I’ve been sojourning with my soul mate recently and I haven’t had much chance to get to blogging. But, this week I thought I would speak a little bit about this season known as pre-Lent and the “gesima” Sundays. There are three of them and they make up the Sundays known as pre-Lent. What is the meaning of the “gesimas” and why do we even need a three week pre-Lent season anyway? When I first heard the word “Septuagesima” as a teenager I thought, “Great… even the church has a season to celebrate some obscure algebraic formula.”
Here’s the deal. We have just been through some joyous events these last few weeks — the birth of Jesus, his naming and circumcision, the first Gentiles (Wise Men) to find him, and his baptism. On various dates and places through the ages, the Christian Church has celebrated these things in its church year.
But now a change is coming. We know, as we celebrate his birth, that Christ was born for us so he could die for us. Look at it this way; 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 Gentile Wise Men who found him had to return by a different way, and I would argue that this is what happens to those of us who find Him, because life is different afterward. After his baptism, Jesus will spend forty days in the desert before beginning his public ministry, where we read he will be tempted by the things of the world. So, we too will soon imitate those forty days for our own devotion with the season of Lent, on the way to the Cross. A change is coming.
So the church provides a transitional time between the first and second of its three great seasons - Advent-Christmas-Circumcision-Naming-Manifestation-Baptism. Now we must prepare for the serious reason why those things happened; sin and our redemption from sin.
Here we have all of these “gesima” Sundays that will fit between the end of the Christmastide, and after the octave of the Epiphany, and then the baptism of Jesus. Septuagesima is simply another word for Seventy Days; that’s all. The Septuagint, the translation into Greek of the Hebrew Scriptures by seventy scholars — and the gesima part derives from the Latin for days.
Seventieth day from Easter; no more complicated than that!
So, Septuagesima is 70 Days; Sexagesima is 60 Days, Quinqagesima is 50 Days. With the Seventieth Day, or Septuagesima, the change within the church is pretty obvious. The white vestments of Christmas time joy give way to the Green of Epiphany tide and then purple or violet of repentance and penitential meditations.
The world has always had its early spring celebrations. The interesting thing is the majority of them are timed on Lent. So pre-Lent, to the world, has become quite opposite from its Christian meaning just 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. The most likely origin of the name for the worldly face of all this is called carnival. It is a celebration before the giving up of consuming meat. In most, but not all places, Septuagesima is the start of carnival season; ending 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. Ever been to Mardi-Gras in New Orleans?
God the Son has indeed come to seek and save the lost. It’s our participation in the process that gives us time in our present state as human beings to walk the path to the cross. Change is coming. Prepare your heart and soul for God’s mercy in sending God the Son to do what we could never do on our own.
Be prepared,
Bishop Ian
