Septuagesima: An Anglican Perspective

The Third Sunday Before Lent

Septuagesima (sep-too-ah-JEH-see-mah) is the traditional name for the third Sunday before Lent, beginning a short period of preparation that leads the Church gradually from the manifestation and light of Epiphany toward the penitential discipline of Lent. The BCP 2019 explicitly restores this older Anglican terminology by providing that “The last three Sundays before Lent may be observed as Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima.” These names are optional rather than a separate liturgical season, and the Sundays remain part of the Season of Epiphany with the appointed propers for those Sundays.

The value of Septuagesima lies precisely in that overlap. The Church does not abruptly move from the brightness of Epiphany to ashes and fasting without preparation. During these final three Sundays, the approach of Lent begins to appear on the horizon while Epiphany continues its work of manifesting Christ. Because the civil dates move with Easter, Septuagesima falls on a different date from year to year, but it always gives the Church time to begin turning her attention toward the penitential season without pretending that Lent has already begun.

Septuagesima is not itself a fast day, nor does the BCP 2019 create a distinct pre-Lenten season with its own propers. It is better understood as a traditional marker within the existing calendar: a reminder that Lent is coming and that Christian preparation for Easter need not begin suddenly on Ash Wednesday.

What Does Septuagesima Mean?

The name comes from the Latin septuagesima, meaning “seventieth.” It belongs to a sequence of traditional Western names: Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima, roughly the seventieth, sixtieth, and fiftieth days before Easter.

The arithmetic is not exact in the modern mathematical sense. Septuagesima Sunday is ordinarily sixty-three days before Easter, or exactly nine weeks. Sexagesima follows one week later, fifty-six days before Easter, while Quinquagesima is forty-nine days before Easter. The names function as traditional liturgical approximations, counting the Church backward toward the Paschal feast rather than providing exact chronological measurements.

That may seem unnecessarily strange to modern ears, but the strangeness has a purpose. The names make Easter the point of reference. The Church begins to measure time not merely by how many weeks remain before Lent but by how near she is drawing to the Resurrection.

Septuagesima therefore quietly changes the direction in which the calendar is looking. During much of Epiphany, the Church looks from the Incarnation outward through Christ’s manifestation and public ministry. With Septuagesima, Easter begins to exert a stronger gravitational pull. The Church is still in Epiphany, but the Paschal mystery is approaching.

Not Yet Lent

It is important not to turn Septuagesima into an unofficial extension of Lent. The BCP 2019 does not describe the last three Sundays before Lent as a separate penitential season. It simply says that they “may be observed” under their traditional names.

Ash Wednesday remains the first day of Lent. The Prayer Book describes Ash Wednesday and Good Friday as traditionally being days of special devotion and total abstinence. It encourages the weekdays of Lent, together with the ordinary Friday discipline outside Christmastide and Eastertide, as days of fasting. Septuagesima does not move those disciplines backward three weeks.

The distinction matters because preparation and observance are not identical. A family may prepare for a journey before the journey begins. A congregation may prepare for Christmas throughout Advent without pretending that Christmas has already arrived. In the same way, Septuagesima allows the Church to begin preparing for Lent without prematurely entering the Lenten fast.

This gives the traditional Sundays considerable pastoral wisdom. Ash Wednesday can otherwise arrive as a liturgical shock. One Sunday the Church is still following Christ through Epiphany, and three days after the Transfiguration she is marked with ashes and reminded that she is dust and to dust she shall return. Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima create room for the heart to turn before the discipline formally begins.

A Bridge Within Epiphany

Septuagesima does not interrupt the Season of Epiphany. It gives the closing portion of that season an additional orientation.

Epiphany is the season of manifestation. The child worshiped by the Magi is revealed as the beloved Son at the Jordan, then manifested through his teaching, authority, signs, healing, and calling of disciples. The season ends with the Transfiguration, when the Father again identifies Jesus as his beloved Son and commands the disciples to listen to him.

The pre-Lenten names begin while that process is still underway. Septuagesima falls on the third-to-last Sunday before Lent, Sexagesima on the second-to-last, and Quinquagesima on the Last Sunday of Epiphany. The final one therefore coincides with Transfiguration Sunday.

That arrangement reveals why the older names still make theological sense. The Church does not cease asking who Christ is when she begins preparing for Lent. Quite the opposite. She must know who is going to the Cross before she can properly follow him there.

Septuagesima therefore joins two movements. Epiphany continues to say, See the Son. The approaching Lent begins to say, Prepare to follow him toward Jerusalem.

