SEPTUAGESIMA: In The Beginning

 

Septuagesimatide begins today. The lessons for Matins introduce the theme of the penitential pre-lenten season of Septuagesima: Creation and Fall, and Original Sin; and God's intervention in History to purify mankind through a remnant in an ark (Sexagesima week) and to choose a People for himself; and the will of the unfathomable Divinity to reveal himself through his chosen people of Israel; and the Mystery of the Incarnation, through which the promise to Abraham ("in thee shall all the kindred of the earth be blessed", First Lesson in the Matins for Quinquagesima Sunday) would be fulfilled by the Divine Son of the Blessed Virgin ("I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel", Third Lesson in the Matins for Wednesday in Septuagesima week).

The reality of Original Sin ("I am the Immaculate Conception") and the great need for penitence in our times ("Penance! Penance! Penance!") were also the messages of the memorable events which began on February 11, 1858:

Leo XIV, quoting Mother Teresa: “The Greatest Destroyer of Peace is Abortion.”

 [T]here will be no peace without ending the war that humanity wages against itself when it discards the weak, excludes the poor, and remains indifferent to refugees and the oppressed. Only those who care for the smallest can do truly great things. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, saint of the poor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, said in this regard that “the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion” (cf. Address at the National Prayer Breakfast, February 3, 1994).