Lent symbolizes the rejection of Satan by Jesus in the 40 days of temptation to the Death of Jesus on the cross. Ash Wednesday begins the Lentin (Old English: “spring season”) or Lenten sacrifice ending on the Saturday evening prior to Easter. The Sunday prior to this last Easter Sunday is called, “Palm Sunday”. It is in this week, Palm Sunday Week, that preparations for the Church and the Believers are to be observed with reverence until Easter Sunday, or Resurrection Sunday.
Lent is probably a Nicene (Constantine’s Nicene council -325 A.D.) concoction with an Egyptian religious feasting origin. Lent has evolved to be a day to ‘give up’ some temptation or desire or whatever- for the reverence of Jesus’ giving up all things.
I already have a problem with this. Only God knows what to take away and give if the structured thought can be assessed from these four Biblical passages. In Job 1:21 and Psalms 139:23-24 we are told that it is the Lord who gives and takes away. In Ecclesiastes 1:9 and Ecclesiastes 3:15 we read that before any event happens it was already was set to happen and *did happen*.
These two enigmatic passages written by Solomon in his older years also tell us that the future, present and past all require one another ( like clockwork ). Finally, Solomon states that there is “Nothing new under the sun”. What is this to mean in conjunction with the first two passages?! Coherently, they tell you that God gives and takes away because it was pre- determinately planned. If this be the case then only God would know what is ‘the next move’. This includes one’s delusion in thinking that they are responsible for ‘good asceticism’.
The second problem I have is that this is an annual-symbolic ‘dying to the flesh’ ritual. “Symbolizing” *that which is Holy is a reversal of everything Jesus was about. Jesus fulfilled every prefigurement there was concerning the Messiah. He fulfilled the prefigurements—-He didn’t return to them!
Jesus’ sufferance and denial of the flesh was HIS sufferance and denial. This personal sufferance was between Him, the Father and the Holy Spirit. We are in the likeness of repentance to take on suffering as Jesus. This is the participation of the Saints. But, again, Jesus did not ‘symbolically’ suffer. He certainly did not suffer for just 40 days out of the year.
Thirdly, ‘suffering’ is not *self-apportioned* or *self-assigned*. The Holy Ghost rushing upon us daily, the Holy Ghost putting us through fiery trials, the Holy Ghost making us suffer unto repentance in the way that He works upon us is not returning to the prefiguration of greater things to come. These are the personal experiences of God confirming our salvation in real time with the Immediacy of God here and now.
This is a Catholic invention and I’ve neither refuted it or accepted it because it is nothing to me.
I find in my natural self an unstoppable cynicism that builds up inside of me when I am confronted on all sides with a misrepresentation of what Jesus went through and meant for us. With equal silly sentiments, for me, I say, “Let there be eating of peanut butter on the days when the Apostles commenced their missions!- in the “likeness” of a crazed Kyle Jones, a 4th century Catholic Monk, who *believed* that reverence for the completion of the mission of the evangelized the world begins with crushing of the basic legume- the peanut. Because Peanuts are basic food groups without fancy in the likeness of the moderate Christian, monk and Friar— let these things be so. Let us put ash on our finger tips to ‘simulate’ the arrows from which God has shot down our enemies and the soot from which our agrarian ancestors have wallowed in be represented. Therefore, let these RITUALS also be allowed in the liturgical marches of the Modern Day Apostate Churches. Let entire 1 1/2 hour services be filled with doldrums. Let us fill the pews with malaise while clear cutting Theologies of the Greek and Hebrew thinking apostolic/ ante-Nicene age become dismissed. Let replacement rituals, replacement theologies, musical entertainment, passing of the coffer, drinking of grape juice and eating of the saltine override the original 1st Century martyrdoms by which the Power of Christ was seen”. Such symbologies should be left as “having been fulfilled”. I say it is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit when HE guides us and we would rather choose a symbol of HIS act upon us over the ACTION that HE is doing upon us presently. This is the Lent in my pocket. I would encourage every Real Christian to purchase the Ante-Nicene collection. This multiple volume set is a collection of letters transmitted from one Christian corpus to another during the years prior to ca 350 AD- or, the Roman Catholic Invention under Constantine’s liturgical orders ( Council of Nicaea ) which included every universal aspect of pagan religions under the guise of Christian apostles, characters, — even down to Christ as the Adonis with deified Mother, Madonna & Adonis ( cf . La Pieta), Venus and Cupid, Semiramis and Nimrod. The Halos seen over “the saints ( Romans 3: “There are none who are righteous, no, not one)” are the sun, Moses=Poseidon, Peter claimed as the first Pope – therefore, in the line of Peter, the Pope has the keys to the gates of Heaven. The Pope is the methurgyman, merman— Dagon, fish god- cf. to the fish mouth when observing the Pope’s Mitre or “hat” that the Pope wears. Cannibalism is carried over in the “mass” of eating the flesh of the god via transubstantiation, etc. Study Dr Samuel Angus’, “The Mystery Religions” to understand this power setup- that is, the Roman Catholic Church, the Maffia, Pedophilia amongst the Priests, rampant homosexuality amongst the priests who claim abstinence, the thousands of abortions done by nuns who were impregnated by the priests, etc— all in the NAME of Jesus Christ. Might I remind you of the remarkable likeness of priests in Exodus 28 compared to the Apocalyptic whore in Rome in Revelation 17? She, the Whore, is dressed in the same likeness as the priests ( which were good for their proper time) of the Israelites.
