The beginning of Lent (07/03)

In 2024, Lent time is — from March 18 to May 4.

The fast of the Holy Pentecost is called Lent due to the special importance of its establishment. Traditionally, Holy Pentecost and all services begin with Maslenitsa (syrupy) week. During the evening service on Forgiveness Sunday there is a rite or rite of general forgiveness in the temple.

The first day of Lent in the Russian Orthodox Church was called «Clean Monday» (although this is a non-church name, but very common in Orthodoxy), due to the fact that people strive to spend this first day of fasting in purity (in every sense of the word). Therefore, on «Clean Monday», as in the next two days, a very strict fast is established; believers are ordered to pray more diligently and fight sinful passions.

Lent is established mainly in memory of the forty-day fast of Jesus Christ, who shortly after His baptism retired to the desert and fasted there (Matthew 4:2), as well as in memory of the forty-day fast of Moses (Exodus 34:28) and Elijah (1 Kings. 19, 8).

There is evidence from ancient times that the fast was established by the apostles and lasted forty days almost from the beginning of its establishment, and the very name «Quadecost» is often found in ancient written monuments.

Painting by Ivan Kramskoy «Christ in the desert» (1872, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Public Domain)

However, the fast of the Holy Pentecost (lasting 40 days everywhere) was observed in the ancient Church at more than the same time. This depended on the unequal calculation of the days of fasting and the days when it was allowed. In the Eastern Churches, the existing procedure for observing Lent until now was established in the 4th century.

Lent consists of a forty-day fast (Four Decades) and a Holy Week fast « for the saving passions» of Christ. The Apostolic Decrees on Lent say: «Let this fast be performed (Four Tent) before the fast of Easter (Good Week)» (Book 5, chap. I).

The ancient Christians observed Lent with particular severity, refraining even from eating water until the ninth (third in the afternoon) hour of the day. They ate food after the ninth hour, eating bread and vegetables. Meat, milk, cheese, eggs were prohibited.

The rules for observing Lent are also reflected in the Church Charter. On the first and Holy Week, the Orthodox Church orders the preservation of a particularly strict fast. On Monday and Tuesday of the first week, it is prescribed to observe the highest degree of fasting: « is by no means appropriate for reality». On the remaining weeks of fasting, except Saturdays and Sundays, — is dry eating. On Saturdays and Sundays, cooked food with oil (vegetable oil) is allowed. Only on the Feast of the Annunciation, if it does not occur on Holy Week, is eating fish allowed.

Meat and dairy products and eggs are prohibited for the entire period of Lent (Photo: Kiselev Andrey Valerevich, licensed by Shutterstock.com)

The Church strictly condemns those who violate Lent, but, acting in the spirit of the love and mercy of God, does not impose the rules of fasting in its entirety on children, the sick, infirm and elderly, and does not alienate them from participating in the joy of communion and Easter. But the weak in body, like the healthy, are obliged during Lent to perform works of love and mercy and, as in other fasts, to maintain spiritual fasting from sins.

In numerous verses and troparions of the services of the Holy Pentecost, the Church explains the essence of true fasting as a means of spiritual revival: a time of spiritual feat, strengthening oneself in self-denial, killing sinful wishes. Therefore, in chants, the Church calls the Holy Pentecost a cheerful time of fasting.



• Article «How to properly spend Clean Monday and start Lent: ancient traditions, customs and rituals»

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