Christ, who by assuming a human body2 became a human being and appeared
SERMON 210
ON THE BEGINNING OF LENT
Date: uncertain1
The meaning of Lent
1. The solemn season has arrived, which should remind us to humble our souls and chastise our bodies with prayer and fasting more earnestly and in¬ tensely than at other periods of the year. But people are regularly puzzled about why this season should be celebrated as the solemnity of the Lord's passion is approaching, and why for this mystic number of forty days. So it is right that I should undertake to offer your graces what the Lord has been good enough to enable me to say on these points. I know that you are asking these questions because you want to know, and not just to start an argument, and so I am greatly assisted by your faith and piety in being instructed by God on what has to be said.
The time for fasting
2. You see, the problem usually raised is this: why was it that the Lord Jesus Christ, who by assuming a human body2 became a human being and appeared to us human beings, precisely to provide us, surely, with the perfect example of how to live and die and rise again; why was it that he didn't fast before he was baptized, but after?3 That, after all, is what is written in the gospel: But after being baptized, he came up straightaway from the water, and behold the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God coming down upon him. And behold a voice from the heavens, saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom lam well pleased. Then Jesus was led into the desert by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward he was hungry (Mt 3:16—4:2).
We on the other hand fast with those who are going to be baptized before the day of their baptism, which coincides with Easter day, and after that day we relax the fast for fifty days. Now we would be quite right to be worried by this problem, if it were not permissible to baptize or be baptized except on the great feast of Easter day. As it is though, nobody is barred from baptism at any time