Lent

Roman Catholic clergy, including Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles, placed ashes on the foreheads of the penitent as part of Ash Wednesday observances followed in Christian churches throughout the world this week. The day marked the beginning of 40 days of Lent--a season of penitence, prayer, self-examination and fasting. The sign of the cross was made with ashes on the foreheads of believers as a reminder that they are mortal.

As thousands of Muslims in the San Fernando Valley celebrated the end of the annual Islamic month of daytime fasting Tuesday, tens of thousands of Catholics and Protestants readied themselves to observe Ash Wednesday today--beginning a longer, though less demanding, period of spiritual self-discipline. Both Islam's Ramadan and Christianity's Lent are periods marked by prayerful study and reflection, abstinence from customary pleasures and generous giving.

Kraig Kelsey, a juvenile crimes detective for the local Police Department, stood outside a neighborhood church and contemplated the themes of abstinence and sacrifice most commonly associated with Lent. He came up with a resolution instead. "I need to try to see the positive side of people," he said. "There is a lot of stress in my job and you tend to be let down by people a lot. I have to remember that they have good sides too."

In observance of Ash Wednesday and its message of renewal and forgiveness, Oryden Gould returned to church for the first time in years to renew her faith and to cast off a deep-seated animosity. "This is a season for a new beginning," said Gould, 44, of Orange after a noon Mass at Holy Family Cathedral. For the past two years, Gould has been consumed by anger and bitterness that stemmed from a romantic relationship gone wrong and the abrupt loss of a job she had held for 22 years.

Today is Ash Wednesday, and if the start of the Lenten season leading to Easter seems early this year, there's a reason: The last time Lent arrived this early was 1913. "Ash Wednesday already?" said the Rev. Ken Fong, senior pastor of Evergreen Baptist Church-L.A. "It just crept up on us." And it did so for many others, too. "It's a real switch," said the Rev. Guillermo Garcia, pastor of St. Gertrude Catholic Church in Bell Gardens, to go from December to Lent in such a compressed time.

Local Catholics received a cardinal's blessing to break an ancient rule and eat meat today because of a rare convergence of observances: a Lenten Friday and St. Patrick's Day, which is typically celebrated with corned beef. But Cardinal Roger M. Mahony had another reason for issuing a dispensation from an edict making the Fridays of Lent days of fast and abstinence. St.

Rio has its riotous Carnaval, New Orleans its bacchanalian Mardi Gras. Moscow has its own orgy of indulgence before the self-denial of Lent: Pancake Week. The festival's origins lie in an exultant farewell to winter that the Slavic tribes of Russia's vast forested lands celebrated long before the arrival of Christianity. The ancient practices of burning straw figures and feasting on hot, golden, sun-shaped pancakes, or blini, were later adapted into Russian Orthodox customs.

Instead of giving up the standard candy and junk food for Lent, the students at All Saints, a Catholic school in El Sereno, are celebrating the season a little differently this year. Principal Maria Palermo said she wanted the students, from kindergarten to eighth grade, to go the extra mile. In addition to attending Mass during the week, they donate money they might have spent on sweets to missionary groups. "It's good that you sacrifice, but let's move forward," Palermo said.