Shrovetide

Shrovetide, also known as the Pre-Lenten Season or Forelent, is the Christian period of preparation before the beginning of the liturgical season of Lent. Shrovetide starts on Septuagesima Sunday and continues for 3 weeks, the 'gesima' weeks, culminating on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday.

The word shrove comes form the English word 'shrive,' which means to obtain absolution for one's sins by way of Confession and doing penance. Thus Shrove Tuesday was named after the custom of Christians to be "shriven" before the start of Lent.

The Anglican rule for confession is "Some should, all can, none must." (Please contact Fr. Shawn if you’d like to arrange a time for confession.) During the season of Shrovetide, it is customary for Christians to ponder the sacrifices and disciplines they will make for Lent.

It is also an opportunity for a last round of merrymaking associated with Carnival and Fastelavn before the start of the solemn Lenten season; the traditions of carrying Shrovetide rods and consuming Shrovetide buns after attending church are celebrated.

On the final day of the season, Shrove Tuesday, we make a special point of self-examination, of considering what wrongs of which we need to repent, and the amendments of life or areas of spiritual growth we need to ask for God's help in dealing with. Many parishioners take the opportunity to participate in confession and absolution, finalize one's Lenten sacrifice, and finish with the English tradition of eating a pancake dinner to use the rest of the lard from their pantry.

During Shrovetide, we also collect the previous year's Holy Week palm branches, that were blessed and distributed during the Palm Sunday liturgies, to them on Shrove Tuesday for the ashes used during the Ash Wednesday liturgy.

Of this time Fr. Gavin Dunbar, rector of St. John’s Church Savannah, writes, "In the ancient calendar of the western church... this Sunday is the called Septuagesima (Latin for "70th"). Next Sunday is called Sexagesima (60th), the Sunday after that Quinquagesima ("50th"). Obviously we are in a countdown towards Lent... Long before the approach of Lent, and its corporate disciplines of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, "works worthy of repentance" (cf Luke 3:8), the Church announces its approach and invites us to prepare for it. Contemporary liturgists have decided the church does not need these pre-Lent Sundays - they are mocked as "the preparation for the preparation" and so there is an abrupt transition from Epiphany to Lent; but as Alexander Schmemann, the celebrated Eastern Orthodox theologian, put it, "the Church knows our inability to change rapidly, to go abruptly from one spiritual or mental state to another. Thus, long before the actual effort of Lent is to begin, the Church calls our attention to its seriousness and invites us to meditate on its significance. Before we practice Lent we are given its meaning."

In the season of Epiphany the Church celebrates the transformation to which we are called by the grace of the incarnate Son, who was manifested to us, that he may be manifested in us; now during the Sundays before Lent we consider the role of disciplined effort in this transformation by his grace. Though good works do not earn God's grace or favor, in good works we testify of our gratitude for the grace we have received, by putting that grace to good use. So these Sundays set before us the corporate disciplines of Lent under the images of purposeful fruitful labor and pilgrimage - the laborers in the vineyard and the athletes in training (Septuagesima); the labors and sufferings of the apostle and the growth of the seed to harvest (Sexagesima), the ascent of Jesus and his disciples to Jerusalem, the healing of the blind man, the growing up to spiritual maturity in faith and hope and charity (Quinquagesima). "Why stand ye here all the day idle? Go ye also in the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive" (Matthew 20:6, 7)."

As we prepare for the season of Lent, let's consider the race we are called to run and join with the church in good race of worship, prayer, self-examination, and fellowship.

‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step into the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to’ – Bilbo