When does "Lent" actually end?

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nfinke

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This is something I’m not sure if there is an official rule for, because I’m pretty sure the “giving up something” for lent thing is just a tradition (in the truest meaning of the word, not church tradition).

But I have heard all different answers about when you’re “allowed” to take back up the thing you gave up: some people say you can do it on Good Friday, some on holy Saturday, and some say wait until Easter morning (since now the Lord is risen so the time for sorrow is over. This one seems the most logical).

Again I know it has nothing to do with canon law, but for those of you that give up something good for the duration of lent, when to you consider that specific type of penance “over”?
 
I think there are two answers. As a liturgical season it ends before Holy Thursday mass. As a time if penance and preparation for Easter, it ends prior after Holy Saturday.
 
Lent is a specific season in the Church. Lent ends with Triduum begins,

http://www.usccb.org/about/divine-worship/liturgical-calendar/upload/2020cal.pdf

When it comes to Lenten practices, prayer, fasting and almsgiving, fasting traditionally includes a personal sacrifice of giving up something good as a sacrifice. This is a personal practice, so, it can be as small or as large as you wish. You can do it every day of Lent, on the weekdays of Lent or only on the Tuesdays of Lent, it is a personal devotion.

In my experience it is more spiritually beneficial for me to give something up for the entirety of Lent. YMMV.
 
After holy Saturday is the same as starting Easter morning right? I think that makes the most sense.
 
From what I have read here at CAF, I believe Lent officially ends on the evening of Holy Thursday, when the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, including the foot-washing ceremony, begins.
 
Doesn’t this answer mean that the lenten time of penance is over and we can not “celebrate” and no longer be penitent until Easter. Plus if you count up the 40 days of Lent it would take you to Easter Sunday. So I would say “Lent” may be over but the time for penance is not.
 
TARRAT said:
Plus if you count up the 40 days of Lent it would take you to Easter Sunday.
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When the forty-day Lenten fast was first introduced, during Constantine’s reign, the duration was exactly forty days, beginning on Quadragesima Sunday and ending on Holy Thursday. At a later date, the Church added four more days at the beginning of Lent, so that it then started on Ash Wednesday. Thus the total duration, instead of forty days, was now extended to forty-four days. That was when people started wondering whether they could legitimately leave out the Sundays, bringing the total down to forty days again, but of course, that wasn’t a wholly satisfactory solution, because there are six Sundays in Lent, not four.
 
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BartholomewB said:
From what I have read here at CAF, I believe Lent officially ends on the evening of Holy Thursday, when the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, including the foot-washing ceremony, begins.
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Yes, it’s sort of a technicality. I used to be baffled when I would read about penances or indulgences and they would reference “Fridays in Lent and on Good Friday” until realizing that technically Lent ends on Holy Thursday, so Good Friday, while the most penitential Friday of the year and subject to fast and abstinence, is technically not a “Friday in Lent”.
 
Ash Wednesday till the first Sunday of Lent is four days. Then you have six periods of six days, since Sundays are not days of Penitence, thus the four days after Ash Wednesday and the following 36 days adds up to the present observance. This seems the most understandable of ways to follow.
 
…wait…I’m not sure where your history is wrong there but at least in the modern day there is definitely 47 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter (ends included), meaning 40 non-sunday days.
 
nfinke said:
This is something I’m not sure if there is an official rule for, because I’m pretty sure the “giving up something” for lent thing is just a tradition (in the truest meaning of the word, not church tradition).

But I have heard all different answers about when you’re “allowed” to take back up the thing you gave up: some people say you can do it on Good Friday, some on holy Saturday, and some say wait until Easter morning (since now the Lord is risen so the time for sorrow is over. This one seems the most logical).

Again I know it has nothing to do with canon law, but for those of you that give up something good for the duration of lent, when to you consider that specific type of penance “over”?
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In the Byzantine Catholic calendar Great Lent ends on Friday before Lazarus Saturday. Then there is Palm Sunday, and then Holy Week (six days before Pascha) begins on Holy Monday. For Byzantines the Vespers on the day before begin the feast.
 
