Transcript

Welcome back to Shameless Popery.

I'm Joe Heschmeyer, and today, I want to explore the true history of Lent.

Now, some Christians just know Lent is that time of year where we give stuff up.

They may not even know why.

Other Christians know that it's a penitential season in preparation for Easter Sunday.

But how many of us know why the Lenten season was instituted?

Do we know when the first Lent happened?

I think the story is actually really cool, so I thought I'd share a quick video unpacking that history.

Now, I know we've just entered into Lent, but the one thing I couldn't bring myself to give up was thanking our beautiful supporters over at shamelessjoe.com.

This show runs because of your direct support.

We haven't taken sponsors.

This ministry is possible because of your generous giving.

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All right, so the first thing to note is that the point of Lent really isn't just giving things up like chocolate or pizza.

If you want to do that, don't get me wrong, that is wonderful, and certainly if there's anything in your life that should not be there, this is a great time to root out any kind of sinful attachments you may have.

But there are actually three spiritual practices associated with Lent.

It is a season to focus on prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and these three are not randomly chosen.

Jesus, in Matthew 6, says, When you give alms and when you pray and when you fast.

Now, notice he doesn't say, If you pray, fast, or give alms.

Jesus is telling us these are not optional parts of the spiritual life.

But why is Lent, in particular, this special season of fasting?

And when and why did Lent become 40 days long?

Because believe it or not, Lent used to be a lot shorter, but also a lot more intense.

And so in tracing the history of Lent and fasting, it's actually important to trace two related trends: the history of Christian fasting before Easter, this is sometimes called the Paschal Fast; and the history of fasting before baptism.

Yeah, early Christians used to fast before baptisms, and we're gonna get back to that, 'cause that's actually gonna be pretty important.

But the first thing we should know is that fasting before Easter, this Paschal Fast, was already considered an ancient practice in the 100s.

How do we know this?

Well, we have fragments of a letter that Saint Irenaeus of Lyon sent to Pope Victor at the end of the second century.

The controversy in the day is that the pope wanted all Christians to celebrate Easter at the same time, on the same day, always on Sunday, while the Christians in what is now Turkey were insisting on celebrating it based on Passover on the Jewish calendar, which might mean Easter could fall any day of the week.

In Irenaeus's letter, he mentions that this actually isn't the only place where we find different Christians doing different things liturgically.

In his words, quote, The controversy is not only concerning the day but also concerning the very manner of the fast.

For some think that they should fast one day, others two, yet others more.

Some, moreover count their day as consisting of 40 hours, day and night.

And this variety in its observance has not originated in our time, but long before, in that of our ancestors.

It is likely that they did not hold to strict accuracy and thus formed a custom for their posterity according to their own simplicity and peculiar mode.

Yet all of these lived nonetheless in peace, and we also live in peace with one another, and the disagreement in regard to the fast confirms the agreement in the faith.

Okay, so that tells us a few things.

Number one, there is a clear and ancient tradition of fasting for some period of time before Easter.

I think it's fair to actually view that tradition as apostolic, and I'm gonna give you a couple reasons for thinking that.

Irenaeus, first of all, he's part of the third generation of Christians.

We actually have another fragment of a letter, uh, that he sends to a guy named Florinus, who would become a Gnostic heretic, and the gist of the letter is this.

Irenaeus reminds Florinus that both of them had learned Christianity from Saint Polycarp of Smyrna, who was definitely a Christian and not a Gnostic.

And why does that matter?

Well, as Saint Irenaeus explains, Polycarp was a student of the Apostle John, so he was teaching Irenaeus and Florinus things that he himself had learned from the Apostle John, so you have those three generations, John to Polycarp to Irenaeus.

So when Irenaeus talks about this as a tradition that doesn't originate in his time but long before, in the time of the ancestors, he seems to be putting it back into the time of the apostles.

But it's equally clear that the apostles didn't give one standardized rule for everybody.

There's no one church-wide rule for how long the fast should be, so every local church seems to be doing its own thing, you know, you got a one-day fast, two-day fast, 40-hour fast, maybe something longer.

