The puzzle of Lent

February 23, 2007, 10:24 pm
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.
2007 Lent and Easter dates for Eastern and Western Christians
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.
Easter dates for Eastern and Western Christians for 2007-2030 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:

... a Lent of eight weeks in all observed at Jerusalem, which, remembering that both the Saturday and Sunday of ordinary weeks were exempt, gives five times eight, i.e., forty days for fasting. 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, "De Elia et Jejunio", 10). In the time of [Pope] Gregory the Great (590-604) there were apparently at 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 "sacrificium quadragesimalis initii"
- Lent, Catholic Encyclopedia

20. Until such time as all Christians are agreed on a fixed day for the celebration of Easter, with a view meantime to promoting unity among the Christians of the same area or nation, it is left to the patriarchs or supreme authorities of a place to come to an agreement by the unanimous consent and combined counsel of those affected to celebrate the feast of Easter on the same Sunday.
- Orientalium Ecclesiarum, HH Pope Paul VI

On May 5, when he was visiting Damascus, John Paul II proposed that Christians in the East and West celebrate Easter on the same day, as a visible sign of the quest for full unity.
- Zenit.org, Oct 19, 2001
Also on the Melkite Catholic Church website

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.


by stephen in Catholic issues       ( Edit )      ( Delete )     

43 days left till Easter

February 23, 2007, 4:24 pm
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.


by stephen in General       ( Edit )      ( Delete )     
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