Forty days of Lent to mark Jesus’s forty days of fasting in the wilderness.
Forty you say. But today is February 21 and Easter is April 8. That’s 46 days (four this week, then six more weeks). 6 times 7 equals 42 plus 4 equals 46
Aha! But the six Sundays don’t count. (No one told me that when I was a kid giving up candy for Lent.)
The date for Ash Wednesday, of course, is determined by counting back 46 days from the date for Easter Sunday.
The usual statement, that Easter Day is the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox, is not a precise statement of the actual ecclesiastical rules. The full moon involved is not the astronomical Full Moon but an ecclesiastical moon (determined from tables) that keeps, more or less, in step with the astronomical Moon.
The ecclesiastical rules are:
- Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox;
- this particular ecclesiastical full moon is the 14th day of a tabular lunation (new moon); and
- the vernal equinox is fixed as March 21.
resulting in that Easter can never occur before March 22 or later than April 25.
The equinox this year is March 20th in the Western Hemisphere (March 20, 6:07 PM MDT).