What Is Sexagesima Sunday? The Second Step Toward Lent

Two Sundays before Ash Wednesday, a handful of churches mark a day with a name that sounds more like a math problem than a feast: Sexagesima, roughly "sixtieth." It isn't the sixtieth day of anything in particular — the old counting was approximate, a round number standing in for "getting close now." But if you've ever noticed the readings turning heavier, the hymns a shade more sober, a few weeks before Lent actually starts, this quiet Sunday is often why.

Where the name comes from

In the pre-Reformation Western calendar, and still today in some Anglican, Lutheran, and Catholic traditions that keep the older forms, three Sundays counted down to Lent by rough multiples of ten: Septuagesima ("seventieth"), Sexagesima ("sixtieth"), and Quinquagesima ("fiftieth"). Sexagesima sits in the middle — the second rung down. None of the numbers is exact; they were never meant to be. They're a countdown made memorable, a way of saying Lent is coming long before the ashes.

What the day is actually about

Nothing is given up yet on Sexagesima. There's no fasting, no ash, no formal discipline. But many lectionaries pair the day with the Parable of the Sower — seed falling on path, rock, thorns, and good soil — read as a kind of self-check before the real work of Lent begins. It's less a command than a question laid quietly in front of you: what kind of ground have you been lately?

Why it faded from most calendars

After the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church dropped the pre-Lent Sundays in favor of moving straight from Epiphany-tide into Lent, and many Protestant traditions had already let the observance lapse earlier. So Sexagesima survives mostly in traditional Anglican, Lutheran, and some Eastern-influenced calendars — a small, almost private marker for the churches that kept it.

A season, not a task

You don't have to observe Sexagesima to feel what it's pointing at: the slow turn of a year toward something more serious, arriving before you're quite ready for it. That's true of a lot of the church calendar — it doesn't ask you to perform anything on the day itself. It just leaves the shape of the season there, for you to notice or not.

Bible Clock keeps the shape of that year on your Lock Screen and Watch face — the ordinary Sundays and the old, half-forgotten ones alike, each with its own hand-drawn face and a verse. No streak to keep, no box to check. Just the calendar, quietly kept.