40 Days of Lent

As we move along the Church year at a high rate of speed we will be preparing for and moving into Lent. Lent is a wonderful season as it is the observance in the liturgical year commemorating the 40 days Jesus Christ spent fasting in the desert and enduring the temptations by Satan.

The pattern of fasting and praying for forty days is seen in the Bible, in different places. In the Old Testament, the prophet Moses went into the mountains for forty days and nights to “fast and pray” until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There, “The word of the Lord came to him.” 1Kings 19:8-9. The early Christian bishop Maximus of Turin wrote that Elijah, by fasting continuously for a period of forty days and forty nights…merited to extinguish the prolonged and severe dryness of the whole world, doing so with a stream of rain and steeping the earth’s dryness with the bounty of water from heaven. The forty day and night fasts of Moses, Elijah and Jesus prepared them for their work.

Today, the practice is that Christians fast by giving something up. This is a personal decision, but it is something that is comfortable in your life. The reason for giving it up is to remind you of all that Jesus Christ gave up when he came to earth and what he gave up when he spent the forty days in the desert. Another practice during Lent is to spend more time in reading the Word of God. It is setting aside some time everyday to just read our Bible and get to deepen our relationship with God. Another practice is to give Alms, that is to give some of our financial means to someone less fortunate. Whichever path you choose is up to you but the goal of these practices again is to spend more time with Jesus and to focus on all that He has done for us. Lent allows us to look at our relationship with Jesus Christ and how we have let it slip over the year and how we can make it the center of our lives again.

My prayer is that each one of us can pick something that will really help us to draw closer to God and one another.

May God bless you.
​Rev. Stephen W. Barch