The Roman Liturgy: Septuagesima – The Babylonian Captivity and the Crisis in the Church
“The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath cursed his sanctuary.”
Introduction
It is a matter of dispute as to why the period before Lent is called “Septuagesima”. The word means “seventieth”, but Septuagesima is not seventy days (nor seven weeks) before Easter. However, if we treat Passiontide as a discrete period, then there are seven weeks between Septuagesima Sunday and Laetare Sunday (the Fourth and last Sunday of Lent).
Some writers also suggest that the name refers to the 70 years of “The Babylonian Captivity.” In the Catholic Encyclopaedia, Francis Mershman writes:
“Amularius [in De Eccl. Off., I.I] would make the Septuagesima mystically represent the Babylonian Captivity of seventy years.”1
Fr Leonard Goffine makes a similar point:
“Alcuin and Amalarius say that the captivity of the Jews in Babylon first suggested [the seventy days]; for as the Jews were obliged to do penance seventy years, that they might thereby merit to return into the promised land, so Christians sought to regain the grace of God by fasting for seventy days.”2
Similarly, in discussing “The Mystery of Septuagesima”, Dom Prosper Guéranger expresses a similar idea, and then comments:
“We are sojourners upon this earth; we are exiles and captives in Babylon, that city which plots our ruin. If we love our country, if we long to return to it, we must be proof against the lying allurements of this strange land, and refuse the cup she proffers us, and with which she maddens so many of our fellow captives.”3
Of the singing of the Alleluia, he says:
“[The Church] bids us close our lips to this word of joy, because we are in Babylon.”4
The Roman Liturgy – an ongoing series of standalone pieces
Septuagesima I: The Beginning of the Liturgical Year?
Septuagesima II: The Babylonian Captivity and the Crisis in the Church
Lent I: The Protection of God
Lent II: “What Think You of Christ?”
Lent III: Laetare Sunday and the Church
Passiontide I: The Silence of PassiontideChrist the King: “Are you a King, then?” – Christendom and the Social Kingship of Christ
Advent I: The Advent Liturgy and the Apocalypse
Advent II: The Close Presence of Christ in Advent
Advent III: Advent and the Preparation for Victory
Christmas and Christ's Triumph over Darkness
Epiphany as the Manifestation of Christ's Kingship
Epiphanytide: Ordinary Time or our Entrance into Eternity?
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As mentioned in the previous piece, the Church reads the book of Genesis throughout Septuagesima, and thus casts us back to the state of our first parents, and of man enslaved by sin and awaiting his Redeemer. Babylon represents a period of exile and captivity in sin, from which Christ only Christ can save us. Dom Guéranger continues:
“The Church, the interpreter of the Sacred Scriptures, often speaks to us of two places, which correspond with these two times of St. Augustine. These two places are Babylon and Jerusalem.
“Babylon is the image of this world of sin, in the midst whereof the Christian has to spend his years of probation; Jerusalem is the heavenly country, where he is to repose after all his trials. The people of Israel, whose whole history is but one great type of the human race, was banished from Jerusalem and kept in bondage in Babylon.”5
But what was the historical “Babylonian Captivity”, and what else can it tell us about Septuagesima and our own period of history?
The history
Following a period of idolatry and religions syncretism, and in the face of warnings from the prophets, the Kingdom of Judah was overrun, and Jerusalem was taken by Nabuchodonosor II. The Catholic Encyclopaedia tells us:
“The princes and leading men, the rank and file of the army, the citizen of wealth, and the artificers, numbering in all 10,000, were carried captive to Chaldea. The Temple and palace were rifled of their treasures.”6
A few years later, Jerusalem was again besieged, leading to a dreadful famine and an eventual frenzy of destruction, including that of Solomon’s Temple.
Thousands of the Jews who survived were exiled, and forced to live away from the Promised Land and their altar of sacrifice.
There can be no doubt that being deprived of the true religion was the worst result of that persecution – as it is of every persecution.
All this resonates with the liturgical texts of Septuagesima which we have already seen. It also resonates with Pinsk’s speculations on the process by which these liturgical propers and the consciousness of the Exile may have arisen in the Roman Church:
“Whenever and however the texts of this Mass may have come into being, they were certainly not invented in the conference rooms of a Liturgical Commission; rather they grew out of terrible affliction, such as men have themselves experienced in nightly bombings and in the horrors of the encounter with a brutal soldiery.
“Perhaps it was the restless age of the barbarian invasions, of the irruption of the barbarian hordes into the approaches to Rome and into the Roman Christian community itself, which first brought priest and congregation together in such a cry to God. This should not be forgotten today. Even today, priest and congregation should unite with all their hearts in this Introit.”7
In the last part, we considered how the propers give voice to the state of fallen man awaiting redemption. As Pinsk suggests, these propers can also be seen as giving voice to the Catholic faithful living today in this valley of tears: we are all in exile until we reach our heavenly homeland.
But that is a general point, and it must be applied to particulars.
