Jesus celebrated every Festival that God appointed in Leviticus 23.
I love Lent and Advent, more than the Holidays that they lead up to. I love the stretch of time between "forgetting" and "remembering."
When I was young I was aware that Lent existed, but was not aware that I was inadvertently partaking.
I just knew it was that time when we had mac and cheese and fish sticks....A Lot. But I liked Mac and Cheese and fish sticks....A LOT, so it didn't really dawn on my 10 year old mind that it was Friday and it usually happened right before Easter.
You see, it was a secret. It was a secret kept for two reasons. 1) I was not allowed to partake in such "Catholic" celebrations as my father, and 2) my dad would repeat "your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."(Mathew 6:18)
I have no idea what my father did all those years during Lent, was never aware what he was choosing to "give up," he did it quietly, in secret, not inconveniencing anyone but himself...
In college, you could smell the fish all over campus during lent. It kind of made me not want to eat fish EVER again...but besides the potent smell of fish, and the posts in the elevator about Mass.....again...there was this quiet stillness about Lent.
Lent is not a period in time that is dictated in the bible as a celebration, it is a time that falls within the Liturgical calendar that is 40 days before Easter.
Lent is an acknowledgement of the 40 days that Jesus fasted in the dessert in preparation of his ministry.
40 days.
40 days and nights that Noah and his family floated in a zoo, the sins of the world washed away in a flood.
The 400 years of slavery the Jews suffered in Egypt, until the night of Passover when the Lord passed over the homes with the doorposts marked with the blood of the lamb.
The Feast of the Passover; "the day of Unleavened Bread,on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed" (Luke 22:7) the night that Jesus' sweat fell like drops of blood, the night The Lamb was betrayed, given up to death by his disciple, and denied 3 times by his best friend.
The night before the Messiah was crucified.
The sins of the world washed away in His blood.
The Passover that the Jews celebrated, that Jesus celebrated...the perfect lamb that was slaughtered, the doors painted red...the blood that flows over us...the Lords judgement that passes over us.
The 40 years that the Israelites wandered the dessert waiting for God to open The Promised Land to them.
And on the 3rd day...
on the third day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people. Ex. 19:11
*(on the third day) God raised him * and made him to appear, 41 not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. Act 10:40-41
As opposed to Advent- the time of longing, the waiting for the King to be born unto us.
- Lent is a time of heaviness.
- A time of preparation for the Passover of the Lord.
- A time of denial, but this time of self.
The beginning of Lent is a celebration of Ash Wednesday, which this year lands on February 18th.
Prepare for the Passover of the Lamb
This Lent,
Deny yourself, and take up your cross, walk with Him to Calvary.
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