I’ve heard many times that since Sundays commemorate the Resurrection we pause Lent on Sunday and should celebrate a little Easter. I was even taught when I was young that you could have the thing you gave up for Lent on Sunday, breaking out candy bars to celebrate the day. Notice, however, that we speak of the “First Sunday of Lent,” for instance, not the first Sunday that isn’t Lent. Lent is a forty-six day season with forty days of fasting within it.
Sundays are not fasting days, which is why we start Lent in the Western Church on Ash Wednesday to add extra fast days to reach the number 40. Lent is even named Quadragesima in Latin referring to the importance of fasting for the full forty days. In addition to the fast, however, Catholics used to give up meat and all animal products throughout the entirety of Lent, including Sundays. Even when one of the most solemn feasts occurred in Lent, the Annunciation, the fast was lifted but not abstinence from meat. (And I just heard from a monk that they continue this practice of abstaining from meat on Sundays and solemnities throughout all of Lent.)
Sundays in Lent offered a pause from the fast, which originally entailed not eating at all during the day, even if a snack or two (called collations) were eventually allowed. No meat or animal products were consumed at all for the duration of the forty-six days of the Lenten season.
We embrace so little penance and fasting in the Church today. We practice very light fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. In addition, we voluntarily make additional sacrifices, which ordinarily do not come close to the rigors of the traditional Lenten fast. Even with these few practices, we quickly rush to set them aside on Sundays and feast days, thinking we need a deserved break. In reality, it makes it hard to keep up our consistency and to allow the sacrifices of the season to break us down in greater humility and trust.
To enter more deeply into the Lenten season, consider fasting in some fashion (eating less food or restricting the kinds of food you eat) Monday through Saturday and keep up your other devotional and penitential practices even on Sundays. Since we only have one penitential season in the Western Church, let’s make the most of it.
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