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number forty, says Saint Jerome, denotes suffering and
affliction. During the Deluge, it rained for forty days
and forty nights, until the whole human race, save one
family, perished in the flood. Later, the Hebrew people,
in punishment for their ingratitude and rebellion, were
condemned, before entering the Promised Land, to
wander, for forty years, in the desert. Moses and Elias,
the two great Prophets of the Old Law, were obliged
to fast for forty days, before they were permitted to
approach the Lord, on Mount Sinai and Mount Horeb.
Lastly, our Lord, having determined to submit His
sacred Body to the severe penance of fasting, fixed
forty days as the duration of that solemn exercise which
was to serve as our example.
The Lenten penance assumes three principal forms :
Fasting, Prayer and Almsgiving. The LENTEN FAST
consists : ist, in taking but one meal during the day :
but this rule is no longer observed in its primitive seve
nty :
an evening collation has been permitted since
the twelfth or thirteenth century and, in the last cen
tury, permission was given for a light refection in the
morning; 2nd., in abstinence from flesh meat and even
from all foods connected with living creatures; here
also, the Church has greatly mitigated the rule; 3rd.,
in fixing a late hour for the one meal of the day. Such
is the penance to which the body is submitted, for the
part
The LENTEN PRAYER gives expression principally to
it has taken in sin.
our sorrow and our repentance for the sins we have
committed. It also appeals to the divine mercy, with
out which we should vainly hope for pardon^ but
through which, we can rely on the favour of reconcilia
tion with our God. The special observances of the
liturgy in this holy season, the formulas which vary