Septuagesima (so called from the number of seventy) is a solemn beginning of a new office and a new time, wherein our Holy Mother the Church hath taught us, by calling to mind the time of the Jews' captivity from their country, the better to remember and bewail our own captivity from ours, even that heavenly paradise which God at first created for us. For which purpose the lessons of the Church Service (saith St. Bernard) are this day altered in their course, and the story of Genesis (where both our first happiness and our first miseries are described) is always begun to be read in Septuagesima.
It is a time, therefore, that suddenly calls us back from our Christmas feasting and joy, to our Lenten fasting and sorrow; from thinking how Christ came into the world, to think upon our own sins and miseries which brought Him into the world; to think upon them , and to bewail, or reform them withal; considering that He came not to take away their sins, who are not weary of them, or be loathe to part with them, and amend their lives themselves.
To this end there was a godly ordinance in the ancient Church (made by the old council of Auxerre more than a thousand years since), that in the end of the Epiphany there should be certain days appointed (such as this and the two Sundays following are) wherein to prepare the people for their solemn fasting and penance, and to give them warning of their Lent beforehand, that when it came it might be the more strictly and religiously observed.
(The illustration is from the 11th century Codex Aureus of Echternach, an illuminated Gospel book, showing the parable of the vineyard owners and labourers. The parable is the Gospel reading for Septuagesima, preparing us to "Go ye also into the vineyard": that is, to enter into the discipline of Lent.)
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