One of the joys of the traditional liturgy is to follow a liturgical cycle that does not contain any such strange 'season' as the Novus Ordo's 'ordinary time'. Which is simply and properly called 'Time after Pentecost'.
In the traditional liturgical cycle, we are now in the short pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima, which began yesterday, Septuagesima Sunday.
Septuagesima and Lent are both times of penance - Septuagesima being a time of voluntary fasting in preparation for the obligatory Great Fast of Lent.
The theme is the Babylonian exile, the “mortal coil” we must endure as we await the Heavenly Jerusalem. Sobriety and somberness reign liturgically; the Alleluia and Gloria are banished.
The Sundays of Septuagesima are named for their distance away from Easter:
• The first Sunday of Septuagesima gives its name to the entire season.
Septuagesima means 'seventieth', and Septuagesima Sunday comes roughly seventy days before Easter. This seventy represents the seventy years of the Babylonian Captivity. It is on this Sunday that the alleluia is “put away,” not to be said again until the Vigil of Easter.
• The second Sunday of Septuagesima is known as Sexagesima, which means 'sixtieth' - we are roughly sixty days from Easter.
• The third Sunday of Septuagesima is known as Quinquagesima, which means 'fiftieth'.
Quadragesima means 'fortieth' which is the name of the first Sunday of Lent and the Latin name for the entire season of Lent.
Throughout this short Season and that of Lent (next Season), Mass and the daily Divine Office show a deepening sense of penance and somberness, culminating in Passiontide (the last two weeks of Lent), that will suddenly and joyously end at the Vigil of Easter on Holy Saturday when the alleluia returns and Christ's Body is restored and glorified.”
Dom Gueranger describes the Sexagesima Season in his classic book,
The Liturgical Year:
The season of Septuagesima comprises the three weeks immediately preceding Lent. It forms one of the principal divisions of the liturgical year, and is itself divided into three parts, each part corresponding to a week: the first is called Septuagesima; the second, Sexagesima; the third, Quinquagesima.
All three are named from their numerical reference to Lent, which, in the language of the Church, is called Quadragesima, that is, Forty, because the great Feast of Easter is prepared for by the holy exercises of forty days.
The words Quinquagesima, Sexagesima, and Septuagesima, tell us of the same great solemnity as looming in the distance, and as being the great object towards which the Church would have us now begin to turn all our thoughts, desires, and devotion.
Now, the Feast of Easter must be prepared for by forty days of recollection and penance. Those forty days are one of the principal seasons of the liturgical year, and one of the most powerful means employed by the Church for exciting in the hearts of her children the spirit of their Christian vocation.
It is of the utmost importance that such a season of grace should produce its work in our souls – the renovation of the whole spiritual life. The Church, therefore, has instituted a preparation for the holy time of Lent.
She gives us the three weeks of Septuagesima, during which she withdraws us, as much as may be, from the noisy distractions of the world, in order that our hearts may be more readily impressed by the solemn warning she is to give us at the commencement of Lent by marking our foreheads with ashes.
This prelude to the holy season of Lent was not known in the early ages of Christianity: its institution would seem to have originated in the Greek Church. Besides the six Sundays of Lent, on which by universal custom the faithful have never fasted, the practice of this Church prohibited fasting on the Saturdays likewise; consequently their Lent was short by twelve days of the forty spent by our Savior doing penance in the desert. To make up the deficiency, they were obliged to begin their Lent many days earlier.
The Church of Rome had no such motive for anticipating the season of those privations which belong to Lent; for, from the earliest antiquity, She kept the Saturdays of Lent as fasting days. The Gallican liturgy, it is true, had retained the Greek custom; but it was abolished by the zeal of King Pepin and St. Karl the Great.
At the close of the 6th century, St. Gregory the Great alludes, in one of his homilies, to the fast of Lent being less than forty days, owing to the Sundays which come during that holy season. It was therefore, after the pontificate of St. Gregory, that the last four days of Quinquagesima were added to Lent, in order that the number of fasting days might be exactly forty.
