![]() CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Lent. Help support New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Still it has been used from the Anglo- Saxon period to translate the more significant Latin term quadragesima (Frenchcar. This in turn imitated the Greek name for Lent, tessarakoste (fortieth), a word formed on the analogy of Pentecost (pentekoste), which last was in use for the Jewish festival before New Testament times. This etymology, as we shall see, is of some little importance in explaining the early developments of the Easterfast. For example, St. 4. St. 4. 20) use similar language (P. G., LXVII, 6. 33; P. ![]() L., XXII, 4. 75). The passage of primary importance is one quoted by Eusebius (Church History V. St. Irenaeus to Pope Victor in connection with the Easter controversy. There Irenaeus says that there is not only a controversy about the time of keeping Easter but also regarding the preliminary fast. He also urges that this variety of usage is of ancient date, which implies that there could have been no Apostolic tradition on the subject. Rufinus, who translated Eusebius into Latin towards the close of the fourth century, seems so to have punctuated this passage as to make Irenaeus say that some people fasted for forty days. Formerly some difference of opinion existed as to the proper reading, but modern criticism (e. Schwartz commissioned by the Berlin Academy) pronounces strongly in favor of the text translated above. ![]() We may then fairly conclude that Irenaeus about the year 1. Easterfast of forty days. When writing as a Montanist, he contrasts the very slender term of fasting observed by the Catholics (i. No doubt he was referring to fasting of a very strict kind (xerophagi. On Prayer 1. 8; etc.). We may note for example that there is no mention of Lent in St. ![]() Dionysius of Alexandria (ed. Feltoe, 9. 4 sqq.) or in the . If this be so, the Sundayliturgy constituted the weekly memorial of the Resurrection, and the Friday fast that of the Death of Christ. Such a theory offers a natural explanation of the wide divergence which we find existing in the latter part of the second century regarding both the proper time for keeping Easter, and also the manner of the paschalfast. Christians were at one regarding the weekly observance of the Sunday and the Friday, which was primitive, but the annual Easter festival was something superimposed by a process of natural development, and it was largely influenced by the conditions locally existing in the different Churches of the East and West. Moreover, with the Easter festival there seems also to have established itself a preliminary fast, not as yet anywhere exceeding a week in duration, but very severe in character, which commemorated the Passion, or more generally, . It occurs in the fifth canon of the Council of Nicea (A. D. 3. 25), where there is only question of the proper time for celebrating a synod, and it is conceivable that it may refer not to a period but to a definite festival, e. Feast of the Ascension, or the Purification, which . But we have to remember that the older word, pentekoste (Pentecost) from meaning the fiftieth day, had come to denote the whole of the period (which we should call Paschal Time) between Easter Sunday and Whit- Sunday (cf. Tertullian, On Idolatry 1. Origin of the word. The Teutonic word Lent, which we employ to denote the forty days' fast preceding Easter, originally meant no more than the spring season. The Words of Institution (also called the Words of Consecration) are words echoing those of Jesus himself at his Last Supper that, when consecrating bread and wine. Fast from Sex. It might be the least-observed advice that the Apostle Paul ever wrote: While telling spouses not to withhold sex, he also advised them to "deprive. Thirty-nine years ago the CHRISTIAN CENTURY printed a waggish but eloquent essay by William B. Mueller titled "Of Obesity and Election." An article so named today.
