[Sca-cooks] Sundays in Lent

[Johnna Holloway]

Answer may be this--
"The answer is that all of those 46 days are within Lent, yet not all of them are of Lent, in the sense that they are supposed to be days of fasting and penance. In the past, Christians observed Lent by imitating Christ's 40 days in the desert. As He fasted for 40 days, so did they. (See "Reader Question: Observing Lent Before Vatican II.") Today, the Church only requires Western Catholics to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
From the very earliest days, the Church has declared that Sunday, the day of Christ's Resurrection, is always a feast day, and therefore fasting is forbidden. Since there are six Sundays within Lent, we have to subtract them from the days of fasting. Forty-six minus six is forty.

That's why, in the West, Lent starts on Ash Wednesday--to allow a full 40 days of fasting before Easter Sunday."

http://catholicism.about.com/b/2008/02/29/reader-question-should-we-fast-on-sundays.htm

Within Lent, not all days were fast days.  Sundays are feast days in all Catholic churches, so the forty day fast was broken with a respite each Sunday (Cowie and Gummer ).  In the early church Saturday was excluded also, so there were fewer fast days in Lent.  Eastern Orthodox Christians maintained the pattern of excluding Saturday and Sunday, except for Holy Saturday, so they had  36 not 40 fast days  (Cowie and Gummer ) (Henisch  p.31-32). http://keeleranderson.net/Hello/Lent/RecreatingLent.htm 

Johnnae

>>> 
>>> 
>>> I've been studying feast menus from around the time of Henry V, and
>>> have a question about them. Both Henry V and his bride Catherine of
>>> Valois were apparently crowned in Lent, and if I have the dates right
>>> (this depends on whether my sources agree on how to handle
>>> Julian-Gregorian conversion), they were both crowned on Sundays.
>>> 
>>> My question is this: Both feasts were almost entirely of fish, with
>>> one or two dishes of flesh. Does this mean that these Sundays were
>>> fish days, and flesh was included by dispensation, or did most of each
>>> menu amount to a voluntary fast?
>>> 
>>> -- 
>>> Henry/Alex