According to the liturgy of the Presanctified - commemorates Israel’s forty years of wandering in the wilderness, those forty years during which the chosen people, having left the captivity of Egypt and crossed the Red Sea, went forward with faith towards the far-off promised land, receiving their earthly food from God in the form of manna and their spiritual food in the form of the Ten Commandments: 

sometimes they rebelled and fell into sin, but still they reached their goal.  Lent also speaks to us of liberation, of pilgrimage, of crossing an arid desert, of the divine manna, of a meeting with God on Sinai, and also of fall and reconciliation.

Lent recalls the forty days that the Lord Jesus spent in the desert during which he contended with Satan, the tempter.  Our Lent must also be a period of fighting against temptation, and especially against the temptation of our most habitual sin.  “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Luke 4:8).  May it be granted to us, during Lent, to learn and understand these words with which the Lord opposed Satan, and which summarize the whole of the spiritual battle.

One can see that Lent is a very rich, very deep agglomeration of different elements.  They serve to purify and to enlighten us.  During the time of Lent, the Church leads us, as if by the hand, towards the radiant paschal feast.  The more serious our Lenten preparation has been, the deeper we shall enter into the mystery of Easter and gather its fruits.