What they saw was worshippers singing hymns and waving palm fronds as they marched in Palm Sunday processions at these churches. Similar sights will be common during Holy Week rites this week and then on Easter Sunday.

There is nothing unusual about various churches celebrating these holy days in their own ways. What is rare is for the churches of the East and West to be celebrating Easter (“Pascha” in the East) on the same day. This will happen again next year, as well as in 2014 and 2017.

This remains one of the most painful symbols of division in global Christianity. While Easter is the most important day on the Christian calendar, millions of Christians celebrate this feast on different days because they have — for centuries — used different calendars. The Orthodox follow the ancient Julian calendar when observing Pascha, while others use the Gregorian calendar introduced in 1582, during the reign of Pope Gregory XIII.

“It was a calendar issue then and it’s a calendar issue now,” said Antonios Kireopoulos, an Orthodox theologian who is a leader in interfaith relations work at the National Council of Churches of Christ. “This is about calendars, but it’s much more than that.”

This clash between liturgical calendars in the East and West, he said, also affects how churches pursue their missions. “We are talking about the central event of our faith, yet we remain so divided about it. … That has to raise questions for those outside the faith. If the resurrection is so important, why can’t we find a way to celebrate this together?”

Seizing the temporary unity represented by the shared Easter dates this year and next, Kireopoulos and National Council of Churches General Secretary Michael Kinnamon recently renewed an earlier call that challenged leaders on both sides to pursue a permanent solution to this clash of the calendars.

Their letter restates three recommendations from the 1997 Aleppo Conference, which was hosted by the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch. That gathering called for Christians worldwide to:

* Honor the first ecumenical council of Nicea by celebrating Easter on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox, which would maintain the biblical ties between the Jewish Passover, Holy Week and Easter.

* Agree to calculate astronomical data by using the best available scientific methods, which was a principle established in Nicea to settle an early controversy about the date of Easter.

* Use the meridian line for Jerusalem as the reference point for all calculations, once again honoring the biblical narratives about the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The problem, of course, is that making a change of this magnitude would require a broad spectrum of Christian leaders — including the pope and numerous Orthodox patriarchs — to agree on something that stirs deep emotions among the faithful. Orthodox leaders continue to wrestle with splits linked to a 1923 decision to celebrate Christmas according to the Gregorian calendar.

The final Aleppo document recognized that it would be especially hard for Eastern believers to change their traditions.

“In some countries in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, where the Christian churches have lived with the challenge of other religions or materialistic ideologies, loyalty to the ‘old calendar’ has been a symbol of the churches’ desire to maintain their integrity and their freedom from the hostile forces of this world,” it said. “Clearly in such situations implementation of any change in the calculation of Easter/Pascha will have to proceed carefully and with great pastoral sensitivity.”

Orthodox leaders know that the Easter gap will keep getting wider — with Pascha creeping into the summer in about a century.

But change is hard. As old joke says, “How many Orthodox Christians does it take to change a light bulb?” The answer: “Change? What is this ‘change’?”

“This is not a matter of one side finally giving in and the other winning,” stressed Kireopoulos. “This is a matter of finding a way to proclaim — together — what we all believe about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. … What we hope is that, once again, we can follow the principles of Nicea and find a way to move forward.”

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“Actually, it was my priest,” said Winner, who teaches Christian spirituality at Duke Divinity School. “I have learned that people in my life often tell me what I need to do during Lent. … It’s kind of like hearing from angels.”

Although the voice wasn’t miraculous, Winner thought it would take a miracle to follow her spiritual guide’s advice. The challenge was deceptively simple: Could she give up reading during Lent?

At the time, Winner was working as book review editor for Beliefnet.com and studying for her doctorate at Columbia University. She was a writer, editor and student and, naturally, was surrounded by books day after day.

How in the name of God was she supposed to stop reading?

Nevertheless, she decided to try.

“This was not your normal 40 days of work,” said Winner, author of “Girl Meets God: A Memoir” and other works of contemporary spirituality. “What I was doing was attacking my own work obsessions. This forced me to examine the place of work in my life. It made me examine other parts of my life, as well.”

