Septuagesima Sunday (70 Days)

Traditionally, Easter is reckoned in this way:

The first Sunday

Following the first full moon

On or after the day of the ecclesiastical vernal equinox, March 21.

This is the reason why the dates of Easter and Lent vary each year.

This formula was authorized by the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, and  adjusted in 1582, to synchronize Easter with the new Gregorian calendar which was adopted in the West that year.  (The Eastern Orthodox Churches still use the older Julian calendar - which means that the Eastern and Western dates for Easter and Lent are frequently not the same, although occcasionally they will line up.)  Counting back 40 days from the date of Easter in any given year (not counting the Sundays), we come to Ash Wednesday, and define the period between Ash Wednesday and Easter as Lent. According to the traditional liturgical calendar, from the 600’s through the middle of the 20th century, the last three Sundays before Ash Wednesday comprised a special pre-Lenten season, a time for the faithful to prepare for their penitential regimen.  

This Pre-Lenten season was a time offered to her children by the Church to prepare them (and us!) and shepherd them (and us!) through our Lenten journey, which was, in turn, a time of preparation for the triumphal rejoicing of Easter.  External signs of penitence prior to Lent in the Scripture passages, prayers and music of the liturgy, beckoned the faithful  to prepare for the disciplines of Lent, so that “not only with our lips, but in our lives,” we might have true  sorrow for sins, and live in hope of our deliverance from death on the glorious feast of the Resurrection.

The third Sunday before Lent (70 days before Easter) was called Septuagesima, remembering the seventy-year exile of the Hebrews in Babylon (a figure of our own exile due to sin). The second Sunday of Pre-Lent was called Sexagesima, since it fell about 60 days before the Paschal feast, and the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday was named Quinquagesima, falling about fifty days before Easter.  Sadly, pre-Lent was taken away in the Ordinary Form after Vatican II, so that sometimes in spite of our best intentions, Lent seems to sneak up unawares for those who worship according to the ordinary Form, and they are not prepared.  However, the pre-Lenten season has been preserved in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, in the calendar of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, and a similar period is observed in the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches. To say the least, it is a blessing to those who observe the season.

In medieval England, the season of Pre-Lent was initiated by the ritual “burying of the Alleluia” just after First Vespers of Septuagesima at which Alleluia was sung for the last time until the Easter Vigil.  The word “alleluia” was actually written on parchment and buried in a little casket until it was “resurrected” at the Easter Vigil. This ceremony illustrated the captivity of sin until Christ, by His victory, burst forth from the tomb, making all things new, and giving us tongues to again sing "Alleluia! He is risen!"  This period of Pre-Lent was meant to help  transition from the festivity of Christmastide, to prepare for the more somber season of Lent. It was not meant to be a period of obligatory fasting or abstinence, but a time of voluntary self-examination and discernment to ready our senses, minds, and souls for the rigors of the coming season, and to formulate a personal rule of self-denial in order to keep a more holy Lent.