That’s today – for all Catholics through most of our history up until fifty years ago – and still today for Eastern Catholics, the Orthodox, Catholics of the Anglican Ordinariate and other Anglicans.
As I’ve written before (frequently), the liturgical and spiritual traditions that evolved over the centuries guarded us from being (as one scholar puts it) parachuted into Lent on Ash Wednesday with no structured preparation.
More on this pre-Lent season called Septuagesima here.
And if you want to do a deep-dive, read the section from the great liturgical scholar Dom Guéranger
In order to console us in the midst of the combats, which so thickly beset our path, the Church, – like a beacon shining amidst the darkness of this our earthly abode, – shows us another Seven, which is to succeed the one we are now preparing to pass through. After the Septuagesima of mourning, we shall have the bright Easter with its Seven weeks of gladness, foreshadowing the happiness and bliss of Heaven. After having fasted with our Jesus, and suffered with him, the day will come when we shall rise together with him, and our hearts shall follow him to the highest heavens, and then after a brief interval, we shall feel descending upon us the Holy Ghost, with his Seven Gifts. The celebration of all these wondrous joys will take us Seven weeks, as the great Liturgists observe in their interpretation of the Rites of the Church:- the seven joyous weeks from Easter to Pentecost will not be too long for the future glad Mysteries, which, after all, will be but figures of a still gladder future, the future of eternity.
Having heard these sweet whisperings of hope, let us now bravely face the realities brought before us by our dear Mother the Church. We are sojourners upon this earth; we are exiles and captives in Babylon, that city which plots our ruin. If we love our country, – if we long to return to it, – we must be proof against the lying allurements of this strange land, and refuse the cup she proffers us, and with which she maddens so many of our fellow captives. She invites us to join in her feasts and her songs; but we must unstring our harps, and hang them on the willows that grow on her river’s bank, till the signal be given for our return to Jerusalem [Ps. cxxv]. She will ask us to sing to her the melodies of our dear Sion: but, how shall we, who are so far from home, have heart to sing the Song of the Lord in a strange Land? [Ps. cxxxvi]. No, – there must be no sign that we are content to be in bondage, or we shall deserve to be slaves for ever.
These are the sentiments wherewith the Church would inspire us, during the penitential Season, which we are now beginning. She wishes us to reflect on the dangers that beset us, – dangers which arise from our own selves, and from creatures. During the rest of the year, she loves to hear us chant the song of heaven, the sweet Alleluia! – but now, she bids us close our lips to this word of joy, because we are in Babylon. We are pilgrims absent from Our Lord [II Cor. v. 6]; – let us keep our glad hymn for the day of his return. We are sinners, and have but too often held fellowship with the world of God’s enemies; let us become purified by repentance, for it is written, that Praise is unseemly in the mouth of a sinner [Ecclus. xv. 9].
The leading feature, then, of Septuagesima is the total suspension of the Alleluia, which is not to be again heard upon the earth, until the arrival of that happy day, when, having suffered death with our Jesus, and having been buried together with him, we shall rise again with him to a new life [Coloss. ii. 12].
The point is this: for three weeks preceding Lent, the entire Catholic world would pray the same preparatory prayers and hear the same Scripture readings that were shaped and chosen with the preparatory spirit in mind. Not the random readings we hear because this year the Sunday before Lent begins is this Sunday from year B but last year we heard something different because it was another Sunday from year A because that’s just how the calendar falls.
Here’s what I say all the time.
Paul writes that “we do not know how to pray as we ought.” What he means by that is we really don’t have a clue what we should be praying for. We think we know ourselves and what’s best for us, but we don’t.
But.
Look at the entire context of Paul’s words:
In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.
And the one who searches hearts knows what is the intention of the Spirit, because it intercedes for the holy ones according to God’s will.
And what we believe and trust to be true is that that Spirit dwells, moves and lives in the Church. So if we do not know how to pray as we ought – we let the Spirit to come to aid of our weakness by grounding our prayer in the prayer of the Church – the Word of God and the prayers and liturgical practices that have developed over the centuries, guided by that Spirit.
So as we enter into Lent – what in the world are we doing? We have ideas, we think we know what we should give up or do or how we should approach the season and what we hope to “get out of it” – but what guides us in our discernment?
What great sense it makes to do that discernment in the context of prayers, reading and a season that developed, guided by the Holy Spirit – with precisely that purpose in mind – and to do so, not alone, not relying mostly on our own resources and what we’ve picked out and what’s come our way in the marketplace, but along with the entire Body of Christ, on this same journey.
If you grew up or were engaged in formation or were just paying attention in the immediate wake of Vatican II, you know that one of the mantras uttered over and over and over again was: Pre-Vatican II spirituality was individualistic. People would go into Mass, pray their own prayers, do whatever on their own. It was all a me-and-God, a vertical spirituality. No more!
Well, irony of ironies, the Law of Unintended Consequences strikes again. For here – as in so much of the post-Conciliar changes, what we see is that in dismantling and blowing up the Big Tradition, western Catholics were set adrift in the spiritual marketplace of late stage capitalism, with nothing in common except the shared identity of anxious, wandering, isolated consumer seeker.
Charlotte was Both 