Septuagesima Sunday

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Septuagesima Overview
Taken from here.

Theme: Babylonian Captivity, Man's Fallen State
Color: Purple
Mood: Penance
Symbols: chains, tears, Jeremias
Length: Septuagesima Sunday to Shrove Tuesday


Septuagesima (also known as "Gesimatide") and Lent are both times of penance, Septuagesima being a time of voluntary fasting in preparation for the obligatory Great Fast of Lent. So connected are Septuagesima and Lent that the former is sometimes called, colloquially, "Pre-Lent." The theme of this season is the Babylonian exile, the "mortal coil" we must endure as we await the Heavenly Jerusalem. Sobriety and somberness reign liturgically; the Alleluia and Gloria are banished

The Sundays of Septugesima are named for their distance away from Easter:

• The first Sunday of Septuagesima gives its name to the entire season as it is known as "Septuagesima." "Septuagesima" means "seventy," and Septuagesima Sunday comes roughly seventy days before Easter. This seventy represents the seventy years of the Babylonian Captivity. It is on this Sunday that the alleluia is "put away," not to be said again until the Vigil of Easter.
  
• The second Sunday of Septuagesima is known as "Sexagesima, which means "sixty". Sexagesima Sunday comes roughly sixty days before Easter.
  
• The third Sunday of Septuagesima is known as "Quinquagesima," which means "fifty" and which comes roughly fifty days before Easter.
  

Quadragesima means "forty," and this is the name of the first Sunday of Lent and the Latin name for the entire season of Lent (the next season).

Each of those Sundays of Septuagesima focuses on a different Old Testament patriarch:

Septuagesima Sunday: Adam
Sexagesima Sunday: Noah
Quinquagesima Sunday: Abraham

Throughout this short Season and that of Lent you will notice a deepening sense of penance and somberness, culminating in Passiontide (the last two weeks of Lent), that will suddenly and joyously end at the Vigil of Easter on Holy Saturday when the alleluia returns and Christ's Body is restored and glorified.

The station churches of the three Sundays of Septuagesima:

Septuagesima: S. Lorenzo fuori le mura
Sexagesima: S. Paolo fuori le mura
Quinquagesima: S. Pietro in Vaticano

Finally, you may be interested in reading St. Thomas Aquinas's "Meditations for Lent," which has a reading for every day from Septuagesima Sunday to the end of Lent. You can find it in this site's Catholic Library.