At the Threshold of Exile: Septuagesima
Introduction: The Meaning of the Gesima Season
The season commonly known as Septuagesima—together with Sexagesima and Quinquagesima—forms what older liturgical writers called the fore-Lent or pre-Lenten cycle. Although suppressed in the postconciliar calendar, this season represents one of the most theologically intentional and pedagogically refined constructions of the Roman Rite. It does not yet impose fasting or external penitential discipline; rather, it prepares the soul to understand why such discipline is necessary.
The Church, in her Roman sobriety, does not demand ascetical effort without first restoring memory. Septuagesima reintroduces the faithful to the fundamental Christian narrative: creation, fall, exile, labour, and the hope of restoration. The Gesima Sundays function as a liturgical anamnesis of salvation history, stretching from Adam to Christ, and from Eden to Calvary. As Prosper Guéranger explains, this period is a solemn prelude, in which the Church gradually withdraws the language of joy so that man may once again grasp the gravity of sin and the cost of redemption.¹
The number “seventy” is not arithmetically exact but symbolically biblical. It evokes the seventy years of Israel’s captivity in Babylon, the fullness of trial, and the patience required of a fallen people awaiting deliverance.² In this sense, the Gesima season is the Church’s annual re-entry into exile—not despairing, but realistic; not yet penitential in form, but penitential in orientation.
Liturgically, the shift is unmistakable. The Alleluia—that chant proper to the language of heaven—is silenced. The Gloria disappears. Violet vestments appear. Yet fasting is withheld. The Church acts here as a wise pedagogue: before she commands bodily discipline, she restores doctrinal clarity and spiritual seriousness.
Septuagesima Sunday, the first of the Gesimas, establishes the interpretive key for the entire cycle. Its Mass propers are not a collection of loosely related texts but a unified theological argument concerning man’s fallen state, the necessity of grace, and the arduous path of salvation.
Introit – Circumdederunt me gemitus mortis (Psalm 17:5–7)
The Roman Rite opens the season with an arresting cry: “The sorrows of death surrounded me; the pains of hell encompassed me.” This is not accidental rhetoric but deliberate theological orientation. The Church begins not with exhortation but with diagnosis.
Patristic commentators consistently read this psalm not merely as David’s personal lament but as the voice of fallen humanity. Augustine insists that the Psalms often speak in persona Christi et Ecclesiae—in the voice of Christ and His Mystical Body together—and thus articulate the groaning of mankind subjected to death through sin.³ The “sorrows of death” signify not only physical mortality but the spiritual death introduced by original sin.
By placing this Introit at the threshold of the penitential cycle, the Roman liturgy makes a decisive statement: repentance begins not with moral resolve but with truthfulness about man’s condition. Septuagesima does not flatter the faithful with illusions of spiritual health. It reminds them that death reigns because sin reigns, and that deliverance must come from beyond man himself.
Collect – The Primacy of Divine Initiative
The Collect of Septuagesima is concise, juridical, and unsentimental—characteristically Roman. It acknowledges human weakness and petitions divine mercy, asking that God may graciously hear the prayers of His people and free them from the bonds of sin.
The theology implicit here is unmistakable. The prayer presumes that man is bound and requires liberation; it does not suggest that he merely needs encouragement. Long before the Pelagian controversy was formally addressed, the Roman liturgy already articulated its resolution: grace precedes effort.
This instinct was later codified doctrinally by the Second Council of Orange, which taught that even the beginning of faith and the desire for salvation are themselves gifts of grace.⁴ Septuagesima’s Collect is therefore not merely preparatory prayer but dogmatic formation, shaping the faithful to understand Lent not as self-improvement but as cooperation with divine initiative.
Epistle – 1 Corinthians 9:24–10:5: Effort Without Presumption
St Paul’s Epistle introduces the ascetical dimension of the season through the imagery of athletic contest. The Christian life is described as a race requiring discipline, restraint, and endurance. John Chrysostom observes that Paul chose this metaphor precisely to emphasise that salvation is neither automatic nor accidental.⁵
Yet the Epistle does not end with exhortation; it ends with warning. The Apostle reminds his hearers that the Israelites, despite receiving supernatural food and drink, fell in the wilderness. Privilege did not guarantee perseverance.
