Preparation for Easter

Why is it that the Church has historically placed Lent, its most intense time of ascetical practice, directly before the great fifty-day feast of Eastertide? Furthermore, what is the use of Lent in relation to Easter? It is surely obvious that the contrast between the two carries a great depth of meaning, but there are several different distinguishable reasons for their placement.

First, the Church has conspicuously put Easter after Lent so as to lend a special meaning to the asceticism of the forty-day fast. Most of the Church Fathers, such as St. Cyril of Alexandria in his Festal Letters, make great use of this fact to encourage their congregations, a wide audience indeed, to engage in intense fasting with their eyes set on the feast.

The wisdom of the Church here is to provide encouragement to all the faithful by giving a definite end, a sense of immanent direction and finality, to Lent. Unlike the more intimidating practice of year-round and lifelong penance, something to which all Christians are called but which it is not always prudent or fruitful to constantly preach, Lent has a definite time frame. This smaller scale helps people find their footing.

After all, though it’s doubtless a great thing to run a marathon (and one might say anyone not physically impaired has no reason not to try), a much shorter run is much more appealing, and indeed much safer, to someone just beginning to train. This language of contest and athletic virtue, which St. Paul co-opts for the spiritual life in the Epistles, is commonly applied to Lent above all other seasons, and the athletic prize is analogized to Easter.

This aspect, the carrot and stick so to speak, has thus been frequently employed by pastors throughout the millennia to get people into fasting and asceticism. Though New Years’ resolutions are a modern analogue to this practice, Lent is far superior for its definite demands.

Second and more importantly, the fruit of Lent properly practiced is improved self-control and subjugation of the passions. This result is, of course, always desirable, but is especially so before Easter. 

When temperance and fortitude have been nurtured in Lent, the great feast can be enjoyed with proper moderation. This, in turn, enables the soul to understand the spiritual nature of the feast rather than merely the abundance of physical goods and emotions of Easter.

Lent thus aims to remove spiritual blindness by diminishing the grip of our concupiscence, which all too often blinds us to virtue and makes us despondent about our pilgrimage to Heaven.

Lent in itself is necessary to prepare the soul to worthily celebrate Easter. The most significant day of the entire year, commemorating the single greatest event in history, demands purification on the part of all celebrating it.

Third and most importantly, by partaking in the Lenten preparation, and foregoing feasting or even one’s modest but comfortable year-round habits, the soul conforms itself further to Christ by experiencing his pain and his trials. The Gospels demonstrate that Christ’s astonishing miracles, most especially the Resurrection, were always preceded by and interlinked with periods of intense fasting, prayer, and vigils, and indeed His crucifixion and death.

Therefore, if a Christian truly desires conformity with Christ in the Resurrection, it is necessary also to conform to His suffering and death. Lent offers a special time to emulate Christ crucified.

The end of Lent is drawing near. Whether you have been rigorous or lax in your practice, there is time yet to prepare for Easter as an athlete for a competition, as a Christian for conformity to Christ.