Lent is a 40 day preparation for Easter, yet it can start on a Monday 48 days before Easter, or a Wednesday 46 days before Easter, while Easter is always on a Sunday.

How does this work?

The date for Easter, as most people know it, is calculated according to rules defined by the Catholic Church centuries ago.  Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, Dutch Reformed, and other Protestant churches that celebrate Lent, a 40 day preparation before Easter, along with most Catholics, keep Lent the way most people know it.

Western Lent is as follows:

• starts on Ash Wednesday
• starts 46 days before Easter Sunday
• lasts 40 days
• ends on the day before Easter Sunday
• does not include the Sundays during that period

The Catholic Church in Milan keeps a completely different Lent to either the one known to most Western Catholics or the one known to the Eastern Christians.

Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox both count Lent differently.

Eastern Lent is as follows:

• starts on Clean Monday
• starts 48 days before Easter Sunday
• lasts 40 days
• ends on the day before Lazarus Saturday, which is the day before Palm Sunday, which is the Sunday before Easter Sunday
• includes the Sundays during that period

Lent this year [2007] started on Monday 19 February for Eastern Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, and on Wednesday 21 February for Western Catholic and Protestants.

This image shows this year's Lent, with day counts for Eastern and Western Lent.
Click on the image to open a larger version.

A further problem arises from the fact that Protestants follow the Catholic calculation for the date of Easter, while the Orthodox use a different calculation - so they usually celebrate Easter 1-4 weeks after Catholics and Protestants.  So sometimes the two Eastern Lents do not begin the same week.  And so sometimes there are THREE Lents - one for the West, one for the Eastern Catholics who keep the Easter as defined by the Catholic Church, and one for the Orthodox and Eastern Catholics who keep the Easter defined by the Eastern rule.

Note: the Eastern Catholics who follow the Eastern rule still acknowledge the jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome, currently HH Pope Benedict XVI, even though they celebrate Easter on a different date.  (They even have married priests with kids and all.)  "The Eastern Catholic Churches are in full communion of faith and of acceptance of authority of the see of Rome, but retain their distinctive liturgical rites, laws and customs, traditional devotions and have their own theological emphases." - Eastern Catholic Churches, Wikipedia

In 2007, the dates for Eastern and Western Easter coincide.  The next image shows the dates of Easter from this year until 2030 AD.
Catholic / Protestant Easter dates can be calculated at the following page: Dates of Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday

At Easter Dates, the dates of Easter (Orthodox and Catholic/Protestant) are listed for 1990 till 2050.  A calculator is available to calculate the date of Easter between 326 AD and 4099 AD.  A text file (zipped, 32K) containing all these dates can be found here.

More info on Orthodox Easter and Lent:

More info on Eastern Catholics keeping Eastern Easter, or a different Lent:




And finally, on the differing dates for Easter, Celebrating Together Redemption in Christ: Catholic Hopes for a Common Date of Easter

Now Lent is no longer the puzzle it was.

Ash Wednesday was this week.  Ash Wednesday began Lent, a period of 40 days of preparation for Easter, when we celebrate the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

So Easter is getting closer.  We're counting down.  Only 43 days left between today and Easter Sunday.  Easter Sunday will be day 44.  On Monday, there will be 40 days between then and Easter Sunday.

Found via James Akin's blog, reporting on Anglican / Catholic unity, where a journalist claims that unity is imminent (James says it's nonsense, I agree.)

One of the comments on the original article says the following:


How incredibly true that it.  If only people would realise how Catholicism really views the Bible.  There are so many misconceptions out there.

Someone else says:


That's one of the misconceptions.  There are many degrees of meaning to a word, and fundamentalist Protestants, of whatever denomination, don't recognise that - they restrict their language to the meaning they use.  Worship can also mean simply paying respect to someone, and the Bible has plenty of examples of this - conveniently ignored by those who want to complain about Catholicism.  We don't worship Mary as we do God.  We honour her, much like they honour the Bible.  Prayer - it's something that can be used as a form of worship; but it can also simply be a request.  Again, there are different degrees of meaning, and Catholics do not limit their use of the word to modern Protestant definitions.  The actual English word can mean a request, or to address someone.  Sometimes Catholic English and Protestant English use different definitions for the same words.  If people want to understand each other, that is am important factor to take into account.  You can't judge a statement unless you know what was intended by it.

