Seasons of Fasting and Penitence

Opens the Western Lent. Ashes made from the previous year's Palm Sunday branches are marked on the forehead with the words "Remember that you are dust," and the day is one of fasting and abstinence. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church gives its date as the Wednesday forty-six days before Easter.

The forty-day penitential season that prepares Christians for Easter, recalling the forty days Jesus fasted in the wilderness. It runs from Ash Wednesday through the weeks before Easter without counting Sundays, and is kept with fasting, prayer and almsgiving.

The Orthodox counterpart, which the atlas records as a more sharply defined season: a full forty days from Clean Monday ending before Holy Week, with a strict fasting rule and weekday liturgies in which the full Eucharist gives way to the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts.

Holy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper and opens the Sacred Triduum in the evening. The name comes from the mandatum, the new commandment given at the supper, and after the evening Mass the altar is stripped and the church left bare for Good Friday.

The solemn day commemorating the crucifixion and death of Jesus, kept with fasting, penance and mourning. Altars are stripped bare, bells fall silent, and services include the veneration of the cross and in many churches the Stations of the Cross.

The major fast of mourning in Judaism, twenty-five hours without food or drink on 9 Av. Lamentations is chanted in a darkened room, worshippers sit low as mourners do, and the day recalls the destruction of both temples. The Mishnah, Taanit 4:6, lists five disasters of the ninth of Av.

The ninth month of the Islamic calendar, observed as a month-long fast and the fourth Pillar of Islam. Adults abstain from food and drink from dawn to sunset, breaking the fast at iftar. Because the calendar is lunar, the month shifts through the seasons.

The Festival of Breaking the Fast ends Ramadan on the first day of Shawwal. Before the congregational prayer every household gives zakat al-fitr, a charity of food or its value, so that the poor can share in the celebration.

The Intercalary Days of the Baha'i calendar, four or five days set aside for hospitality, charity and gifts, falling immediately before the final month of fasting. It is a joyous observance rather than a day of rest, and it prepares the community for the fast that follows.

Baha'is of adult age and good health fast from sunrise to sunset through the nineteen days of the month of Ala, just before the new year festival of Naw-Ruz. The Kitab-i-Aqdas prescribes it as a time of spiritual purification and prayer.