Caritas Dei

Lenten Resources from the USCCB

From: the US Conference of Catholic Bishops

On Ash Wednesday, February 17th  this year, Catholics begin the forty-day season called Lent which precedes the celebration of Easter, Christ’s resurrection from the dead. 

Since the Second Vatican Council, the Church has reemphasized the baptismal character of Lent with the restoration of the catechumenate, a period of learning and discernment for individuals who have declared their desire to become Catholics.

In most Catholic parishes, groups of adults prepare to receive the sacraments of initiation at the Easter Vigil through a process known as the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. The traditional Lenten practices of fasting, prayer and almsgiving are still observed, but are done so with the purpose of recalling our baptism and in solidarity with those preparing to be baptized and received into the Church.

On these Web pages, [USCCB] you will find a variety of suggestions and resources to facilitate your Lenten practice and your journey with Christ.

Lent

Origin of the word

The Teutonic word Lent, which we employ to denote the forty days' fast preceding Easter, originally meant no more than the spring season. Still it has been used from the Anglo-Saxon period to translate the more significant Latin term (French carê, Italian quaresima,Spanish cuaresma), meaning the "forty days", or more literally the "fortieth day". This in turn imitated the Greek name for Lent,tessarakoste (fortieth), a word formed on the analogy of Pentecost (pentekoste), which last was in use for the Jewish festival before New Testament times. This etymology, as we shall see, is of some little importance in explaining the early developments of the Easter fast.

Origin of the custom

Some of the Fathers as early as the fifth century supported the view that this forty days' fast was of Apostolic institution. For example, St. Leo (d. 461) exhorts his hearers to abstain that they may "fulfill with their fasts the Apostolic institution of the forty days" - ut apostolica institutio quadraginta dierum jejuniis impleatur (P.L., LIV, 633), and the historian Socrates (d. 433) and St. Jerome (d. 420) use similar language (P.G., LXVII, 633; P.L., XXII, 475).

But the best modern scholars are almost unanimous in rejecting this view, for in the existing remains of the first three centuries we find both considerable diversity of practice regarding the fast before Easter and also a gradual process of development in the matter of its duration.  Read more in the article "Lent", The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913