Patrick Comerford
Today is the Sunday before Lent, and many churches and parishes, including Saint Mary and Saint Giles,Stony Stratford, have marked today as Transfiguration Sunday. In the past, the Transfiguration was traditionally marked on 6 August and this Sunday, the Sunday before Lent, was known as Quinquagesima.
The three Sundays before Lent once had special Latin names in the Book of Common Prayer, names that were shared in most traditions in the Western Church. Although these Sundays are usually counted as ‘Ordinary Time’ in many traditions today, some Anglican parishes still use the original Latin names, and they are reminders that Lent and its disciplines are imminent.
These three Sundays were known as:
Septuagesima Sunday: the Third Sunday before Lent, which this year fell two weeks (Sunday 1 February 2026), although most parishes and churches celebrated it as the Feast of the Presentation, and some as the Fourth Sunday of Epiphany (Epiphany IV). In the early Church, no Gloria or Alleluia was sung on that Sunday because it was the first Sunday of the call to Lenten discipline. Although the word Septuagesima means ‘seventieth’, this Sunday falls only 63 days before Easter.
Early Christians began observing Lent the day after Septuagesima Sunday. This is because Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays were not days of fasting in the early Church. So, if the faithful wished to fast for 40 days before Easter, they would start the Monday after Septuagesima Sunday. Today, only Sunday is a non-fast day, and so Lent begins on Ash Wednesday (18 February 2026).
Sexagesima Sunday: the Second Sunday before Lent, which was last Sunday (8 February 2026). In the Early Church, Lent would have started on the previous Monday. In some parts of the Eastern Orthodox Church, that Sunday is known as ‘No Meat Sunday,’ and the dietary observances for Lent begin on this day.
Quinquagesima Sunday: the final Sunday before Lent, or the Sunday before Ash Wednesday (15 February 2026). It is 50 days before Easter, hence quinquagesima or ‘fiftieth.’
Today [15 February 2026] is the Sunday before Lent, is Quinquagesima Sunday, and as a reflection today, I have been re-reading John Keble’s poem, ‘Quinquagesima Sunday,’ recalling the traditional name once used for the Sunday before Lent.
John Keble (1792-1866) was an Anglican priest and poet, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and one of the leading figures in the Oxford Movement. He was born on Saint Mark’s Day, 25 April 1792, in Fairford, Gloucestershire, where his father, the Revd John Keble, a former Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was Vicar of Coln St Aldwyn’s. The choir sang his ‘Blest are the pure in heart’, written in 1819, as the anthem at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, this morning, and we sang another version as the Post-Communion hymn.
John Keble studied at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and in 1810, at the age of 18, he graduated with a double first in classics and mathematics. He became a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, in 1811 and he was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Oxford in 1815 and priest in 1816.
Keble published The Christian Year in 1827. He wrote the poems to restore a deep feeling for the Church Year among Anglicans, and it received such acclaim that it became the most popular volume of verse in the 19th century. One of the most popular poems in The Christian Year is the well-known hymn, ‘New every morning.’
The Christian Year went into 95 editions in Keble’s lifetime, and by the time the copyright expired in 1873, over 375,000 copies had been sold in Britain and 158 editions had been published.
The success of The Christian Year led to Keble being appointed Professor of Poetry in Oxford University (1831-1841).
His ‘Assize Sermon’ in Saint Mary’s University Church, Oxford, in 1833 was the spark that ignited the Oxford Movement. He was appointed Vicar of Hursley, Hampshire, in 1835, and he settled down to family life and remained there for the rest of his life as a parish priest at All Saints’ Church.
He edited an edition of Richard Hooker’s works in 1836. The most important of his prose writings, however, was his treatise on Eucharistic Adoration.
John Keble died 160 years ago, on 29 March 1866 at the age of 74. Within three years of his death, Keble College, Oxford, was established at Oxford ‘to give an education in strict fidelity to the Church of England.’
Quinquagesima Sunday by John Keble:
Sweet Dove! the softest, steadiest plume,
In all the sunbright sky,
Brightening in ever-changeful bloom
As breezes change on high; –
Sweet Leaf! the pledge of peace and mirth,
“Long sought, and lately won,”
Blessed increase of reviving Earth,
When first it felt the Sun; –
Sweet Rainbow! pride of summer days,
High set at Heaven’s command,
Though into drear and dusky haze
Thou melt on either hand; –
Dear tokens of a pardoning God,
We hail ye, one and all,
As when our fathers walked abroad,
Freed from their twelvemonth’s thrall.
How joyful from the imprisoning ark
On the green earth they spring!
Not blither, after showers, the lark
Mounts up with glistening wing.
So home-bound sailors spring to shore,
Two oceans safely past;
So happy souls, when life is o’er,
Plunge in this empyreal vast.
What wins their first and fondest gaze
In all the blissful field,
And keeps it through a thousand days?
Love face to face revealed:
Love imaged in that cordial look
Our Lord in Eden bends
On souls that sin and earth forsook
In time to die His friends.
And what most welcome and serene
Dawns on the Patriarch’s eye,
In all the emerging hills so green,
In all the brightening sky?
What but the gentle rainbow’s gleam,
Soothing the wearied sight,
That cannot bear the solar beam,
With soft undazzling light?
Lord, if our fathers turned to Thee
With such adoring gaze,
Wondering frail man Thy light should see
Without Thy scorching blaze;
Where is our love, and where our hearts,
We who have seen Thy Son,
Have tried Thy Spirit’s winning arts,
And yet we are not won?
The Son of God in radiance beamed
Too bright for us to scan,
But we may face the rays that streamed
From the mild Son of Man.
There, parted into rainbow hues,
In sweet harmonious strife
We see celestial love diffuse
Its light o’er Jesus’ life.
God, by His bow, vouchsafes to write
This truth in Heaven above:
As every lovely hue is Light,
So every grace is Love.
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