Lent is a recapitulation of our understanding of creation and fall, and of regeneration and sanctification.
Because Lent was seen as a season preliminary to Easter, in some older interpretations Lent was predominantly or even exclusively about the suffering and death of Jesus. Lent was the season of the cross. Period.
But those serious about the pursuit of Christian history had to wrestle with the fact that Lent began as a time of final instruction and intensive preparation for baptism. Ancient lectionaries (or at least portions of them) were reconstructed and found to contain Lenten readings such as the story of the man born blind (John 9), for in the early centuries baptism with likened to the recovery of sight. This Lectionary inclusion, grounded in a very old understanding of Lent as preparation for baptism, helped to reestablish Lent in the church as a season for the consideration of the meaning of baptism as related to the new life we have in Christ, the Crucified and Risen One.
Lawrence Hall Stookey Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church
