It happens every year. I get caught up in the routine of Christmas and New Year. I’m usually busier at work early in the year. This year in particular I went on vacation with extended family for a week in late January. I show up for Sunday Mass thinking about everything going on during the rest of the day, as I am wont to do. And then I see something I wasn’t expecting:

Purple.

Septuagesima

From the Catholic encyclopedia:

(Latin septuagesima, the seventieth).

Septuagesima is the ninth Sunday before Easter, the third before Lent known among the Greeks as “Sunday of the Prodigal” from the Gospel, Luke 15, which they read on this day, called also Dominica Circumdederunt by the Latins, from the first word of the Introit of the Mass. In liturgical literature the name “Septuagesima” occurs for the first time in the Gelasian Sacramentary. Why the day (or the week, or the period) has the name Septuagesima, and the next Sunday Sexagesima, etc., is a matter of dispute among writers. It is certainly not the seventieth day before Easter, still less is the next Sunday the sixtieth, fiftieth, etc. Amularius, “De eccl. Off.”, I, I, would make the Septuagesima mystically represent the Babylonian Captivity of seventy years, would have it begin with this Sunday on which the Sacramentaries and Antiphonaries give the Introit “Circumdederunt me undique” and end with the Saturday after Easter, when the Church sings “Eduxit Dominus populum suum.” Perhaps the word is only one of a numerical series: Quadragesima, Quinquagesima, etc. Again, it may simply denote the earliest day on which some Christians began the forty days of Lent, excluding Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday from the observance of the fast.¹

The Church in her wisdom gives us a time prior to Lent so that we may better be prepared for the Lenten season. It is supposed to be a time of fasting and penance, and nobody who seriously takes up that practice - or any bodily practice - jumps in cold turkey with a day’s notice. The idea is that the entire 40-day period (it’s not quite 40 days, just like Septuagesima/Sexagesima/Quinquagesima aren’t actually 70/60/50 days respectively. Math is hard.) is a time of fasting and prayer in preparation for Easter. Lent isn’t meant to be a 40-day journey where we gradually ween ourselves and hopefully by Easter we’re able to fast for a day or two.

Ideally we are so aware of the liturgical year that at all times we know how many days remain until Lent and so we can be prepared on our own without any reminders. Rephrased: ideally we should not have concupiscence and other effects of Original Sin. Unfortunately that is not how people are, so the Church gives us these visible reminders that Lent is coming. The colour is purple which we only see in Lent and Avent; the Gloria is ommitted; the Epistle and Gospel readings have a more penitential or reflective tone so that we are encouraged to reflect on the Mercy of God and where we need to be in 3 weeks (and at the end of our lives).

This is not a practice isolated to the Latin Church, and it has its parallels in the Greek Church with Meatfare and Cheesefare, plus with similar trends in the readings. This is a universal (i.e. catholic) practice meant to strengthen our weak human nature, which is yet again something the authors of the Novus Ordo - who at least claimed to appeal to ‘modern man’ and the East - got completely wrong.

When I attended the NO - which has been over a decade ago at this point - it very frequently happened that I would show up to Mass on Sunday with Fr. in green vestments, not knowing what Sunday it is in Ordinary Time, and there might be a comment in the homily that Ash Wednesday is this week. I haven’t changed, so I was just as forgetful or side-tracked as I am now. That gave me 3 days to quickly move away from feasting and consooming product to the opposite. Then whatever things I wanted to do for Lent generally didn’t happen at the start, which means they pretty much didn’t happen. Failing in our resolutions is inevitable to at least some degree, but it sure helps if we at least have a fighting chance and make headway from the get go. That initial momentum helps us make it to the end.

So, if you’re like me and completely forgot about Septuagesima Sunday, that is completely ok. The Calendar is designed with us in mind. It’s part of the plan - trvst the plan.

I wish you all a blessed [preparation for] Lent.