The Gesima Sundays

This Saturday, Epiphanytide ends. Sunday, the liturgical color in the church shifts from green to purple (or violet), marking a change in the church calendar. Epiphanytide is over, Lent is coming. But it’s not here yet. There are the Gesimas to consider.

The Gesima Sundays—Septuagesima-Latin for seventy, Sexagesima-Latin for sixty, Quinquagesima-Latin for fifty—count days. Seventy, Sixty and Fifty of them, give or take a few. They number the days till Easter. Though a heading in the Prayer Book calls them “The Pre-Lenten Season,” the Gesima Days aren’t a “season” like Lent or Epiphanytide or the Twelve Days which make up Christmastide. Experts on the church calendar (called “herontologists,” if you’re looking for a good scrabble word) say the days between the closing of Epiphanytide and the beginning of Lent is not a “season” but the countdown to a season. Though the Gesimas reckon the days till Easter, they’re counting us down to Lent.

I’m sure you recall the word “Lent” is an old Anglo-Saxon word that means “Spring.” In Latin, the word used to designate the season is “Quadragesima.” You won’t be surprised to learn that it just means “Forty.” Lent is the Forty Day Fast.

For Christians, Lent is the annual contest of the spiritual life. Forty Days (not counting Sundays, to make the number come out) of special fasting, praying and almsgiving; forty days we’re given to grow to be a bit more like Jesus.

So why the Seventy and Sixty and Fifty? If it’s the Forty Days that count (and it is), then what’s the point of the Gesimas? Why not just make Epiphanytide longer? Why does the Prayer Book bother with the “Pre-Lenten Season?”

Lent is indeed a contest, a time we can devote ourselves to our spiritual lives. The point of Lent is for you and me to struggle with our sins, to fight our fallen selves, to look where we don’t want to look—into the rotten part of us that we each hope nobody else knows about. In Lent, you and I wrestle with ourselves—and we wrestle to win.

St Paul compares our Christian struggle with an athletic contest in his First Epistle to the Corinthians:

“Do ye not know that they which run in a race run all, but only one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. Every man that striveth for the mastery of self-control is temperate in all things. Now they struggle after a corruptible crown; but we, an incorruptible one. I therefore run, not uncertain of my goal; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I discipline my body, and bring it into subjection…”

Uh—okay, but what does this have to do with the Gesimas?

The countdown of the Gesima Days, the “Pre-Lenten Season,” is not empty counting. These are days set aside for us to “prepare.” It’s not Lent—but it’s the time the Church gives us to prepare for Lent. The athlete prepares for his contest by planning what he’ll do, mapping out his strategy, stretching his muscles for the race. He develops a plan for himself, makes himself a rule to follow.

That’s what the Gesima Days are for. Planning, thinking praying, drawing up a Rule to follow for the Forty Days to come. Watch here for some ideas. Don’t let Septuagesima turn to Sexagesima then Quinquagesima become Quadragesima before you think “Will I give up boxed chocolates again this year?”--Fr Gregory Wilcox