How to Observe Lent

Lent runs from Ash Wednesday to Holy Thursday — forty days, not counting the Sundays, modelled on Christ's forty days in the wilderness.

It is preparation, not self-improvement. The distinction matters, because Lent has been widely absorbed into a culture of new year resolutions and now often functions as a second run at giving up chocolate. That is not what the season is for. Lent exists to get you to Easter capable of meaning it.

The three disciplines

The traditional practice is threefold, and taking one without the others is where most Lents go thin.

Fasting

Going without. Traditionally food, though the shape varies enormously by tradition — from the Orthodox abstention from meat, dairy, fish, wine and oil through most of Great Lent, to the modern Catholic minimum of two days of fasting and Friday abstinence from meat.

The purpose is not endurance. It is to make an appetite audible. Most of us are so continuously fed, entertained and distracted that we never encounter our own wanting. Remove something and the wanting becomes visible — and what you find when it does is the actual subject of Lent.

Prayer

Lent adds prayer; it does not merely subtract food. This is the discipline most often dropped, and dropping it turns the fast into a diet.

Additional prayer through Lent might be the Daily Office, the Examen each evening, Lectio Divina on the day's reading, or fifteen minutes that were not there in January.

Almsgiving

Giving. Money, or time.

The classical link is direct: what the fast saves, the almsgiving spends on someone else. Skipping meals and banking the savings misses the point entirely. Augustine put it bluntly — fasting without almsgiving is not fasting, it is economising.

Choosing a discipline

Pick something that will actually bite. If it costs nothing you will not notice it, and noticing is the mechanism.

Pick something you can keep for six weeks. Forty days is long. A discipline chosen in the enthusiasm of Ash Wednesday and abandoned by the second Sunday teaches you nothing you wanted to learn.

Prefer a daily encounter to a heroic one. Something you meet every day — the phone after nine, the second coffee, the news — does more than an extreme fast kept for four days.

Add as well as subtract. A Lent that is only subtraction becomes grim by week three. Pair the fast with something added: a daily psalm, a weekly visit, a letter a week to someone you have neglected.

Do not announce it. "When thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face" (Matthew 6:17). A fast performed for an audience has, on the text's own account, already been paid out.

Some workable ones: a meal a day; alcohol; the phone after a fixed hour; buying nothing that is not needed; social media; complaining, which is harder than it sounds and unusually revealing.

The Sundays

Sundays are not part of the forty days. Every Sunday is a small Easter, and the Church does not fast on the day of resurrection.

Whether you relax your discipline on Sundays is a matter of custom rather than rule, and both practices are ancient. Keeping it straight through is simpler. Relaxing it on Sundays is more theologically pointed, since it makes the weekly resurrection visible in your own week.

What is not the point is treating Sundays as a loophole to be planned around from Wednesday.

When you break it

You will break it. Almost everyone does, usually in the third week, and often without noticing until afterwards.

The response determines what the rest of Lent is. Two failure modes to avoid: abandoning the season because the run is spoiled, and grimly redoubling into a contest with yourself.

The useful response is smaller than either. Notice it, name it in prayer, and resume the same day. What you have just learned — that you reached for the thing without deciding to — is precisely the self-knowledge the fast is for. A Lent that reveals you to be less in command of yourself than you assumed has done its work, even if you kept it badly.

Keeping the end in view

Lent is not the point. Easter is.

The forty days are preparation for the Triduum, and a Lent that arrives at Holy Week exhausted and self-focused has drifted. Through the last fortnight, let the reading move toward the passion — the lectionary does this for you — and plan for Holy Week before it arrives, because it will not survive being improvised.

And when Easter comes, stop. The fast ends. Fifty days of Easter follow, longer than the fast, and keeping a Lenten discipline into Eastertide out of momentum mistakes the whole shape of the year.

Common questions

When does Lent start and end?

Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and ends on Holy Thursday, forty days later not counting Sundays — forty-six calendar days in total. The dates move with Easter, which falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after 21 March. Ash Wednesday can land anywhere from early February to early March.

What should I give up for Lent?

Something that will genuinely be missed, that you meet daily, and that you can sustain for six weeks. A daily encounter — the phone after a set hour, a meal, alcohol, social media — does more than a heroic fast abandoned in week two. Pair it with something added, because a Lent of pure subtraction turns grim, and give away what the fast saves.

Are Sundays part of Lent?

Sundays fall within the season but are not counted among the forty days, because every Sunday celebrates the resurrection and the Church does not fast on it. Whether you relax your own discipline on Sundays is a matter of custom; both practices are old and neither is wrong.

Why is Lent forty days?

It follows Christ's forty days of fasting in the wilderness, and behind that the forty years of Israel in the desert and Moses' forty days on Sinai. The number carries a consistent scriptural association with testing and preparation.

What do I do if I break my Lenten fast?

Notice it, bring it to prayer, and start again the same day — without either abandoning the season or turning it into a contest with yourself. Breaking a fast unthinkingly is itself the most useful information Lent supplies: it shows you what you reach for without deciding to, which is exactly what the discipline exists to surface.

Is Lent in the Bible?

The season is not commanded in Scripture, and some Protestant traditions decline to keep it for that reason. The practices it is built from are thoroughly scriptural — fasting, prayer and almsgiving are the three disciplines Jesus assumes in Matthew 6, and forty days of preparation follows his own example. The season is a churchly arrangement of biblical practices rather than a biblical command.