Today, once again, we enter upon the solemn forty days of Lent, for which we owe you a solemn exhortation so that God’s word, served up by our ministry, may feed the hearts of those about to fast in their bodies, and so the inner self may be fed by his food and may be able more firmly to carry out and to bear the disciplining of the outer self. It is fitting to our devotion that we who are soon to celebrate the passion of the crucified Lord make a cross for ourselves on which to restrain our fleshly pleasures, as the Apostle says, “Those who are of Jesus Christ have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24). On this cross, throughout lives lived amid tests, Christians must always hang.... The Apostle also says, “I beseech you, brother and sisters, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, and pleasing to God” (Rom 12:1). Not only is God’s servant not ashamed of this cross, he boasts of it: “Far be it from me to boast of anything other than the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ through whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world” (Gal 6:14).

This cross, I say, is not just for these forty days, but for this entire life, something mystically signified by the number of days of Lent [which is variously interpreted]. Some say that one about to lead this life is formed for forty days in the womb. Some multiply the four Gospels by the ten commandments because both of them are necessary in this life. Others may come up with a more probable, better and clearer, understanding: that Moses and Elijah and the Lord himself fasted for forty days, to suggest to us that in them, that is, in the law and the prophets and in the Gospel, we are reminded not to conform and cling to this world, but to crucify the old self, not indulging “in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy,” but “putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, and making no provision for the flesh and its lusts” (Rom 13:13-14). Always live here in this way, O Christian. If you don’t want your steps to sink into this world’s mud, don’t come down from this cross. And if this is how we are to act throughout our lives, how much more during these forty days when not only is this life lived, but its meaning is expressed. (Sermon 205, 1; PL 38, 1039-1040)

Another indication that Lenten practices are intensifications of practices that must characterize the whole year’s Christianity. Lent is a period that calls to mind the meaning of life, a helpful, often needed, reminder.