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Yes, the 47-day period can be split up into three parts:
(1) From Ash Wednesday to Saturday, a later addition to the original Lent … … … … … 4 days
(2) From Quadragesima Sunday to Holy Thursday, Pope Sylvester’s original Lent … … 40 days
(3) From Good Friday to Easter Sunday, the Easter Triduum … … … … … … … … 3 days
Total … … … … … 47 days
 
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nfinke said:
…wait…I’m not sure where your history is wrong there but at least in the modern day there is definitely 47 days from Ash Wednesday to Easter (ends included), meaning 40 non-sunday days.
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But (as I remind people every year):
If you’re going to whittle down to exactly 40 by excluding Sundays, what do you do about the Solemnity of St Joseph (18 Mar) every year? And what about the Solemnity of the Annunciation (25 Mar) in many years?

4️⃣0️⃣➕➖❓❔❓
 
The snag there is that, if Holy Thursday is truly the last day of Lent, which I believe it officially is, then there aren’t 36 days to add to the first four, but only 34.

I think, in the end, it doesn’t really matter that there aren’t exactly forty days. The important thing for us to do is to follow the rules, without quibbling about the numbers not adding up.
 
BartholomewB said:
The snag there is that, if Holy Thursday is truly the last day of Lent, which I believe it officially is, then there aren’t 36 days to add to the first four, but only 34.

I think, in the end, it doesn’t really matter that there aren’t exactly forty days. The important thing for us to do is to follow the rules, without quibbling about the numbers not adding up.
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The length was only nominally fixed at forty days by Council of Nicaea in 325 but then later Pope Leo I said Lent concludes with Maundy Thursday (Tractate 39). Here is a paper on the Early History of Lent by Nicholas V. Russo that may be interesting:

 
Thank you, @Vico! There’s some important information there that’s completely new me. Most of my information, I think, came from Barnes’ book, which came out at around the same time Nicholas Russo was writing that article. Sadly, I no longer have the book on my shelf to check, but from memory it was Constantine who liked the idea of the forty-day fast which he had heard about as a local custom somewhere in the West and more or less forced both Sylvester and Athanasius to introduce it as standard Church practice. Athanasius had never even heard of a forty-day Lenten fast until he came to Rome, according to Barnes, so it must have been a practice that began in the West, not in the East, he says.

 
However, the Liturgical Calendar (linked above) is very clear, Sundays in Lent are Sundays of Lent. They are not outside of Lent.
 
TheLittleLady said:
However, the Liturgical Calendar (linked above) is very clear, Sundays in Lent are Sundays of Lent. They are not outside of Lent.
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Catholic Encyclopedia has on Lent duration:
On the other hand, in many localities people were content to observe no more than a six weeks’ period, sometimes, as at Milan, fasting only five days in the week after the oriental fashion (Ambrose, “De Elia et Jejunio”, 10). In the time of Gregory the Great (590-604) there were apparently at Rome six weeks of six days each, making thirty-six fast days in all, which St. Gregory, who is followed therein by many medieval writers, describes as the spiritual tithing of the year, thirty-six days being approximately the tenth part of three hundred and sixty-five. At a later date the wish to realize the exact number of forty days led to the practice of beginning Lent upon our present Ash Wednesday, but the Church of Milan, even to this day [1910], adheres to the more primitive arrangement, which still betrays itself in the Roman Missal when the priest in the Secret of the Mass on the first Sunday of Lent speaks of “sacrificium quadragesimalis initii”, the sacrifice of the opening of Lent.
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Thurston, H. (1910). Lent. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09152a.htm

I noticed that Byzantine Great Lent: Clean Monday to Friday before Palm Sunday adds up to forty days inclusive and Holy Week is independent.
 
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The encyclopedia is a good place to read history.

The Liturgical Calendar from one’s Bishops’ Conference is the Official source.
 
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