Liturgy tips
January/February 2010
Eight ways to get your parish ready for Lent
Don’t let parishioners be caught off guard this year
By: Nick Wagner
A special lenten food
Perhaps the easiest and most significant lenten food custom is to serve a small pretzel to each family member with meals during Lent. The pretzel is a symbol of prayer and fasting.
The pretzel was the Christian lenten bread as far back as the fifth century. In the Roman Empire, the faithful Christians kept a strict fast all through Lent: no milk, butter, eggs, cheese, cream, or meat. They ate bread made of water, flour, and salt.
To remind themselves that Lent was a time of prayer, they shaped the bread into the form of arms crossed in prayer (in those days they crossed their arms over their chests while praying). They called the bread “little arms” (bracellae).
Today in many European places, pretzels are served only from Ash Wednesday to Easter, thus keeping the ancient symbolism alive.
Take a piece of dough (refrigerator breadsticks work well) and make a pretzel. Roll the dough into a rope-like shape. Bend the two ends around and cross one over the other. Pinch the dough together where the pieces meet. When you are finished, bake your pretzel.
Excerpted from Learning Centers for Advent and Lent by Doris Murphy (Twenty-Third Publications).
Many parishes begin Lent too late. That is, they begin on Ash Wednesday. And for most parishioners, Lent begins on the First Sunday of Lent. While this makes a lot of sense in the liturgical calendar, it doesn't make much sense in the lives of parishioners. For parish leaders who are onsite every day and at perhaps two or three or four Masses every Sunday, it seems incomprehensible that parishioners don't know when Lent begins. But you and I both know they don't. A healthy percentage of them come to Mass on the average of once a month. And even the weekly regulars are often not paying attention to the liturgical cycle. So here are some tips to get everyone into the lenten spirit.
- Publish calendar information in January. If parishioners get the lenten dates into their Blackberries and iPhones soon enough, they're more likely to remember the shift in seasons.
- Be sure to publish the Triduum liturgies and dates as well. Emphasize the Easter Vigil as the most important date in the cycle.
- "Require" or strongly suggest that all parish leaders participate in the following liturgies:
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- Ash Wednesday
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- Rite of Sending to the Cathedral for Election
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- Scrutinies
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- Triduum, especially Easter Vigil
- Place a few elements of the lenten environment around the edges of the worship space on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday (February 14) as a foreshadowing of the season to come.
- On the same Sunday, include ideas in the bulletin and on the Web site for lenten devotion and sacrifice for the domestic churches.
- Don't just publish the usual paragraph of rules about fast and abstinence during Lent. Expand it to include all of the lenten disciplines: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. For a link to a good example, go to todaysparish.com/links0110.
- Consider announcing a parish fast that all parishioners share. For example, everyone in the parish might give up table salt for Lent.
- Do not empty the holy water font for Lent. Lent is a season of baptismal preparation and water is the primary baptismal symbol.
| Nick Wagner is the editor of Today's Parish. |