Christians are called to asceticism as a way of reaching out, in faith, toward a life to come.

The note that the psalmist sounds at the beginning of Lent is not sin, but forgiveness.

‘Lent may once again don its public mask’: America's editors from 1978 on an American Lent.

Mardi Gras must end; and yet its joys are right and good, in their time, in their place.

Purim and Mardi Gras serve, paradoxically, as a farcical introduction to a period of deep religious seriousness.