Are we in Babylon?
One such particular is the ongoing ecclesiastical crisis under which we have been labouring since the 1960s. In fact, it is impossible to consider the Babylonian Captivity, and the agony expressed in Septuagesima’s liturgical texts, without thinking about our own ecclesial situation today.
Martin Luther famously used the image of the Babylonian Captivity to portray “Rome” as enslaving the true Christian Church with false doctrines and disciplines. Are we in dangerous territory here?
No, it is completely different. Luther claimed that at some distant point in history the true Church had disappeared or been driven underground by what he considered to be Roman accretions and distortions, and that it fell to the reformers to restore the true religion of Christ. Such a claim is chimerical. It is not only false; there is not even a moment, lost in the fog of time, which can plausibly mark the event or period in which it occurred.
We, by contrast, say what nobody can seriously question: that within living memory, the received religion practised by our recent forebears, many of whom we knew personally (e.g., parents, grandparents and great-grandparents), apparently underwent a wholesale revolution. This process changed nearly every aspect of their religion, which was deconstructed and reconstructed with a mixture of original and new materials. This is why so many of those who experienced it said: “They changed the religion.”
Some say that the essentials remain, but this is simply begging the question that such a revolution is possible. If a house is demolished, and a new house is rebuilt with a mixture of original and new materials, even according to an identical design (which the Vatican II revolution was not), can we really say that it is the same house? Not that the Catholic Church can be demolished: but anyone who presumes to deconstruct and reconstruct the true religion in this way surely leaves it in the process.
Another difference: we are by no means seeking to reform or restore the practice of a religion which had ceased to exist for centuries. It is a notorious fact that traditionalists are continuing the received religion of our grandparents: the very reason that they are criticised is that they have failed to adopt the changes mandated by the putative authorities.
It is another notorious fact that this religion never ceased being practised, in the way that our recent forebears practised it, and that it has never ceased being practised visibly and in public. As such, we traditionalists are not restoring that religion, but rather continuing it. There is nothing “radical” about this at all: the radicals are those responsible for the changes and their defenders. Any talk of “restoration” amongst us is mere shorthand, referring to the eventual vindication of that which we are continuing, and the end of our exile from our rightful home.
As a result of that drastic revolution, and due to the proliferation of pernicious doctrine and liturgical destruction, very many of us are exiled from the churches which our grandparents or forefathers built.
In many (or all) of those places, the sacrifice has been taken away, and replaced with something else which none of our recent forebears would recognise as belonging to the Catholic religion. To this, we could apply (in a figurative, qualified sense) the words of Jeremias over Babylon’s destruction of Jerusalem:
“The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath cursed his sanctuary: he hath delivered the walls of the towers thereof into the hand of the enemy: they have made a noise in the house of the Lord, as in the day of a solemn feast.” (Lam. 2.7)
We know, of course, that Christ’s Church is perpetual and that God will never cast her off or curse her in the sense that she ceases to exist or suffers even a temporary change in her essential and divine constitution.
But the situation is such that we are wholly justified in considering ourselves exiled in Babylon during this time, and making our own the prayers of Septuagesima. Only an ignorant or very superficial mind could draw a parallel between our use of this image and Luther’s.
The liturgy and our exile
Why would the Lord seemingly cast off his altar and curse his sanctuary like this? It seems reasonable to consider the current crisis as a punishment for the sins of mankind, which makes the collect of Septuagesima Sunday very fitting for our time:
Collect: O Lord, we beseech thee, graciously hear the prayers of thy people, that we who are justly punished for our sins may be mercifully delivered for the glory of thy name.
While the liturgy of these two and a half weeks continually gives voice to this acceptance of our exile, whilst also expressing confidence that God will indeed deliver us. In the Gradual of Sexagesima Sunday, the Church even has us ask God to scatter those who have oppressed her and driven her children into exile.
Gradual: Let the nations know that the Lord is thy name: thou alone art the most High over all the earth.
V. O my God, make them like a wheel; and as stubble before the wind. (Ps 82.19, 14)
And yet, despite this exile, many of us traditional Catholics still enjoy a remarkable level of consolation and comfort in the exercise of our religion.
It remains possible for very many of us to assist at the true Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, to receive the sacraments, and to enjoy Catholic families and friendships. Ultimately, those who wish to practice the true Catholic religion may still do so, and this sentiment is on our lips in the Offertory on Septuagesima Sunday:
Offertory: It is good to give thanks to the Lord, and to sing praise to Your name, Most High. (Ps 91:2)
In a way, many of us have already been preserved (or rescued) from the worst of the chastisement.
This is a theme taken up in Sexagesima week, when the Church reads the account of Noe, the flood and the Ark at Matins. The Ark is obviously an image of the Church, outside of which absolutely nobody can be saved.
But in a secondary sense, we who have been given the grace to retain the faith are like those animals, hidden in the Ark, safe from the flood of apostasy outside.