That continuity is visible in the Church’s worship as well. Septuagesima remains within Epiphany rather than beginning Lent early, so the customary liturgical color remains green rather than shifting to the purple associated with Lent. Older Western customs sometimes gave pre-Lent a more penitential appearance, but the BCP 2019 simply permits the traditional names without creating a separate season around them.

From Manifestation Toward the Passion

The movement toward Lent is already present within the Gospel story itself. Jesus’ public ministry does not remain indefinitely in Galilee as a sequence of teaching and miracles. The Gospels steadily turn toward Jerusalem, suffering, death, and Resurrection.

The Transfiguration makes this especially clear. In Luke’s account, Moses and Elijah speak with Jesus concerning the exodos (EX-oh-dos) he is about to accomplish at Jerusalem. (Luke 9:31, ESV) His glory is revealed not as an alternative to the Cross but immediately in relation to the saving work toward which he is going.

Septuagesima begins preparing the Church to make that same turn. The faithful have heard the Father’s declaration at the Jordan and watched the Son’s authority unfold through Epiphany. Now the calendar begins asking what it means to follow this Lord when the road becomes costly.

Jesus himself repeatedly joins discipleship to the Cross: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24, ESV) Lent will give those words particular ascetical force, but Septuagesima begins preparing us to hear them.

The Church is not preparing for suffering as an end in itself. She is preparing for Easter through the Cross.

The Old Anglican Roots of Septuagesima

Septuagesima is not a modern attempt to recover an obscure medieval curiosity. The name belongs deeply to the Western and Anglican liturgical inheritance. Earlier editions of the Book of Common Prayer retained Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima as familiar Sunday designations, preserving a pattern inherited from the medieval Western calendar even as the Reformation simplified many other features of the liturgical year.

The BCP 2019’s documentary section provides an intriguing historical witness. In the Preface to the 1549 Prayer Book, Cranmer complains that the older system of Scripture reading had become so complicated and interrupted that biblical books were often begun but not completed. As an example, he writes that “the book of Isaiah was begun in Advent, and the book of Genesis in Septuagesima; but they were only begun, and never read through.”

That passing reference tells us something significant. Septuagesima was already so familiar to sixteenth-century Christians that Cranmer could use the name without explanation. His complaint was not against Septuagesima itself but against a disorderly lectionary system that failed to give the people sustained access to Holy Scripture.

The first Prayer Book therefore reformed the reading of Scripture while retaining the basic contours of the Christian year. That is characteristic of classical Anglican reform more broadly: receive the ancient inheritance, test it by Scripture, simplify what has become burdensome or corrupt, and preserve what continues to serve Christian worship and formation.

The BCP 2019’s decision to permit the traditional names again belongs naturally within that same Anglican instinct.

Why Begin Preparing Before Lent?

There is practical wisdom in preparing to prepare. Christian disciplines can easily become either impulsive enthusiasm or mechanical habit when they are undertaken without reflection.

Ash Wednesday will invite the Church into a holy Lent “by self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditation upon God’s holy Word.” Lent therefore asks something more serious than selecting an inconvenient food to avoid for forty days. It asks for an intentional turning toward God.

Septuagesima gives Christians time to ask what such a Lent should actually look like. Where has sin become comfortable? What habit needs repentance rather than management? Where has prayer grown thin? Is there a relationship requiring reconciliation? Has generosity become an afterthought? Is Scripture being heard regularly enough to shape the mind?

Those are not yet demands to begin the Lenten fast. They are invitations to prepare intelligently for it.

Without that preparation, Lent can become a hurried collection of resolutions made on Ash Wednesday and abandoned shortly afterward. The older calendar instead allows the coming fast to approach gradually. Septuagesima says that Lent is coming soon enough that we should begin thinking seriously about it.

Grace Before Discipline

Pre-Lenten preparation can go badly if it turns Christian discipline into a program of spiritual self-improvement. The Church does not enter Lent because sufficiently rigorous fasting will make God favorable toward us.

Grace comes first.

The same Gospel grammar that appears so dramatically in the Conversion of Saint Paul continues here. God acts before we respond. He calls sinners, opens blind eyes, forgives, justifies, adopts, and gives the Spirit. Christian obedience is genuine and necessary, but it arises from grace rather than purchasing it.

Lent itself must remain within that order. We do not fast so that Christ will save us. We fast because Christ has saved us and because sinners who have received grace still need mortification, repentance, discipline, and growth in holiness.