Fasting traditions during Lent — the 40-day penitential season before Easter — have evolved through the ages, especially in Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and liturgical Protestant churches that emphasize the church calendar. Winner is active in the Episcopal Church.

For centuries, Catholics ate only one real meal a day, with no meat or fish. Today, Catholics are supposed to observe a strict fast and abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday at the start of Lent and Good Friday at the end. In many parishes, the faithful are still urged to avoid meat on Fridays during Lent. Orthodox Christians strive to fast from meat and dairy products during all of Lent and Holy Week.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans in a variety of churches follow an informal tradition in which they choose to fast from “one thing” — such as chocolate or soft drinks — during Lent. This practice may be linked to a passage in the sixth century monastic Rule of St. Benedict, which states:

“During these days, therefore, let us add something to the usual amount of our service, special prayers, abstinence from food and drink, that each one offer to God … something above his prescribed measure. Namely, let him withdraw from his body somewhat of food, drink, sleep, speech, merriment, and with the gladness of spiritual desire await holy Easter.”

Winner noted that this practice of “giving up one thing” was supposed to build on the traditional Lenten disciplines linked to food, prayer and almsgiving — not replace them. The goal was to shine a spotlight into some unexamined corner of one’s life.

It didn’t take her long, for example, for Winner to realize that she couldn’t stop reading — period. She needed, for example, to reread one book to prepare for an exam. She had to do some reading in order to do her day job, but she asked if she could be relieved from some assignments that she would have accepted, if not for this unique Lenten discipline.

The surprise, said Winner, was how this fast touched her life after the working day. That’s when she could almost hear her favorite volumes of history and fiction calling her name (especially the detective novels).

“What this showed me was that I was using reading as an escape. I was reading books as a way to get away from some things,” she said, and then laughed. “Fiction is probably a better way to cope with some issues in your life than heroin. But if books are what you’re using, then you need to find that out.”

In the years since, Winner has repeated this bookish fast several times, while searching for other disciplines that would have a similar impact. This year she is trying to fast from “saying ‘yes’ all the time,” which is harder than it sounds.

“The thing is, Lent isn’t a therapeutic self-improvement project,” she said. “We’re supposed to take a hard look at our sins and then repent. But how do we get to repentance if we have never truly paused to examine our lives? …

“Most of us are morally and spiritually sleepwalking. We need to wake up and see where we are and what we’re doing.”

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Month after month, Towns faced two house payments — a real family crisis. Thus, the veteran Bible professor decided to try something that he considered a radical, “Old Testament thing.” In addition to praying that someone would buy the house back in Chicago, Towns and his wife Ruth began fasting on the day that mortgage was due.

Not much happened, but they kept praying and fasting.

After a year, the house sold and Towns has been pondering this question ever since: What role did their fasting play in solving this personal problem?

“What I have learned is that there is much more to fasting than trying to get something from God, because we cannot say what God will do,” said Towns, the author of 100-plus books and dean of the School of Religion at Liberty.

“You are really fasting because you want a closer relationship to God. … There are fasts where you are seeking an end result — like the deliverance of a person from addiction. But that is not the norm. That’s not the main reason God wants us to fast.”

These kinds of mysteries have driven Towns to do something that may sound strange for an evangelical Protestant. He has written three books about fasting, including the recent “The Beginner’s Guide to Fasting,” and has already finished a fourth book on this topic.

Fasting, of course, is a familiar practice for Jews, who observe a strict fast on Yom Kippur (“Day of Atonement”). Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset during the month of Ramadan and believers in many other religions also practice forms of fasting.

Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians fast several times during the church year, especially in the pre-Easter season of Lent — which began this past week. Some modern Catholics continue to fast from meat during Lent, while the Orthodox strive not to eat meat or dairy products.

This practice — eliminating specific forms of food from the diet — is one of several different forms of fasting found in the Bible and in religious history, noted Towns. In the Book of Daniel, the prophet and his friends only ate vegetables and water for 10 days. The leader of the Methodist renewal movement, John Wesley, often fasted for 10 days before major conferences, eating only whole-grain breads and drinking water.