But my other reason for suggesting that this might be apostolic in origin is that it's actually pretty thoroughly Jewish.

The Jewish Mishnah describes how there was a fast on the eve of the Passover, so that you would go all the way to evening without eating and you would break your fast with the Passover meal.

So it makes sense to see this carried out in the preparation for Christ's own Passover as Christians take the holiday of Passover and turn it into the holiday of Easter.

So that's one strain.

You've got Paschal Fasting, but there's a second fast that we know about as well, which we also have good reason to believe goes back to the time of the apostles.

And the reason I say that is 'cause there's this ancient document called the Didache.

It's dated anywhere from around 150 at the latest to quite possibly sometime in the first century, which would make it older than parts of the New Testament, and it talks about Christians fasting twice a week throughout the year on Tuesdays and Fridays.

But then into the chapter on baptism, it talks about another kind of fasting.

It says, Before the baptism, let the baptizer fast and the baptized and whatever others can, but you shall order the baptized to fast one or two days before.

So we know that there was a pre-baptismal fast of about a day or two that was mandatory for the one about to be baptized and seemingly for the one who was going to baptize them and then apparently optional for everyone else, but encouraged for those able to do it.

Well, similarly, when Saint Justin Martyr is talking about baptism in the middle part of the 100s, As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true and undertake to be able to live accordingly are instructed to pray and to entreat God with fasting for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them.

Then they are brought by us where there is water and are regenerated, that means reborn, in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated.

Now, notice, by the way, how casually he mentions that when Jesus tells us we have to be born again of water and the spirit in John 3, this is obviously a reference to the fact that we become born again in water baptism.

Later Protestants like Anabaptists and Baptists today are gonna deny this, but this is what it means for 2,000 years to be a born-again Christian, biblically.

This is how the early Christians understood it.

But for our purposes, that's actually not what we wanna key in on.

We wanna key in on just the fact that the person being baptized and the Christian community receiving them would join in a period of prayer and fasting before baptism.

Now, around the year 200, the theologian Tertullian writes a whole work on baptism called, fittingly, De Baptismo, and there are a few details in particular that he mentions that might help us to draw these two strands together.

How do the Paschal Fast and the Baptismal Fast end up connected in this season of Lent?

Well, we've got some clues.

In chapter 20 of his work, Tertullian writes that, They who are about to enter baptism ought to pray with repeated prayers, fasts, and bendings of the knee, and vigils all the night through, and with the confession of all bygone sins, that they may express the meaning even of the baptism of John.

Okay, now if you don't catch that reference, Tertullian's saying that even John the Baptist's baptism, which isn't a sacrament, which is just a foreshadowing of Jesus' baptism, that even in that case, the people getting baptized first had to confess their sins, as we see from Matthew 3. And if you're gonna be doing that, Tertullian's point is you need this spiritual time of prayer and fasting.

But he then points out that even after the baptism, the very first thing that we see Jesus do after His own baptism is going for a 40-day fast in the desert, and he uses this point to encourage the people who are about to be baptized.

Therefore, blessed ones, whom the grace of God awaits, when you ascend from that most sacred font of your new birth and spread your hands for the first time in the house of your mother, together with your brethren, ask from the Father, ask from the Lord that His own specialties of grace and distributions of gifts may be supplied to you.

I think that's a beautiful bit of advice for anyone about to be baptized this Easter.

Now, I've already given a clue just now, but there's a reason that these two fasts come together.

Well, why is that?

Because as the Code of Canon Law notes, while baptism can be celebrated on any day, it is nevertheless recommended that it be celebrated ordinarily on Sunday, or if possible, at the Easter vigil.

So, the timing of these is that the pre-Easter fast and the baptism fast are happening at the same time.

And this isn't some new thing canon law is coming up with.

Tertullian talks about this directly.

He says that, Easter, which he calls the Passover, affords a more usually solemn day for baptism.

When with all the Lord's passion, which we are baptized, was completed.

But if you can't get baptized on Easter, he suggests the next best time is to be baptized on Pentecost.

