ITEM OF INTEREST

Make Lent Count
"Lent" comes from the Anglo-Saxom word lencton-meaning "spring" or "lengthening" from the time of year when the days grow long. The season begins on Ash Wednesday  and ends with the Easter Triduum (Maundy Thursday through Easter Day), covering 40 days (excluding Sundays which are little feasts of the Resurrection). Some believe that the word "Lent" may derive from the Latin lentare, which means "to bend." This understanding reinforces a sense of Lent as a time of preparation for personal and collective transformation. having nurtures ourselves through Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, Lent becomes the time to look truthfully at ourselves and make changes. In the early church, Lent was a time of preparation for the Easter, Pascha (Christian Passover) baptism of converts to the faith. Persons. were to receive the sacrament of "new birth" following a period of fasting, penitence and preparatrion. Just as the children of Israel had been delivered from bondage of Egyptian slavery, we are delivered from the bondage of sin. The bible readings appointed for the Sundays in Lent continue to offer us a short course on the meaning of bpatism- our sacrament of initiation into the Body of Christ.