As early as the 9th century, the custom of beginning Lent on Ash Wednesday was of obligation in the whole Latin Church. All the manuscript copies of the Gregorian Sacramentary, which bear that date, entitle this Wednesday In capite jejunii, that is to say, the beginning of the fast.
But, out of respect for the form of divine service drawn up by St. Gregory, the Church does not make any important change in the Office of these four days. Up to the Vespers of Saturday, when alone She begins the Lenten Rite, She observes the rubrics prescribed for Quinquagesima week.
Peter of Blois, who lived in the 12th century, tells us what was the practice in his days: “All religious begin the fast of Lent at Septuagesima; the Greeks, at Sexagesima; the secular clergy, at Quinquagesima; and the rest of Christians, who form the Church militant on earth, begin their Lent on the Wednesday following Quinquagesima.”
The secular clergy, therefore, were bound to begin the fast two days before the laity – that is, on Monday, as we gather from the Life of St. Ulrich, Bishop of Augsburg, written in the 10th century. Quinquagesima was then called Dominica carnis privium sacerdotum, that is, priests' carnival Sunday, when the announcement we made that the abstinence from meat was to begin on the following day.
This usage, however, soon became obsolete; and in the 15th century, the secular clergy, and even the monks themselves, began the Lenten fast, like the rest of the faithful, on Ash Wednesday.
There can be no doubt that the original motive for this anticipation was to remove from the Greeks the pretext of taking scandal at the Latins, if they did not fast fully forty days. Whilst faithful to Her ancient practice of fasting on Saturdays, the Roman Church gladly borrowed from the Greek Church the custom of preparing for Lent, by giving to the liturgy of the three preceding weeks a tone of holy mournfulness.
Even as early as the beginning of the 9th century, the Alleluia and Gloria were suspended in the Septuagesima Offices. In the second half of the 11th century, Pope Alexander II enacted that this custom be everywhere observed, beginning with the 1st Vespers of Septuagesima.
Thus was the present important period of the liturgical year, after various changes, established in the cycle of the Church. It has been there for more than a thousand years. Its name, Septuagesima (seventy), expresses, as we have already remarked, a numerical relation to Quadragesima (the forty days); although in reality, there are not 70 but only 63 days from Septuagesima to Easter. This is partly to represent a profound mystery connected with the number 70.
St. Augustine speaks of two times: the time before Easter, representing our sojourn on earth, and the time after Easter, representing eternity. The Church often speaks of two places corresponding to these two times, Babylon and Jerusalem. Now the Babylonian captivity lasted 70 years; and it is to express this mystery that the Church, according to all the great liturgists, uses the name Septuagesima for this season.
Again, the duration of the world itself, according to the ancient Christian tradition, is divided into seven ages. The human race must pass through seven ages before the dawning of the day of eternal life.
- The first age included the time from the creation of Adam to Noah;
- the second begins with Noah and the renovation of the earth by the deluge, and ends with the vocation of Abraham;
- the third opens with this first formation of God's chosen people, and continues as far as Moses, through whom God gave the Law;
- the fourth consists of the period between Moses and David, in whom the house of Juda received the kingly power;
- the fifth is formed of the years which passed between David's reign and the captivity of Babylon, inclusively; the sixth dates from the return of the Jews to Jerusalem, and takes us as far as the birth of our Savior.
- Then, finally, comes the seventh age; it starts with the rising of this merciful Redeemer, the Sun of Justice, and is to continue until the dread coming of the Judge of the living and the dead. These are the seven great divisions of time; after which, eternity.
Holy Mother Church reminds us during this season that we are sojourners upon this earth; we are exiles and captives in Babylon, that city which plots our ruin.
The Church wishes us to reflect on the dangers that beset us; dangers which arise from ourselves and from creatures. During the rest of the year She loves to hear us chant the song of Heaven, the sweet Alleluia; but now, She bids us close our lips to this word of joy, because we are in Babylon.