Another common practice, which Towns considers a “normal” fast, is to eat nothing, while continuing to drink liquids. The Gospel of Luke observes that during a 40-day fast Jesus “ate nothing and afterward, when he had ended, he was hungry.”

An “absolute” fast, said Towns, eliminates both solid food and liquids, as in St. Paul’s three-day fast after his conversion on the Damascus road. This strict form of fasting is not for beginners and never should exceed three days, he said. On Mount Sinai, Moses is said to have survived a 40-day fast without food or drink — which would clearly be miraculous.

Believers who are new to fasting should seek guidance from experienced clergy and even from doctors, stressed Towns. The bottom line: It isn’t physically or spiritually wise to “put God to the test by rushing off and doing something irrational,” he said.

In the past decade or so, interest in spiritual disciplines such as fasting is on the rise among many Protestants, including evangelicals and those in Pentecostal or “charismatic” movements, said Towns. This is interesting because, at the same time, many Americans seem anxious not to be labeled as religious “fanatics,” “nuts” or “extremists.”

Yet many Americans seem open to new forms of religious experience.

“I think that there’s a growing interest in spirituality among all kinds of people — people inside the church and people outside the church, as well,” said Towns. “Some people are willing to try all kinds of things right now, including some things that I think are very dangerous.

“People may hear about fasting and say, ‘That sounds interesting. That sounds powerful. I think I’ll give that a try.’ … The issue is whether they have the commitment to stick to it. I’m concerned that most people aren’t willing to pay a price to experience the presence of God.”

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However, since this man was scientist, Father Gary Thomas wasn’t surprised that he was a skeptic when it came to supernatural evil. That was fine, since one of the first things the priest learned in Rome while training to be an exorcist was to remain as skeptical as possible, as long as possible. Still, there were troubling facts in the man’s story — such as an episode when a counselor urged him to channel spirits.

Finally, the priest turned to “De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus Quibusdam (Of Exorcisms and Certain Supplications),” the Vatican document released in 1998 that contains a modernized exorcism rite. He has been fighting this man’s demons ever since.

“When we started, he told me, ‘Wait! Can’t you just take this thing right out of me?’ But that’s rarely how things work,” said Thomas, the official exorcist in the Diocese of San Jose in northern California. “It’s hard to get people to understand that no two exorcisms are the same. Reality isn’t like the movies.”

The subject of demonic possession remains controversial, as illustrated by the media storm that greeted the revised exorcism rite, which was required by a Vatican II mandate three decades earlier. Later, the Vatican announced that Pope John Paul II had personally performed three exorcisms during his pontificate.

While the new rite warned exorcists not to confuse diabolic possession with mental illness, it also affirmed ancient teachings about the reality of spiritual warfare, as illustrated by biblical accounts of Jesus performing exorcisms.

Truth is, stressed Thomas, the events of Holy Week — especially Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter — make no sense without real demons, real temptations and a real hell. But many Catholics disagree.

“There are plenty of bishops and priests who simply do not believe in Satan and demons and they have told me so,” he said. “That makes a difference. What most people do not realize is that bishops are like independent contractors and they can do whatever they damn well want to do. … That’s why we don’t have many exorcists in America.”

At the request of his own bishop, Thomas took a Vatican-approved approved course on demonic possession while living at the North American College in Rome in late 2005 and early 2006. As part of his studies, the second-career priest — who worked in a mortuary before seeking ordination — participated in more than 80 exorcisms with a senior Italian exorcist. These experiences form the heart of “The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist,” a new book written by American journalist Matt Baglio.

For the past three years, the 55-year-old priest has quietly been using the techniques he learned in Rome. He said that his teachers, from the beginning, emphasized that an exorcist must strive to remain the “ultimate skeptic,” pursuing every pastoral option before turning to the exorcism rite as a last resort.

Modern exorcists are urged to work with psychiatrists, psychologists and physicians while evaluating those who are suffering. They also test to see if spiritual health can be restored through confession, healing rites and frequent participation in Mass. However, Thomas noted that these contacts with “holy things” occasionally trigger open displays of demonic powers.

It’s one thing to hear the voice of a demon on a recording or to read pages of blasphemies in transcripts. Face-to-face encounters are another matter.

