Why is Lent 40 days?

[Stella]

Mark 1:12-15
The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert,
and he remained in the desert for forty days,
tempted by Satan.
He was among wild beasts,
and the angels ministered to him.
After John had been arrested,
Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God:
“This is the time of fulfillment.
The kingdom of God is at hand.

The forty-day period of Jesus’ trial in the desert
echoes a number of events in the Old Testament:

• The face of the earth was cleansed and purified
during the promised period of days and nights that
rain poured down during the great flood—”I will
bring rain down on the earth for forty days and forty
nights, and so I will wipe out from the surface of
the earth every moving creature that I have made”
(Gen 7:4).

• The face of the earth was renewed during a forty
day period after the mountain tops appeared and
the waters of the great flood receded—“The tops
of the mountains appeared. At the end of forty
days Noah opened the hatch of the ark that he had
made” (Gen 8:5-6).

• Moses spent forty years as a shepherd in the
desert before God called him to lead the Israelites
out of slavery—“Moses fled when he heard this and
settled as an alien in the land of Midian . . . Forty
years later, an angel appeared to him in the desert
near Mount Sinai in the flame of a burning bush”
(Acts 7: 29-30).

• Moses fasted for forty days and nights on Mount
Sinai before receiving the tablets of the covenant—
“So Moses stayed there with the Lord for forty days
and forty nights, without eating any food or drinking
any water, and he wrote on the tablets the words of
the covenant, the ten commandments” (Ex 34:28).

• The Israelites spent forty years wandering in the
desert, as a time of testing, trial and purification
of the people, before reaching the Promised Land—
“Now the Israelites had wandered forty years in the
desert, until all the warriors among the people that
came forth from Egypt died off because they had
not obeyed the command of the Lord” (Jos 5:6;
see Num 32:13).

• The prophet Elijah spent forty days in the desert
before encountering God on Mount Horeb—“[Elijah]
got up, ate and drank; then strengthened by that
food, he walked forty days and forty nights to the
mountain of God, Horeb” (1 Kgs 19:8).

• The Ninevites were given forty days before God was
going to destroy the city, allowing time for repentance
and conversion—“Jonah began his journey through
the city, and had gone but a single day’s walk
announcing, ‘Forty days more and Nineveh shall be
destroyed,’ when the people of Nineveh believed
God; they proclaimed a fast and all of them, great
and small, put on sackcloth” (Jon 3:4-5).

https://www.usccb.org/resources/Why%20i ... 20Days.pdf

[Doom]

Despite all the elaborate hand-waving explanations of how the number is arrived at, (subtract the Sundays, etc) the real truth is that it isn't. 40 days is an estimate, it is usually closer to 46 days. But 40 is a good Biblical number so we go with that.

[JanetM]

If you take a calendar and start counting from Ash Wednesday as day 1 but skip every Sunday, your 40th day will land exactly on Holy Saturday.
(I've got too much time on my hands, yet not enough.)

[anawim]

If you take a calendar and start counting from Ash Wednesday as day 1 but skip every Sunday, your 40th day will land exactly on Holy Saturday.
(I've got too much time on my hands, yet not enough.)

Yes, and whatever you give up for Lent, you don't have to sacrifice on Sundays.

[Doom]

If you take a calendar and start counting from Ash Wednesday as day 1 but skip every Sunday, your 40th day will land exactly on Holy Saturday.
(I've got too much time on my hands, yet not enough.)

Nope, and if you need to not count certain days to make it work then it doesn’t work; that’s like saying you have 8 fingers so long as you don’t count your thumbs.

[Stella]

If you take a calendar and start counting from Ash Wednesday as day 1 but skip every Sunday, your 40th day will land exactly on Holy Saturday.
(I've got too much time on my hands, yet not enough.)

Nope, and if you need to not count certain days to make it work then it doesn’t work; that’s like saying you have 8 fingers so long as you don’t count your thumbs.

Numbers are alive with meaning throughout Scripture so I wouldn't dismiss the significance of the 40 day Lent cycle. It's quite amazing that Genesis records a 7 day cycle which wasn't finally adopted by civilisation until the 4th century calendar. I thought you were a tragic numbers guy, Doom?

[Kage_ar]

If you take a calendar and start counting from Ash Wednesday as day 1 but skip every Sunday, your 40th day will land exactly on Holy Saturday.
(I've got too much time on my hands, yet not enough.)

Except the Sundays are also Lent. In fact, they are named "The First Sunday of Lent" etc.

[peregrinator]

If you take a calendar and start counting from Ash Wednesday as day 1 but skip every Sunday, your 40th day will land exactly on Holy Saturday.
(I've got too much time on my hands, yet not enough.)

Except the Sundays are also Lent. In fact, they are named "The First Sunday of Lent" etc.

It's true that the liturgical season of Lent is longer than 40 days but there are (were, I guess - now there are only two) 40 days of fasting since Sundays are not fast days even during Lent.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

Also, Lent doesn't end on Holy Saturday; it ends on Holy Thursday. The Triduum is not Lent.

[peregrinator]

Also, Lent doesn't end on Holy Saturday; it ends on Holy Thursday. The Triduum is not Lent.

It does now.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

So Lent, under the current calendar, doesn't come out to forty days by omitting Sundays.

[Stella]

So Lent, under the current calendar, doesn't come out to forty days by omitting Sundays.

But when the focus is on fasting, that includes the days of the Triduum making it 40.

[peregrinator]

I think if you asked most people they would say that all of Holy Week is part of Lent.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

They would, but technically they'd be wrong.

[peregrinator]

The sensus fidelium should be respected!