The leading feature, then, of Septuagesima, is the total suspension of the Alleluia, which is not to be heard again upon the earth until the arrival of that happy day, when, having suffered death with our Jesus, and having been buried together with Him, we shall rise with Him to a new life.
Perhaps we could not better show the sentiments, wherewith the Church would have her children to be filled at this period of Her year, than by quoting a few words from the eloquent exhortation, given to his people at the beginning of Septuagesima, by the celebrated St. Yvo of Chartres in the 11th century:
‘We know,' says the Apostle, ‘that every creature groaneth, and travaileth in pain even till now: and not only it, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body' (Rom. 8: 22, 23).
The creature here spoken of is the soul, that has been regenerated from the corruption of sin unto the likeness of God: she groaneth within herself, at seeing herself made subject to vanity; she, like one that travaileth, is filled with pain, and is devoured by an anxious longing to be in that country, which is still so far off…
During these days, therefore, we must do what we do at all seasons of the year, only we must do it more earnestly and fervently:
- we must sigh and weep after our ome, from which we were exiled in consequence of having indulged in sinful pleasures;
- we must redouble our efforts in order to regain it by compunction and weeping of heart…
Let us not become like those senseless invalids, who feel not their ailments and seek no remedy. We despair of a sick man who will not be persuaded that he is in danger.
- No, let us run to Our Lord, the Physician of eternal salvation. - Let us show Him our wounds, and cry out to Him with all our earnestness: ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak' (Ps. 6: 3). Then will He forgive us our iniquities, heal us of our infirmities and satisfy our desire with good things.”
A FIRST THINGS article in 2010 places Septuagesima in the context of the Christmas season that preceded it:
What's a 'gesima'?
The Church prepares for Lent
By Terry Maher
There’s been some joyous events these last few weeks — the birth of Jesus, his naming and circumcision, the first Gentiles to find him, and his baptism. On various dates and combinations from place to place through the ages, the Christian Church has offered its members celebrations of these things in its church year.
But a change is coming, one already present amid the joy.
- We know as we celebrate his birth that he was born for us so he could die for us.
- We know as his blood was spilled in circumcision, putting him under the Law, his blood would be spilled on the Cross, to redeem us from under the Law.
- We saw that the Gentiles who found him had to return by a different way, as the way of all who find him is different afterward.
- And after his baptism, Jesus will spend forty days in the desert before beginning his public ministry, wherein he will be tempted to make himself into the various false Messiahs into which Man makes him anyway so often.
- We will soon imitate those forty days for our own devotion with the season of Lent, on the way to the Cross, without which Easter is but another metaphor or myth. A change is coming.
So the church provides a transitional time between the first and second of its three great seasons, as the joyous events from preparing for his birth to his baptism, Advent-Christmas-Circumcision-Naming-Manifestation-Baptism, now turn to the literally deadly serious reason why they happened, sin and our redemption from sin.
Just like with the Christmas-related season, this has taken various forms in various places and times but within the same general pattern, and the universal practice of the Christian Church since ancient times (well, until 1960s Rome messed with it, but we’ll get to that) has been to provide a transition from the beginnings of Jesus’s earthly life to the end of it.
The Western and the Eastern Churches also calculate Easter, and thus the forty days before it, differently, but the overall pattern is the same, as is a transitional period between what leads to Easter and the Christmas season just past. In the Eastern Church this transitional period is framed by five Sundays, after the last of which Great Lent begins on Clean Monday; in the Western Church it is a little over three weeks with Lent starting on Ash Wednesday. Either way, it is there.
Candlemas ended Christmas. The 40 days of purpose, from Jesus’s birth to his mother’s purification in the
mikveh and his presentation in the Temple, is over. These 40 days are fixed, reckoned forward from Christmas, from 25 December through 2 February. The next 40 days of purpose are not fixed, reckoned backward from that to which they lead, Easter, which is not a fixed date and reckoned differently in the West and in the East. In the West, Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, will never be earlier than 4 February, so that always works out even if by just two days.
