Lent is a period of 40 days marked by fasting. This period begins on Ash Wednesday and last until Good Friday. The time is like a season, a season of passion, purification and renewal; as is the physical account of the Passion, the Death and Resurrection of Christ.

The logic that is prominent in today's communication is material and would entail; Ash Wednesday having something to do with ashes, and 40 days of fasting as a dieting ordeal. Now the same logic would interpret a religious experience from the visual of someone covered in ashes, and looked thin from malnutrition. If you put the two and two together, a religious experience can be an unhygienic and hunger experience; certainly a bit of a no-no for some modern PC parents.It is almost impossible to make any logical meanings of a religious experience from our material world...

However, the logic of social relations is not exactly like the rigid laws of material science. The physical cultural and traditional practice is experienced in the metaphysical realm that renders it meaning. It is not because men and women are covered with ashes and hungry from the 40 day fast, but the preparation for the season practically requiring the faithful to repent and seek forgiveness, that they are not proud but humbled.

The fasting is a mere exercise in the physical condition of the heart and mind away from material desires of the self. It is when the mind is pure that the body is also pure in the metaphysical sense irrespective of the physical condition. But the purification of the heart and mind is death to the physical condition before new life emerges. The process follows repentance and forgiveness of sins, the Passion in the Garden of Olive, the Death on the Cross, and the Resurrection.

You know it's a rather strange season as far as behaviour is concerned. Some folks really put on the act with long faces as if they haven't eaten the whole week. It is a good practice of endurance and sustainability under the physical condition, and no one can really tell whether you have fasted one day or five of the week. But the real growth is in your true person..