Paul describes the Christian life with striking seriousness: “I discipline my body and keep it under control.” (1 Corinthians 9:27, ESV) Yet the same Paul insists that everything he is rests upon grace: “By the grace of God I am what I am.” (1 Corinthians 15:10, ESV)

Septuagesima can therefore become a useful guard against both legalism and laziness. Grace does not mean discipline is unnecessary, and discipline does not mean grace is insufficient.

Preparing for Fasting

One of the most practical uses of Septuagesima is to recover a properly Christian understanding of fasting before Lent begins.

The BCP 2019 says that fasting, in addition to “reduced consumption,” normally includes prayer, self-examination, and acts of mercy. It encourages the weekdays of Lent as days of fasting and describes Ash Wednesday and Good Friday as traditionally being days of special devotion and total abstinence.

Fasting ordinarily concerns food. Christians may certainly give up other pleasures or conveniences as forms of self-denial, but those practices should not be allowed to redefine fasting until the word simply means doing without anything we enjoy.

The bodily character matters. Human beings are embodied creatures. Hunger exposes dependence and reveals how quickly appetite can govern us. Voluntarily limiting food for a spiritual purpose can turn even the body toward prayer and remind us that “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”(Deuteronomy 8:3, ESV)

Septuagesima provides time to consider how to fast wisely rather than dramatically. Health, age, pregnancy, medication, physical labor, and other circumstances genuinely matter. Christian fasting is not contempt for the body, and no one should injure the body in the attempt to appear devout.

The goal is not the most impressive fast. The goal is a discipline that assists repentance, prayer, and dependence upon God.

Preparing for Repentance

Lent is also a season of intensified repentance, and repentance deserves preparation because Christians are remarkably skilled at confessing sin in general while avoiding particular sins.

The Prayer Book’s ordinary confession teaches us to say that we have followed the devices and desires of our own hearts, offended against God’s holy laws, left undone what we ought to have done, and done what we ought not to have done. It also makes explicit that “apart from your grace, there is no health in us.”

Septuagesima gives us time to allow those familiar words to become particular. Which desires have we followed? Which commands have we ignored? Which duties have we neglected? Where have pride, anger, lust, greed, envy, fear, bitterness, dishonesty, or spiritual indifference been given room to grow?

Christian repentance is not morbid introspection. We examine ourselves before the God whose mercy has already been revealed in Jesus Christ. The purpose is not to become fascinated with our own sin but to bring sin honestly into the light where it can be confessed and forsaken.

The Prayer Book’s absolution reminds us that Almighty God “desires not the death of sinners, but that they may turn from their wickedness and live.” That is the purpose toward which penitence moves: not despair, but life.

Preparing for Prayer and Scripture

The pre-Lenten Sundays are also an excellent time to consider the shape of prayer during Lent. Adding spiritual practices impulsively often results in trying to do too much and sustaining almost none of it.

A modest discipline kept faithfully is usually more fruitful than an ambitious discipline abandoned after a week. The Daily Office offers Anglicans an obvious pattern because Morning and Evening Prayer order the day around confession, Scripture, Psalms, praise, intercession, and the Lord’s Prayer.

A Christian who does not normally pray both offices might begin with one. Someone already praying the Office might add deliberate time for silent prayer, Scripture meditation, or intercession. A household might decide how it will pray together during Lent before Ash Wednesday arrives.

The same applies to Scripture. Lent should not become a season dominated by what Christians are giving up while neglecting what God gives. The Word of God is not another self-improvement exercise. God addresses, corrects, comforts, and feeds his people through Scripture.

Septuagesima can therefore be used to choose a realistic pattern of reading before Lent begins. The goal is not accumulating chapters but hearing God’s Word with attention.

Preparing for Almsgiving and Mercy

Although the Ash Wednesday invitation does not explicitly name almsgiving, the Prayer Book’s description of fasting says that it normally includes acts of mercy. That keeps Christian self-denial from curving the believer inward.

Isaiah repeatedly criticizes fasting that leaves injustice and indifference untouched. In Isaiah 58, the fast God desires is joined to loosening wicked bonds, sharing bread with the hungry, bringing the homeless poor into the house, and clothing the naked. (Isaiah 58:6–7)

Jesus likewise places almsgiving, prayer, and fasting together in Matthew 6. He assumes all three will belong to the life of his disciples while warning that each can be corrupted when performed for human praise.

