Septuagesima Sunday – The Parable of the Labourers
A definitive break in the tone of the liturgy – explained by the Gospels read over the next three Sundays.
A definitive break in the tone of the liturgy – explained by the Gospels read over the next three Sundays.
Editor’s Notes
Septuagesima Sunday marks the beginning of the Easter cycle and, according to some scholars, the start of a new liturgical year. Whether or not it also marks the end of the Christmas cycle – or that this continues to Candlemas – is also debated. You can read more about Septuagesima, its meaning and its liturgical propers here:
When we started Father Coleridge Reader, we were publishing whole chapters, which would range from 1,500 words to upwards of 10,000. It became apparent that this was unmanageable, and we began splitting the chapters into more manageable chunks. Septuagesima marks the point where we began to hit the “sweet spot” of less than 2,000 words.
We have been updating the old instalments in order to fit them to this “sweet spot” length – but from today we will shift to focusing on important saints days, as outlined in our Milestone post from last Summer:
Year 2
Continue the task of curating, preparing and publishing Fr Coleridge’s texts, this Tome focusing on important saints’ days for the year
Fill out the liturgical year with texts that were too long to publish in Year 1
Begin typesetting extracts for a series of hard-copy books (E.G., Advent with Fr Coleridge)
However, we will continue to mark the progress of the liturgical year by sending out a weekly post collating the sections of the chapter dealing with the relevant Sunday Gospel.
Part I: Is it unfair that ‘the first will be last’ in the Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard?
The Parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, read at Septuagesima, shows us that God’s justice can confound human expectations.
Part II: Does your rank in the Church determine holiness and reward?
Vocations are indispensable for the Church—but they are a means to end. What is that end?
Part III: Why are good works worthless without charity?
Animosity and jealousy can render good works worthy of punishment, rather than reward.
Part IV: Acting like this is why Catholics fall away
Being a Catholic won’t save you if you ignore the lesson of the Labourers in the Vineyard.
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Beautiful framing of the liturgical shift. The parable's "last will be first" reversal works brilliantly to set a pententail tone bc it undermines any spiritual complacency we might carry from Christmas. I remember reading similar pre-Lenten prep in older devotionals that's mostly gone now. This kind of theological architecture in the calendar makes way more sense than "ordinary time" labeling.
The modern Church calls this Sunday the "Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time." How dull, how boring! What a small, rotten way to rip out memory from the Catholic faithful! Even the Missouri Synod Lutherans use the term "Septuagesima Sunday" My recently deceased, elderly, somewhat retarded and autistic friend William used to call this Sunday "Quaesimegesima Sunday." (Say that three times.) Even William, with his somewhat slow but still creative brain, had a more poetic vocabulary than the modern Church.