But don't worry.

Even if you weren't baptized on Easter or on Pentecost, Tertullian is quick to point out that every day is the Lord's.

Every hour, every time, is apt for baptism.

If there's a difference in the solemnity, there's no difference in the grace received in baptism.

So, even if you didn't get baptized on Easter, no sweat.

You didn't have a discount baptism or something.

We've got the same divine graces, no matter the day we were baptized.

There you have it, though.

Think about the picture we've formed so far.

The Christians are fasting before Easter, and they're fasting before baptism, which oftentimes are taken at this exact same time right before Easter.

Now, this can also dispel a myth that many modern-day Christians have.

We often think of fasting as a purely personal thing.

I decide what I'm going to give up, or whether or not I'm going to fast, and so on.

But biblically, fasting was an act of the whole people frequently, like when the people who came from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem proclaimed a fast before the Lord in Jeremiah 36, or when the Ninevites fasted and averted the judgment of God in Jonah 3, or when the Prophet Ezra proclaims a fast in Ezra 8. And that's not just an Old Testament reality, either.

The church in Antioch discerns that Paul and Barnabas are called to mission as a result of time of fasting and worshiping together.

Okay, so over time, these sort of intense, no food at all, 40-hour fasts turns into the limited food, 40-day period that we now know as Lent.

Well, why 40?

Well, quite obviously, because it's a biblical day of preparation, and because as Tertullian points out, Jesus fasts in the desert for 40 days.

Now, that shift doesn't happen all at once.

Instead, various churches lengthen the time that they fast, and other churches seem to follow suit.

So, take the writings of the great Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, for example.

In an Easter letter from the year 334, he talks about how important Lent is in preparing us for the joy of Easter.

The letter is actually worth quoting at length.

But as Israel, when going up to Jerusalem, was first purified in the wilderness, being trained to forget the customs of Egypt, the word by this typifying to us the holy fast of 40 days, let us first be purified and freed from defilement, so that when we depart hence, having been careful of fasting, we may be able to ascend to the upper chamber with the Lord, to sup with Him, and may be partakers of the joy which is in Heaven.

In no other manner is it possible to go up to Jerusalem and to eat the Passover except by observing the fast of 40 days.

Okay, you might be wondering, well, maybe the church in Alexandria is just especially strict with the Lenten fast.

Well, according to Athanasius, it's quite the opposite.

Some years after the letter I just quoted from, Athanasius is in exile.

This is not the only time that happens to him.

He's in exile in Rome, and we have a letter that he sends home to Egypt in which he says, But I have further deemed it highly necessary and very urgent to make known to your modesty, for I have written this to each one, that you should proclaim the fast of 40 days to the brethren, and persuade them to fast, lest while all the world is fasting, we who are in Egypt should be derided as the only people who do not fast, but take our pleasure in these days.

Okay, so clearly by this point, the 40 days of Lenten fasting are standard across the church.

There's also a somewhat famous papal decretal from the year 385 in which the pope writes rebuking the Spanish bishop, telling him that he needs to be having his baptisms on Easter or Pentecost, and that he needs to have a period of 40 or more days of prayer and fasting beforehand.

Although he points out that obviously this doesn't apply when we're talking about infant baptism.

There are more steps to this story, but I'm just trying to give kind of the broad brush picture, and hopefully you can see the basic story.

All the way back to the beginnings of Christianity, we find people praying and fasting before the Passover, Easter, and before baptism, which often happened at Easter.

And this practice eventually becomes standardized as the season of Lent.

Final point here.

If you find yourself listening to this and thinking, man, we should go back to that short period of a day or two right before Easter to fast really intensely, I've got good news for you.

The church encourages us to keep the Good Friday fast actually all the way until the Easter vigil, marking the ancient 40-hour Paschal Fast.

So, there you go.

I hope this short history helps this to become your most spiritually rich Lent yet.

If this has been helpful, please, again, consider joining over at shamelessjoe.com.

For Shameless Popery, I'm Joe Heschmeyer.

God bless you.