The Season of Septuagesima
We Catholics are quite used to being out of sync with the secular world, especially when it comes to holidays. While we don penitential purple and prepare for Christ’s coming in the flesh during December, the secular world shops, parties, and tortures our eardrums with Maria Carey. By the time our Christmas season comes, and we glory in the presence of Christ among us, the secular world is wallowing in slush filled misery, hung over with holiday cheer. Lent is only acknowledged by the secular world through more extensive advertising of seafood. The frequent occurrence of Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day during this time drives away any thought of sobriety and self-restraint from the worldly mind. Easter, the time of our greatest joy, is likewise only acknowledged by an abundance of egg-shaped candies, which vanish from the store shelves mere days after Easter. Even Halloween, formerly a day of penance, is now marked by Dionysian debauchery, with the days of All Saints all but forgotten.
Now much of this dissonance is the result of living in a culture at odds with our Faith. In ages past, liturgical and secular calendars and practices were more in sync with each other, and the faithful could, generally, feast and fast without having to fight so hard against the opposing atmosphere created by their fellow citizens.
There is, however, one season of the Church year where this dissonance is intentional: Septuagesima. Also known as Carnival.
Carnival, meaning “farewell to meat,” started at different times in different places, with the Germans and Dutch starting it as early as St. Martin’s Day (November 11th). But in every place, Carnival was in full swing three Sundays before the start of Lent. Indeed, the approach of Lent was the main reason for the festivities: Medieval Lenten disciplines forbade the consumption of meat, butter, lard, eggs, and any animal products whatsoever. The faithful were only allowed one vegan meal a day, except on Sundays (when fasting was forbidden), and Ash Wednesday and Good Friday (which were Black Fasts: no food or drink at all). Since all of these animal products would spoil if left until after Easter, it was better to eat them all before Lent started. And if eating an ungodly amount of rich food was needed, might as well make a party out of it.
And party our forebears did, and still do in the more culturally Catholic parts of the world. From the masquerade balls of Venice, to the fantastic parade floats of Rio, to the block parties in New Orleans, Carnival is marked by feasting, drinking, costumes, and raucous behavior. Carnivals of ages past also featured theatrical plays and biting satire, as the rules of polite society were abandoned and everyone made fools of themselves.
It is, in short, an inversion festival, in which the world is turned upside down, and the repressed passions of the people come pouring out in a torrent of absurdity.
The liturgical season of Septuagesima (Latin for “Seventy”), on the other hand, is almost completely penitential in character. Three Sundays before Ash Wednesday, the Alleluia is buried (often literally) and the vestments of hopeful green are put off in favor of sorrowful purple. The Psalms sung during the Sunday Masses are cries for help, the epistles from St. Paul full of warnings of coming judgment, and the Gospels full of exhortations to do the hard work of penance and to trust in God’s mercy.
The contrast between Carnival and Septuagesima could not be more clear. And yet, these two overlapping seasons share a common theme: a focus on the absurd. For how absurd is it that the Israelite, having received so many graces from God, should fall away from Him and die in the wilderness, or that those who only work for one hour should be paid the same wage as those who work a full day (Septuagesima Sunday)? Or that greats saints like St. Paul should go through so many trials and tribulations to bring us the Word of Eternal Life, only for those precious seeds to fall on the road, or on the rocks, or among the thorns, and die before they bear fruit (Sexagesima Sunday)? Or that a man may spend his whole life performing acts of piety, yet make the whole of it worthless because he neglects to let charity grow in his heart, or that the Son of God, the source of all goodness and life, should die a violent death (Quinquagesima Sunday)?
The absurdity is even more pronounced in the reading from Office of Matins, which feature the stories of Adam (Septuagesima), Noah (Sexagesima), and Abraham (Quinquagesima). Offered a life of never-ending bliss and ease, our first parents choose death and suffering instead. God, in seeming contradiction to the oft-repeated promises of Scriptures, protects not the righteous Abel, but his murderous brother Cain, allowing he and his descendants to build a society full of violence, worldly amusements, and polygamy. The very laws of nature are broken as the Sons of God take wives from the Daughters of Men (whatever that means) and give birth to a race of giants. God, loving and patient and ready to forgive, seemingly changes his mind about the whole creation business and proceeds to return the earth to the watery chaos from which it came. The man who He opted to save along with his family, the righteous Noah, proceeds to find himself naked and ashamed in a garden after consuming a fruit, just like his forefather Adam, and puts a curse on his own child when discovered. His descendants, learning nothing, proceed to build an immense tower to reach the heavens, a symbol of and monument to their colossal pride. God responds by breaking the human family apart, confusing their speech and scattering them over all the earth. And with Abraham, a wealthy man with no son, God promises him an heir, and numerous descendants, only to demand that Abraham sacrifice his promised son.
In the midst of this almost pagan atmosphere of carnal delights and existential dread, we might be tempted to pull a Job and doubt the goodness of God who would create a world this unfair, this nonsensical, and bury ourselves in pleasure, driving as far from our minds as possible the coming judgment, or the knowledge that we will one day return to dust. But, as God tells Job, He and the reality He has made are far beyond our comprehension. No answers will satisfy us, only the presence of God Himself. And Himself is what he gives us: Himself incomprehensible, He allows us to comprehend Him as a man, a descendant of the spared son of Abraham. Needing nothing from us, He nevertheless comes to us, burning with desire for us. Immortal, He dies for us the cruel death of the cross, in that portrait of majesty and horror at the turning point of all history, that ultimate inversion on the hill of the skull. And through that inversion, and through the harsh penance of Lent that prepares us for the anniversary of that day, our wild passions are tamed, our corrupt nature puts on immortality, and the world is set right again.
May God bless you all in this holy season, and may your Lent be fruitful.
For more about inversion festivals, see this video by the esteemed Mr. Jonathan Pageau, host of The Symbolic World.
And if you like what I write here, be sure to check out my novel, Cain Son of Adam: A Gothic Tragedy, available in paperback and eBook formats on Amazon, and free to read on Kindle Unlimited.