Advent, the THIRD Lent?
Reflections from Rabanus Maurus
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Introduction
In sacred scripture, it is normative that fasting be taken over a period of 40 days, exemplified especially by Moses, Elijah, and Our Lord. As many know, this is the reason for our 40 days of fasting during Lent.
What few know is that the 40 day Lenten fast is really a relic of an earlier practice where there were three 40 day periods of fasting, each justified by appeals to Sacred Scripture, and each having a relation to some feast.
First, Lent was celebrated in order to prepare for Easter, the great feast of feasts. Second, the Pentecost fast was celebrated in order to ensure sobriety after a long period of feasting, especially in relation to the cultivation of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Third, the Advent fast was celebrated in order prepare for the feast of Christmas.
In order to understand the significance and foundation for these periods of fasting, I want to look into the reflections of the Carolingian writer Rabanus Maurus in his work De Institutione Clericorum. Amalar of Metz also discusses this, but I couldn’t find a pdf of the work to read, sadly.
The Pentecost Fast
In the early Church, there was some disagreement as noted by Rabanus Maurus. Some interpreted the saying of Our Lord “the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then they shall fast” (Matt. 9:15) as indicating that they should begin fasting right after the ascension, especially as a preparation for the reception of the Holy Ghost in Pentecost.
Yet, as he notes, such reasoning is flawed. For, the fast that takes place after Pentecost is not one of mourning, but of joy refreshed by the Holy Spirit. It is a fast of zeal, “the Fathers rightly established that this fast be begun after Pentecost, that exulting in the joy of the promised Holy Spirit, we may expect His coming in the praises of God, and then, renewed by His grace and inflamed with spiritual zeal, apply ourselves to abstinence and fasting.”
There is still a short remanent of this in the Apostle’s fast in the East.
The Advent Fast
The third fast is the one shortly approaching us (which I cover in more detail in my YouTube video on this).
According to Rabanus Maurus, St. Isidore, and others, this fast was originally established by Jeremiah,
In the fifth year of Jehoi′akim the son of Josi′ah, king of Judah, in the ninth month, all the people in Jerusalem and all the people who came from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem proclaimed a fast before the Lord. (Jer. 36:9)
This fast of the ninth month ended, according to their calculations, in the tenth month on the Nativity.
The reason for this fast is, according to Rabanus Maurus, so that
before the day of the Lord’s Nativity we may chastise ourselves by fasting and abstinence, that we may with worthy conduct receive the coming Redeemer—just as before the time of His Resurrection we afflict our flesh that we may merit to obtain the grace of the Resurrection which is wrought by Him.
The logic here is simple. We fast in order to prepare for something which will be received. In every feast day, we prepare to receive some gift of God, whether it is the example and intercession of a saint (as in every saint day), or in celebration of one of the mysteries of our redemption (e.g., Christmas, Easter, Pentecost, etc.).
In proportion to the solemnity of the feast and the greatness of the gift, so is the intensity of the fast. For each and every feast, there is a certain “vigil” of the feast where the day before is kept as a fasting day. The various different vigils mentioned by the Fathers are summarized by the Catholic Encyclopedia:
The fast on Christmas Eve is mentioned by Theophilus of Alexandria (d. 412), that before the Epiphany by St. John Chrysostom (d. 407), that before Pentecost by the Sacramentary of St. Leo I. Pope Nicholas I (d. 867), in his answer to the Bulgarians, speaks of the fast on the eves of Christmas and of the Assumption. The Synod of Erfurt (932) connects a fast with every vigil....The Synod of Seligenstadt (1022) mentions vigils on the eves of Christmas, Epiphany, the feast of the Apostles, the Assumption of Mary, St. Laurence, and All Saints, besides the fast of two weeks before the Nativity of St. John.
In 1909, this was standardized into seventeen vigils,
The number of vigils in the Roman Calendar besides Holy Saturday is seventeen, viz., the eves of Christmas, the Epiphany, the Ascension, Pentecost, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, the eight feasts of the Apostles, St. John the Baptist, St. Laurence, and All Saints. Some dioceses and religious orders have particular vigil...
Yet, unfortunately, their character as fasting days was not strongly emphasized in the law,
In the United States only four of theses vigils are fast days: the vigils of Christmas, Pentecost, the Assumption, and All Saints.
Now, if we follow this same logic, if there are feast days which are more solemn and require a greater preparation, then the fasting period will be longer and more intense.
This was the reasoning that lead to the creation of the “three lents” which correspond to the three great feasts of the ecclesiastical calendar, Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas.