What is lent?

Here are some ideas on what lent is... Please add your ideas in the comments section below.

The season of preparation and discipline, which begins on Ash Wednesday and concludes at sun-down on
Holy Saturday. During the forty weekdays and six Sundays in Lent, the church remembers the sacrificial life and ministry of Jesus leading to the cross and renews its commitment to Christian discipleship.
- Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word. And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.
-Common Book of Prayer

Lent serves as our annual invitation to come closer to God. It provides a time to look at our lives and ourselves, not so we may criticize ourselves more harshly but so we can identify the obstructions that keep us from God. What keeps us from feeling the presence of the divine in our every day? How do we hide from God, and why? Lent gives us a chance to look at such obstructions and to move them gently away so that we can come closer to the Love that gives us life, the Love whose triumph we will celebrate on Easter morning.
- Sarah Parsons A Clearing Season

When is lent?

Lent in 2010 will start on Wednesday, the 17th of February and will continue for 46 days until Saturday, the 3rd of April. In Western Christianity Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and concludes on Holy Saturday. The six Sundays in Lent are not counted among the forty days of lent because each Sunday represents a "mini-Easter", a celebration of Jesus' victory over sin and death.

- www.when-is.com