Exhortation

The church calendar is essentially a calendar of feast days, preceded by days of preparation for feasting. Advent is a time of preparation for the feast of Christmas, when we celebrate the Father’s gift of His Son; Lent is a time of preparation for the feast of Easter, when we celebrate the Son’s resurrection in the Spirit; the Sundays after Easter prepare us for the climactic festival of Pentecost, when the Father and Son poured out the gift of the Spirit.

This coming Wednesday is the first day of the 40-day period that many Christians celebrate as Lent. Lent is a period of fasting and preparation prior to Easter, and is set aside each year for meditation on our own sins, on the sufferings and death of Jesus, and on the coming joy of Easter.

Many Christians observe Lent by fasting, self-denial, sacrificing pleasures. Those are certainly appropriate practices. Even if our Lenten fast is more symbolic than real, it is a constant reminder of the demand that we need to deny the flesh, deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Jesus.

Yet, in the midst of Lenten fasts, Christians have sometimes forgotten that Lent has a goal. It is not an end in itself, but a preparation for something else. Our fastings are not self-deprivation for the sake of self-deprivation, but purification and cleansing for a feast.