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What unifies the Mass of Sexagesima is neither its obvious placement between Septuagesima and Quinquagesima, nor the recurrence of penitential purple and the suppression of the Alleluia, but rather a demanding question posed by Holy Mother Church to her children as she stands at the threshold of Lent. Are you prepared to be drawn into mystery? Are you prepared to sally forth from that encounter?
The Epistle from 2 Corinthians and the Gospel from Luke 8 belong together because both speak of divine initiative that wounds, elevates, tests, and finally bears fruit, though only where the soil, or the soul, has been broken open.
The liturgical context matters. Sexagesima stands within pre-Lent, a season that exists so that preparation itself may be prepared. The Roman Station Church anchors this truth in stone and blood. Today the Church gathers, at least spiritually, at St. Paul’s Outside-the-Walls, the burial place of the Apostle to the Gentiles. The very word station, from statio, evokes both a stopping place on a journey and a military post manned by a sentry. Together with the Stations of Septuagesima at St. Lawrence and Quinquagesima at St. Peter’s, these basilicas stand like armed guards over Rome, martyrs stationed as witnesses and protectors. On Sexagesima Sunday The ancient Roman faithful with the aspiring catechumens would process from the city under a covered walkway toward the tomb of the Apostles, chanting psalms of trust in distress, asking whether they themselves were ready to continue what the catechumens were going to assume at baptism. The Introit today gives voice to that question in the anguished words of Psalm 43(44): “Rouse thyself! Why sleepest thou, O Lord? … Rise up, come to our help! Deliver us for the sake of thy steadfast love.”
The Collect intensifies the plea by naming Paul himself, a rarity for a Sunday outside a saint’s feast.
Deus, qui conspicis,
quia ex nulla nostra actione confidimus:
concede propitius;
ut, contra adversa omnia,
Doctoris gentium protectione muniamur.
God is addressed as the One who “conspicis,” who sees attentively, who takes in all things together. The prayer confesses that the Church trusts in no action of her own, and begs to be fortified, muniri, walled around, against every adversity by the protection of the Doctor of the Gentiles. This is not ornamental rhetoric. It arose in a Rome battered by plague, famine, and invasion, and it still speaks to a Church conscious of assault, whether from without or from within.
CLUNCKY LITERAL VERSION:
O God, You who perceive
that we trust in no action of our own:
propitiously grant;
that against every adverse thing we may be walled around
by the protection of the Doctor of the Gentiles.
Standing by Paul’s tomb, the Church listens to Paul speak of himself in a way that unsettles modern expectations of authority. The Epistle spans what we now call 2 Corinthians 11:19–33 and 12:1–9, divisions unknown to Paul himself. In the first movement, Paul catalogs his sufferings in relentless detail. Beatings, shipwrecks, hunger, exposure, betrayal, danger from enemies and false brethren. He does so in response to accusations from some in Corinth who dismissed him as unimpressive, unskilled, even fraudulent. Paul answers by exposing the true cost of discipleship. Apostolic authority is authenticated by conformity to the Crucified. To belong to Christ entails being handed over to weakness, insult, hardship, persecution, and calamity.
Yet Paul does not stop with visible sufferings. He moves, at the precise point where modern editors placed a chapter break, into territory even more dangerous to describe.
“I must boast; there is nothing to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord.”
He speaks obliquely, referring to himself as “a man in Christ” who fourteen years earlier was caught up “éos trítou ouranoú,” to the third heaven, into Paradise. Whether this occurred in the body or out of the body he does not know. God knows. What he heard there was unspeakable, arreta rhemata, words not permitted to human utterance.
The restraint is striking. Paul asserts the reality of the experience while refusing to exploit it. He boasts only in weaknesses, lest anyone think more of him than what is seen or heard. This tension belongs at the heart of Christian mysticism. The reality of divine encounter is affirmed, yet it remains veiled, protected from curiosity and pride. Paul’s authority rests both on suffering endured in the flesh and on mysteries received in silence.
The phrase “third heaven” draws on the layered meanings of the Greek ouranós. It can refer to the visible sky, the realm of clouds and birds. It can signify the higher heavens of sun, moon, and stars. It can also denote the heaven beyond heavens, the dwelling of God and the angels, the sphere of divine glory invoked when Christ teaches us to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven.” Paul claims to have been seized, harpazo, snatched into that presence. He tries to describe the indescribable while insisting that such grace does not exempt him from humility or suffering.
Indeed, precisely to prevent exaltation, Paul was given what he calls a skólops te sarki, a thorn in the flesh, which he also identifies as an ángelos Satán, a messenger of Satan. From Homeric Greek onward, skólops denotes a sharp stake or splinter, something piercing and painful. The identification with a satanic messenger suggests more than a metaphorical inconvenience.
