In the traditional liturgy, the Christmas season ends on Candlemas, February 2, the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, which also doubles as
the Feast of the Purification of Mary. So the Christmas decorations are still up at Holy Innocents Church where, however, today, with the rest of the Catholic
world that celebrates the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, we marked Septuagesima Sunday, the start of the annual preparation for Lent - and the priest's purple
vestments were a counterpoint to the red poinsettias adorning the altar. Here is more information on the so-called -gesima Sundays and the whole pre-Lent
preparation:
Septuagesima Sunday:
BRING BACK PRE-LENT!
January 27, 2018
While in the new-fangled calendar Sunday is the 4th in Ordinary Time, and celebrated in green vestments,in the traditional Roman calendar this Sunday is called Septuagesima, Latin for the “Seventieth” day before Easter. Already!
These pre-Lenten Sundays prepare us for the discipline of Lent, which once was far stricter.
The number 70 is more symbolic than arithmetical. The Sundays which follow are Sexagesima (“sixtieth”) and Quinquagesima (“fiftieth”) before Ash Wednesday brings in Lent, called in Latin Quadragesima, “Fortieth”.
One of our frequent commentators here enriched my view of the numerical adjectives:
A fairly literal interpretation of the terms Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima:
• Septuagesima Sunday is the 63rd day before Easter and thus falls in the 7th (septimus) decade or 10-day period consisting of the 61st to 70th days before Easter;
• Sexagesima Sunday is the 56th day before Easter and falls in the 6th (sextus) decade consisting of the 51st to 60th days before Easter; and
• Quinquagesima Sunday is the 49th day before Easter and falls in the 5th (quintus) decade consisting of the 41st to 50th days before Easter.
Septuagesima gives us a more solemn attitude for Holy Mass.
Purple is worn on Sunday rather than the green of the time after Epiphany. These pre-Lent Sundays also have Roman stations, just as each day of Lent does. The station for Septuagesima is St. Lawrence outside the walls. St. Gregory the Great (+604) preached a fiery sermon here, which we have, and which is read in part for Matins in the traditional Office. The traditional Office also presents three figures over the three pre-Lent Sundays, all foreshadowing Christ: Adam, Noah and Abraham.
When we want to follow what Holy Church is giving us in our sacred liturgical worship we should remember that Mass is only part of the picture. We also have the Office, the “liturgy of the hours”. They mesh together and reinforce and complete each other. PLEASE don’t say “the liturgy” when you mean “the Mass”. Say “Mass”.
Alleluia is sung for the last time at First Vespers of Septuagesima and is then excluded until Holy Saturday.
There was once a tradition of “burying” the Alleluia, with a depositio ceremony, like a little funeral. A hymn of farewell was sung. There was a procession with crosses, tapers, holy water, and a coffin containing a banner with Alleluia. The coffin was sprinkled, incensed, and buried. In some places, such as Paris, a straw figure bearing an Alleluia of gold letters was burned in the churchyard. Somehow that seems very French to me. This custom has been rediscovered and it is being revived far and wide. Each year we see photos of the charming moment from more and more parishes.
The prayers and readings for the Masses of these pre-Lenten Sundays were compiled by Gregory the Great, Pope in a time of great turmoil and suffering. Looking at Gregory’s time, with the massive migration of peoples, the war, the turmoil, you are reminded of our own times.
I like to imagine the Romans who were aspiring to be brought into the Church at Easter, the catechumens. They were brought out to St. Lawrence for today’s Mass. In the echoing space, wreathed in smoke and shafts of light, they heard chanted antiphons about suffering and crying out to God. Then they heard the reading in which Paul says that God wasn’t pleased with everyone who drank from the rock. These catechumens might have looked at each other and exclaimed: “What am I getting myself into?!?” Indeed, I think that was the intended effect of the formulary.
But, if throughout the Mass formulary there are grim messages, there are also signs of great hope. God does hear the cry of those who invoke him.
In the Novus Ordo of Paul VI there is no more pre-Lent. A terrible loss.
We are grateful that with Summorum Pontificum the pre-Lent Sundays have regained something of their ancient status. May they through “mutual enrichment” correct the Novus Ordo...
Septuagesima: In the beginning
January 28, 2018
The lessons for Matins introduce the theme of the penitential pre-Lenten season of
- Septuagesima: Creation and Fall, and Original Sin;
- God's intervention in human History to purify mankind through a remnant in an ark (Sexagesima week) and to choose a People for himself; and the will of the unfathomable Divinity to reveal himself through his chosen people of Israel; and
- the Mystery of the Incarnation, through which the promise to Abraham ("in thee shall all the kindred of the earth be blessed", First Lesson in the Matins for Quinquagesima Sunday) would be fulfilled by the Divine Son of the Blessed Virgin ("I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel", Third Lesson in the Matins for Wednesday in Septuagesima week).
The reality of Original Sin ("I am the Immaculate Conception") and the great need for penitence in our times ("Penance! Penance! Penance!") were also the messages of the memorable events which began on February 11, 1858 [Mary's apparitions to Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes]:
But the world, which today affords so many justifiable reasons for pride and hope, is also undergoing a terrible temptation to materialism ...
This materialism is not confined to that condemned philosophy which dictates the policies and economy of a large segment of mankind. It rages also in a love of money which creates ever greater havoc as modern enterprises expand, and which, unfortunately, determines many of the decisions which weigh heavy on the life of the people.
It finds expression in the cult of the body, in excessive desire for comforts, and in flight from all the austerities of life. It encourages scorn for human life, even for life which is destroyed before seeing the light of day. ...
May priests be attentive to [the Blessed Virgin's] appeal and have the courage to preach the great truths of salvation fearlessly. The only lasting renewal, in fact, will be one based on the changeless principles of faith, and it is the duty of priests to form the consciences of Christian people. (Pius XII, Le Pèlerinage de Lourdes)
May we all find good priests to guide us as we "go up to Jerusalem" (Gospel for Quinquagesima Sunday) and help us to be released from the bonds of our sins (
peccatorum vinculis: Collect for Quinquagesima Sunday), for the burdensome truth remains unchanged: "many are called, but few are chosen" (Gospel for Septuagesima Sunday).
Septuagesima Sunday
January 26, 2018
Until the reformers of the 1960s abolished it, Septuagesima had, for a millennium and a half at least, pointed the Latin Church to the Pentateuch [the first five books of the Old Testament], and its structural centrality to Christian understanding and to the living of the Christian life. A proper respect for the Pentateuch is something that would come more easily to Catholics if we all had a deeper inculturation into our Jewish roots. Sadly, the the 'reformers' of the 1960s weakened this rather than enhancing it.
So: Septuagesima and its week give us Eve, and Adam, and their Creation; and their Fall. Members of the Anglican Patrimony do not need (but perhaps some others do) a recommendation to read an imaginative piece of theological fiction by the great Anglican apologist Professor C S Lewis: his novel
Voyage to Venus, alternatively known as
Perelandra. It constitutes an extended meditation on the Fall and on the strategies of the Enemy.
This morning, I would like to offer you a few sentences which seem to me to be highly useful solvents of "The Enlightenment" and of its demonic errors. And just the sort of thing which we need before opening the Word of God at the beginning of Genesis and submitting ourselves to what we find there. [I have made one or two tiny syntactical adjustments.]
" ... the triple distinction of truth from myth and of both from fact is purely terrestrial - part and parcel of that unhappy division between soul and body which resulted from the Fall.
Even on Earth the sacraments exist as a permanent reminder that the division is neither wholesome nor final. The Incarnation was the beginning of its disappearance ...
The whole distinction between things accidental and things designed, like the distinction between fact and myth, is purely terrestrial. The pattern is so large that within the little frame of earthly experience there appear pieces of it between which we can see no connection, and other pieces between which we can. Hence we rightly, for our use, distinguish the accidental from the essential. But step outside that frame and the distinction drops down into the void, fluttering useless wings."
(St John Paul remarked that, in God's Providence, there are no such things as coincidences.)
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/01/2018 06:04]