For each day of Lent, and also for the Sundays which technically are not "of" Lent but "in" Lent and do not count in the forty days of Lent, we provide an idea for reflection and/or action--hopefully with one leading to the other. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, self-examination and repentance, and reading and meditating on God's Word, provide the general structure of a Lenten rule and we have set aside particular days of the week to ensure that all of these are addressed regularly throughout Lent. Wednesdays will be days of fasting and freedom. On Thursdays, we will look to the examples of the saints. Fridays are the days of darkness, anticipating the darkness of Good Friday. Saturday is the Sabbath, a day for quiet contemplation and prayer. Sundays are never days of fasting, so Lenten foods will be our theme. On Mondays, almsgiving will be our focus. And the Tuesday theme will be reconciliation.
Good stuff.
2 comments:
What a freaky idea, that I hear more and more often: «the Sundays which technically are not "of" Lent but "in" Lent and do not count in the forty days of Lent»!
Oh yeah, the Sundays are well, fully and entirely of Lent, in Lent, within Lent and so forth.
In the past, the Copts had a Lent which excluded Saturdays & Sundays, but that Lent counted 8 weeks of 5 days each; and all that preceded the Holy Week.
As for us, the couting is simple: from the Ash Wednesday till the Saturday of the Palm's eve, there are exactly 40 days. On Palms Sunday begins the Holy Week, which is a season apart.
Maybe. The fast continues at least until Maundy Thursday, though, and some say until Easter Vigil. So I'm not so sure that Lent ends on Palm Sunday, as you suggest; if it did, the fast would end, too.
I think there are several ways to look at this, in any case.
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