The classic signs of possession have been established for ages. The possessed may exhibit superhuman strength, describe private events in the life of an exorcist or possess the ability to speak languages — such as Latin — they have never studied. They often suffer bizarre physical reactions to contact with holy water, crosses or icons.

Most people seeking exorcisms are simply physically sick, mentally ill or emotionally distressed. Some may try to fake “Hollywood-esque symptoms” in order to draw sympathy or attention.

“You may see case after case in which there are other explanations for what these people are suffering,” stressed Thomas. “But then, every now and then, you see things that let you know that you are dealing with the real thing. That’s when you know that sin is real, hell is real and Satan is real. That’s when you learn what the cross and the resurrection are all about.”

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This year, the gap between the two Easter dates was so large — five weeks — that the leftover chocolate eggs had been cleaned out by April 27 and the great Orthodox feast called Pascha (Greek for “Passover”).

“It’s true that when the Easters are not together, we don’t have to deal with the whole Hallmark Card, Easter bunny side of things,” said Father Alexander Rentel, professor of Byzantine Studies at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in Crestwood, N.Y. “That we’re on a different schedule can make it easier to for us to concentrate on what we’re supposed to be concentrating on — which is what the season means in the first place.”

Why are the dates for Easter and Pascha usually different? The short answer is that all the Eastern Orthodox churches use the ancient Julian calendar when calculating the date for this season, while the Western church began using the Gregorian calendar in the 16th century. A more complex answer is to say that, for the Orthodox, Pascha is the first Sunday after the first full moon that comes after the vernal equinox and after the Jewish Passover.

The bottom line, however, is that the Julian and Gregorian calendars are about 13 days apart and this gap will continue growing at the rate of about a week per millennium.

All of that can be hard to explain, noted Rentel, when a child at school hands another child an invitation to an Easter party.

“One kid says, ‘Happy Easter!’ and then your kid says, ‘Actually, we haven’t celebrated Easter yet.’ Then the other kid says, ‘Why not?’ and then that leads off into all kinds of conversations that can either be good or bad, depending on how comfortable your children are when they’re talking about what they believe and why.”

In other words, he said, answering questions about why your church celebrates Easter on a different Sunday is similar to answering questions about why your family fasts from meat and dairy for long periods of time, or why you go to confession, or why you make the sign of the cross and pray before eating lunch in the school cafeteria. Any strong belief that clashes with the surrounding culture is going to lead to questions.

“These are questions about who we really are,” said Rentel.

Identity questions can be especially complex for the Orthodox in North America. There are 250 million Orthodox believers worldwide — the second largest Christian church — but only 5 million in the United States. The Orthodox flock in the “new world” remains divided into a dozen jurisdictions, each with ethnic and historical ties to a mother church abroad.

Thus, there are times when it’s hard to draw a line between ethnic traditions and Orthodox traditions. It’s easy for the rites of Holy Pascha to turn into My Big Fat Greek — or Russian, or Lebanese, or Bulgarian — Easter. Someday, the parishes founded by converts into Orthodoxy (like my own near Baltimore) may be tempted to celebrate My Big Fat Ex-Evangelical Protestant Easter. It could happen.

What the Orthodox call the “small t” traditions are important, said Rentel. The family baskets packed with holiday foods, the blood-red eggs, the joyous dances and the other ties that bind are important. But what cannot be sacrificed are the “Big T” traditions found in the 500-plus pages of prayers, scriptures and rituals that guide the spiritual journey from Palm Sunday to Holy Pascha.

The final sermon is always the same — year after year, century after century — no matter where Pascha services are held. All Orthodox priests, by tradition, read the Easter sermon of St. John Chrysostom, which dates to about 400 AD. As the sermon ends, the preacher called “the golden mouthed” summed everything up:

“O death, where is thy sting? O hell, where is thy victory?

“Christ is risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!

“Christ is risen, and the evil ones are cast down!

“Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!

“Christ is risen, and life is liberated!

“Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;?for Christ having risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

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One of the Church of England’s most famous hymns, after all, offers this somber vision of industrialization from poet William Blake: “And did the countenance divine shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here among those dark satanic mills?”

