Lenten Question

[Weekend_worker]

WHY ARE ALL THE STATUES COVERED DURING LENT AND WHY START DOING THIS ON THE DATE WE DO?

 

[Lazerlike42]

WHY ARE ALL THE STATUES COVERED DURING LENT AND WHY START DOING THIS ON THE DATE WE DO?

Lent is a period in which we join with Jesus as He suffers in the desert, and as He makes His way to Calvary to die on the Cross.

Jesus gave up much during that time, and He lost much during that time. We join Him in that journey as we surrender and as we lose the good things that we have. We do this by abstinence, fasting, and by those individual sacrifices that people choose to make during Lent (not eating candy, for example).

This Sunday is the Fifth Sunday of Lent. It begins in the period of Lent that time in which we walk with Jesus to Calvary, carrying our crosses with Him. Next Sunday, we will read the Passion of the Lord on Palm Sunday. Thus, beginning on this, the fifth Sunday of Lent, churches may cover up their statues to instill in us the sense of desolation and loss that comes with Christ. This will continue when, on Thursday night, the Eucharist is removed from tabernacles and on Friday when there is no Mass, culminating with the Easter Vigil when there is not even light in the church.

If you’d like a slightly deeper look, read this article, which I read earlier today and influenced my post.

 

[Miserissima]

This article from EWTN (ROME, 8 MARCH 2005 (ZENIT)
Answered by Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University.) helped me a lot, and has more details to your answer than what I have quoted here:

It probably derives from a custom, noted in Germany from the ninth century, of extending a large cloth before the altar from the beginning of Lent.

This cloth, called the “Hungertuch” (hunger cloth), hid the altar entirely from the faithful during Lent and was not removed until during the reading of the Passion on Holy Wednesday at the words “the veil of the temple was rent in two.”

Some authors say there was a practical reason for this practice insofar as the often-illiterate faithful needed a way to know it was Lent.

Others, however, maintain that it was a remnant of the ancient practice of public penance in which the penitents were ritually expelled from the church at the beginning of Lent.