Lent is a 40-day season of fasting, prayer and charitable giving, intended to mould Christians in imitation of Jesus, who spent 40 days fasting and being tempted by the devil in the wilderness in preparation for his ministry.

Fasting was obligatory before the Reformation but since then has in most denominations become voluntary, along with the other penitential practices of the season. By the end of the last century liberal theologians and declining church attendance had ensured that Lenten observances had died out in all but the most observant Christian families.

Anyone who admitted to “giving up” food or drink for Lent risked mockery. Since the millennium, however, there has been a renaissance in the Christian disciplines of abstinence and self-denial.

This has possibly been fuelled in part by the seriousness with which the world takes the Muslim fasting season of Ramadan, giving these ancient religious practices a new credibility.

The revival of the Lenten fast today is also fuelled by the polemic against the modern age, one characterised by church leaders as of untrammelled greed. This has never more been the case than this year, with the products of that greed tumbling like the walls of Jericho around our ears. Suddenly, giving up greed makes sense. No longer is it those desert fathers who fasted at the tops of columns for weeks in the first few centuries of the Christian Church who look absurd. Our world has woken up to the need for repentance of our excesses, and Lent gives us the discipline.

Lent can now be observed in many forms. Besides giving up food during the day, or for the traditional Friday each week in honour of the day of the Crucifixion, or giving up meat and dairy products for the entire 40 days, Christians are also advised to forswear activities they are fond of indulging in, sometimes to excess. These could include sex, alcohol, gossip, texting or tweeting.