40, 44, 38 or 46 days?

A while ago I was on twitter and saw a post about lent's 46 days but I said to myself from I been going church when I was little I know lent to be 40 days and 40 nights, they even have a song which got stuck in my head about 40 days and 40 nights and I'm absolutely sure that Lent ends on Holy Thursday.

Well have any of you ever counted the amount of days till Holy thursday from Ash Wednesday? I did a while ago and I counted 44 days. I wondered why was everyones impression of Lent to be 40 days then? I thought about leap years but that still wouldn't make it 40 days that'd make it 40 on some leap years not all, dependent on the days of easter so it really made me do some research and even though I found an explanation it still wasn't 100% correctly logically so I just guess it's just easier to use thats a perfect multiple of 10 maybe it justs sounds nicer? Right?

No.

The technical reason behind the 40 days is the fact that Lent does not include the holy Sundays it incorporates but if you count it then you get 38 days excluding the six Sundays they do not count as those six Sundays are considered to be a celebration of easter. It gets deeper though. Clearly it's just a period and the technicalities shouldn't matter but I realize it's a thing of culture. Lent is observed in two different ways around the world split into a eastern Christian Churches and the western Christian Churches which names the period "Great Lent" and doesn't start the period until the following Monday after ash Wednesday which is celebrated as "Clean Monday" and sticks to the actual 40 days ending the period 9 days before the easter celebrations.

The spiritual reason behind the 40 days are more abundant but then it makes you question the likelyhood of these things actually lasting exactly 40 days but the spiritual reason is because firstly after the flood that destroyed the earth, it rained for 40 days and nights, secondly the Hebrews who were looking for the promise land searched for 40 days before they found it also Moses fasted for 40 days before he received the ten commandments and last and most important is that Jesus in preparation for his ministry went into the wilderness where he was tempted for 40 days whilst he fasted, thus the spiritual reasoning of the 40 days of lent.

From the information I've laid out here your suppose to start wondering now that maybe we have it wrong on the western side of the world? With what they say and what they do right? I think some Catholic churches in the states realized this simple technicality and have extended their Lent period to be 46 days ending on the Saturday after Holy Thursday and then subtracting the 6 Sundays they celebrate the mini-easter thus by making it 40 days.

All in all I found out though that the days of Easter is what constitutes what day is Ash Wednesday which constitutes how long Lent will be. For example this year Ash Wednesday is today (Feb 17th) next year Ash Wednesday will fall in March (March 9th) so once ever seven years they won't need to worry about those extra days that the Lent would bring about because all in all Lent is what comes before we celebrate that Christ who died, rose again three years later thats the complete focus here. So despite the technicalities I hope you do realize the importance of this period and please to note I'm not just focusing on the technicalities, I am actually planning on giving up "Going out" and "Eating after 11pm" for the period of Lent to help in my preparation and reflection before Easter.

Thanks for reading this post!

Andre S.