by Rob T:
"Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel."
I heard those words many times growing up as a Catholic, uttered by a priest as he applied ashes to my forehead on Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian season of Lent leading up to Easter.
They are words whose truth still resonates with me as a Latter-day Saint.
About the only thing I questioned about the season — due to the prohibition of eating meat on Fridays — was why chicken was considered "poultry" except for Fridays during Lent, when it became "meat" and I could not eat it, because I preferred the taste of it to that of fish — which was okay to eat on Fridays.
But that is obviously trivial. Lent is a beautiful season. Much like Advent leading up to Christmas, Lent, to me, always felt like a season of anticipation. Something is about to happen, God is going to do something incredible, and you need to be prepared.
I believe that anticipatory sense is what drove Christ into the wilderness for forty days before his entry into Jerusalem, and subsequent atonement, crucifixion and resurrection. He knew what He was about to undergo, so the fully human Jesus took time to withdraw and contemplate the gravity of what would be accomplished by God through the fully divine Christ.
During a tweet-flurry on Wednesday in response to Jana Riess'
excellent piece on a Mormon perspective of Ash Wednesday (also enjoyed
this post by LDS Living that is linked to from Jana's blog), the ever-thoughtful Kristine A expressed this lament:
As can be seen above, I agreed with Kristine A and regretfully admitted that I had cracked those jokes myself in my early years after converting to the LDS Church.
That the ideas of Lent should be in year-round practice is not an incorrect notion. The problem is that this is rarely uttered in the right spirit — it's usually meant a jab at a religious tenet that we as Mormons do not formally share (look at the comments on Riess' post, there's one that's blatantly disrespectful, though there's another that I think captures a good balance). It also violates the principle of being open to and seeking truth wherever it is found and applying it to our lives.
And I don't think any Christian who celebrates Lent would disagree that the season's principles should be a constant effort.