Sexagesima: An Anglican Perspective

The Second Sunday Before Lent

Sexagesima (seks-ah-JEH-see-mah) is the traditional name for the second Sunday before Lent, standing between Septuagesima and Quinquagesima in the older Western sequence of pre-Lenten Sundays. The BCP 2019 explicitly permits the last three Sundays before Lent to be observed as Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima while leaving them within the Season of Epiphany rather than creating a separate liturgical season.

The name therefore adds a layer of preparation without replacing the Sunday’s proper identity. Lent has not yet begun, and the Sunday retains the Collect, readings, and liturgical character appointed for its place in Epiphany. Sexagesima instead deepens the gradual turn begun at Septuagesima: Easter is drawing nearer, Lent is approaching, and the Church is given another week to prepare before Ash Wednesday.

Sexagesima also corresponds to the Second-to-Last Sunday of Epiphany, which the BCP 2019 designates as World Mission Sunday. This is not an accidental feature of a particular calendar year. Sexagesima is the second Sunday before Lent, while World Mission Sunday occupies the second-to-last Sunday of Epiphany; those are two ways of locating the same Sunday. The Prayer Book does permit the World Mission Sunday Collect, psalms, and lessons to be substituted on another Sunday of Epiphany except the First or Last, but its proper calendar location is the same Sunday traditionally called Sexagesima. The convergence is especially fitting. Even as the Church begins preparing more deliberately for Lent, she is reminded that repentance never turns her inward upon herself alone. The grace received in Christ is grace proclaimed to the nations.

What Does Sexagesima Mean?

The name comes from the Latin sexagesima, meaning “sixtieth.” Like Septuagesima and Quinquagesima, the number is traditional rather than mathematically exact. Sexagesima Sunday ordinarily falls fifty-six days before Easter, eight weeks from the Paschal feast.

The point is not numerical precision but liturgical orientation. The older names reckon backward toward Easter, allowing the Resurrection to become the fixed point by which these final weeks before Lent are understood. The Church is not merely counting down to Ash Wednesday. She is already looking through Lent toward the Paschal feast.

That distinction matters because Lent makes sense only in relation to Easter. Christian fasting does not exist for its own sake, and repentance is not an annual exercise in religious sadness. The Church prepares to walk more deliberately toward the Cross because the crucified Lord has risen bodily from the dead.

Sexagesima therefore continues what Septuagesima began. The calendar is still in Epiphany, but the Paschal mystery is exerting an increasingly strong pull upon the weeks ahead.

Still Epiphany, Not Yet Lent

The BCP 2019 does not appoint separate Sexagesima propers merely because the traditional name is used. The Sunday remains part of Epiphany, and the Prayer Book’s language is deliberately modest: the final three Sundays before Lent “may be observed” under their older 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. The weekdays of Lent and every Friday of the year outside the twelve days of Christmas and the fifty days of Eastertide are encouraged as days of fasting. Using the name Sexagesima does not move those disciplines backward into a new three-week penitential season.

The distinction between preparation and observance is important. Septuagesima has announced that Lent is drawing near. Sexagesima now gives that awareness another week to become intentional without asking the Church to pretend that the Lenten fast has already begun.

This gradual approach has pastoral value. A serious season of repentance is better entered deliberately than impulsively. Sexagesima therefore asks Christians to begin moving from the general thought that Lent is coming toward a more concrete willingness to receive whatever repentance, discipline, reconciliation, and renewed attentiveness to God may be needed.

The Sunday nevertheless remains firmly within Epiphany. The liturgical color is green, fitting the season’s continuing emphasis on growth, discipleship, and the ordinary work of following the Christ who has been manifested. The approaching Lent adds preparation without changing the Sunday into a Lenten observance.

The Second Step Toward Lent

Septuagesima begins the turn. Sexagesima carries it forward. Quinquagesima will bring the Church to the very threshold of Lent.

The progression is subtle but useful. Christian habits develop slowly, and sins often become difficult to see precisely because they have become familiar. The pre-Lenten Sundays create room for reflection before the Church hears the Ash Wednesday summons to self-examination and repentance.

