Wednesday, March 9, 2011

These 40 Days...

"The distinctive English word 'Lent' is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for 'spring', which appropriately coincides with the great forty-day fast, common to both East and West at least since the fourth century....The English word has the advantage over the Latin words based on 'quadraginta' or 'forty' because it calls to mind the new life, growth, hope and change that should characterize this time of prayer, penance and conversion, this season of initiation in the grace life of the Church.

In these forty days, Mother Church vests herself simply in violet.  Her sacred halls are bare, and much of her gracious music is muted.  Flowers at her altars and shrines are set aside, and, at the end of the season, the lamps will be extinguished, the bells will fall silent and her altars will be stripped.  But this is her true springtime, when her children grow in grace, in ways often imperceptible, sublte and varied.  Lent thus reminds us that the great graces are given by God, not when our senses perceive them or when our hearts are full of consolations, but in the silence and the stillness of 'the night.'"       (from "Cerermonies of the Liturgical Year", by Msgr. Peter Elliott, sec.  88-89)