The final two weeks are dominated by preparation for the celebration of the passion. In spite of the suppression of Passion Sunday, the tradition still echoes in the new rite. It is still permitted to veil the statues and crucifixes at vespers before the fifth Sunday of Lent if your parish wants to do it before Holy Thursday.
You can also still hear, if your parish uses the propers of the season, Psalm 42, as the Introit on this day. Visit the link for more.
This blog is no longer being actively updated. Alex US English. David US English. Mark US English. Daniel British. Libby British. Mia British. Karen Australian. Hayley Australian. Natasha Australian. Veena Indian. Priya Indian. Neerja Indian. Zira US English. Oliver British. What was really at stake was a recovery of ancient Christian practice, not only of this Sunday, but of Lent itself, a recovery that was part and parcel of many findings of liturgical scholarship and ecumenical work beginning in the late nineteenth century.
The recovery of Lent was not simply about re-syncing our current calendars with more ancient ones. Instead, it was primarily about recovering the church's mission of discipling people in the way of Jesus , and realigning our worship practices to support that mission. That purpose became obscured by medieval innovations in the calendar and lectionaries that followed the demise of what had been the church's primary means of offering such intensive discipling -- the three-year at least!
Lent formed the "home stretch" of final preparation of candidates for baptism after three years of learning how to pray, how to listen to and learn from Scripture, how to care for the poor, the sick, and the orphans, how to care for and advocate for the needs of older people, and how to overcome addictive patterns in their lives, among other things.
All of this ongoing training made sure candidates for baptism could respond to the baptismal questions with deep integrity. Those questions, in their most ancient form, were "Do you renounce Satan and all his works? Do you confess Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord? But when the three-year catechumenate itself was first compressed to just these forty days as early as in Syria and then all but disappeared entirely across most of the former Roman Empire by the sixth century, replaced by a hodge-podge of practices later known as "confirmation" with a focus more on doctrine than living the way of Jesus, the weeks of Lent started being used for another purpose-- a season of fasting and penitence with constant reminders of the suffering of Jesus along the way.
This was fairly universally established in the West by the eighth century. In other words, Lent was no longer about discipling others in the way of Jesus, but rather about trying to discipline ourselves for our sins, if only for these forty days. It was this medieval practice of Lent, disconnected from any serious effort to disciple newcomers or others in the way of Jesus, that continued to inform Lenten lectionaries and practices in the West until Vatican II.
Here, too, Rome has led the way to some degree, particularly in its publication of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults RCIA and many resources to support this, worldwide. For United Methodists, the fullest flowering of these efforts is Daniel Benedict's marvelous and practical book, Come to the Waters.
Lent is a forty-day season of fasting and spiritual preparation intended to help congregations accompany candidates for baptism during a "home stretch" in practices, ritual and disciplines critical to living in the way of Jesus.
For the same crowd that was cheering during the parade into Jerusalem was jeering a few days later. But as soon as the tide began to turn, so did they.
Above image by an unknown artist. Public domain. Of course, he was not surprised in the least. The gospels tell us that he knew the human mind and heart all too well. He was not fooled by all the acclamation and fanfare. Flattery could not swell his head.
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