Therefore, turn away from our sinfulness, recommit ourselves to following Jesus, and deepen our relationship and closeness to God by reflecting on His Words. We remember in Lent that our faults can lead us away from God, and also make us selfish, forgetting about the needs of others. We think for a moment about our own lives and we ask God?s forgiveness. During this time of Lent, we learn to let go of all unnecessary things and be more mindful of our dependence on God. We fast, abstain, pray and give alms.
Lord, during this Lenten season
nourish us with Your word of life
and make us one in love and prayer.
The forty days of Lent represent Jesus forty days in the desert fasting, overcoming temptations, and praying after His baptism by John the Baptist, Let us be like Jesus who never gave in to temptations during His forty days in the desert, We to need to pray to God like Jesus did in over coming temptations.
The Church has never allowed Sundays to be kept as days of fast ... Every Sunday is a day of obligation, the paschal mystery is celebrated (Canon 1246) and is also mini Easter.
Sunday, on which by apostolic tradition
the paschal mystery is celebrated,
must be observed in the universal Church
as the primordial holy day of obligation.
Abstinence from meat,
or from some other food
as determined by the Episcopal Conference,
is to be observed on all Fridays,
unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed
on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
Therefore the calculation on how forty days came about is as follows:
From Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday is 46 days and there is 6 Sundays within that period. Therefore, 46 days minus 6 Sundays equals to 40 days of Lent fasting.
