SECOND PART OF THE PROPER OF THE SEASON

EASTER SECTION

Redemption fulfilled and applied to souls

With the Season of Septuagesima begins the Section having for its centre that greatest of solemnities, the feast of Easter.

The Christmas Section is an essential preparation to the Easter Section, for if God has come down among us, it is that He may lift us up to Him. With the Section of Christmas and Epiphany or of Redeemer manifested, wherein the liturgy shows us God clothing Himself with our humanity, corresponds the Section of Easter, or of Redemption fulfilled and applied to souls, in which we are shown Jesus who saves us and bestows on us eternal life. That is the great work which “the Father has given His Son to do.” (St. John 17:4)

The Church, manifesting the divinity of Christ throughout the first part of the Ecclesiastical year, shows us in the second what our Lord has done to merit it for us and communicate it to us. We shall see a violent struggle taking place between Him and Satan which will rage with increasing intensity during the successive seasons of Septuagesima, Lent and Passiontide. Christ is God; His victory ., therefore certain. Next we come to Eastertide when our Redeemer’s victory over the world, the flesh and the devil is made clear to us by His Resurrection, Ascension and founding of the Church on which He sends His Holy Spirit. The Time after Pentecost is the other remnant of the original basic cycle; however, it may be regarded, as well as the whole liturgical year, but more especially, as representing the life of the Church: imbued with the Spirit of Christ, who continues to visit and guide her, she goes on growing and sanctifying mankind down the centuries until the end of time when she will attain the fullness of Christ. (Eph. 4:13)

In former times the weeks preceding Easter were devoted to the initiation of the catechumens and the public penance of erring Christians, the triduum of Christ’s death and resurrection to the reception of baptism and the holy Eucharist, and Pentecost with the first following Sundays to the spiritual development of the souls of the faithful who, as members of the Church, live the life of Christ. In our own days the whole of the Easter Section of the Church’s year is a vivid recall to the spirit of our baptism; every year increasingly we are made to die and rise again with our Lord by our Easter confession and communion, in order thenceforward to continue, as members of the Church, living our lives in Him.

First Season in the Easter Section

SEASON OF SEPTUAGESIMA

(From Septuagésima to Shrove Tuesday)

Doctrinal Note

After the eager welcome given to the Incarnate Word, whose divine glory shines through His Humanity, the Church suddenly confronts us with the gloomy depths of the fall of man. As in the Christmas Section she returns to the Old Testament to show us all the great figures who heralded Christ’s work of redemption and whose history, as types of our Lord’s, is well calculated to prepare us for the great festival of Easter when we celebrate His victory. “Search the Scriptures,” said our Lord, “the same are they which give testimony of Me.” Lex gravida Christi, the Old Law is obsessed with the thought of the Messias, for everything to do with God’s people foretold and heralded Jesus who was to be their Saviour. The Old Testament is, so to say, an anticipation of the Gospel which throws considerable fight on the whole course of our Redeemer’s life. In her liturgy the Church delights to draw a parallel between the beginning and end of the Bible. This parallelism, frequently to be found in the Missal, is particularly prominent during Septuagesima, Lent, on Holy Saturday and the first Sundays after Pentecost.

In this Daily Missal care is taken to show how the Masses of this season are related to the lessons from the Old Testament read in the Breviary on the same day, and to bring out the connexion between these two elements so that one is a considerable aid in the interpretation of the other. The following table, which is explained in detail on the Sundays to which it refers, shows the order of the lessons at the divine Office during the seasons of Septuagesima and Lent, and how the Masses of these seasons should be studied in order the better to understand them.

SUNDAYS	BREVIARY LESSONS	MASS THEMES
Septuagesima	History of Adam	Christ the new Adam
Sexagesima	History of Noah	Christ the true Noé.
Quinquagesima	History of Abraham	Christ the true Abraham
First Sunday of Lent	Consideration of Lent supersedes that of Isaac	Christ in the desert
Second Sunday of Lent	History of Jacob	Christ the true Jacob
Third Sunday of Lent	History of Joseph	Christ the true Joseph
Fourth Sunday of Lent	History of Moses	Christ the true Moses

Christ repairs the evil wrought by Adam; to the Church He is the true Noah, that is, the founder of a new race; far more than Abraham He is the Head of those whom God has chosen to be His people; in a better sense than Jacob He is the cherished and blessed one of God; in returning good for evil He outdid Joseph; although Moses was able to set free his people from the bondage of sin and feed them on manna in the desert, he did so only as a figure of Christ, the Saviour of His people who was Himself the true bread come down from heaven. To see thus the history of the people of God, of Christ and of His Church, as one related whole, reveals what was in the mind of the compilers of the Roman Missal, and by helping us to a better understanding of it enables us to participate more profoundly in the Paschal mystery foretold by Israel and brought to fulfilment by Christ.

During this Septuagesima season the Church dwells especially on the first three figures mentioned in the above table. There we see the fall of Adam resulting in original sin and its baneful consequences (Septuagesima); the malice of men in actual sin and the Flood which was its punishment (Sexagesima); and finally the sacrifices of Abraham and Melchisedech (Quinquagesima), which foreshadowed the sacrifice which God required from His own Son as a satisfaction for the sins of the whole human race. This assertion of the dogma of original sin and the portrayal of its lamentable results makes our blessed Lord’s glorious title of Saviour stand out more clearly.

