A Reminder of What Lent Is All About

Allen Yeh over at The Scriptorium has a great post today which deals with what Lent is all about, and six fallacies regarding Lent. Here's an excerpt:

Today is Ash Wednesday, 2009, and I thought it would be good to reflect a bit on the meaning of Lent.

It seems to me that while Easter has escaped a lot of the ravages of Christmas (yes there are Easter eggs and bunny rabbits, just as there are Santa and reindeer during Christmastime, but Easter has largely remained unscathed from consumerism and greed), it seems that Lent has suffered more than Advent.

Advent is usually quite beautiful as we light candles and prepare our hearts in anticipation of the birth of the Messiah. Lent, however, becomes more of an exercise in giving up things (what we can do) and less in looking forward to the death and resurrection of Christ (what Jesus can do). In true Dantean fashion, let me break this down into six fallacies (one less than a number of perfection, which symbolizes shortcoming):

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