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Athanasius' letter from the year 340 A.D.

That this was practiced in Rome and elsewhere is seen in St. We learn from this that even at the time the Nicene Creed was written, at the time Constantine the Great ruled, the Western and Eastern Churches practiced a voluntary fast for 40 days before Easter.

5).’ Immediately afterwards that great Sunday receives us, I mean on the sixteenth of the same month Pharmuthi (Easter Sunday morning), on which our Lord having risen, gave us peace towards our neighbours. Let us rest then, on the fifteenth of the month Pharmuthi (Easter Sunday Eve), for on the evening of that Saturday we hear the angels’ message, ‘Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is risen (Luke xxiv. “The beginning of the fast of forty days is on the fifth of the month Phamenoth (we call Ash Wednesday) and when, as I have said, we have first been purified and prepared by those days, we begin the holy week of the great Easter on the tenth of the month Pharmuthi (Palm Sunday), in which, my beloved brethren, we should use more prolonged prayers, and fastings, and watchings, that we may be enabled to anoint our lintels with precious blood, and to escape the destroyer (Exod. Athanasius directs the readers to many Scriptural examples and exhortations to moderation, self-control, and fasting for repentance, Athanasius gives several Bible examples of the 40 day fast, especially of Christ's 40 day fast, after which Athanasius wrote: In the year 331 he wrote in order to encourage his congregations in Egypt to keep the Lenten fast for 40 days. He wrote annual Festival letters to the Church as they prepared to celebrate Easter. Athanasius, who led at the Council of Nicea to defeat Arianism-a denial of Christ being truly God and man in one person-was a bishop in Alexandria, Egypt. The ancient Church chose to keep a fast during the forty days before Passover/Easter to focus on repentance and the gift of the Resurrection at Easter. The actual history is much more interesting and beneficial.

Where did Ash Wednesday and Lent come from? Are they relics of paganism? No.