Nevertheless, a recent sermon by the U.S. Episcopal Church’s outspoken leader raised eyebrows as it circulated in cyberspace. Some traditionalists were not amused by a bookish discussion of bovine flatulence on the holiest day in the Christian year.

In her Easter message, Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori stressed that all Christians should let their faith shape their actions in real life and, thus, affect the world around them.

“How can you be the sacrament, the outward and visible sign, of the grace that you know in the resurrected Christ? How can your living let others live more abundantly?” she asked, before turning to environmental concerns.

“We are beginning to be aware of the ways in which our lack of concern for the rest of creation results in death and destruction for our neighbors,” added Jefferts Schori, who has a doctorate in oceanography. “We cannot love our neighbors unless we care for the creation that supports all our earthly lives. …

“When atmospheric warming, due in part to the methane output of the millions of cows we raise each year to produce hamburger, begins to slowly drown the island homes of our neighbors in the South Pacific, are we truly sharing good news?”

This short sermon seemed to focus more on affirming the doctrines of Al Gore than on proclaiming the reality of the Resurrection, said Father Kendall Harmon, canon theologian of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina and editor of The Anglican Digest. This is regrettable, since it’s crucial for the modern church to do more to help protect the environment. This concern is, in fact, linked to Easter and to the ultimate hope for the renewing of God’s creation, he said.

“The problem isn’t so much what the presiding bishop said in this sermon, but what she all but left out of it,” said Harmon. “The emphasis is totally on this one ethical dimension of our faith. … That’s important, but she didn’t really connect it to what is the most important reality of all for Christians, which is that Jesus truly is risen from the dead and that really happened in time and in history and that changes everything — literally everything.”

On the other side of the Anglican aisle, the Easter message offered by the leader of a controversial missionary movement also addressed social issues, but did so after a strong affirmation of a literal resurrection.

Then, Bishop Martyn Minns linked the doctrine of the empty tomb to the church’s belief that miracles continue today.

“I have seen it. I have seen men and women who were dead to the things of God come alive — I have seen blind people be given their sight and I have seen sick people made well,” said Minns, who leads the Convocation of Anglicans in North America. This is a network of conservative churches that have fled the Episcopal Church and are now linked to the Anglican Church of Nigeria.

“I have known people who were locked into patterns of abuse and addiction set free. … I have witnessed broken marriages made whole and children who were lost brought back home.”

It’s crucial to note that these very different bishops begin with references to the Resurrection — expressed in different ways — and then build on that doctrine to talk about issues in modern life, noted Phyllis Tickle, an Episcopalian best known for writing “God Talk in America” and other books on spirituality and culture.

The bishops do have different reference points, she said.

Jefferts Schori seems to be “starting inside the church” and then saying, “Look out there. Look at the world and see what we need to go and do.” Meanwhile, Minns is “starting inside the church” and then saying, “Come in here. This is what happens when the church is really alive.”

The sad reality in Anglicanism today, she said, “Is that both of these leaders are talking to their people, to the people that they lead, but they are no longer part of the same body.”

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But in recent weeks, the sarcastic jabs by the University of Notre Dame graduate began drawing an ominous canned response from the producers — a doomsday choir chanting “Golic’s going to hell.”

You see, Golic vowed to make a big sacrifice this year for Lent, the 40-day penitential season that precedes Easter. When he was in Catholic school, he told listeners, he was taught to give up one thing during Lent. This time around, Golic elected — rather than donuts or another great pleasure — to give up making fun of “Greeny.”

When most people think of Lent, this “giving up one thing” concept is the one thing that comes to mind, even for many of America’s 62 million Catholics. Now, many Protestants have adopted the same practice. This is, however, a modern innovation that has little or nothing to do with ancient Lenten traditions, in the West or the East.

“There are Catholics who don’t practice their faith and they may not be up on what it really means to observe Lent,” said Jimmy Akin, director of apologetics and evangelization for the Catholic Answers (Catholic.com) website. “But active Catholics know there is supposed to be real fasting and abstinence involved in Lent.

