Lent is the traditional period of spiritual introspection and abstinence observed by Christians in remembrance of the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ. Beginning on Ash Wednesday, it includes the forty days, excluding Sundays, preceding Easter and is also symbolic of the forty days Christ fasted in the wilderness. Consequently, we have come today not to the first Sunday "of" Lent, but the first Sunday "in" Lent. The word "Lent" is quite beyond the Hebrew or Greek vocabulary, which is to say, it is not a biblical word. It is a derivation of the Saxon name for the month of March, "Lencten-Monath," indicating that at this time of year days begin to exceed nights in length. Anglo-Saxon Christians observed their primary time of fasting during this period. It was during the reign of C…