Like it or not, Christmas has left us. In the Ordinary Form of the Latin Rite we must make do with the first bout of Ordinary Time (a name Benedict XVI confessed to not liking). In the Extraordinary Form and the ex-Anglican Ordinariates, this season continues to bear its hallowed name of “Time after Epiphany”.
The following season is Septuagesima, which begins with the Sunday it takes its name from – February 17 in 2019. The name refers to “Seventy”, as in days till Easter. As a result, the two following Sundays are called Sexagesima and Quinquagesima, as in “Sixty” and “Fifty” (Lent in Latin is Quadragesima, hence the Spanish Cuaresma and French Carême). The two days after Quinquagesima Sunday – Lundi and Mardi Gras in French – lead inevitably into Ash Wednesday. Either way you cut it, we are in Pre-Lent.
