Lent is the Church's forty-day preparation for Easter, running from Ash Wednesday to the evening of Holy Thursday, when the Easter Triduum begins. It has two faces: it is the season in which the catechumens make their final preparation for Baptism, and the season in which the already baptized return to the grace of their own Baptism through penance. The Gospel read on Ash Wednesday names its three practices: prayer, fasting and almsgiving. A good Lent is not a heroic one but a planned one, chosen in the days before Ash Wednesday rather than improvised on the day.

What you need

• A calendar with Ash Wednesday, the Fridays of Lent, Holy Week and Easter marked
• The Mass and confession times of your parish (the bulletin or website)
• A short written plan: one prayer, one fast, one work of mercy
• A Bible or missal for the Lenten readings

When to pray it

Make the plan in the week before Ash Wednesday. Lent itself begins on Ash Wednesday and ends before the evening Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday.

Steps

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   Step 1: Understand what Lent is for

   Lent exists for Easter. For forty days the Church unites herself to Jesus' forty days in the desert, so that at the Easter Vigil the catechumens may be baptized and the rest of us may renew our baptismal promises with clean hearts. That is why the season is marked by penance: not gloom for its own sake, but the work of turning back to God. The liturgy shows it in violet vestments, the silence of the Gloria and the Alleluia, and readings that call us to conversion. Keep Easter in view from the first day; every practice you choose is a way of getting there.

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   Step 2: Choose your prayer

   Pick one prayer practice you do not already keep and hold to it every day of Lent. Good choices are a weekday Mass, the Stations of the Cross on Fridays, a daily decade or full Rosary with the Sorrowful Mysteries, fifteen minutes with the day's Mass readings, or Morning or Evening Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours. The De Profundis▾ (Psalm 130▾) is a traditional Lenten psalm that takes two minutes to pray. One practice, kept, is the goal; if you add more, add it after the first is steady.

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   Step 3: Choose your fast

   The Church asks a minimum of every Catholic: fast and abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and abstain from meat on every Friday of Lent (the How to Fast and Abstain guide gives the details and who is bound). Beyond that minimum, choose one voluntary self-denial for the whole season: a food, a drink, a screen, a habit. The point is not self-improvement but hunger, a bodily reminder that we do not live by bread alone. Choose something you will actually feel.

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   Step 4: Choose your almsgiving

   Fasting and almsgiving belong together: what you do not spend on yourself is meant to reach the poor. Decide now on a concrete gift of money to your parish's Lenten collection, a Catholic charity or a person you know is in need, and a concrete gift of time, such as visiting someone who is sick or lonely. The corporal and spiritual works of mercy are the traditional list to choose from. Almsgiving done quietly is the kind the Lord praises in the Ash Wednesday Gospel.

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   Step 5: Mark the calendar

   Write into your calendar: Ash Wednesday (fast and abstinence); every Friday of Lent (abstinence, and usually Stations of the Cross at the parish); the Fourth Sunday, Laetare Sunday, when rose vestments mark a moment of joy halfway through; the solemnities of Saint Joseph and the Annunciation; Palm Sunday, which opens Holy Week; and the Triduum, Holy Thursday evening to Easter Sunday. Look up your parish's Holy Week schedule as soon as it is published and decide now to be there for the Mass of the Lord's Supper, the Celebration of the Passion and the Easter Vigil.

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   Step 6: Plan your confession

   The Church asks every Catholic to confess grave sins at least once a year, and Lent is the natural time. Parishes add confession times and many dioceses hold Lenten penance services with several priests. Choose a date in the first half of the season, prepare with the Examination of Conscience guide, and learn or print the Act of Contrition▾. If you have been away from the sacrament for years, the How to Go to Confession guide walks through exactly what to say; the priest will help with the rest.

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   Step 7: Pray the Stations and the Rosary

   Two devotions carry the season. The Stations of the Cross, prayed publicly in most parishes on Lenten Fridays, walk with Christ from his condemnation to his burial; the How to Pray the Stations of the Cross guide gives the fourteen stations with their versicles. The Rosary's Sorrowful Mysteries, the agony in the garden, the scourging, the crowning with thorns, the carrying of the cross and the crucifixion, are the natural Lenten mysteries and can be prayed on any day. Choose at least one of these to keep weekly.

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   Step 8: Keep going after failing

   You will break your fast, skip your prayer, or forget your alms at some point, and that is not the end of Lent. The season is a school of conversion, and conversion is learned by beginning again. Say a short Act of Contrition▾, pray the Our Father▾ with its petition for forgiveness, and take up the practice again the next day without renegotiating it. The measure of a good Lent is not an unbroken record but a heart that keeps returning to God, which is exactly what Easter is about.

Tips

• The six Sundays of Lent are not days of fast; they remain the Lord's Day. Do not treat a Sunday rest from your fast as a failure.
• Choose practices you can actually keep for forty days. A small fast kept every day does more than a great one abandoned in the second week.
• Two solemnities usually fall inside Lent, Saint Joseph on 19 March and the Annunciation on 25 March; if either lands on a Friday the law of abstinence does not bind that day.
• Put confession on the calendar now; Holy Week confession lines are long, and the sacrament is the heart of the season.

Related devotions

• Stations of the Cross
• The Holy Rosary

Related practices

• Fasting
• Almsgiving