Lent began this past month and will continue until Easter Sunday, March 25.

For Christians, Lent is a time of penitence and reflection. It is a time of prayer and renewal, a time to go in toward the core of one’s being and to reach out into the infinity of God.

Culturally, Lent has the stigma of being a time for sorrow and denial, asceticism and depravation, but Sundays in Lent are great cause for celebration.

Lent lasts for 40 days, not counting Sundays.

I always found that strange until I sat in on a class at Bangor Theological Seminary on Christian time-keeping.

The professor, Cliff Guthrie, explained that we do not count Sundays in Lent because Sunday is always a feast day and Lent, being a holy month of fasting, has no place coming to church on Sunday.

Lent is for the week. Sunday is the Lord’s day. It is a weekly celebration of Easter, of the Resurrection of Christ.

In the Episcopal church that I attend, Sundays in Lent are often somber occasions. Our priest likes to celebrate what is called the Penitential Order for Sundays in Lent, and I’m not going to criticize him for it, but I agree with Guthrie’s principle that there is to be no groveling on the Lord’s Day.

I feel that it would do us good as Christians to celebrate Sunday worship even more joyously during Lent as a celebration of the end of a week of fasting and repentance.

Muslims do this at the end of their days of fasting during Ramadan with extravagant meals put on for the community at hotels, private homes and mosques.

It gives their fasting a rhythm and a goal that gets them though the hardship, one day at a time.

Five weeks of repenting one’s sins, fasting or depriving oneself of chocolate, coffee or beer seems like a daunting task at which many people are set up to fail, unless it is broken up by that weekly celebration of the Lord’s Day, which is always an occasion for joy, singing and perhaps a little bit of chocolate cake during coffee hour.

Max Coolidge-Gillmor is a senior at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. He lives in Orland with his wife, Jennifer, and their infant son, Matthew. He may be reached through bdn

religion@bangordailynews.net. Voices is a weekly commentary by Maine columnists who explore issues affecting spirituality and religious life.