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Season of Septuagesima
With the season of Septuagesima begins the second cycle of the Church's year. The Christmas
cycle is centered round the birth of our Saviour; the Easter cycle is centered round his passion
and Resurrection. In both, however, the theme is the same - the radical transformation of our
lives by Christ's coming into this world. But whereas Christmas represents salvation coming from
on high, the transformation of our life by the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, Easter is
salvation won by our Lord Jesus Christ's passion and death. Christmas means the coming of our
Saviour-already we experience the joy of being saved, since our Saviour has come among us.
Easter means our Lord in conflict with the devil and the powers of evil from which he issues
triumphant, crushing Satan and rising in glory taking us in his wake to our heavenly home;
Easter means the redemption of man obtained at the price of the cross. The liturgical season
which begins with Septuagesima and continues until the end of Lent is marked as a period of
struggle and toil which we must undergo with Christ, leading, by his grace, to the victory and
triumphant joy of Easter. On the days after Easter comes the gladness of the baptized raised up
with Christ to a new life. Taken as a whole the Easter cycle puts before us the most fundamental
and striking aspect of our life: men's sin and weakness expiated and mastered by Christ's
redemption. It reminds us that Christ came to us as our Redeemer; we need redemption. And it is
as the redeemed that our real realtionship with God is to be found; the felix culpa of the Easter
vigil has no other meaning than the overflowing joy of the redeemed who exult in their
redemption. (St. Andrew Missal)
Choose liturgy here:
Septuagesima
Sexagesima
Quinquagesima
Septuagesima
Epistle: 1 Corinthians 9. 24-27, 10. 1-5; Gospel: St. Matthew 20, 1-16
"For many are called, but few are chosen." (Mt. 20, 16)
The calling of all mankind, the vocation of all, is to holiness.
God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer
goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed
life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws
close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him
with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided
by sin, into the unity of his family the Church. To accomplish this,
when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer
and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in
the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed
life.(CCC 1)
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But few are chosen. The "chosen" ones are those who respond to God's call
perfectly spoken forth in Christ the eternal Word. These few persevere in "doing the
will of their heavenly Father", professing the orthodox Catholic faith, living the faith
in "fraternal sharing" and celebrating the faith in liturgy and prayer.
Those who with God's help have welcomed Christ's call and freely
responded to it are urged on by love of Christ to proclaim the Good
News everywhere in the world. This treasure, received from the
apostles, has been faithfully guarded by their successors. All Christ's
faithful are called to hand it on from generation to generation, by
professing the faith, by living it in fraternal sharing, and by celebrating
it in liturgy and prayer. (Cf. Acts 2:42) (CCC 3)
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Thus, the parable of the vineyard is the Lord's call to all those who have received Him
in word and sacrament to share generously with all men what they themselves have
received. All share equally in the task, whether called early or late in the day, to build
up the kingdom of God in this world.
Let's pray for each other until, again next week, we "meet Christ in the liturgy",
Fr. Cusick
(Publish with permission.) http://www.christusrex.org/www1/mcitl/
Sexagesima
Epistle: 2 Corinthians 11. 19-33, 12. 1-9; Gospel: St. Luke 8, 4-15
How are we to avoid being as those "who hear, but as they go on their way they
are choked by the cares and riches and pleasure of life"? (Lk 8, 14)
How are we to be those people called by the Lord to be "good soil", "those who,
hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit
with patience"? (Lk 8 15)
Prayer.
The tradition of Christian prayer is one of the ways in which the
tradition of faith takes shape and grows, especially through the
contemplation and study of believers who treasure in their hearts the
events and words of the economy of salvation, and through their
profound grasp of the spiritual realities they experience. (CCC 2651)
Prayer cannot be reduced to the spontaneous outpouring of interior
impulse: in order to pray, one must have the will to pray. Nor is it
enough to know what the Scriptures reveal about prayer: one must
also learn how to pray. Through a living transmission (Sacred
Tradition) within "the believing and praying Church," (Dei Verbum 8)
the Holy Spirit teaches the children of God how to pray. (CCC 2650)
The invocation of the holy name of Jesus is the simplest way of
praying always. When the holy name is repeated often by a humbly
attentive heart, the prayer is not lost by heaping up empty phrases,
(Cf. Mt 6:7) but holds fast to the word and "brings forth fruit with
patience." (Cf. Lk 8:15) This prayer is possible "at all times" because
it is not one occupation among others but the only occupation: that of
loving God, which animates and transfigures every action in Christ
Jesus. (CCC 2668)
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Let's pray for each other until, again next week, we "meet Christ in the liturgy",
Fr. Cusick
(Publish with permission.) http://www.christusrex.org/www1/mcitl/
(See also CCC 368, 2731, 2847)
Quinquagesima
Epistle: 1 Corinthians 13. 1-13; Gospel: St. Luke 18, 31-43
The Twelve failed to understand that the Lord must suffer. Only later, with the gift of
the Holy Spirit, will they grasp that "what God foretold by the mouth of all the
prophets, that his Christ should suffer, he thus fulfilled" (Acts 3:18) Christians
unite themselves with all that Christ experienced, including his suffering, and certainly
all can see that he shared in our death.
St. John Chrysostom writes about the Passion of the Lord. It
"had been foretold by Isaiah when he said, 'I gave my back to the
smiters, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I
hid not my face from shame and spitting' (Is 50:6), and the same
prophet even foretold the punishment of the Cross with these words:
'He poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the
transgressors' (Is 53:12). And therefore the text adds, 'They will
scourge him and kill him'; but David had also announced his
resurrection when he said, 'Thou dost not let thy godly one see
the Pit' (Ps 16;10). In fulfillment of this the Lord adds, 'And on the
third day he will rise" (Hom. on St. Matthew, 66).
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Only Christians can accept suffering not as the punishment of an angry God, but as the
inescapable consequence of original sin.
Now, however, "we walk by faith, not by sight"; (2 Cor 5:7) we
perceive God as "in a mirror, dimly" and only "in part." (1 Cor 13:12)
Even though enlightened by him in whom it believes, faith is often
lived in darkness and can be put to the test. The world we live in
often seems very far from the one promised us by faith. Our
experiences of evil and suffering, injustice, and death, seem to
contradict the Good News; they can shake our faith and become a
temptation against it. (CCC 164)
In solidarity with the blessed Passion of the Lord, every human
person can accept suffering as a gift and aing as a gift and a grace unto salvation. In
particular this is made possible by the Sacrament of the Anointing of
the Sick. One of the effects of the sacrament is of union with the
passion of Christ. (CCC 1521)
By the grace of this sacrament, the sick person receives the strength
and the gift of uniting himself more closely to Christ's Passion: in a
certain way he is consecrated to bear fruit by configuration to the
Savior's redemptive Passion. Suffering, a consequence of original sin,
acquires a new meaning; it becomes a participation in the saving
work of Jesus. (CCC 1521)
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Let's pray for each other until, again next week, we "meet Christ in the liturgy",
Fr. Cusick
(Publish with permission.) http://www.christusrex.org/www1/mcitl/
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