“The question is whether they want to do more, to add something extra. That is what the ‘one thing’ was supposed to be about.”

Lenten traditions have evolved through the ages. For centuries, Catholics kept a strict fast in which they ate only one true meal a day, with no meat or fish. Over time, regulations were eased to allow small meals at two other times during the day.

Today, Catholics are supposed to observe a strict fast and abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday at the start of Lent and Good Friday at the end. In most parishes they are urged to avoid meat on Fridays. However, Lenten guidelines have been eased so much in recent decades that even dedicated Catholics may become confused. Akin tries to cover the basics online in what he calls his “Annual Lent Fight” roundup.

It’s impossible to know how or when the idea of “giving up one thing” came to dominate the Lenten season, he said. The roots of the tradition may date back to the sixth century and the influential monastic Rule of St. Benedict, which added a wrinkle to the usual Lenten guidelines.

“During these days, therefore, let us add something to the usual amount of our service, special prayers, abstinence from food and drink, that each one offer to God … something above his prescribed measure,” states the Rule. “Namely, let him withdraw from his body somewhat of food, drink, sleep, speech, merriment, and with the gladness of spiritual desire await holy Easter.”

The key, Akin explained, is that this was supposed to be an extra sacrifice. The Rule even tells the monks to seek the approval of their spiritual fathers before taking on an extra discipline, so as not to be tempted by pride.

“It’s understandable that when you have a season in which you’re supposed to do something — like penance — there will always be people who want to do more. They will want to observe both the letter and the spirit of the law,” said Akin. “At the same time, you’re going to have people who want to go in the opposite direction. They will want to find a way to do the bare minimum, to set the bar as low as possible.”

It’s also possible, he said, that the “give up one thing” tradition grew out of another understandable practice. Parents and Catholic teachers have long urged small children — who cannot keep a true fast for health reasons — to do what they can during Lent by surrendering something symbolic, such as candy or a favorite television show.

But if grownups stop practicing the true Lenten disciplines, then the “one thing” standard is what remains.

“You can have a good example set at home and then undermined at school or it can happen the other way around,” said Akin. “Our children need to see the faith lived out at home and the school and in the parish. You need consistency.”

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One of his favorites is baked-potato soup, a filling option that, at first glance, appears to be meat-free. That’s important because Phillips isn’t eating meat during the 40 days of Lent preceding Easter. Alas, baked-potato soup almost always contains chicken fat, as do many vegetable or pasta soups.

“I gave up meat for Lent last year, which was a pain in the neck,” said Phillips, who has a Catholic University of America doctorate in Patristics, the study of the early Church Fathers’ writings.

“I decided that I didn’t want to go through all of that this year, but then I realized this was actually a pretty good reason to try to do it again. … The whole reason we fast is to do something that gets our attention, something that reminds us that we’re sinners in need of redemption.”

While all this Lent talk may sound Catholic, Phillips is a convert into the conservative Missouri-Synod Lutheran Church. He grew up “low church” evangelical and is still adapting to a denomination that includes both modern multimedia megachurches and congregations that embrace old hymns, “high church” liturgy and some ancient traditions.

Phillips attends Immanuel Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Alexandria, Va., a small church near Washington, D.C., that includes many who are striving to embrace fasting, almsgiving, Vespers services and other Lenten disciplines. Some are avoiding meat, while others are surrendering one cherished pleasure — such as desserts, soft drinks, pizza or candy. Phillips said a friend is “trying to give up sarcasm for Lent.”

But Lutherans are Lutherans and these believers are not following a specific set of Lenten rules. They are not Roman Catholics or Orthodox Christians who, to one degree or another, follow ancient traditions that ask them to fast from meat or even from meat and all dairy products.

For traditional Lutherans the words of Augsburg Confession, article XXVI, are clear: “In former times men taught, preached, and wrote that distinctions among foods and similar traditions which had been instituted by men serve to earn grace and make satisfaction for sin. For this reason new fasts, new ceremonies, new orders, and the like were invented daily, and were ardently and urgently promoted, as if these were a necessary service of God by means of which grace would be earned if they were observed and a great sin committed if they were omitted.”

