i found this article about lent i hope it helpIn determining this period of forty days the example of
Moses,
Elias, and
Christ must have exercised a predominant influence, but it is also possible that the fact was borne in mind that
Christ lay forty hours in the
tomb. On the other hand just as
Pentecost (the fifty days) was a period during which
Christians were joyous and
prayed standing, though they were not always engaged in such
prayer, so the
Quadragesima (the forty days) was originally a period marked by
fasting, but not necessarily a period in which the
faithful fasted every day. Still, this principle was differently understood in different localities, and great divergences of practice were the result. In
Rome, in the fifth century, Lent lasted six weeks, but according to the historian
Socrates there were only three weeks of actual
fasting, exclusive even then of the Saturday and
Sunday and if Duchesne’s view may be trusted, these weeks were not continuous, but were the first, the fourth, and sixth of the series, being connected with the ordinations (Christian Worship, 243). Possibly, however, these three weeks had to do with the
“scrutinies” preparatory to
Baptism, for by some authorities (e.g., A.J. Maclean in his “Recent Discoveries”) the
duty of
fasting along with the candidate for
baptism is put forward as the chief influence at work in the development of the forty days. But throughout the
Orient generally, with some few exceptions, the same arrangement prevailed as
St. Athanasius’s “Festal Letters” show us to have obtained in
Alexandria, namely, the six weeks of Lent were only preparatory to a
fast of exceptional severity maintained during
Holy Week. This is enjoined by the
“Apostolic Constitutions” (V, xiii), and presupposed by
St. Chrysostom (Hom. xxx in Gen., I). But the number forty, having once established itself, produced other modifications. It seemed to many necessary that there should not only be
fasting during the forty days but forty actual
fasting days. Thus we find Ætheria in her “Peregrinatio” speaking of a Lent of eight weeks in all observed at
Jerusalem, which, remembering that both the Saturday and
Sunday of ordinary weeks were exempt, gives five times eight, i.e., forty days for
fasting
