As I See It Repentance and Confession By Frank C. Senn “Return
to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to
anger and abounding in steadfast love.” These words from Joel,
heard on Ash Wednesday, are a liturgical sentence sung
throughout Lent. Lent is a season of repentance, of turning
around. It originated as the time in which the candidates for
baptism at the Easter Vigil went through rites of election and
catechesis. In the first five centuries most candidates for
baptism were adults. They were turning from paganism to
Christianity. Catechesis was a form of “conversion therapy,”
which could last for years but gained intensity in the forty
days before Easter. The point of conversion is to be assimilated
into the passover of Christ from death to life, to turn from the
way of life in this world that is passing away to the new life
of the world to come by cultivating the values of the kingdom of
God taught by Jesus. Hence, candidates were engaged in the
practices of fasting, almsgiving, and pr