The Lenten season is a time of preparation for the liturgical celebration of the suffering, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. Many Catholics spend that time on the three practices of Lent: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. It is also a time to participate in the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. The season of Lent lasts from Ash Wednesday until the evening of Holy Thursday. If Sundays are excluded from the count, the season lasts forty days. The forty-day length of Lent is rooted in the biblical usage of the number forty. Forty is typically indicative of a time of testing, trial, penance, purification, and renewal. The number forty is used many times in both the Old and New Testaments:
Mark 1:12-15: The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him. After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand.
Genesis 8:5-6: The face of the earth was renewed during a forty-day period after the mountain tops appeared and the waters of the great flood receded— “The tops of the mountains appeared. At the end of forty days Noah opened the hatch of the ark that he had made.”
Exodus 34:28: Moses fasted for forty days and nights on Mount Sinai before receiving the tablets of the covenant— “So Moses stayed there with the Lord for forty days and forty nights, without eating any food or drinking any water, and he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments.”
Josiah 5:6; Numbers 32:13: The Israelites spent forty years wandering in the desert, as a time of testing, trial and purification of the people, before reaching the Promised Land— “Now the Israelites had wandered forty years in the desert, until all the warriors among the people that came forth from Egypt died off because they had not obeyed the command of the Lord.”
Jonah 3:4-5: The Ninevites were given forty days before God was going to destroy the city, allowing time for repentance and conversion— “Jonah began his journey through the city, and had gone but a single day’s walk announcing, ‘Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed,’ when the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great and small, put on sackcloth.”
The use of the term “forty” denotes a complete period of time that transitions to another period of time. After every forty days or years listed above, a great event occurs, or a definitive transition takes place. It’s a more effective and dramatic literary device than saying, “After some time [momentous moment] began.” It also helps the sacred author highlight theological parallels.
When we see the number forty used to denote time in the Bible, we are being told that something extraordinary and definitive is happening. During these forty days of Lent, the hope is that something extraordinary and definitive is happening in your life with Christ too.
From: usccb.org; catholic.com
