Shrove Tuesday

What’s not to like about Shrove Tuesday at St. Bede’s?

The Vestry hosts the pancake supper. The kids adorn their pancakes with sweet treats. Even some of the adults pass up the fruit toppings and go straight for the sprinkles instead. In past years, we’ve run pancake relays, but the kids always beat us. This year we played Fascinating Questions about Shrove Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, and Lent.  See (below) how many you can answer. At the end of the evening, we burn some of the palm crosses from last year’s Palm Sunday celebration, to make ashes for tomorrow’s Ash Wednesday observance. The kids get to put the crosses in the brazier. Flame, smoke, and ash, all part of God’s great and marvelous recycling system. Here a few snapshots of the evening!

v. Behold, we speak to the Lord God
r. We who are but dust and ashes

God takes up the weak out of the dust*
And lifts the poor from the ashes       (Psalm 113:6)

Lenten Trivia Quiz – Test Your Knowledge!

1a. How many days are there from the first day of Lent to Easter Sunday?

1b. How many days of fasting are there in Lent?

1c. What New Testament story parallels the days of Lent?

1d. What two Hebrew Scriptures stories parallel the days of Lent?

1e. What did the early Christian communities of the first two centuries use the days of Lent for?

1f. What do we typically use the days of Lent for now? What do you use them for?

2. What was the original meaning of the word “Lent”?

3a. What are the three names we use for the day before Lent begins?

3b. What is the first day of Lent called?

3c. How is the first day of Lent determined?

4. What color vestments do the Eucharistic ministers traditionally wear during Lent?

4b. What sort of vestments do St. Bede’s Eucharistic ministers wear?

5. What prayer is traditionally omitted during Lent?

6. What word is traditionally never said or sung during Lent?

7a. What do some Christians abstain from eating during Lent?

7b. What phrase does the word, “carnival,” come from?

7c. What aquatic rodent was officially recognized as a fish by the pope so that it could be eaten during Lent?

8. What snack originated during Lent because it contains only flour, water and salt?

9. What food was traditionally eaten the day before Lent begins, but we now associate with Easter Sunday?

10. When does Lent officially end?

11. Is Lent traditionally considered a good time to get married?

Answers

1a&b. Lent is supposed to be “40 days” of fasting but there are 46 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday. This is because Sundays are not counted in the fast (Sundays are always feast days) so once the 6 Sundays are subtracted, that makes 40. However, the Season of Lent officially ends prior to the beginning of the Triduum (see below) during the evening of Maundy Thursday, 44 days after Lent begins. So there are, in fact, only 38 days of Lenten fasts.

1c. Jesus’ fasts for 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness during which he is tempted 3 times by the Devil.

1d. Moses takes 40 days and 40 nights up on the top of Mt. Sinai carving God’s commandments onto stone tablets. Noah’s arc floated on the water while it rained for 40 days and 40 nights.

1e. The early Christian communities used the days of Lent to prepare new members of the community for baptism on the eve of Easter Sunday.

2. “Spring”

3a. Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras

3b. Ash Wednesday

3c. The start of lent is based on the astronomical setting of the Easter date, which is close to the astronomical selection of Passover. (In the Western church, Ash Wednesday can be as early as February 3 and as late as March 9.) The commonly stated rule, that Easter Day is the first Sunday after the Full Moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox, is somewhat misleading because it is not a precise statement of the actual ecclesiastical rules. In order that the date should be incontrovertibly fixed, and determinable indefinitely in advance, the Church constructed tables to be used permanently for calculating the age of the Moon. Easter is determined by the “ecclesiastical moon” defined by these tables, which is not strictly identical with the real Moon. In addition, the vernal equinox (the time at which the apparent longitude of the Sun is zero degrees) is fixed at March 21, not by the actual motion of the Sun. Moreover, the date of Easter is determined independently of any meridian of longitude, and is always the same in all time zones, unlike astronomical phenomena.

4a. Purple            4b. Sack-cloth

5. The Gloria

6. Alleluia

7a. Meat            7b. “farewell to meat”

7c. The capybara (kap-i-’bar-uh), hydrochoerus hydrochaeris, is a semi-aquatic rodent of South and Central America. It is the only species in its genus, which belongs to the family Hydrochoeridae, order Rodentia. When the Spanish missionaries found the capybara in Brazil during the 16th century, they wrote to the Pope to ask – there’s an animal here that’s scaly but also hairy, spends most of its time in the water but occasionally comes on land; can we classify it as a fish (and thus, the indigenous people could continue to eat it during Lent)? Not having a clear description of the animal (and not wanting the petitioners to starve), the Pope agreed and declared it to be a fish.

8. Pretzels — Ancient Christians apparently made small breads of water, flour and salt, to remind themselves that Lent was a time of prayer. They shaped these breads in the form of crossed arms imitating the way they crossed their arms over the chest while praying. Therefore they called the breads “little arms” (bracellae). From this Latin word, the Germanic people later coined the term “pretzel.”

9. Hot Cross Buns

10. At sundown on Maundy Thursday before the beginning of the Maundy Thursday service, which, in turn, kicks off the “Triduum.” Named for the Latin word for three, the Triduum includes the three holiest days of the Church year from sundown on Maundy Thursday, through Good Friday and Holy Saturday, to sundown on Easter Sunday.

11. No. As the saying (apparently) goes: “Marry in Lent, live to repent.”