Lent's Forty Days

Not long from now, Western Christians of all stripes will sing Claudia Hernaman’s 1873 hymn, “O Lord, throughout These Forty Days,” as a staple of Lenten hymnody. Nearly from the beginning of Lenten observances the number forty has been associated with the fasts of Lent. But why? What is the association with the number forty?

A popular notion, suggested by the second-century Church Father, Tertullian, is that the figure forty commemorates the number of hours that Jesus lay in the tomb. According to Tertullian, the reason the Catholics gave was that this fast was observed because the Bridegroom, Christ Jesus, was taken from His Bride, the Holy Church (Mark 2:18-20; Luke 5:33-35): hence, the Bride lamented, repented, and prepared herself for her Bridegroom’s victorious return. Christians thus fasted from Good Friday through Easter Vigil until the Easter Mass (which occurred as early as three am or at sunrise).

Saint John Chrysostom describes Sundays in the season of Lent as “stations and inns, and havens, for those to rest in who have taken upon them the course of fasting in this holy time of Lent, that they may refresh their bodies a little from the labors of fasting.”

Another worthy suggestion is that forty referred to the number of days the fast lasted, even though, Sundays were always excluded from the fast (in both Eastern and Western traditions), and some churches excluded other days also (Eastern Churches precluded Saturdays, too), some actually fasted for as few as fifteen days, and no one fasted more than thirty-six days in the West or thirty-nine days in the East. In this way of thinking, just as Jesus was forty days in the wilderness refining his spiritual disciplines and preparing for his God-given vocation, so too Christians trod a Christ-like path toward transformation. And, well, thirty-six and thirty-nine are both almost forty, right?

This brings up an important point. The Lord’s Day (Sunday) was never allowed to be kept as a fast in the Early Church but was always observed as a festival — even in Lent — in all the churches of the world as a celebration of Christ’s resurrection and the dawning of the new creation. In the first centuries of the Church, the fact of Jesus’s resurrection (along with his blood atonement on the cross) was the inviolable rock on which Christianity was set, and altering its celebratory weekly observance on Sunday — the day of Jesus’s resurrection — was unthinkable, even in light of Lent’s powerful themes.

Saint John Chrysostom describes Sundays in the season of Lent as “stations and inns, and havens, for those to rest in who have taken upon them the course of fasting in this holy time of Lent, that they may refresh their bodies a little from the labors of fasting.” [1] As one journeyed through the ardors of Lent with fellow pilgrims, Jesus’s Sunday resurrection provided an oasis for beleaguered souls. Modern practices have departed from this custom, since most parishes on Sundays actually “dress down” fixtures and drape crucifixes in purple, sing Lenten hymnody, extol fasts, and omit the Gloria and Alleluias from the liturgy. With fewer congregations assembling for mid-week Lenten Mass or Stations of the Cross, Sundays have become the default day of the week for observing the forty days of Lent.

The number forty calls to remembrance narratives of God’s great acts of redemption, but also our conformity to and participation in those narratives.

Aside from the musings of the Church Fathers, there’s good biblical precedent for a fast of forty days. Consider that Moses tarried on Mount Horeb for forty days (Ex. 24:18; Deut. 9:9). Or Elijah’s fast of forty days in the same place (1 Kings 19:8). Of course there’s also Jesus’s own forty days of fasting and temptation in the wilderness following his baptism (Matt. 4:2; Luke 4:2). These biblical examples all signal the number forty as preparation for trials, a great transition accomplished by God, or sometimes both. The number forty calls to remembrance narratives of God’s great acts of redemption, but also our conformity to and participation in those narratives. A few examples include: the Great Deluge of Noah lasted forty days and nights; Moses fasted for forty days and nights in preparation to receive the Law and see the Lord; and the Israelites wandered the Sinai desert for forty years before entering the Promised Land. Most important of all, Jesus underwent the rigors of fasting, resisted temptation, and consummated faith overt-against the machinations of the Evil One, to be “made perfect through suffering” and “obedience” (Heb. 2:10; 5:8-9), so that he could “offer up himself” as a spotless sacrifice to atone for sins and reconcile us to God (Heb. 7:27).

It is thought that Pope Gregory the Great, around the year AD 595, added Ash Wednesday and the other three days of the first week before the first Sunday of Lent to the Lenten fast, though attribution is sometimes made to Gregory II. Whoever it may have been, the forty days of Lent were rounded out and in place before the end of the sixth century, giving Lent developmental origins stretching from the first to the sixth century. However you may wish to biblically associate the number forty, each attempt purposes to bring the life of Christ into time and surrender time to him. Whether the number forty is supposed to commemorate either the hours Jesus lay in the tomb yielding resurrection or replicate his temptation and fasting, it is a number retained as the abiding paradigm fused with Christ’s saving work for the Lenten season.