What Is Lent? Ash Wednesday, the 40 Days and What the Bible Says

What does Lent mean?

Lent is a season of getting ready for Easter. Christians use it to turn back to God through prayer, fasting and giving to people in need. In the early church, it was also when new believers prepared to be baptized at Easter.

The English name comes from an old word for spring, the season when the days lengthen. Many other languages call it the Forty: Quadragesima in Latin, Cuaresma in Spanish, Carême in French.

When is Lent in 2027?

Lent starts on Ash Wednesday, 46 days before Easter. That is 40 days of fasting plus six Sundays, which are feast days and aren’t counted. It runs up to Easter, though in Catholic practice Lent itself ends on the evening of Holy Thursday.

Orthodox churches begin Great Lent on a Monday, called Clean Monday, 48 days before Orthodox Easter.

What is Ash Wednesday?

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent. In many churches, a minister marks a cross of ash on each person’s forehead, often with ashes from the palm branches of last year’s Palm Sunday. The words that go with it are usually based on God’s sentence on Adam: “For you are dust, and you shall return to dust.” (Genesis 3:19).

In the Bible, ashes go with grief and repentance. Job ends his argument with God by saying, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:6), and Daniel prays “with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.” (Daniel 9:3). The traditional reading for the day, from Joel, asks for something deeper than ash on the skin: “Tear your heart and not your garments, and turn to the LORD, your God; for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in loving kindness” (Joel 2:13).

For Catholics, Ash Wednesday is a day of fasting for adults aged 18 to 59, and of no meat for everyone 14 and over. Our guide to Ash Wednesday has more on the day, from the service to where the ashes come from.

Is Lent in the Bible?

No. The season grew up in the early church. In the second century, Christians fasted for a day or two before Easter. By the Council of Nicaea in 325, a season of forty days was known, and within a few decades it was common.

The number comes straight from Scripture, though. Moses spent forty days on the mountain with God: “He was there with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread, nor drank water.” (Exodus 34:28). Elijah walked “forty days and forty nights to Horeb, God’s Mountain.” (1 Kings 19:8). Israel wandered forty years in the wilderness, and Jesus fasted forty days there before he began his work (Matthew 4:1–11, Luke 4:1–13).

Lent also borrows from Nineveh, a city given forty days to change. Its people “proclaimed a fast and put on sackcloth, from their greatest even to their least.” (Jonah 3:5), and God relented.

What does the Bible say about fasting?

In the Bible, fasting is a way of praying with your whole body, usually in grief, repentance or great need. It isn’t a way to earn God’s love. Through Isaiah, God describes the fast he wants:

“Isn’t this the fast that I have chosen: to release the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? Isn’t it to distribute your bread to the hungry, and that you bring the poor who are cast out to your house?” (Isaiah 58:6–7).

Jesus taught his followers to fast quietly, without making a show of it (Matthew 6:16–18). Lent keeps all of this together: giving something up, giving to others and praying more.

What to give up for Lent, and what to take up

Pick something small enough to keep for six weeks. The point isn’t the thing you give up. It’s the room it makes for God and for other people.

• Give up a habit that fills your time, such as social media, a game or streaming at night, and use those minutes to read. Our guide to reading Scripture instead of doomscrolling can help.
• Give up a small comfort, such as sweets, coffee out or snacks between meals, and give away the money you save.
• Keep a Friday fast, from meat as Catholics do, or skip one meal and spend that time praying.
• Take up a daily reading, such as the plan below.
• Take up a weekly kindness: a visit, a call to someone who lives alone, or an hour of help at church or a food bank.

A Bible reading plan for Lent

Mark is the shortest Gospel, and more than a third of it covers Jesus’ last week. Read it across Lent, about three chapters a week, and you reach the cross and the empty tomb in Holy Week.

That comes to a few minutes a day. If you miss a week, skip ahead to the current one, so you read Mark 15 on Good Friday.

Common questions