Eight ways to get your parish ready for Lent

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).

Fasting

Click here to see the lenten regulations for prayer, fasting, almsgiving