Conclusion
If we are really are living through a type of the Babylonian Captivity, then perhaps we should have hope: this exile may nearly be at its end.
Perhaps we do not think enough about being called back from exile, returning to the holy places built by our forebears, and clean sacrifice being offered there again.
God said through Jeremias that the Babylonian Captivity would last seventy years:
“For thus saith the Lord: When the seventy years shall begin to be accomplished in Babylon, I will visit you: and I will perform my good word in your favour, to bring you again to this place.
“For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of affliction, to give you an end and patience.
“And you shall call upon me, and you shall go and you shall pray to me, and I will hear you. You shall seek me, and shall find me: when you shall seek me with all your heart.
“And I will be found by you, saith the Lord: and I will bring back your captivity, and I will gather you out of all nations, and from all the places to which I have driven you out, saith the Lord: and I will bring you back from the place to which I caused you to be carried away captive.” (Jeremias 29:10)
This is a stirring promise.
It is difficult to say exactly when our current situation started. Did it start 55 years ago in 1969, with the introduction of the Novus Ordo? Or 59 years ago in 1965, with the promulgation of Dignitatis Humanae and the other documents of Vatican II?
Or 66 years ago in 1958, with the death of Pius XII??
If 1958 and 1969 represent the two extremes of when our crisis may have begun, and if this crisis might be set to last a Babylonian 70 years, then there may be only 4-15 years left until everything is restored.
Would it not fill us with hope to think that, no matter how bad our situation might seem, there are only 4-15 years left? Would that change how we sing the Communion antiphon for Sexagesima, also said in the prayers at the foot of the altar?
Communion: I will go in to the altar of God, the God of my gladness and joy. (Ps. 42.4)
In any case, Septuagesima’s liturgical texts are timeless, and will be as relevant in times of triumph as in crisis. Pinsk continues:
“For what is here expressed is the universal anguish of the Christian world, the Christian world that can, on the one hand, reveal to the angels the secret of the glory of God inhering in the creature – but is compelled, on the other hand, not only to fight the powers of this present world, but also to put on the whole armor of God so that it can resist the crafty assaults of the devil.”8
Whether in exile or at home, the combat and our duties remain basically the same. They are perfectly in the texts which the Church gives us for Septuagesima in the traditional Roman Liturgy.
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Further Reading:
Dom Prosper Guéranger – The Liturgical Year
Fr Johannes Pinsk – The Cycle of Christ
Dom Columba Marmion – Christ in his Mysteries
Mgr Robert Hugh Benson – Christ in the Church
Fr Frederick Faber – The Precious Blood
Fr Leonard Goffine – The Church’s Year
Book Review: “Christ in the Church” by Mgr Robert Hugh Benson
Book Review: “Christ in His Mysteries” by Dom Columba Marmion
How should Catholics approach Lent today? Timeless advice from John Henry Newman
Labelling other Catholics as “radical traditionalists” is immoral
Open Letter to Latin Mass Catholics
Part I – Collective Punishment
Part II – “An ecclesiology that is not part of the Church’s Magisterium”
Part III – The Judgment of Solomon
The Roman Liturgy – an ongoing series of standalone pieces on the liturgical texts, the crisis in the Church and hope:
Septuagesima I: The Beginning of the Liturgical Year?
Septuagesima II: The Babylonian Captivity and the Crisis in the Church
Lent I: The Protection of God
Lent II: “What Think You of Christ?”
Lent III: Laetare Sunday and the Church
Passiontide I: The Silence of PassiontideChrist the King: “Are you a King, then?” – Christendom and the Social Kingship of Christ
Advent I: The Advent Liturgy and the Apocalypse
Advent II: The Close Presence of Christ in Advent
Advent III: Advent and the Preparation for Victory
Christmas and Christ's Triumph over Darkness
Epiphany as the Manifestation of Christ's Kingship
Epiphanytide: Ordinary Time or our Entrance into Eternity?
See also The WM Review Reading List
He continues: “[He] would have it begin with this Sunday on which the Sacramentaries and Antiphonaries give the Introit "Circumdederunt me undique" and end with the Saturday after Easter, when the Church sings ‘Eduxit Dominus populum suum.’” Mershman, Francis. "Septuagesima." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 13. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 7 Feb. 2023, available at: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13721b.htm
Fr Leonard Goffine, Devout Instructions on the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays and Holy Days, 1896. Benziger Brothers, New York, p 75. Available at: https://archive.org/details/GoffinesDevoutInstructions/page/75/mode/2up?q=babylon
Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year Vol. IV, ‘Septuagesima’ (1949), trans. Dom Laurence Shepherd, OSB., St Bonaventure Publications, 2000, p 9
Ibid.
Ibid., 7
Reid, George. "Captivities of the Israelites." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. 7 Feb. 2023, available at: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03315a.htm
Johannes Pinsk, The Cycle of Christ, 1966. Trans. Arthur Gibson, Desclee Company, New York, 7-8.
Pinsk 8.