Lent. It’s a heavy portion of the Church’s year. It is too important a season just to jump right into, so both the Western and Eastern traditions have allotted time in the liturgical calendar to prepare for it. In the West, there are three Sundays in this season, and they are counted down by their distance from Pascha. In Latin they are called Dominica in septuagesima, in sexagesima, and in quinquagesima, that is the Sundays falling closest to seventy days before Easter, sixty days, and fifty days, respectively. The first of these, Septuagesima Sunday, is a turning point in the Church year.
In our kalendar, with each season change we really do experience a change in tone, in thematic emphasis, and also in aesthetics, most notably in the music and liturgical colors of our Altar decoration and vestments. On Septuagesima Sunday, even though we haven’t begun the fast yet, the character of Lent is brought before us liturgically, so that it can begin sinking into our psyches, so that we are already prepared in our hearts to begin the fast on Ash Wednesday.
On this day the liturgical color is changed to violet. In Matins, instead of the Venite we sing the entirety of Psalm 95. We replace the Te Deum with the Benedicite, and sing the Benedictus Dominus in a more solemn tone. In the Mass we omit the Gloria and replace the Alleluia before the Gospel reading with a tract. In fact, we omit all alleluias, but more about that later.
On this Sunday specifically, throughout the Propers of the Mass (that is, the variable parts which change from day to day), we’re introduced to the multiform character of Lent. Lent, like a diamond, has multiple facets, but they all fit together in a harmony that, once you come to accept it, you realize is quite beautiful. These facets are expounded in the Mass propers, and from them we may discern five facets particularly. The first is trials and tribulations from outside—from the world and from the devil. The second facet is repentance of sin. The third facet is ascetic effort. The fourth facet is God’s rewards. And the fifth facet is praising God.
So, the first facet in the Lenten diamond is the reality that we experience trials from outside ourselves, difficult circumstances that test our character, our resolve, our patience, and our faith. One of the inspirations for the forty day fast of Lent is Jesus’ own forty days in the desert before his ministry. When he was at his weakest and most vulnerable, he experienced a trial from without. The devil came to him to tempt him. Likewise, many of us will discover that, during Lent, when we’re struggling to be faithful in our fast, spiritual or worldly tribulations tend to come at us; they shake our resolve, they alter our perspective so that all of a sudden the whole Lent thing looks ridiculous compared to this. We’ll wonder why we’re even bothering to fast and abstain, to pray, or to come to church.
But at times like those, remembering that God remembers us is the only way to prevail. God alone can rescue us, and having our trust in him is the only thing that can put our minds at rest and our hearts at peace. The Introit, or Entrance chant, for this Sunday comes from Psalm 18: “The sorrows of death compassed me, the pains of hell came about me: and in my tribulation I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice out of his holy temple. * I will love thee, O Lord my strength: the Lord is my stony rock, my fortress, and my Savior.” And the Gradual chant, during the censing of the Gospels, comes from Psalm 9: “A refuge in the time of trouble: they that know thy Name will put their trust in thee: for thou Lord never failest them that seek thee.” When we experience these times of trouble, the Lenten instruction is this: seek the Lord and call upon his Name.
The second feature of the Lenten character is our repenting of our sins. Lent begins right after Shrove Tuesday, “shrove” being the past tense of “Shrive” which refers to the sacrament of confession. Customarily we are to prepare ourselves and make a good, full confession of our sins on Shrove Tuesday, receive our penance, and then, with that in mind, receive the ashen mark of the fast on the following day to 1) emulate those who have fasted in sackcloth and ashes, but primarily 2) to keep in mind our humble nature, composed of the dust of the earth, and how because of our sin, that’s what our bodies return to. The remembrance of our sins in Lent isn’t a defeatist exercise, but rather a humbling one, and a necessary one if we are to make a change of direction.
The Collect prayer for the day gets right to the point in regards our sin: “O LORD, we beseech thee favorably to hear the prayers of thy people: that we, who are justly punished for our offenses, may be mercifully delivered by thy goodness, for the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.” We are “justly punished for our offenses.”
Now, in the Orthodox Church, and indeed throughout the scriptures, sin is often described in terms of sickness, malady, and injury; and salvation is described in terms of rescue, healing, and restoration. But while that may be a legitimate, and even the dominant, way of characterizing sin and salvation, there is still a part of sin that is “an offense” against God, his Saints, or his good creation. And while many of the consequences of our sin naturally follow from sin itself, sometimes the consequences come not just from the nature of things, but from God himself.