But, the transitional period, Gesimatide, can overlap with the concluding Epiphany part of the Christmas season. For the West, adding three weeks to forty days is approximately seventy days, and even with the earliest possible Easter will fall no earlier than 18 January, so Gesimatide will still always fit between the end of the Christmas cycle itself on 14 January, after the octave of the Epiphany and the Gospel portion relating the baptism of Jesus is read, and whenever Easter falls, early or late, in any given year...
On Septuagesima Sunday, the Seventieth Day before Easter, the change is apparent on various levels.
- The white vestments of Christmastime joy give way to purple or violet of repentance;
- the joyful exclamation Alleluia and other joyful expressions like the Te Deum and the Gloria are not used, and
- the readings, especially if one follows the hours of prayer, the Divine Office, begin their way through the sorry history of Man from his creation and fall on, which the Holy Saturday liturgy will recapitulate.
On Septuagesima itself, the Gospel reading is Matthew 20:1-16, the story of the workers in the vineyard, wherein we see Man the same as from the start in Eden, trying to impose his ideas of what is right on to God’s, this time arguing over whether the same wage is fair for those who worked all day, those hired at the last, and everyone in between, as if we deserved anything from God and it were not his to give and not ours to presume or demand anyway.
So we argue with God and each other over the denarius rather than taking in in gratitude from him who owed us nothing! Kind of the whole problem in a nutshell.
The Eastern Church uses the following on its five Sundays in the Pre Lenten Season: 1) the story of Zacchaeus, 2) the Publican and the Pharisee, 3) the Prodigal Son, 4) the Last Judgement, and 5) the Sunday of Forgiveness.
The world, which has ever had its early Spring celebrations, has in many lands timed them on Lent, so pre-Lent attains a nature as opposite from its Christian meaning as Advent has become the gift buying and partying season before Christmas.
At the beginning of Lent, fasting in some form is observed, usually involving abstaining from meat, and the most likely origin of the the name for the worldly face of all this, carnival, is a farewell to meat (flesh), from the Latin root carne- for meat or flesh (as in carnivore) and vale, good-bye (as in valedictory).
In most but not all places, Septuagesima is the start of carnival season, to end just before Lent starts on Ash Wednesday. As the church prepares for the penitential season of Lent the world enjoys the flesh, in all senses of the word.
In the [Novus Ordo of the] Western Church, if one follows the lead of the Great Whore, Rome, as unfortunately many have,
the transitional pre-Lenten period has been abolished altogether! And not only is this important transition dropped, the period of time it formerly took is simply counted as Ordinary Time.
That would be bad enough if ordinary here meant what ordinary ordinarily means. Ordinary here means the literal meaning of ordinary, which is, something that has no particular name or identity but is simply numbered. So in the Novus Ordo and the various adaptations of it, this significant time of transition from the Christmas cycle to the Easter cycle simply ceases to exist, in numbered anonymity, in the face of nearly two millennia of Christian observance in varying forms, and the continuing observance of those who do not follow suit. Well, when you’re the Whore of Babylon, you do stuff like that, maybe even have to do stuff like that. Not a lead for the Church of Christ to follow.
Actually, at first in English, Lent itself followed the Gesima pattern and was called Quadragesima, meaning referring to 40 days, the duration of Lent in the West, which was also the name of the first Sunday in Lent, a word that then just meant Spring. This still survives in other languages. For example in Spanish the word is
Cuaresma for Lent. No word yet on whether Rome can get languages like Spanish to quit calling Lent after a pattern it has abolished.
The world, though, seems securely attached to its traditions; Carnival season will endure though Pre-Lent is done in. Who knows? Maybe the next council can get Ash Wednesday moved to the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, for “pastoral reasons” of course, like they jacked around the date of Epiphany, or move it to the Monday after and call it reclaiming our ancient Greek roots.
The Eastern Church still has its Pre-Lenten Season.
Join the Christian Church, East or West, in this transition, whatever your church body may have chosen to do, as we turn to the preparation for Lent, the observance of that for which he whose birth we recently celebrated came to die and then rise again, and the Easter and Pentecost joy to follow in anticipation of the eternal joy of heaven!