The Gospels of the Labourers in the vineyard (Septuagesima Sunday), and of the Sower (Sexagesima Sunday), both remind us that redemption extends to all men, Jew and Gentile alike, while the cure of the blind man at Jericho following the announcement of the Passion, shows us the salutary effects produced in us by the cross of Christ. The Epistles of St Paul come in their turn during these three Sundays to remind us that at this season the Church must complete the Redeemer’s work by entering with courage upon the purifying discipline of penance.

Historical Note

The liturgy follows our Lord step by step in His earthly life. However, just as in the Christmas Season, when we read in the Missal of the slaughter of the Innocents, of the flight into Egypt and even of the return from that country before being reminded of the adoration of the Magi, so we need not expect the strictly historical order to be kept in the sequence of events which are brought before us in the Seasons of Septuagesima and Lent.

Although in the Missal the Church does not follow the historical order of our Lord’s life, nevertheless she passes from the mysteries of His childhood to those of His public life in which the increasing hostility of the Pharisees leads up gradually to the Gospels of the Passion and the glorious mysteries of our risen Saviour. If we would live throughout the year in close union with the Church, we should adopt her method of approach and general attitude of mind to these mysteries. In addition it should not be forgotten that the liturgical year was built up slowly from different elements, belonging to widely different liturgies and periods which were only at a later date fashioned into a connected whole as we know it. Lent, for instance, is of earlier institution than the Septuagesima season, and the first four days of Lent were only added as an afterthought to bring the days of fasting up to forty, as we will explain in the Liturgical Note for Lent. It must be admitted that in the Temporal Cycle as it exists to-day, the seasons of Septuagesima and Lent, times of effort and special penance, correspond closely with that period of our Lord’s public life which began with His retreat into the desert followed by His baptism, and came to a tragic end in His Passion, commemorated by the Church in the following season known as Passiontide.

The idea of uniting the personal effort that is required of us during these nine weeks of preparation for Easter with our Lord’s struggles and toils which led Him byway ofHisPassion to His glorious resurrection, comes out very clearly in many passages appointed to be read at both Mass and Office during this season. What better way could there be of preparing to celebrate the glorious events of Eastertide than by uniting ourselves with Christ in the sorrowful events which began with His public ministry and His struggle against the powers of evil? These struggles belong, properly speaking, to the Passion; it was from this moment that our Lord’s enemies began to show themselves and their hatred increases until it finds full satisfaction on Good Friday in the murder of God.

By living the Church’s worship, too, we shall obtain clearer understanding of the reason for that rejection of Israel and choice of the Gentiles constantly alluded to in the liturgy of Septuagesima and Lent. As has been noticed, it was atEaster that in former times pagans were baptized; the liturgical seasons preceding that feast were intended to prepare them for baptism and show them how they would take the place of the unfaithful people in God’s kingdom, because they had accepted the Messias whom Israel rejected. It is clear how closely this liturgical season unites the Church to the divine Bridegroom in that part of His life in which He wrought our salvation. We must, therefore, make our own our Lord’s dispositions as divine lover of souls and as our Redeemer, so as to co-operate in His work of Redemption by doing penance, by hearing the word of God and by driving from our hearts the devil whose kingdom Christ came to overthrow. Every year, then, Christ’s struggles and toils together with those of His Church are the distinctive feature of this part of the liturgical year. As was said above Christ and His Bride in all this do but fulfil what God promised to the patriarchs, what was foretold by the prophets and what,under the Old Law, God’s people had shown forth in figures. Thus the liturgy makes a marvellous synthesis of the whole divine plan by abolishing, so to say, the boundaries of time and place and making all generations contemporaneous with each other in Him whose life it retraces year by year.

Liturgical Notes

The Septuagesima season always begins with the ninth week before Easter and comprises three Sundays called respectively Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima. These names, which were taken from the numeral system in use at one time, denote a series of ten-day periods (or decades) during which these Sundays occur. If the nine weeks preceding Easter are divided into a series of ten-day periods (decades) it will be seen that the first of these Sundays occurs in the seventh decade (on the 63rd day), the second Sunday in the sixth decade (on the 56th day), the third in the fifth decade (on the 45th day): this accounts for the origin of their names : Dominica in Septuagesima, in Sexagesima, and in Quinquagesima.

This liturgical period is a prelude to Lent and a remote preparation for Easter. It serves as a time of transition for the soul, which must pass from Christmas joys to the stern penance of the sacred forty days. Even if the fast is not yet of obligation, the colour of the vestments worn is already changed to purple. As during Advent, the Gloria in excelsis is not said, since this hymn which celebrated Christ’s birth in our mortal flesh, is reserved to extol Him when born in His undying Body, i.e. when He rises from the tomb. "Born once of the Virgin, thou art now reborn from the sepulchre,” will then be the cry of the Church. Again the Martyrology introduces Septuagesima Sunday as that on which "we lay aside the song ofthe Lord which is Alleluia.” "How," said the people of Israel, “shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land (Ps. 136:4)?”

This "strange land” is for the people of Christ, the world, which is a place of exile, while Alleluia, the chant St. John heard in heaven, will begin again in the liturgy at Paschaltide, which represents the future life. In the Easter festivities we shall hail our Lord, the conqueror of Satan, who while freeing us from the bondage of sin, will re-open to us the heavenly kingdom. The season of Lent which lasts for forty days (Quadragesima) and that of Septuagesima which conveys the idea of three periods of ten days (Quinquagesima, Sexagesima and Septuagesima) may well be taken as representing the seventy years passed by Israel in exile under the harsh captivity ofthe Babylonians.

Saint Andrew Daily Missal with Vespers for Sundays and Feasts, by Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, O.S.B. of the Abbey of St. André, 1953