Over the centuries, Western Christians slowly moved from observing the Three Days from Good Friday to Easter Sunday to the 46 days of Lent that begins on Ash Wednesday (including the six Sundays). The purpose of Lent is to encourage spiritual preparations for observing Christ's death and resurrection. Themes include repentance, thinking of Christ's mission, self-sacrifice, and suffering, and meditation on ways that Christians follow and join with their Lord. Ash Wednesday seems to have started as a local observance in some parts of Western Europe and eventually to have become more universal.
By the late Middle Ages, observances had been encoded in church and secular law with punishments for those who transgressed the rules. At the time of the sixteenth-century Reformation, Lutherans and Anglicans took a moderate approach to Lent. Some medieval practices were eliminated, but the season was preserved and re-focused. Lent emphasized the centrality of Christ's Passion and the need for believers to respond by repentance and living faith.
If used carefully, a variety of Lenten devotional practices can be helpful reminders of themes from Scripture; if over-emphasized, specific practices may become stumbling blocks to faith in Christ. So as we begin Lent, let us seek to be more penitent and disciplined, but let us also stay focused on Christ's work of redemption and His saving grace