We start with learning from the workers in the vineyard not to haggle over the denarius but understand whose it is and that it is a gift, or, from the call of Jesus to Zacchaeus, who collected taxes for the foreign oppressors, that he doesn’t have to climb a tree to see him, that he is coming to his very house — which btw produced more grumbling about what is right and just — after which Zacchaeus repented and made restitution to his brethren.
The Son of Man has indeed come to seek and save the lost — don’t worry about being seeker-sensitive, HE is the seeker — whether that be those who cast aside their own people for power or those who are idle because they are not hired, as we all seek our own gain first by nature and are all “unemployable” before the justice of God, who shows us mercy instead in Christ Whom He has sent.
Here are the readings for the three Sundays of Gesimatide. It has been noted that the three correspond with the three “solas” of the Lutheran Reformation.
Septuagesima Sunday
Introit: Psalm 18:5,6,7. Verse Psalm 18:2,3.
Collect.
O Lord, we beseech Thee favourably to hear the prayers of Thy people that we, who are justly punished for our offences, may be mercifully delivered by The goodness, for the glory of Thy name, through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Our Saviour, who liveth etc.
Epistle: 1 Cor 9:24 - 10:5.
Gospel.: Matthew 20:1-16. The Workers in the Vineyard.
Sola gratia, by grace alone.
Sexagesima Sunday
Introit.: Psalm 44:23-26. Verse Psalm 44:2.
Collect.
O God, who seest that we put not our trust in anything that we do, mercifully grant that by Thy power we may be defended against all adversity, through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Our Lord, who liveth etc.
Epistle: 2 Cor 11:19 - 12.9
Gospel: Luke 8:4-15. The Sower and the Seed.
Sola scriptura, by scripture alone.
Quinquagesima Sunday
Introit: Psalm 31:3,4. Verse Psalm 31:1.
Collect.
O Lord, we beseech Thee, mercifully hear our prayers and, having set us free from the bonds of sin, defend us from all evil, through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Our Lord, who liveth etc.
Epistle: 1 Cor 13:1-13.
Gospel: Luke 18:31-43. Healing the Blind Man.
Sola fide, by faith alone.
In 2007, Fr Hunwicke wrote this:
Where have the Gesimas gone?
The liturgical year is to be revised so that the traditional customs and discipline of the sacred seasons can be preserved or restored to meet the conditions of modern times; their specific character is to be retained so that they may duly nourish the piety of the faithful.
- Vatican II, Sacrosanctum Concilium
Constitution on the Liturgy, Paragraph 107
Well, the pre-Lent Season of Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima somehow seems to have missed out on that.
The pre-Lent Season certainly had a specific character. It entered the Liturgy at a time when Rome had been sacked ... have I got this right ... some seven times; catastrophic floods had, as they still do in some parts of the world today, led to typhoid; the Lombards were relocating the population of Latium to the slave-markets of the North.
So the Bishop and people of Rome resorted to penitential supplication in the three basilicas of the three patrons of Rome, Ss Lawrence, Paul, and Peter, which stood like fortresses at the approaches to the city. They prayed in penitence, seeing their calamities as the punishment fo their offences, begging deliverance. As Dr Cranmer translated the ancient Septuagesima collect:
O Lord, we beseech thee favourably to hear the prayers of thy people: that we, who are justly punished for our offences; may be mercifully delivered by thy goodness for the glory of thy Name.
- Has the world changed much?
- Has the theme of the Gesimas lost any of its topicality?
- Is there any reason for the Roman Rite to continue to deny its worshippers these instructive and relevant Sundays, which it would be so easy to restore
"so that they may duly nourish the piety of the faithful"?
We come to Fr. Hunwicke's reflection yesterday on Septuagesima...
SEPTUAGESIMA
February 17, 2019
The ancient usage of the Western Church suggests you should ... now ... be reading the book of Genesis in your Divine Office. And that you should have started reading Genesis today, Septuagesima. Thus, the Roman Breviary; thus, the Anglican 1961 Lectionary for the Divine Office, authorised in the American and Australian Ordinariates (but, strangely, not in the English Ordinariate).
