From the Archives: "The Origins and Shape of Lent"
Each month, our blog features articles from the archives of Liturgy. Our goal is to share the wisdom from decades past so that we might celebrate the work and insights of these excellent ministers and scholars.
A consummate scholar, Thomas Talley focuses in this essay on how the Church came to observe the time we call Lent––preparation for Holy Week, the crucifixion, death, and finally the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection. Evidence in the writings of the early theologians is varied and somewhat contradictory surrounding the origins of Lent. Talley sorts through the differing descriptions of the six-week and the four-week Lent, where and how they came to be, and what meaning the observance has had over time, especially in light of the biblical texts appointed for different days. –– Melinda Quivik
Selected Quotes from
"The Origins and Shape of Lent"
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[The] renewed appreciation of initiation as an inherently public act of the gathered body of Christ leads us as well to a renewed appreciation of initiation as a process rather than a discrete act. The rite for the initiation of adults in the Roman Catholic Church and similar rites in other churches reveal once again the fully processual character of initiation. Initiation is a process of growth which leads to ultimate participation in Christ's death and resurrection as the type and sign of our understanding of human life. This process was a significant dimension in the life of the early church. It shaped every aspect of that life, including its ordering of the time that we know as the liturgical year
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Lent began as a season of preparation for baptism, a season given to and shaped by the formation of candidates for Christian initiation.
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[In the Byzantine tradition,] Lent begins on a Monday and continues through an unbroken period of forty days until it ends at vespers on a Friday evening six weeks later. A troparion reflects the transition from the fast to the festal day that follows: "having completed the forty days that bring profit to our soul, let us cry: Rejoice, city of Bethany, home of Lazarus. Rejoice, Martha and Mary, his sisters. Tomorrow Christ will come, by his word to bring your dead brother to life." This text reveals the nature of the celebration on the following day: it is the Saturday of Lazarus, the celebration of the raising of Lazarus from the tomb at Bethany
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Throughout Lent the gospel readings of the eucharistic liturgy in the Byzantine rite are taken from the gospel of Mark, from its beginning through Mark 10:32–45. On this Saturday, however, there is an abrupt shift to the gospel of John, the only gospel to contain the story of Jesus' raising of Lazarus.
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From such a complex history we can see that the themes presented in our lenten readings reflect
no artificial catechetical schema, but bear us back to the earliest roots of our tradition where the
patterns and contents of the liturgical year flow from the patterns and contents of the gospels themselves.
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Thus, the liturgical year is itself a development closely bound to the formation of the gospel tradition. For a much longer time than we might have thought, the season of Lent has set the pace and prepared us for our participation in Christ's death and resurrection, a participation that is in the first instance baptismal, but is also for that very reason our entrance into Christ's ministry.
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Thomas J. Talley, an Episcopal priest, wrote the seminal book The Origins of the Liturgical Year and numerous other books on worship, and was for many years professor of liturgics at The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York City.
Thomas J. Talley, “The Origins and Shape of Lent,” Liturgy 4, no. 1 (1983): 8–13.