The writings of Martin Luther make it clear that he was rebelling against practices common in the medieval Catholic churches and monasteries of his day, said Immanuel Pastor C.S. Esget.

Thus, it’s easy to conclude that Luther rejected fasting and similar disciplines altogether, when what he rejected were mandatory rules. Instead, the Protestant reformer embraced voluntary fasting and almsgiving and argued that these disciplines were like weight lifting and running — part of a spiritual exercise regime.

“The key is that anything that smacks of legalism will raise all kinds of red flags for Lutherans,” stressed Esget, who has promoted Lenten disciplines in his own kitchen as well as his pulpit. “We want to be able to say that fasting, for example, is a good thing. But the minute it becomes a requirement, then there’s going to be trouble.”

For centuries, Lutherans in Europe chose to follow many fasting traditions found in Catholicism and other Western churches, such as the Church of England. But this gradually evolved into a minimalist tradition that Esget said he has never been able to find in Luther or any other church traditions — the popular modern practice of giving up “one thing” during Lent.

“What has happened over the centuries is that many Lutherans — especially after the move to America — have tried to blend in with all of the Protestants that surround us in this culture,” he said. “So most of our traditions have faded over time into a kind of vague idea that it’s Lent, but we’re not really sure what that is supposed to mean.”

The pastor paused, struggling to define the safe middle ground between laziness and legalism, between apathy and dead ritualism.

“I wouldn’t want to see my people doing all of these things during Lent just because I laid down the law,” said Esget. “Yet, I have to admit that really wish they would do them. Does that make sense?”

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Trend watchers are even tossing around this monster statistic — one in four Americans has caught the low-carb bug. That’s a lot of bacon, sausage, eggs and cheese for the Atkins disciples and turkey, fish, egg substitutes and low-fat cheese for those who walk the way of the South Beach Diet.

This also means — with 5 million Eastern Orthodox Christians in America — that lots of people are trying to reconcile low-carb diets with the fasting discipline of Lent.

“I know that I’m struggling and everywhere I go I discover I’m not the only one,” said Chuck Powell of the national Orthodox radio program Come Receive the Light (www.receive.org). “Lent is always a challenge and that’s a good thing. But combine Lent with trying to stay on a low-carb and it’s like, ‘What is there left we can eat?’ “

This leads to new questions, he said, such as: “What is the purpose of food anyway? What is the spiritual lesson to be learned here?”

Fasting is a part of life for many religious believers, including Jews at Yom Kippur and Muslims in the season of Ramadan. During the 40-day season of Lent, which precedes Easter, faithful Catholics will abstain from meat to varying degrees. Christians in other flocks may give up sweets or some other favorite food.

But Eastern Orthodox churches urge their members to follow an ancient fast that means abstaining from meat, eggs and dairy products. Orthodox believers do eat shrimp, scallops and other shellfish, but avoid meats with bones. There are subtle fasting differences between Greeks, Russians, Arabs and other Orthodox.

Nevertheless, these traditions tend to push those keeping the fast toward rice, pasta, corn, potatoes and bread — the very foods shunned in low-carb diets. For many dieters the fear is real: What if they strive to keep the fast and, with a burst of carbohydrates, start regaining the weight they have struggled to lose?

“It seems like everybody in America is concerned about their weight and their health right now and you’d have to say that is a good thing,” said Father Christopher Metropulos of St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., founder of Come Receive the Light. “At the same time, it seems that this is making everyone totally consumed with food and the reason we fast is to try to learn not to be consumed with food. … The goal of the fast is to learn to crave God, not food.”

And it’s not just the lay people who are struggling with the fast, or being tempted to deny that these diet conflicts are real.

“I know priests who doing these diets and they are working for them,” said Metropulos. “But I asked a priest who is doing the Atkins Diet, ‘What are you going to eat during Lent?’ And he said, ‘I’ll be busy. I just won’t eat. I won’t have time to eat.’ I told him, ‘Good luck. You’ll need it.’ “

Some Orthodox people cope by sharing recipes for tofu desserts, falafel, oriental salads (the key is the right sesame-seed dressing) and every imaginable casserole that can be made with beans. They know the microwave properties of every soy product on the market. They can read food labels like scientists.