The Roman Rite thus confronts one of the perennial spiritual dangers: presumption. Sacramental participation, liturgical familiarity, and historical election do not exempt the believer from the demands of fidelity. Septuagesima teaches that salvation history is not a tale of inevitability but of cooperation—often failed, always dependent upon grace.
Gradual and Tract – The Silence of Exile
The replacement of the Alleluia with the Tract is one of the most distinctive features of the Gesima season. Joseph Jungmann explains that the Roman Rite suppresses expressions of jubilation when the Church wishes to emphasise the distance between the present condition of the faithful and the joy of heaven.⁶
The Tract’s extended, penitential character mirrors Israel’s long exile and the slow, patient endurance required of fallen man. The Church does not rush toward consolation. She teaches the soul to dwell in supplication, to accept delay, and to hope without illusion.
Gospel – Matthew 20:1–16: Labour in the Vineyard
The parable of the labourers provides the theological synthesis of the day. Gregory the Great interprets the successive hours as successive stages of salvation history, from Adam to Christ, culminating in the call of the Gentiles.⁷
The equal wage signifies eternal life, bestowed by mercy rather than earned by duration of labour. Yet all are called to labour. Grace is gratuitous, but it is never inert. Septuagesima therefore balances two truths often separated in modern discourse: salvation is wholly unmerited, and yet it demands perseverance in obedience.
The Gospel also prepares the faithful to abandon envy and comparison. The economy of salvation is governed not by human calculation but by divine generosity.
Offertory – Bonum est confiteri Domino
At the Offertory, the tone shifts subtly from lament to ordered trust. Confession here denotes more than verbal admission of sin; it signifies the alignment of the soul with divine truth. Thomas Aquinas teaches that true confession restores the right relationship between intellect, will, and God, preparing the soul for sacrificial participation.⁸
As the gifts are offered, the faithful are reminded that the Mass is not merely observed but entered. The sacrifice demands interior offering, particularly during a season oriented toward conversion.
Secret – Sacrifice in Silence
The silent recitation of the Secret prayer reinforces a perennial Roman conviction: grace operates invisibly. Transformation does not depend upon emotional experience but upon sacrificial reality. The Church here trains the faithful to trust what God accomplishes at the altar, even when consolation is absent.
Communion – Manducaverunt et saturati sunt (Psalm 77)
The Communion antiphon recalls the manna of the desert: “They ate and were filled.” Yet the Epistle has already warned that many who ate nevertheless perished. Ambrose emphasises that sacramental nourishment requires perseverance in obedience; the Eucharist is medicine, but medicine presupposes cooperation with healing.⁹
The juxtaposition is deliberate. Septuagesima refuses sentimental Eucharistic theology. Communion strengthens the journey, but it does not abolish the journey.
Postcommunion – Strength for the Long Return
The final prayer asks not for joy but for fortitude. The Church knows that Lent approaches, and beyond Lent, the Cross. Pius XII later articulated this liturgical principle clearly: the sacred liturgy forms souls for endurance, fidelity, and sacrifice, not merely for consolation.¹⁰
Conclusion: Memory Before Penance
Septuagesima Sunday restores realism to the Christian life. It teaches that man is fallen, time is short, grace is necessary, effort is required, and mercy is real. Before fasting, the Church gives truth; before sacrifice, meaning.
By re-entering exile liturgically, the faithful are prepared to return spiritually. The Gesima season thus stands as one of the Roman Rite’s most humane and profound acts of pastoral wisdom: it tells the truth first—and only then demands the Cross.
- Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year, vol. 2: Septuagesima (Dublin: James Duffy, 1870), Introduction.
- Ibid.
- Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, Psalm 17, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 8 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994).
- Second Council of Orange (529), Canon 5, in Denzinger–Hünermann, Enchiridion Symbolorum, no. 375.
- John Chrysostom, Homilies on First Corinthians, Homily XXIII, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 12.
- Joseph A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite, vol. 1 (New York: Benziger, 1951), 376–379.
- Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Evangelia, Homily XIX, in Patrologia Latina 76:1138–1144.
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, q. 83, a. 4.
- Ambrose, De Sacramentis, V, 4–5, in Patrologia Latina 16:450–452.
- Pius XII, Mediator Dei (1947), §§20–24.
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