Sometimes the consequences are natural, ontological, and don’t have as much of a moral or personal component to them. For example, if you get drunk—which is, in fact, missing the mark of how God desires you to live and is therefore a sin—your hangover and/or liver damage aren’t direct punishments from God, they’re just the natural consequences of your error. On the other hand, because with every rebellion against the all gracious, all loving desire of our Creator for our fulfillment, we sometimes receive consequences from God that are punitive—chastisements that humble us in direct response to the way we rebel against God who loves us. This is why we are both “justly punished for our offenses” by God, but also are “mercifully delivered” from the other affects of our sin by his goodness.
The Psalmist is quoted in the Tract for the day (which is chanted where the Alleluia would normally go) appealing to the Lord from the depths of the natural consequences of sin, and also appealing to the Lord’s tenderness in his punitive measures: “Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord: Lord hear my voice. O let thine ears consider well the voice of my complaint. If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, O Lord, who may abide it? For there is mercy with thee: therefore shalt thou be feared.” That’s from Psalm 130. So the big broad gamut of what sin and salvation means is one of the facets of the Lenten journey.
The third aspect of Lent is that of ascetic effort. This is probably the one we think about the most. Why is that? This facet is probably not more important than God rescuing us from trials, or from being shriven, healed, and cleansed from sin. But it is the thing that we’re directly responsible for. It’s our part to play. So that’s most likely why we think about it the most. The principle of spiritual discipline is simple: the spiritual aspects of our persons need exercise just as much (if not more) than our physical aspect. In fact the spiritual needs it more, because it lasts. Our bodies, no matter how well we eat, how much sleep we get, or how much we exercise, will run down and expire. But our spirits go on. St. Paul brings up this point in the Epistle reading for the day in 1 Cor. 9:24 – 10:5. He says that athletes do a lot of work and discipline themselves to win a prize that won’t last, but we exercise spiritual disciplines for something that will last. Forever.
An increase in prayer and works of mercy is part of our discipline during Lent, but so is the disciplining of our bodies. We pommel them, as St. Paul says; we beat them into subjection, so that they and their appetites don’t rule our wills, but rather so that our wills may rule them. That’s what fasting is all about. It’s a practical way to train ourselves so that it’s not quite as hard to “die to self”, to “take up our cross,” as Jesus instructs us.
If the third facet of Lent is what we’re responsible for, the fourth is what God’s responsible for. Sometimes we mistakenly think that God rewards us in direct proportion to what we think we’ve earned. Even if we don’t always consciously think that, I think we’re often in danger of feeling like that. But today’s Gospel reading from Matthew 20:1-16 reminds us differently. In it, workers are called to go work in a vineyard, beginning at various hours throughout the day. Some are called early, some a little later, and some near the end of the day. In the end, they all get paid the same wage.
There’s so much to learn from this parable, but primarily I think it’s this: what the master pays out is his prerogative. He pays out of his generosity, not because he owes us anything. Our work in the vineyard, that is our ascetic effort, already benefits us through the skill we gain, the mastery over ourselves, the fruit that we help to bring forth, and many other benefits besides. But the “wage” we are given stands apart from the economy of work and earnings. This wage is a gift, and its rationale is purely love. The reason this gospel passage is placed at the very beginning of the Lenten cycle in the West is the same reason St. John Chrysostom uses its imagery at the end of Lent in his famous paschal homily. It’s an apt lesson for Lent: whatever our circumstance, however early or late, faithfully or unfaithfully we worked during Lent, if we but endure to the end we all still receive from the overabundant bounty of God’s goodness.
This brings us to the fifth facet of Lent: praising God. It’s true that the Alleluias are absent from our Western Rite worship during this season, but that doesn’t mean we don’t praise God. It just means that we do it without that word. And what is that word? It’s a short hand for “God be praised.” Well, in Lent we praise him without the shorthand. We dig deeper to find the words we need. We try to praise God out of the depths, not just the heights, of our being. The Offertory chant today says: “It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto thy Name, O Lord Most Highest.” In all the repenting, the fasting and discipline, in the midst of any trials or tribulations, the key to success, the thing that completes us as whole human beings, is praising God continuously.
So these are the facets of Lent that we are introduced to on this day: trials and tribulations from outside, repentance of sin, ascetic effort, God’s rewards, and praising God. Septuagesima Sunday brings the Lenten character before us so that we may prepare ourselves for these realities by thinking on them and asking God to make us ready to begin the fast in earnest on Ash Wednesday.
