What Is Septuagesima Sunday? The Quiet Run-Up to Lent

Three Sundays before Ash Wednesday, some churches quietly change key. Nothing is given up yet. No ashes, no fasting. But the color shifts toward violet, a certain word disappears from the liturgy, and the year starts leaning, gently, toward Lent. That Sunday has a name almost no one outside a few traditions still uses: Septuagesima.

Where the name comes from

Septuagesima is Latin for "seventieth" — not a precise count of days, but part of a set. It's followed by Sexagesima ("sixtieth") the next Sunday, then Quinquagesima ("fiftieth") the Sunday right before Ash Wednesday, then Quadragesima ("fortieth") — the old Latin name for the first Sunday of Lent itself, and the root of Cuaresma and Quaresma, the words Spanish and Portuguese still use for Lent today. The numbers count down in round tens, more like mile markers than a strict calendar.

A season before the season

For centuries, this three-Sunday stretch — sometimes called Pre-Lent, or the "Gesimatide" — served as a threshold. Lent itself hadn't started, so nothing was formally required. But the readings turned more sober, the color shifted from green to violet, and in many medieval parishes, the Alleluia was set aside at Vespers the Saturday before, not to return until the Easter Vigil. Some churches marked this with a small, almost playful custom: burying or "saying farewell" to a written or sung Alleluia, so its return at Easter would land with real weight.

It wasn't asceticism. It was a runway — a way of easing a congregation from ordinary time into Lent's fast rather than dropping it on them all at once.

The reading it carries

In the older Roman lectionary, Septuagesima Sunday's Gospel is the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1–16) — laborers hired at different hours of the day, all paid the same wage. It's an odd, faintly unsettling story to place at the start of a season about discipline: a reminder, right before the hard work of Lent begins, that none of it is earned on a strict ledger.

Where it's still kept

The Roman Catholic Church set the Gesima Sundays aside in its 1969 calendar reform, folding that time back into what's now called Ordinary Time. But Septuagesima never fully disappeared. It's still observed in the traditional Latin Mass, in some Lutheran calendars, and among Anglicans who follow the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. For a season with no fasting rule attached to it, it has proven surprisingly durable.

A quiet note

You don't need to track down a missal or change anything about how you keep the weeks before Lent. Most calendars, most years, won't mention Septuagesima at all. It's enough to know it's there — a small, old hinge in the church year, three Sundays that exist only to let the turn toward Lent happen slowly instead of all at once.

Bible Clock keeps the seasons of the church year across its 84 hand-drawn faces, each paired with its own verse — so even a quiet, half-forgotten season like this one can sit gently in the background of your day. One purchase, no subscription, on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch.