Septuagesima and Lent

1. Septuagesima

History of this Time.—To the forty days of Lent Pope Telesphorus added a week of penitence for clerks. This week bore the name of Quinquagesima, or the Fiftieth. Following this, some of the popes having authorized two repasts on Saturday to sustain the body weakened by the rigors of the fast of the preceding day, more severe than that of the other days, to make up for these seven Saturdays taken from Lent, an eighth week was added, and it bore the name of Sexagesima. Then, as, out of respect for the ascension of Our Lord, Thursday was solemnized as Sunday, a ninth week was established, called Septuagesima, to complete the forty days of fast. These different names of Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima, have been preserved in the three Sundays which precede Lent, and the liturgic period which these embrace was called the time of p. 150Septuagesima. If we take the exact signification of the word Septuagesima it indicates an interval of seventy days from the Sunday which bears this name to Easter. Although there are in reality but sixty-three days, the Church has adopted this expression, taking, according to the custom of the Scriptures, the number outlined for the actual number.

In spite of the changes wrought in the ecclesiastical discipline, Septuagesima has remained a time of half penitence and prayer. The Greek Church always begins her Lenten period from the week of Septuagesima; holy considerations of charity make her Western sister associate herself with her mourning. The spouse of Jesus Christ had another motive which reveals to us her profound knowledge of the human heart; a mother full of solicitude, she knows all its weaknesses.

After the sweet joys of Christmas, after the beautiful feasts of the Epiphany season and the more tumultuous ones of the carnival, could we at once enter into the penitential life without transition? Assuredly not. The evening twilight precedes the night; it is necessary to let the last echo of the feasts fade away little by little, before intoning the sad chant of mourning: Septuagesima becomes the preparation for Lent.

Symbolism of Septuagesima.—“There are two periods,” says St. Augustine; “one passing now in the temptations and trials of this life, the other that which will pass in the security and joys of eternity. These two periods we celebrate, the former before Easter, the latter after Easter. The time before Easter expresses the anguish of this present life; that which we celebrate after Easter signifies the beatitude which we shall one p. 151day taste. This is why we pass the former in fasting and prayer, while the second is consecrated to canticles of joy.” (In Ps. cxlviii.)

The two places which correspond to these two periods are Babylon and Jerusalem. Babylon is this world; Jerusalem is heaven. Now, the Jewish people, figure of the Christian people, was enslaved in Babylon seventy years, whence the number seventy for the days of expiation. “The Church,” say the liturgists, “has fixed this number of days to put us in mind of the captivity of Babylon and our own.” (Alcuin, Cap. de Septuag.—Gavant., p. iv. tit. 5.)

The Church, in these days, thinks but of the sorrows of her exile; clad in mourning, like the Hebrew captives, like them she weeps when she remembers Sion. In the strange land she can but repeat the sweet chants of her country, though her silent harps no longer voice the canticles of the heavenly Jerusalem. Neither the Alleluia nor the Gloria in excelsis, the Te Deum nor the Ite, Missa est, rise in the saddened arches of her temples till the day of the resurrection.

Devotion of the Forty Hours.—The worldly rejoicings which precede Lent demanding reparation, the Church established the prayers called the Forty Hours, in honor of the forty hours which elapsed between Our Lord’s condemnation and His resurrection. This devotion was inspired by the Spirit of God in the pious Cardinal Gabriel Paleotti, Archbishop of Bologna, in the sixteenth century. It owes its propagation above all to Pope Benedict XIV.

2. The Time of Lent

Instituted by the apostles in memory of the forty days of Our Lord’s fasting, Lent extends from Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday. St. Jerome observes that the number forty is always that of pain and affliction. (In Ezech., c. xxix.) The Scripture furnishes us proofs of this in great numbers. We will mention: the forty days and forty nights of rain in the deluge; the forty years of exile in the desert; the forty days of siege which preceded the destruction of Jerusalem; the forty days’ fasting of Moses and Elias.

Three great thoughts fill all the Lenten liturgy. The Church in the first place proposes to her children’s meditation the drama of the Passion of Jesus Christ; each week she follows step by step the development of the deicidal conspiracy. And then Lent was to those who were aspirants for baptism the last preparation, and the Old as well as the New Testament furnished lessons intended to make the catechumens understand the grandeur of the blessing which they were to receive. Besides this the public penitents became also during the holy season the object of the maternal solicitude of the Church, and the numerous instances of mercy with which the Epistles and Gospels are especially filled opened their hearts to confidence, the inseparable accompaniment of pardon. These three considerations are the key to the Epistles and Gospels of this holy time.

Ash Wednesday.—Ashes were not in the beginning laid upon the heads of any but sinners submitted to public penance.

Before the Mass of this day the guilty presented themselves at the church to avow their faults and to receive the ashes on their heads. They were covered at the same time with the haircloth of penance, and driven solemnly from the church doors, which did not open again to them till Holy Thursday. Through humility pious Christians mingled with the penitents. After the abolition of public penance, the Church, not wishing to deprive her children of the great teachings contained in the pious ceremony of the ashes, preserved the custom of laying them on the brows of the faithful at the beginning of Lent. Let us respond to her holy intentions, and bring to this ceremony the sentiments of Adam and Eve after their sin. The sentence pronounced against them will fall upon us: “Remember, man, that dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.”

But beside this sadness the Church has placed hope. The sign of the cross made on our foreheads with the ashes reminds us that death has been conquered by the divine Crucified One, and that, thanks to Calvary, the dust has become for redeemed man the cradle of a life glorious and immortal.

First Sunday of Lent.—In France this is called Dimanche des Brandons, or Sunday of the Torches. The reason for this is that the young people who had given themselves over too much to the license of the carnival presented themselves at the church on the first Sunday of Lent, a torch in the hand, to make a public reparation of their excess.

The reparation has fallen into disuse, but the custom of fires has survived, and the popular name of Sunday of the Torches, or the brands, remains to the first Sunday of Lent.

Fourth Sunday in Lent, called Lætare Sunday.—This name is derived from the first word of the Introit of this day. Everything speaks of joy in the liturgy of the fourth Sunday of Lent, because on this day were enrolled those who were to receive baptism at Easter, and the Church saw approaching the time for the restoration of the public penitents. In Rome on this day is blessed the golden rose, and the explanation of this ceremony will make us understand the cause of the Church’s joy. We will translate Cardinal Peter of Capua. “We read,” he says, “that the Lord Jesus, at the approach of His passion, wishing to strengthen His disciples against the scandals and humiliations to come, foretold to them often the glory of His resurrection, and even showed His glory to three of them in His transfiguration on Thabor. It is to follow the steps of the divine Master that, on the fourth Sunday of Lent—that is to say, that which immediately precedes Passion Sunday, which opens the way of sorrow—the Sovereign Pontiff, to soften the sadness of the days which are to come, announces to the faithful the glory of the resurrection, bearing a golden rose in his hand. This glory is, in fact, figured by the flower. Our Lord said that ‘His flesh should flourish like it.’ (Ps. xxvii. 7.) Among all the perishable beauty, nothing is equal to that of the flower; we have the testimony of the Saviour for this, Who said that: ‘Not Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these.’ (Matt. vi. 29.) Now, among the flowers, the rose is the most beautiful. It is then by a just title that it has been chosen to figure p. 153that glory ‘which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive.’ (I. Cor. ii. 9.) Why is it a golden rose which is anointed with musk and balm? Gold, the most precious metal, is very proper to represent the glory of Jesus Christ in His resurrection. Balm preserves the body from corruption, and expresses here the immortality of the risen Saviour. Musk is the most odoriferous of the aromatics; it is thus a symbol of the fame of Christ which His resurrection has spread everywhere, like a sweet odor, by the ministry of His apostles.” (Spicil. Solesm., t. iii. p. 495.)

This rose is carried by a clerk who precedes His Holiness, then is laid in the middle of the altar on a rich silken veil embroidered with gold. The Sovereign Pontiff usually sends it to some prince or important personage, to honor him, or as a testimony of gratitude for service rendered to the Church.

Passion Sunday.—In the Mass of the preceding Friday has been read the gospel of the raising of Lazarus. We learn from St. John that many of those who were witnesses of this miracle went, under the influence of jealousy, to the Pharisees, to inform them of what had happened. The next day, which was the Sabbath, the death of the Saviour was decided upon. From that moment Our Lord had to flee and hide Himself. To express this unheard-of humiliation, the Church veils the cross. She veils at the same time the images of the saints, for it is right that the glory of the servant should efface itself when his Master is humiliated; and the fifth Sunday of Lent was called Passion Sunday, because, in fact, the way of sorrow began for Jesus p. 154Christ in the council-hall where the black plots against His life were woven.

Feast of the Annunciation, March 25th.—The time of Septuagesima and Lent represents the militant life of man driven from the earthly paradise, and winning heaven by labor and sorrow. Fallen man had received a promise, and his tears were become less bitter. The Annunciation of Mary and the Incarnation of the Word are the accomplishment of this divine promise. In these days of penitence may man draw from this mystery proposed to his love new courage in the combat which he must sustain! No more cowardice nor murmurs in the midst of trials; the Word made flesh has foreseen them, and submitted to them Himself. One feast a year is not enough for gratitude. A voice was needed to repeat unceasingly to man the love of God in giving Himself to the world: the prayer of the Angelus received from the Church this sweet mission. Thrice a day the beloved voice of the bell repeats the message of the angel, the humility of Mary, and the abasement of the Word. The thrice-repeated Angelus will be the expression of man’s gratitude toward the adorable Trinity, Who has so mercifully intervened in this mystery. Who does not know it? The voice of the bell struck nine times brings us the musical invitation of the nine choirs of angels; let us unite ourselves with them to adore the Incarnate Word, and salute Mary. The custom of reciting a prayer in honor of Mary at the sound of the bell goes back to Urban II. This Pope ordered that all the faithful should pray morning and night to call down the blessing of Heaven on the crusades. And, since prayer said in common is more powerful, the bell gave the signal for this great manifestation of Catholic faith. We know that Jerusalem fell into the hands of the Christians. Till that time the prayer had not been said at noon. It was Calixtus III. who, following the steps of his predecessor, completed the pious practice, hoping that God, once more disarmed by prayer, would grant victory to the Catholic army then fighting in Hungary against the Turks. These various struggles ended, the Angelus remained as a chant of triumph. Some authors see in the evening Angelus a commemoration of the joyous mysteries wrought in the silence of the night; in the morning Angelus the glorious mysteries; and in that of noon, the sorrowful mysteries. These pious reflections can but make us say this prayer, which has been enriched by numerous indulgences, with greater devotion. In the first place, there is an indulgence of a hundred days each time that the Angelus is said kneeling at the sound of the bell. The Christian faithful to this daily practice may gain each month, on whatever day he chooses, a plenary indulgence. The Angelus is said standing on Sunday in honor of the Resurrection, as is the Regina Cœli during the Paschal time.

This feast goes back to the highest antiquity. We read in the Bollandists that each year Mary celebrated the anniversary of that great day when the Word, assuming our flesh, raised her to the ineffable dignity of the Mother of God. As witnesses of these feelings of gratitude, the apostles associated themselves with her, and established the feast of the Annunciation in the entire world.

Feast of the Seven Dolors.—Tradition says that Mary, meeting her Son bearing His cross, fell under the weight of her anguish. Upon the place of this awful p. 155meeting a chapel was raised which took the name of St. Mary of the Spasm, and a feast was celebrated under the same name for several centuries. At the provincial Council of Cologne, in 1413, to rebuke the audacity of new heretics called Hussites, who had laid sacrilegious hands upon the images of Jesus Christ crucified and His holy Mother, was instituted the feast of the Commemoration of the Seven Dolors of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and its celebration was fixed for the Friday of Passion Week. This feast, substituted for that of the Spasm, or rather blended with it, was eagerly accepted by the faithful. To represent the anguish of Mary, painters have shown her with her heart pierced with seven swords. According to Benedict XIV., this was the origin of the custom: Seven merchants of Florence withdrew to a mountain near that city, and there laid the foundation of the Order of Servites, or Servants of the Blessed Virgin. These pious founders, in meditating on the sorrows of their august patron, discovered seven, of which some are found in the Gospel, and others are based on other pious reasons. These sorrows are: 1st, the prophecy made in the temple by the holy old man Simeon; 2d, the flight into Egypt; 3d, the loss of Jesus in Jerusalem; 4th, the meeting of Jesus and Mary on the way to Calvary; 5th, the crucifixion; 6th, the descent from the cross; 7th, the burial. In these seven swords we may believe that Christian art has wished to represent the abyss of sorrow into which the soul of Mary was plunged; the number seven being taken for universality. This is the translation of the words of Holy Scripture applied to Mary: “Thy sorrow is great as the sea” (Lament. ii. 13).