I have been asked by an Adventist:

OK let say a catholic individual study his or her bible and learns John 3:16, 1john 1:9, Col 2:14 and other. He began to understand the death of Jesus paid in full for penalty of his sins. That Jesus took away all his sins and reconciliation with God and made possible through the blood of Jesus. But the catholic teaching says he has to suffer for his sins in purgatory before he enters heaven. What is he to do?

The passages he cites:

John 3:16 KJV  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

1 John 1:9 KJV  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Colossians 2:14 KJV  Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross;

If we sin, we need forgiveness.  Once we are forgiven, we usually still need to learn a better way.  That is the purpose of Gods' discipline - teaching us that bad things are bad, and to prefer good things.  God could, of course, snap his fingers and make us all perfect ... but he doesn't.  He teaches us through the consequences of our sins.  If we lie, and ask for forgiveness, we are forgiven, but still get to learn from the embarrassment, or pain, or loss, or whatever the lie caused.

Purgatory is often misunderstood to be a place we go to in order to finish the punishment for sin that wasn't removed by Christ.  That's not exactly true.

Christ paid the full price for our salvation, but what he didn't remove was the discipline we would require in order to grow as Christians.  I think that is a belief shared by the vast majority of Christian denominations. The difference between Catholics and Protestants is that Catholics believe that, when discipline is still needed to finish our development into a fully Christ-like servant of God, that process continues after death, before entry into heaven.  Protestants, seemingly, consider that pending discipline to be discarded/ignored, and what is lacking simply added on without that process of learning, so entry into heaven would be "immediate".  Probably Adventists believe the same as Protestants, with the difference regarding the timing of entry into heaven relative to the time of death / end of time.

So, for Catholics, purgatory exists in this life (not always stated that way) and after death; for Protestants, purgatory (not called that) exists in this life, and not after death.

However ... Adventists, I think (but not all Protestants), believe that even the saved will have to face their sins in the final judgement.  They won't be condemned by them, but they will have to face the reality of what their sins actually meant (a realisation few people reach in this life.)  I doubt Adventism would call it a purification, but I can't imagine that such a revelation about the true nature of their sinfulness would NOT bring about a change for the better in those who are saved, which then amounts to the same thing.

And that is purgatory ... not a mystical version of hell that has fire and brimstone but one can escape from when enough pain has been inflicted, but rather the trials and tribulations of life that make us grow - if we let them - into a more Christ-like person.

True faith in Christ requires that process - and in that sense, and only that sense, is sanctification/purgatory a requirement for salvation.  But if it's part of the definition of true faith that we submit to God and let him change us, then it's not truly an "extra" but rather part of the results of true faith that we are sanctified / purified of our sinful nature.

The following from the article “Sanctification� by Dr William Ames (a puritan, 1567-1633) shows the process that we see as purging:

1. The real change of state is an alteration of qualities in man himself. 2 Cor. 5:17, Old things have passed away; all things are new.

2. The change is not in relation or reason, but in genuine effects seen in degrees of beginning, progress, and completion. 2 Cor. 4:16, The inner man is renewed day by day.

4. Sanctification is the real change in man from the sordidness of sin to the purity of God's image. Eph. 4:22-24, Put off that which pertains to the old conversation, that old man, corrupting itself in deceivable lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Put on that new man who according to God is created to righteousness and true holiness.

5. just as in justification a believer is properly freed from the guilt of sin and has life given him (the title to which is, as it were, settled in adoption), so in sanctification the same believer is freed from the sordidness and stain of sin, and the purity of God's image is restored to him.

13. The starting point of sanctification is the filthiness, corruption, or stain of sin. 2 Cor. 7: 1, Let us purge ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, being led to holiness in the fear of God.

14. Its end is the purity of God's image (said to be fashioned or created once more in Knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, Eph. 4:24) or Conformity to the law of God, Jas. 1:25; Newness of life, Rom. 6:4; the New creature, 2 Cor. 5:17 and Gal. 6:15; and the Divine nature, 2 Peter 1:4.

The relevant biblical texts:

Hebrews 12:6-11 KJV  For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.  [7]  If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?  [8]  But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.  [9]  Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?  [10]  For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.  [11]  Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.

1Co 3:15  If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.

In summary, Jesus paid the full price for our sins.  That is the atonement, which relates to justification.  But he did not take away the chastisement necessary for our growth as Christians.  That is sanctification, and Catholics call its completion purgatory - they are one and the same thing. So there is no confict at all with the atonement achieved for us by Christ.  That atonement is not what we complete by sanctification.