In the end, many find it easy to lose sight of what Lenten fasting is supposed to be about in the first place, said Father Matthew Streett of Saints Peter and Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church in Potomac, Md. The goal is to discipline the will and to encourage repentance. Anyone who thinks of fasting as a form of dieting is missing the point.

“Fasting from food is only one aspect of fasting,” he said, in a commentary written for strugglers. “Lent is a time for turning away from the emptier pleasures of our society: television, video games and the other forces that often do more to harm family communication and bonding rather than help.

“In Lent, we should examine our lives and isolate the influences that are destructive or silly, the habits that draw us away from God.”

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But Father William Fulco is getting used to it, as Mel Gibson completes his cathartic epic “The Passion of the Christ.”

While mixing dialogue the other day, Gibson hit a scene in which a man standing at a door lacked something to say. The director needed a line — right now. Fulco’s first question was unique to this project: Was this character supposed to speak Latin or first-century Aramaic?

“Mel said the camera was not on the speaker’s face, so we did not need to synchronize what he said with his the movements of his mouth,” said Fulco, who translated the screenplay into the two ancient languages, with English subtitles.

“The character needed to say something in Aramaic in the ballpark of, ‘What do you want?’ So I had him say in rather colloquial early Aramaic, ‘MAH? MAH BA’EH?’ That is literally, ‘What? What wanting?’ “

That worked.

It has been nearly two years since Fulco answered the telephone and heard a strange voice blurt out: “Hey Padre! It’s Mel!”

Gibson’s proposal was unusual, but fit the Jesuit’s skills as a professor of ancient Mediterranean studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Fulco began digging into Hebrew texts seeking the roots of the now-dead Aramaic language, while simultaneously exploring dialects such as Syriac spoken today in tiny Christian enclaves in Iran, Syria and Turkey. He also stepped into heated academic debates between those who favor a more Italian-friendly Latin and those who reject this approach.

“I’m getting hate mail about Latin pronunciations,” said Fulco. “On guy wrote who was angry about what he called ‘these ecclesiastical bastardizations’ of the Latin. Not only was he going to boycott the movie, he said he was going to call his high school Latin teacher and tell her to boycott the movie as well. …

“I have to keep reminding people: This is not a documentary. We had to make artistic choices.”

Legions of critics, of course, oppose the film for other reasons. Liberal Catholics and some Jewish leaders claim the script is tainted by anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, Gibson — who has invested $25 million in the project — has previewed early versions to rapt audiences of traditional Catholics, evangelicals and others. The film opens on 2,000 U.S. screens on Feb. 25, which is Ash Wednesday.

It is crucial to realize that the images and language at the heart of “The Passion of the Christ” flow directly out of Gibson’s personal dedication to Catholicism in one of its most traditional and mysterious forms — the 16th century Latin Mass.

“I don’t go to any other services,” the director told the Eternal Word Television Network. “I go to the old Tridentine Rite. That’s the way that I first saw it when I was a kid. So I think that that informs one’s understanding of how to transcend language. Now, initially, I didn’t understand the Latin. … But I understood the meaning and the message and what they were doing. I understood it very fully and it was very moving and emotional and efficacious, if I may say so.”

The goal of the movie is to shake modern audiences by brashly juxtaposing the “sacrifice of the cross with the sacrifice of the altar — which is the same thing,” said Gibson. This ancient union of symbols and sounds has never lost its hold on him. There is, he stressed, “a lot of power in these dead languages.”

Thus, the seemingly bizarre choice of Latin and Aramaic was actually part of the message. The goal of Gibson’s multicultural, multilingual team was to make a statement that transcended any one time, culture and tongue.

“We didn’t want another movie with Jesus as some kind of Aryan superman or Jesus as a surfer,” said Fulco. “We saw one movie in which Jesus was almost this Michael Jackson kind of character. Try to imagine that. …

“We didn’t want an American Jesus, or a Japanese Jesus or a French Jesus. What we wanted was a language that allowed Jesus to be none of these nationalities, so that he can be all of them at the same time. This is a universal story.”

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