Lent is almost upon us. Somehow, unlike several of our continental neighbours, England maintained the old words for this time, even as the Church’s Latin altered so much of our language. Lent probably came into English through Old Saxon, but its exact history is lost in the folds of antiquity. Nevertheless, the meaning is clear. It is to do with something long, possibly reflecting the lengthening days brought by spring in the northern hemisphere. Maybe, also, the sense that days of abstinence might be long days and, consequently, Lent is a season to be endured. It ends, of course, in Easter – another ancient name from Old English, with origins linked to Northumbrian Eostre. Perhaps the name of a Goddess, or a word for dawn, but in any event adopted by the early Christians of these isles as a fitting word for the new life that awaits at the end of Lent.

While our warming winters have changed our experience of the seasons, we may still see churchyards transformed with a late frost, or layered in a final fling of snow’s fleeting transformation. There is an added poignancy that these occasions are becoming fewer, with such brief visitations acting as a nostalgic reminder of how we once experienced these months. Much of English literature describes the tyranny of enduring and unavoidable cold, when even a hearthside might offer only limited and temporary relief.

Given their appearance in or around the start of Lent, purple is often the colour of choice for crocuses planted amongst the grave stones that surround our ancient parish churches. A fitting sign of both our mortality and also the liturgical season. From this coming Wednesday, until mid April, many churches will be draped in purple, signifying the Lenten focus on “self-examination and spiritual discipline”.

… crocuses
Pale purple as if they had their birth
In sunless Hades fields.

From The Sun Used to Shine by Edward Thomas

Perhaps ‘sombre’ isn’t the right word for these 40 days. As regular readers of this blog will know by now, I completed a project last year to write a Lent book for distribution before March 2025. A Sterne Lent refers in many places to the sermons preached by the vicar-novelist, Laurence Sterne. It is estimated that at least one third of these 45 homilies were preached in the time of Lent. This is not surprising as even in the 18th century the penitential season was marked by some effort towards thinking and reflection upon religious convictions and actions. For Sterne the denial of joy for such a lengthy period would have been a trial. Laughter spilled out of the unlikely parson, and a significant proportion of his 42 sermons (there are another 3, but those develop content from previous ones) were preached during Lent.

According to the Julian calendar, Sterne preached his sermon on ‘Penances’ on Palm Sunday 1750. Based on some circumstantial evidence it is probable that it was preached in York Minster. Sterne explores some of his core convictions which, alongside a side-swipe at Methodists, centres on a Deity who doesn’t want us to be endlessly glum, or excessively earnest. We were not created “on purpose to go mourning, all our lives long, in sack-cloth and ashes”. However, Lent is a time when our restraint can:

dispose us for cool and sober reflections, incline us to turn our eyes inwards upon ourselves, and consider what we are, – and what we have been doing; – for what intent we were sent into the world, and what kind of characters we were designed to act in it.

It is in this season that Sterne feels the discipline of Lent is intended to “call home the conscience”. In particular, Sterne is critical of our wasteful use of time. We fill up diaries with distractions, “parcelling out every hour of the day for one idleness or another”, and seem eager that when it comes to time we are endlessly inviting others “to come and take it off our hands”. Sterne cannot abide the idea that we reach older age only to discover we have lived “a life so miserably cast away”.

Lent is a time to contemplate what we are here for; how we spend the time we have been given – but not, as Sterne would see it, to fill up the season with so much dour reflection that there is no space for joy.