Today is Ash Wednesday, which it marks the first day of Lent, a 40-day prayer and fasting season that ends on Thursday, April 17, Maundy Thursday or Holy Thursday.
Ash Wednesday starts with a Mass when ashes are applied on the foreheads of believers in the shape of a cross. The tradition of marking oneself with ashes comes from ancient traditions wherein it symbolises mourning, mortality and penance, a sign of humility and reminder of the mortality of the human race. For Christians, it is a demonstration that man is “Dust, and to dust you shall return” as aptly captured in Genesis Chapter 3 Verse 19.
The ashes also signifies the readiness of the recipient to embark on the 40-day spiritual exercise, which rests on four pillars – fasting, prayers, abstinence and alms giving. It affords us the opportunity to be sober with God, to hear Him and to follow His directions.
Generally, Sundays in Lent are not counted in the 40 days because each Sunday represents a “Mini-Easter” and the austere spirit of Lent is tempered with joyful anticipation of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Lent began centuries after the death of Christ and is believed to have been inspired by his 40 days fasting and prayers in the wilderness. The earliest mention of a 40-day Lent was in the Canons of Nicaea in 325 AD when early Christians observed it as a way to prepare for Easter.
The Lenten period is filled with services, meditations, studies, teachings, retreats and other forms of rejuvenating gatherings and programmes, which delves into Holy Week activities.
Indeed, Lent signifies adherents’ willingness to deprive themselves and reach out to those who are most in need. The season of abstinence also helps Christians to shed bad habits while embracing self-love towards purifying themselves into a much more single-minded response to the divine call and will. It reminds them to prepare towards offering themselves to be broken up, body and soul, and transformed by God’s merciful love, in fact towards state of being made holy.
This is because Lent has become a time of preparation, an opportunity for deeper relationship with God through personal reflection, which prepares believers’ hearts and minds for Good Friday and Easter. So, essentially, the Lenten season prepares the believer for Easter through constant prayer, mortifying the flesh, repentance of sins, simple living and self-denial.
As Nigerian Christians join the rest of the world in observing the Ash Wednesday and the start of the Lenten season, we at Daily Trust felicitate with them. We congratulate the faithful for witnessing another Lenten season.
We therefore urge them to live faithfully and peacefully with their neighbours including people of other faiths, sharing and extending hands of love to them during this period. They should exhibit the virtues of the season in their day-to-day activities.
Specifically, we admonish all Christians to use the season to imbibe the values of adding value to human existence by actively responding to those in need and reaching out to families and neighbours who are going through hard times. After all, this is the only way to imitate God through the promotion of the good of one and all.
Moreover, we urge them to live in total submission to the will of God, using the period to re-evaluate their lives to ensure a better society for everyone.
We admit that this year’s is no doubt coming at a very auspicious time; a period when many Nigerians are frustrated, and some even angry as they battle the challenges of insecurity, including economic, religious and ethnic issues.
This period, therefore, creates an opportunity for citizens to turn to God and pray for the leaders to make the right decisions. They should also pray so that the citizens would be able to surmount the challenges. It is also a time to pray for unity of the country so that as we work together, we can find solutions to all our problems.
We urge them to pray to God to give leadership at all levels the wisdom to do right to all people and for the citizens to discharge the duties of their citizenship with patriotic intent by holding the leaders accountable.
In addition, we also implore Nigerian Christians to adhere to Pope Francis’s Lenten message for 2025 entitled “Let us journey together in hope” and examine their lives to ensure they reflect the reality that life is a pilgrimage while working together in faith. Let this Lent season reawaken the redemptive power of hope, and the certainty for better tomorrow through the virtues of prayers and fasting.