by Franco Cardini 

Lent, i.e. "quadragesima", is the forty-day period preceding Easter in the Catholic liturgical year. It begins with Ash Wednesday and ends with the Resurrection, that is, with the lighting of the lumen Christi, the new fire in churches stripped of furnishings, on Easter night.

Today we talk a lot, perhaps too much, about carnival. Partly because our "happy" time has a ferocious need to escape (in the nostalgia of the past, in the dream of the future, in the elsewhere of political utopia, in the bliss of celebration), partly because anthropology and folklore go hand in hand fashion, and carnival is one of the privileged moments for this type of study.

Lent, in the current mentality, is the exact opposite of carnival. And after all, this was precisely the message of the popular festivals of the past, the ones that now, from time to time, we start doing again or that, in certain areas of our Italy, have never stopped doing. Fires during which the "old woman" is burned, serious-facetious ceremonies during which she is sawed in two like a log; the "pentolaccia", the celebration of half-Lent, as a breaking of fasting and penance. We break the old piñata, and then we fight to catch the sweets that come out of his poor gutted belly. Once upon a time, tournaments were held in the square between the fat and laughing Carnival King and the lanky Old Lent, the one with his cheerful and opulent sausage trophies, the other with the meager attributes of the salted herring. And a brilliant scholar, Carlo Ginzburg, described the era following the Counter-Reformation as a great "triumph of Lent" in Catholic Europe.

From carefreeness to joy of the spirit

In reality, Carnival and Lent support each other: they are the other side of each other. In the joy of carnival there is a ferocious, terrible, macabre aspect. Remember the movie Black Orpheus! Do you remember the day after Mardi Gras in Rio de Janeiro, when the victims of the party are relentlessly counted? And on the other hand, Lent, which begins with the sad rite of ashes, accompanies the course of the new year towards spring, the season of good weather that begins again and of flowers, the promise of fruit and harvests. In traditional European culture, carnival coincides with the period in which the pig is slaughtered ('celebrated' on 17 January, for Saint Anthony the Abbot), and the parts not intended for conservation are consumed in a cheerful 'orgy' and the fat reserves in the pantries are used up peasants. Then, with the beginning of spring, while the new supplies of preserved meat ripen for autumn consumption, we enter into a period of abstinence by consuming legumes and vegetables. 

Dry, light diet, waiting to return, precisely with the beginning of spring, to a diet based on fats and proteins which will unfold triumphantly with eggs, roast lamb and Easter desserts. During the Middle Ages, fish was not considered meat as it belonged to a cold-blooded species; he therefore did not break the fast. Medieval Europe, much richer in fish (especially freshwater fish) than today, lived through it and made the salted Baltic herring the emblem of poverty, but also of penance. Moreover, the large fishmongers of the lords and abbeys supplied the important tables with very delicate Lenten foods: sturgeons, lampreys, salmon, trout, pike, mullet whose meat was more prized than that of the best game. Lent occupies the weeks between winter and spring. Since Easter is linked to the first moon after the vernal equinox, Lent always falls - also mobile, like the holiday to which it refers - between February and March and between March and April. These are the months of the true "detachment" between the old year and the new one.

For Christians, however, Lent does not only have the meaning of a period of proto-spring "purification", which could be similar, from an anthropological point of view, to the various purification rites present in almost all religions. This is, of course, a framework to keep in mind: but it does not exhaust the problem. The relationship between Christian Lent and Muslim Ramadan, the month of fasting set to commemorate the descent of the Koran from heaven, must also be kept in mind: but it serves more to underline the differences than the similarities between the two periods.

The Christian essentially lives by the imitation of Christ. And Jesus, according to evangelical tradition, before starting his public activity as a preacher to the crowds, retreated to the steep mountain overlooking the oasis of Jericho, east of Jerusalem, to pray and fast. 

Fasting and prayer: two notes for a melody of hope

Now, on the mountain of "Lent", a famous Orthodox monastery stands. Fasting and prayer are two tools recommended by Jesus in the Gospel to overcome carnal temptations; and it is precisely to bend his flesh, his human nature which - being perfect - is not exempt from any of the stimuli that are naturally its own, that he resorts to fasting and penance. In fact, the temptations that he suffers on the mountain of "Lent" are precisely the carnal ones: hunger and power. The vision of him "from the pinnacle of the temple", of "all the kingdoms of the earth", is the maximum exaltation of that thirst for command, of that will to power, which is the most terrible stage of materialism. All the more terrible then as it can cleverly disguise itself as spiritual tension: throughout human history - from Alexander to Genghiz Khan to Hitler - power has had its terrible "saints", its ascetics who lived only in it and for it, exercising it with such abnegation, with a daily forgetfulness of oneself, that paradoxically seems like a "virtue".

But Christ, who is king, but is not of this world, flees from the offers of kingdom made to him by the Tempter, just as he flees from the crowd that wants to proclaim him sovereign. 

Only before the shepherds and magi who came from afar, or in the hour of pain and ignominy, before Pilate, does he allow - only then, weak like a child in the manger and derelict like the last of the condemned - to affirm high his kingship, his right to the scepter and the crown.

A penance animated by spring joy

By celebrating Lent which begins with the assumption of ashes in memory of the smallness and lability of man's life and body, the Christian prepares to share the royal glory of the Resurrection, to live eternal life in Christ God. For this reason , in fasting and renunciation, Jesus - after the flight imposed on Satan - was served by angels. Christian spirituality makes the Christ of "Lent" the model, the measure of asceticism, that is, of renunciation of the world and self-control in view and in preparation for the reward. Every penitential moment must therefore be lived with joy: "when you fast, perfume your head", says Jesus who hates ostentation and hypocrisy, who actually loves life, parties, banquets with friends. In the same way, Francis of Assisi, after a Lenten life lived in renunciation, on the point of death, asked that one of his favorite desserts be prepared for him: thus he celebrated the glory and joy of his Easter, his passage from this life to life eternal. The biscuits in the shape of the letter of the alphabet (the "Lenten") and the sweet or chocolate scales of our children, in the middle of Lent, are precisely to remind us that there is no penance without waiting for joy and reward. “Breaking” Lenten penance with a dessert, when Lent is “broken” halfway through its duration, has the profound meaning of the search for joy even in penance. For this reason, Jesus, after having remembered that "man does not live by bread alone", will want to eat his Easter with the Apostles and will willingly break bread with the pilgrims of Emmaus, redeveloping daily food with his blessing.