligation throughout the Church are all Fridays and Ash Wednesday, that is to say the first days of Great Lent, according to the diversity of rites. Their substantial observance binds gravely" (Paenitemini, III, norm II). Besides fast and abstinence on specified days, the whole Lenten season is to be penitential, with stress on prayer, reception of the sacraments, almsgiving, and the practise of charity. (Etym. Anglo-Saxon lengten, lencten, spring, Lent.) ++++++++ Back during Lent, I posted two articles on Lenten Fasting in the Middle Ages, Mediæval Lenten Fasting Rules and Think Lent is Tough? Take a Look at Mediæval Lenten Practise, showing what wimps we have become. Father mentions that the fasting rules he outlines apply only to the Western Rite, but doesn't mention the Eastern Rites. The Eastern Rites follow a bit stricter rule of fasting. First, they have four 'Lents', Great Lent, comparable to Western Lent, the Nativity Fast of 40 days before Christmas, comparable to Western Advent, the Dormition Fast for two weeks before the Feast of the Dormition (Assumption), and the Apostles' Fast, which is of variable length, beginning on the second Monday after Pentecost and continuing until the Feast of Ss Peter and Paul on 29 June. Plus Wednesdays and Fridays are fasting days, as well as a few other days strewn through the year. Their rules of fasting traditionally are closer to the mediæval rules discussed in the articles linked above. Fasting during these times includes abstention not only from the standard meat, but also fish on most fasting days, and from: oil (interpreted variously as abstention from olive oil only, or as abstention from all cooking oils in general), and  red wine (which is often interpreted as including all wine or alcoholic beverages)  sexual activity (where fasting is pre-communion) On the abstention from oil and wine, it is a joke amongst Slavs of the Eastern Rites and Orthodox Churches, that the Fathers forbad olive oil and red wine. Let the Greeks abstain from all oil and alcohol. We'll abstain from olive oil and red wine, and cook with sunflower seed oil and drink vodka (or slivovitz if they're Serbs or Romanians!)

When a feast day occurs on a fast day, the fast is often mitigated (lessened) to some degree (though meat and dairy are never consumed on any fast day). For example, the Feast of the Annunciation almost always occurs within the Great Lent in the Orthodox calendar: in this case fish (traditionally haddock fried in olive oil) is the main meal of the day.

There are two degrees of mitigation: allowance of wine and oil; and allowance of fish, wine and oil. The very young and very old, nursing mothers, the infirm, as well as those for whom fasting could endanger their health somehow, are exempt from the strictest fasting rules.

On weekdays of the first week of Great Lent, fasting is particularly severe, and many observe it by abstaining from all food for some period of time. According to strict observance, on the first five days (Monday through Friday) there are only two meals eaten, one on Wednesday and the other on Friday, both after the Presanctified Liturgy. Those who are unable to follow the strict observance may eat on Tuesday and Thursday (but not, if possible, on Monday) in the evening after Vespers, when they may take bread and water, or perhaps tea or fruit juice, but not a cooked meal. The same strict abstention is observed during Holy Week, except that a vegan meal with wine and oil is allowed on Great Thursday.

On Wednesday and Friday of the first week of Great Lent the meals which are taken consist of xerophagy (literally, "dry eating") i.e. boiled or raw vegetables, fruit, and nuts. In a number of monasteries, and in the homes of more devout laypeople, xerophagy is observed on every weekday (Monday through Friday) of Great Lent, except when wine and oil are allowed.

Those desiring to receive Holy Communion keep a total fast from all food and drink from midnight the night before . The sole exception is the Communion offered at the Easter Sunday midnight liturgy, when all are expressly invited and encouraged to receive the Eucharist, regardless of whether they have kept the prescribed fast, in line with the doctrine expressed in the Paschal Homily of St John Chrysostom (my Name Saint, Светог Јован Златоусти [Jovan Zlatoust] in Serbian), which I posted here.