The traditional liturgical calendar has today as Septuagesima Sunday. The three Sundays preceding Ash Wednesday are called Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima Sundays — meaning, respectively, the 70th, 60th and 50th day before Easter. These days are not part of Lent (the Quadragesima Sunday), but serve to call to mind this period that requires much preparation. (As Fr. George Rutler was wont to say, “There was a certain pastoral logic to the old custom of preparing for Lent by numbering the weeks leading up to it with elegant Latin numbering: Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima. It is hard to take a sudden plunge into Lent ‘cold turkey.’ ”) Fittingly, on these Sundays, the Gloria and Alleluia are omitted, and violet vestments are used. The Introit reminds us that Man is the victim of the sin of Adam and of his own sins:

In this week’s church bulletin, Father Rutler shares his thoughts on Septuagesima Sunday:

I

t seems that the Christmas decorations are coming down just in time for Easter. in the last three hundred years, Easter has been celebrated on March 23 [as it will be this year, in 2008] five times: in 1704, 1788, 1845, 1856 and 1913. It is almost as early as it can ever be, and it will not be on March 23 again until 2160, when all of us in our happy parish will, God willing, be celebrating in a more heavenly city. The only possible earlier date for Easter is March 22, and that happened last in 1818 and will not happen again until 2285.

In preparation for Ash Wednesday on February 6, it is right to begin now to examine our consciences and reflect on how we are growing in baptismal grace. Each one of us was baptized in obedience to our Lord’s command that his disciples preach the Gospel to all nations and baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The recent Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord was a reminder of the promises we made, or were made for us, at the font: to reject Satan and all his works and all his empty promises. As Christ wants us to believe in Christ, so the Anti-Christ does not want us to believe that there is an Anti-Christ or that his works are evil and his promises empty. Experience inevitably teaches otherwise, but we can live our lives most blessedly right now by saying to God at the start of each day: “I will serve.” The word Satan essentially means “the one who will not serve.” That Prince of Lies offers each soul many promises, and he has never kept one. Christ has never broken a single promise He made to His Church, and the greatest is that He is with us until the end of the world.

“As many of you as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). That “sanctifying grace” perfects nature and does not destroy it. Physically, after baptism we are what we were before: We did not turn into anything other than a human being. But the intellect and the will, those two parts of the soul, are now freed from the original sin of pride which sets up a barrier to God. Like a clogged artery, original sin prevents God’s grace from reaching the heart and leads to the death of soul. Washing away original sin does not eliminate concupiscence, or the tendency of human weakness to choose our will instead of God’s. Individual sins result from that. But the baptismal grace does bestow the promise of eventual triumph over death and strength to resist actual sins. That is the glorious promise of Easter, which this year fittingly follows so soon upon the celbration of the birth of Our Saviour.

~ Fr. Rutler
Church of Our Saviour
New York City
Septuagesima Sunday 2008