A good Lenten preparation therefore asks not only, What will I give up? but also, What will I give? Money saved through fasting might become generosity toward someone in need. Time freed from entertainment might become time offered in service. Increased prayer should enlarge concern for neighbors rather than narrowing attention toward personal spiritual achievement.

Septuagesima allows those decisions to be made deliberately rather than sentimentally.

The Alleluia and Older Pre-Lenten Customs

In some older Western traditions, Septuagesima marked the point at which the Alleluia disappeared from the liturgy until Easter. Elaborate customs developed around “burying” or bidding farewell to the Alleluia, and the omission became one of the clearest audible signs that the Church had entered pre-Lent.

Those customs can carry real devotional beauty, but they should not be presented as requirements of the BCP 2019. The Prayer Book’s permission to use the names Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima does not by itself impose the entire medieval or later Western pre-Lenten ceremonial system upon Anglican worship.

A parish may retain appropriate inherited customs where authorized and pastorally useful, but the theological value of Septuagesima does not depend upon reproducing every historical practice attached to the day.

The heart of the observance is simpler: Lent is coming, Easter lies beyond it, and the Church begins to prepare.

Septuagesima and Easter

The most important thing about Septuagesima may finally be that its strange name points beyond Lent altogether.

It does not mean “three Sundays until Ash Wednesday.” It belongs to a numerical sequence oriented toward Easter. Even before the ashes appear, the Resurrection is already determining the calendar.

That is how Christian penitence should always work. Lent is not forty days of spiritual gloom undertaken because Christians believe suffering is inherently holy. It is preparation for the Paschal feast. The Church fasts because she is going toward Easter.

The Preface of Lent will eventually make this explicit, giving thanks because God bids his faithful people cleanse their hearts and “prepare with joy for the Paschal feast.” The destination of Lenten penitence is joy.

Septuagesima quietly tells us this before Lent even begins. Easter is coming, and therefore preparation matters.

Observing Septuagesima

Septuagesima is observed on the third Sunday before Lent. Because Easter moves from year to year, its civil date changes accordingly. The BCP 2019 permits the name but does not give Septuagesima a separate Collect or set of readings; the appointed propers for the corresponding Sunday of Epiphany remain in use.

To observe the Sunday well, begin by noticing the calendar itself. Ash Wednesday is now close enough to require attention. Look at the coming weeks and decide deliberately how Lent will be kept rather than waiting until the night before Ash Wednesday to invent a discipline.

Consider fasting in its proper sense and determine what form is faithful and physically wise. Think about prayer and whether the Daily Office or another regular pattern could be strengthened during Lent. Consider Scripture reading, almsgiving, acts of mercy, and any particular area in which repentance or reconciliation is needed.

Do not begin by asking how difficult a discipline can be made. Begin by asking what will help you turn more fully toward God.

Septuagesima is also a fitting time to pray for grace to see ourselves truthfully. Ask the Lord to expose sins we have normalized, duties we have neglected, and attachments that have quietly become masters. At the same time, remember that Christian self-examination always takes place before the Cross. The purpose is not self-condemnation but repentance and renewed faith.

Finally, keep the Sunday as a Sunday. Every Sunday is a celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection. Septuagesima may look toward the coming fast, but it does so from the Lord’s Day. Even the preparation for penitence begins in the light of Easter.

Conclusion

Septuagesima is a modest but wise feature of the Anglican calendar. The BCP 2019 does not create a new season or move Lent backward by three weeks. It simply permits the Church to recover an older name for the third Sunday before Lent and, with that name, an older habit of preparation. The light of Epiphany still shines, the appointed Sunday propers remain, and the Church continues to behold Christ. Yet the road ahead is beginning to turn toward Jerusalem.

That gradual turn serves a deeply Christian purpose. Lent should not be approached as a sudden burst of religious determination or as an annual experiment in self-improvement. Prayer, fasting, repentance, almsgiving, and Scripture are responses to the grace of God already given in Christ. The same Lord who calls his people to discipline is the Lord who saves them by grace, and even the desire to repent depends upon his mercy.

Most importantly, Septuagesima points beyond Lent to Easter. Its unfamiliar name counts backward toward the Paschal feast and reminds the Church why the coming disciplines matter. We prepare to fast because we are preparing to feast; we examine ourselves because Christ calls sinners into life; and we turn toward the Cross because beyond the Cross stands the bodily Resurrection of the Lord. Lent is approaching, but Easter is already the destination that gives the preparation its meaning.