That does not mean constructing an elaborate spiritual program weeks in advance. The point is simpler: Lent should not arrive as an annual emergency. Sexagesima invites the Christian to become more attentive to where repentance may be needed and more ready to receive the disciplines of Lent as gifts ordered toward holiness.

The Church is still following Christ through Epiphany while beginning to look toward the road he will travel to Jerusalem. That double vision is important. We prepare for the Cross only because we have been shown who is going there.

Grace Before Discipline

Pre-Lenten preparation can easily become distorted if the Christian life is imagined as a project of spiritual self-improvement. The Church does not prepare for Lent in order to persuade God to become merciful or to accumulate enough discipline to make herself worthy of grace. Grace comes first, and Christian response follows. Paul can write with great seriousness about disciplining his body and persevering in obedience, yet he also declares, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” (1 Corinthians 15:10, ESV) The order matters. Christian discipline is real, but it grows from grace rather than purchasing it.

The Conversion of Saint Paul, observed during the latter part of the Epiphany season, makes that order particularly vivid. Paul does not initiate his salvation. Christ confronts him, reveals himself, calls him, and lays hold of him. Yet the grace that overtakes Paul produces an extraordinarily active life of obedience, suffering, prayer, preaching, and mission.

Sexagesima therefore prepares the Church for a Lent that is neither self-salvation nor spiritual passivity. God acts first, and therefore his people respond. He gives grace, and therefore we repent. He calls, and therefore we follow. The disciplines of the coming season serve the life grace has already given.

World Mission Sunday and Sexagesima

World Mission Sunday belongs naturally alongside Sexagesima because both observances turn the Church outward from what God has already done. The BCP Collect prays, “Almighty God, through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, you revealed the way of eternal life to every race and nation: Pour out this gift anew, that by the preaching of the Gospel your salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

That prayer belongs naturally near the end of Epiphany. The season began with Gentile Magi coming to Israel’s Messiah. Week by week Christ has been manifested as Son, Lord, teacher, healer, and light of the nations. Near the season’s end, manifestation turns explicitly toward mission: the Christ revealed to the Church is the Christ proclaimed to the nations.

Sexagesima adds another dimension. The Church is beginning to prepare for repentance while simultaneously praying for the Gospel to reach the world. Those are not competing movements. Genuine repentance should make Christians less self-absorbed, not more. The more clearly we understand that salvation is entirely of grace, the less reason we have to treat the Gospel as private religious property.

The sovereignty of grace gives mission its confidence. Christians preach, teach, reason, pray, serve, translate, plant churches, and bear witness, but they cannot manufacture conversion. Only God can open blind eyes and give spiritual life.

Paul provides the unforgettable example. If the risen Christ can stop a persecutor on the road to Damascus and turn him into an apostle, Christians have no warrant for deciding beforehand that another person is beyond the reach of grace. We do not know whom God will call or when he will act, but human resistance is never sovereign over divine mercy.

That conviction should deepen both prayer and mission. We can pray for the indifferent, the hostile, the hardened, and those who appear very far from Christ without pretending that their conversion depends finally upon our persuasiveness. The God who commands the Church to proclaim the Gospel is himself the one who gives the increase.

World Mission Sunday therefore prevents pre-Lenten preparation from collapsing into religious introspection. The Church examines herself because Christ has called her, but she also looks outward because the same Christ sends her. Repentance and mission belong together when both are understood as responses to grace.

The Word and the Harvest

Older Western lectionaries historically associated Sexagesima with the Parable of the Sower. The BCP 2019 does not restore that older lectionary merely by permitting the name Sexagesima, so the distinction should remain clear. The Sunday uses the propers appointed for its actual place in Epiphany, including the World Mission Sunday propers when that observance is kept on its appointed Sunday.

Even so, the traditional association is worth remembering because the image fits the Sunday’s missionary emphasis. Jesus describes seed scattered across different kinds of soil, producing very different responses (Luke 8:4–15). The sower scatters the word broadly while the power to create life does not lie within the sower himself.

The image guards Christian mission against manipulation. The Church is commanded to sow faithfully, not to engineer spiritual life by technique. Yet it also guards against timidity because the sower does not hoard the seed while trying to predict in advance which soil deserves it.