During Lent, of which Septuagesima is the preamble, we repent of the Fall and the mark which it has left on each successive age of human history and on each one of us.
- Lent leads up to Easter Night, with the great, the outrageous impudence of the Deacon's shout:
O felix Culpa: O blessed iniquity (that's Knox's Patrimonial translation ... now, gloriously, restored for use in the Ordinariates!!!); the marvel of Adam's Trangression which deserved such and so great a Redeemer.
- And then Eastertide invites us to live the Risen Life with and in our New Adam.
The St Pius V/Book of Common Prayer/Ordinariate Eucharistic psalmody for Septuagesima and its season express this spirituality.
Yes, I know that the Gesimas were probably introduced by S Gregory the Great at a time of great distress, strife, and chaos in Italy - which does lie behind the sense of agony and helplessness in this and other texts. My point is that
it was the Pontiff who discerned a connection between a world ravaged and disordered by the Fall ... and the realities of late sixth century Italy. How can anyone who reads the newspapers doubt that a similar connection is just as possible now?
I incline to believe that St Gregory has left us his own explanation of his liturgical creation, Septuagesima, in the passage from his writings of which the old Breviary gives us a portion in the Third Nocturn (Hom 19 in Evang.; the full text of which is handily available in PL 76 coll 1153sqq.).
- The Introit of Septuagesima Sunday is about "The sorrows of Death", recalling the Genesis theme that the pains, labours, and mortality of Man (and not least of Woman) result from the Fall.
- Speaking, according to the manuscripts, in the basilica of St Lawrence one Septuagesima morning, St Gregory explained explains the different times of the day referred to in the Sunday's EF Gospel (the parable of the Husbandman hiring labourers for his vineyard): "The morning of the world was from Adam to Noah; the third hour, Noah to Abraham; Sixth, Abraham to Moses; Ninth, Moses to the Lord's Advent; eleventh, from the Lord's Advent to the end of the world".
- The EF Epistle reading ends with the disobedience of many in Jewry in the time of Moses ("in many of them God was not well-pleased"); the Gospel concludes "Many were called but few were chosen".
While there is no doubt that the Tradition has seen this applying to those Jews who rejected the Messiah's call, Bible and Fathers leave no room whatsoever for complacency on the part of Gentile Christians.
The whole point of I Corinthians 10, from which the Septuagesima EF Epistle is taken, is that the fall from grace which happened to some who were "baptized into Moses" is just as much a fall awaiting some of those who have been baptised into Christ.
And the passage from St Gregory selected for Matins ends sharply: "At the Eleventh hour the Gentiles are called; to whom it is said 'Why are you standing here lazy all day?'" St Gregory goes on to ask "Look what a lot of people we are gathered here, we're packing the walls of the church, but, y'know (
tamen), who can know how few there are who're numbered in the flock of God's chosen?"
Divine election ... Human disobedience ... its just punishment in the tribulations of the present age... followed by a call to Christians to recollect their own sinfulness before Lent begins: it all looks to my eye like a very coherent Proper.
Perhaps it is a trifle politically incorrect: the Journalist In The Street tends indignantly to demand of fashionable bishops whether Disasters are a Divine Punishment and why it is that a good God ... all that ... but Stay: my assumption is that this blog has a superior class of theologically literate readers who can do the theodicy stuff for themselves.
I urge those who can, to read St Gregory's entire homily; it ends with a lurid and lengthy account of an unrepentant sinner at the point of death; it is a real mission-sermon rant such as Fr Faber might have preached to his recalcitrant Irishmen before he moved on to (what Newman called) the 'second rate gentry' of Brompton.
St Gregory wasn't half the Latin stylist that S Leo was; but, to be regretfully honest, I sometimes doubt whether the
plebs sancta Dei understood much of S Leo's lapidary preachings ... but I bet you could have heard a pin drop when S Gregory launched into one of his purple passages and the pontifical spittle was really flying.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/02/2019 20:04]