![]() In any case it is certain from the . Athanasius that in 3. Holy Week, and secondly that in 3. ![]() ![]() Daniel Fast recipes, food lists, guidelines for Christians fasting and dieting to develop a closer relationship with the Lord through fasting and prayer. ![]() Father, after having traveled to Rome and over the greater part of Europe, wrote in the strongest terms to urge this observance upon the people of Alexandria as one that was universally practiced, . Although Funk formerly maintained that a Lent of forty days was not known in the West before the time of St. Ambrose, this is evidence which cannot be set aside. On the other hand just as Pentecost (the fifty days) was a period during which Christians were joyous and prayed standing, though they were not always engaged in such prayer, so the Quadragesima (the forty days) was originally a period marked by fasting, but not necessarily a period in which the faithfulfasted every day. Still, this principle was differently understood in different localities, and great divergences of practice were the result. In Rome, in the fifth century, Lent lasted six weeks, but according to the historian Socrates there were only three weeks of actual fasting, exclusive even then of the Saturday and Sunday and if Duchesne's view may be trusted, these weeks were not continuous, but were the first, the fourth, and sixth of the series, being connected with the ordinations (Christian Worship, 2. Possibly, however, these three weeks had to do with the . Maclean in his . But throughout the Orient generally, with some few exceptions, the same arrangement prevailed as St. Athanasius's . This is enjoined by the . Chrysostom (Hom. But the number forty, having once established itself, produced other modifications. It seemed to many necessary that there should not only be fasting during the forty days but forty actual fasting days. Thus we find . On the other hand, in many localities people were content to observe no more than a six weeks' period, sometimes, as at Milan, fasting only five days in the week after the oriental fashion (Ambrose, . In the time of Gregory the Great (5. Rome six weeks of six days each, making thirty- six fast days in all, which St. Gregory, who is followed therein by many medieval writers, describes as the spiritual tithing of the year, thirty- six days being approximately the tenth part of three hundred and sixty- five. At a later date the wish to realize the exact number of forty days led to the practice of beginning Lent upon our present Ash Wednesday, but the Church of Milan, even to this day, adheres to the more primitive arrangement, which still betrays itself in the Roman Missal when the priest in the Secret of the Mass on the first Sunday of Lent speaks of . For example, the historian Socrates (Church History V. Others eat birds as well as fish, because, according to the Mosaic account of the Creation, they too sprang from the water; others abstain from fruit covered by a hard shell and from eggs. Some eat dry bread only, others not even that; others again when they have fasted to the ninth hour (three o'clock) partake of various kinds of food. Amid this diversity some inclined to the extreme limits of rigor. Epiphanius, Palladius, and the author of the . Melania the Younger. Melania Giuniore. But the ordinary rule on fasting days was to take but one meal a day and that only in the evening, while meat and, in the early centuries, wine were entirely forbidden. During Holy Week, or at least on Good Friday it was common to enjoin the xerophagi. Moreover, at a somewhat later date, Bede tells us of Bishop Cedda, that during Lent he took only one meal a day consisting of . None the less St. Gregory writing to St. Augustine of England laid down the rule, . Still exceptions were admitted, and dispensations to eat . These dispensations were known in Germany as Butterbriefe, and several churches are said to have been partly built by the proceeds of such exceptions. One of the steeples of Rouencathedral was for this reason formerly known as the Butter Tower. This general prohibition of eggs and milk during Lent is perpetuated in the popular custom of blessing or making gifts of eggs at Easter, and in the English usage of eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. From the beginning to the end of that time all flesh meat, and also, for the most part, . At a very early period, however (we find the first mention of it in Socrates), the practice began to be tolerated of breaking the fast at the hour of none, i. We learn in particular that Charlemagne, about the year 8. This gradual anticipation of the hour of dinner was facilitated by the fact that the canonical hours of none, vespers, etc., represented rather periods than fixed points of time. The ninth hour, or none, was no doubt strictly three o'clock in the afternoon, but the Office of none might be recited as soon as sext, which, of course, corresponded to the sixth hour, or midday, was finished. Hence none in course of time came to be regarded as beginning at midday, and this point of view is perpetuated in our word noon which means midday and not three o'clock in the afternoon. Now the hour for breaking the fast during Lent was after Vespers (the evening service), but by a gradual process the recitation of Vespers was more and more anticipated, until the principle was at last officially recognized, as it is at present, that Vespers in lent may be said at midday. In this way, although the author of the . This seems to have begun in the ninth century, when the Council of Aix la Chapelle sanctioned the concession, even in monastic houses, of a draught of water or other beverage in the evening to quench the thirst of those who were exhausted by the manual labor of the day. From this small beginning a much larger indulgence was gradually evolved. The principle of parvitas materiae, i. St. Thomas Aquinas and other theologians, and in the course of centuries a recognized quantity of solid food, which according to received authorities must not exceed eight ounces, has come to be permitted after the midday repast. As this evening drink, when first tolerated in the ninth- century monasteries, was taken at the hour at which the . To begin with, the custom has been tolerated of taking a cup of liquid (e. But, what more particularly regards Lent, successive indults have been granted by the Holy See allowing meat at the principal meal, first on Sundays, and then on two, three, four, and five weekdays, throughout nearly the whole of Lent. Quite recently, Maundy Thursday, upon which meat was hitherto always forbidden, has come to share in the same indulgence. In the United States, the Holy See grants faculties whereby working men and their families may use flesh meat once a day throughout the year, except Fridays, Ash Wednesday, Holy Saturday, and the vigil of Christmas.
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