The same logic appears in the appointed Gospel for World Mission Sunday in Year A, where Jesus sees the crowds, has compassion upon them, and tells his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:37–38, ESV) The older image of the sower and the Prayer Book image of the harvest converge naturally: the Church sows, prays, and goes, while the Lord remains sovereign over both field and fruit.

The older Sexagesima association therefore complements World Mission Sunday without determining the BCP lectionary. The Church scatters the Gospel widely and entrusts its fruit to God.

The Alleluia and Older Pre-Lenten Customs

In older Western practice, the pre-Lenten Sundays were often marked by the disappearance of the Alleluia and by other signs of increasing liturgical restraint. In some places, bidding farewell to the Alleluia became a devotional custom in its own right.

Such practices can express the gradual approach of Lent, but they should not be confused with requirements created by the BCP 2019’s permission to use the names Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima. The Prayer Book restores the terminology without requiring the entire ceremonial system historically associated with pre-Lent.

The same is true of older penitential color customs. Earlier Western uses sometimes gave the pre-Lenten period a more visibly penitential character, but the BCP 2019’s recovery of the traditional names does not itself restore a separate pre-Lenten color scheme. Sexagesima remains an Epiphany Sunday, and its ordinary liturgical character remains that of the season.

The older instinct nevertheless makes theological sense. The Church sometimes prepares for a feast by withholding something familiar so that its return may be heard with renewed force. Where appropriate customs are retained, they should serve that movement toward Easter rather than becoming exercises in liturgical antiquarianism.

Observing Sexagesima

Sexagesima is the second Sunday before Lent and corresponds to the Second-to-Last Sunday of Epiphany, the place assigned to World Mission Sunday in the BCP 2019. The traditional pre-Lenten name and the missionary observance therefore speak to different dimensions of the same place in the calendar rather than competing for space.

To observe the day, continue the preparation begun at Septuagesima without attempting to begin Lent early. Allow the approaching season to become more concrete. Ask where repentance is needed, where a neglected discipline might need attention, and where reconciliation or renewed obedience should no longer be postponed.

Pray the World Mission Sunday Collect when that observance is kept and allow it to widen that preparation beyond the self. Pray for missionaries, evangelists, church planters, pastors, Bible translators, persecuted Christians, and peoples among whom Christ is scarcely known. Pray also for particular people in your own life who do not know Christ.

Remember Paul when someone seems beyond reach. Christian hope does not depend upon pretending that unbelief or hostility is insignificant. Paul’s hostility was very real. Our hope rests instead upon the sovereignty of the God who can open blind eyes and turn enemies into servants.

Sexagesima is also a good Sunday to consider whether the coming Lent is in danger of becoming primarily about personal religious achievement. The disciplines of Lent matter, but they should lead us toward Christ, repentance, love of neighbor, and greater freedom for the service of God. Preparation is useful only when it serves those ends.

The day therefore holds together two directions that the Christian life must never separate. The Church looks inward honestly enough to repent, and outward lovingly enough to proclaim. Both movements begin with grace.

Conclusion

Sexagesima brings the Church another step toward Lent without pretending that Lent has already begun. The Sunday remains within Epiphany, where Christ continues to be manifested as the light of the world, while the Paschal feast draws nearer and the need for intentional preparation becomes more pressing. The older name gives the Church a simple gift: another week in which the heart can begin turning toward the discipline ahead without confusing preparation with the fast itself.

World Mission Sunday gives that preparation an equally important outward direction when observed in its proper calendar place. Repentance cannot become spiritual self-absorption because the Gospel that calls us home to God is the same Gospel entrusted to the Church for the nations. The God who converted Paul is still sovereign in salvation, and therefore Christians can proclaim Christ and pray for even those who seem most resistant without imagining that conversion finally depends upon human ingenuity or persuasion.

Sexagesima therefore holds together preparation, grace, and mission. The Church prepares because God has acted first. She repents because mercy has called her, and she bears witness because that same mercy is meant to be proclaimed to every race and nation. Easter remains the destination, Christ remains the Savior, and grace remains the first mover as the Church takes another measured step toward Lent.