Reflections on Lent

"And yet, though the long season of sorrow which ushers in this Blessed Day in some sense sobers and quells the keenness of our enjoyment, yet without such preparatory season, let us be sure we shall not rejoice at all.

"None rejoice in Easter-tide less than those who have not grieved in Lent. This is what is seen in the world at large. To them, one season is the same as another, and they take no account of any. Feast-day and fast-day, holy tide and other tide, are one and the same to them. Hence they do not realize the next world at all."

- John Henry Newman (an Anglican cleric in the mid-19th century who later became a Cardinal in the Catholic Church)