{"id":640,"date":"2013-02-21T16:28:11","date_gmt":"2013-02-21T21:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ptsblog.org\/?p=640"},"modified":"2021-04-02T13:37:24","modified_gmt":"2021-04-02T18:37:24","slug":"what-color-is-lent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pts.edu\/blog\/what-color-is-lent\/","title":{"rendered":"What Color Is Lent?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This has, thankfully, been a mild winter in Pittsburgh (the picture above comes from 2010).\u00a0 Still, this year as every year, Lent began while winter still held sway.\u00a0 Indeed, even now, with February at long last over and done (how strange that, according to the calendar, February is the shortest<\/em> month of the year!), the official first day of spring, March 20, seems a long way off.<\/p>\n

All of which may seem appropriate.\u00a0 Lent certainly seems a wintry season of the church year: dark, cold, grim, unforgiving.\u00a0 The liturgical color for Lent is purple\u2014an appropriately dark and lugubrious shade.\u00a0 But we are likely to think of Lent even more in winter shades: the penitential black of clerical garb, the gray of Ash Wednesday\u2019s daubs on hands or foreheads, the off-white of sackcloth.<\/p>\n

Yet, curiously, the term \u201cLent\u201d has nothing to do with winter, or darkness, or fasting, or penitence.\u00a0 Etymologically, \u201cLent\u201d derives from the Middle English lenten <\/em>and the Old English lencten<\/em>, and is related to the Old High German lenzin<\/em>, all of which mean \u201cSpring\u201d!<\/p>\n

Likely we will have difficulty wrapping our heads around this concept.\u00a0 Lent as springtime?\u00a0 Our springtime associations wrap about Easter (a name which, by the way, derives from the Saxon goddess of fertility and the dawn!)\u2014the feast of Christ\u2019s resurrection, acclaimed by John of Damascus (sixth century) as \u201cthe Spring of souls.\u201d\u00a0 Even in the secular world, Easter is celebrated with signs and symbols of newness and life: eggs, brightly dyed in the shades of spring flowers; bunnies (famous for their fecundity!); and new clothes.<\/p>\n

By contrast, these\u00a040 days of preparation are appropriately penitential, marked by self-examination, prayer and fasting. Likely, we would prefer to skip the preparation and jump directly into the celebration!\u00a0 But the Lenten disciplines are not optional.\u00a0 Mark reminds us that, after Jesus\u2019 baptism, \u201cthe Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness\u201d (Mark 1:12).\u00a0 Jesus could not avoid this time of trial, and neither can we.\u00a0 But this Lenten season need not be grim and colorless.\u00a0 Lent is a green season\u2014a time of growth.\u00a0 Lent provides the opportunity for us to dig down deeper in our tradition, to break up the fallow ground of our cold hearts so that the Water of Life may seep down into the center of who are.\u00a0 Lent is the time for the Spirit to prune away our dead branches so that we may bear fruit.\u00a0 It is then a season of new life\u2014a springtime for our souls!<\/p>\n

God grant you, sisters and brothers, a green, growing, God-filled Lent!<\/p>\n

By The Rev. Dr. Steven Tuell, James A. Kelso Associate Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This has, thankfully, been a mild winter in Pittsburgh (the picture above comes from 2010).\u00a0 Still, this year as every year, Lent began while winter still held sway.\u00a0 Indeed, even now, with February at long last over and done (how strange that, according to the calendar, February is the shortest month of the year!), the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1200,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[8,13,14,15,29,36],"series":[],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ministry","tag-bible-study","tag-communion-elements","tag-community-worship","tag-cpmmunity-worship","tag-pastoral-vocation","tag-spiritual-journeys"],"yoast_head":"\r\nWhat Color Is Lent? 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