SEASON OF LENT

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21416, 7 March 1935, Page 20

SEASON OF LENT

* OBSERVANCE BEGUN YESTERDAY Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. For centuries the Christian Church has used the period of 46 days, excluding Sundays, before Easter, as a time of special religious discipline. The observance has been connected with the 40 days' fast of Christ, and regarded thus it completes, ■with Easter, a cycle comprising Christ's fasting, temptation, death, and resurrection. Self denial, more commonly in the form of abstinence from certain foods, has always been emphasised durjng Lent. It is not generally realised I hat on Sundays in Lent there has never been any rule of abstinence, Sunday being the weekly feast of the resurrection of Christ and therefore not to be regarded as a fast-day. Ash Wednesday derives its name from the ancient custom of sprinkling ashes over the heads of worshippers as a sign of humility and penitence. The following season of Lent is not so rigidly observed as formerly, the only churches recognising it to any extent in New Zealand being the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. The Church of England has no strict rules of abstinence, although recommendations to abstinence ure made by its clergy and the season is marked by forms of worship proper to it. In the Early Church the fast was rigid, abstinence from food continuing till the evening of each day. Almsgiving was a part of the observance, on the assumption that what was saved by abstinence might be given to the poor.