Most people associate Lent with 40 days, even though from Ash Wednesday to the Saturday before Easter actually takes 46 days. However, in most Western traditions, the six Sundays during this period of time are not counted as part of Lent, so that the 46 days then results to 40 days. In Church tradition, each of the Sundays represent a mini-Easter, and so are not counted as part of Lent. (Since some traditions consider Holy Thursday, or Maudy Thursday, as the end of Lent - those traditions technically have 38 days of Lent if you exclude the Sundays, or 44 days if you include them, though they still emphasize 40 days of observing Lent.) (Other Christian traditions start Lent on a different day than Ash Wednesday, and exclude or include different days, but they all focus on observing 40 days of Lent.)
However, this raises the question, why 40 days? Church tradition identifies the 40 days of Lent as a commemoration of the 40 days our Lord spent in the desert fasting and facing temptation from Satan before the start of his public ministry, as recorded in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. 40 days is a significant number in Scripture from other events - rain fell on the earth for 40 days and nights in Genesis 7; Moses spent 40 days with God on Mount Sanai in Exodus 24 (fasting); Elijah spent 40 days and nights walking to Mount Horeb (the old name for Mount Sanai) in 1 Kings 19; Jonah gave the people of Ninevah 40 days to repent or be destroyed by God in Jonah 3; though much longer - the children of Israel spent 40 years wandering in the desert in their travel to the Promised Land in Numbers 14. There is something special about the number 40 in the Bible.
In the next part, I will discuss how Christians in Church tradition have commemorated the 40 days Jesus spent in the desert fasting and facing temptation.
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