God permitted Paul to have an ongoing affliction that harassed Paul, keeping him dependent on grace. Scripture does not specify the nature of this thorn, and the Church has never defined it. Suggestions range from chronic illness or poor eyesight to relentless persecution by a particular person or group. Others see in Paul’s language the possibility of demonic oppression. Distinctions help here. Demonic possession involves control of the body. Oppression concerns assaults from without that disrupt life, relationships, health, and peace. The tradition records such trials in the lives of saints. St. John Vianney suffered physical attacks from the Enemy. St. Veronica Giuliani endured beatings, visions of hell, and cruel deceptions while obediently recording her mystical experiences. Paul’s thorn humbles without destroying.
What matters is Paul’s response. He begged the Lord three times for relief, echoing the Lord Himself in Gethsemane. The answer he received was not deliverance but a word that still wounds and heals the Church.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (v. 12:9)
These words, among the rare direct quotations of Christ outside the Gospels, interpret the entire pre-Lenten season. Divine power comes to rest, episkenose, upon weakness accepted and offered.
The Gospel of Sexagesima introduces the parable of sower. A sower scatters seed with apparent prodigality. Much falls on paths, rocks, and thorns, yielding nothing. Some falls on good soil and bears fruit a hundredfold. Christ explains the parable Himself. The seed is the word of God. The soils are the varied dispositions of those who hear. Reception depends on endurance through trial. Seed that sprouts quickly but lacks root withers under testing. Seed choked by cares, riches, and pleasures never matures. Only seed that falls on soil that has been opened and kept yields perseverance and fruit.
The connection between Paul’s thorn and the sower’s work emerges here. Seed must fall into the earth and undergo a kind of death. Growth often requires pruning, sometimes severe, as in the case of rose bushes and fruit trees. What appears as loss or diminishment can serve fruitfulness. Paul’s sufferings and humiliations prepared him to bear the weight of revelation. The same pattern governs the life of the Church and the soul.
This pattern also governs how Scripture itself is received. When effort is made to trim time from worldly affairs for the sake of Scripture, the Church attaches indulgences to devout reading of the Bible, whether read or listened to, when done “cum veneratione divino eloquio debita” and “ad modum lectionis spiritalis.” The emphasis falls on reverence and devotion. Scripture is not merely a text to be mastered. It is the living Word of God, in whom Christ is present. Contact with it entails unveiling mystery.
An eighth-century Syriac prayer captures this attitude with luminous precision.
“O God, make my mind worthy to find delight in understanding the dispensation of Your beloved Son… take away the veil of passions that lies over my mind… let Your holy light shine into my heart… that with the enlightened eye of my soul I may behold the sacred mysteries hidden in Your Gospel.”
The prayer distinguishes between the outward ink-written text and the inward illumination that God alone grants. Scripture is approached as Moses approached the burning bush, with sandals removed.
Modern biblical scholarship has given the Church indispensable tools, yet it has also risked treating Scripture as a lifeless object. Benedict XVI addressed this tension directly. Historical-critical exegesis has yielded its essential fruit, he observed, but when isolated it becomes theologically irrelevant. It operates within a positivistic hermeneutic that must be corrected and completed. Scripture demands a faith-hermeneutic that reads with the Church and within the Church, allowing the insights of patristic exegesis to bear fruit anew.
The Fathers read Scripture convinced that they encountered Christ Himself in the inspired Word. Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great approached the sacred page as theologians and shepherds charged with the salvation of souls. Their exegesis was prayerful, sacramental in instinct, oriented toward conversion and worship. This approach does not discard critical methods. It situates them within a larger act of faith.
Our sacred liturgical worship embodies this posture. In the traditional Roman rite, before proclaiming the Gospel, the priest bows profoundly and prays that his heart and lips be cleansed as Isaiah’s were by a burning coal. Isaiah’s vision in chapter six reveals the structure of all authentic proclamation. There is first the vision of heaven, then the confession of unworthiness, then purification, and finally mission.
The coal burns before the word is spoken. Contact with divine speech purifies and wounds before it commissions.
Paul’s experience follows the same pattern. He was caught up into Paradise. He received revelations. He was then given a thorn that burned continuously, guarding humility and deepening dependence. Only then could he speak with authority that did not originate in himself. His letters, Peter tells us, contain things “hard to understand,” yet they carry wisdom given by God. Difficulty belongs to revelation. Mystery resists reduction.
The Church returns to these same readings year after year because they do not change, while we do. Fourteen years alter a man profoundly. Repeated encounters with the same texts reveal new depths as lives accumulate suffering, repentance, and grace. Pre-Lent exists so that the soil of the soul may be broken open before the seed is cast more deeply in Lent.
Adversity often performs this work. Hardship can expose illusions, correct course, and provoke growth in charity. Paul’s refusal to boast in visions and his willingness to boast in weakness challenge every temptation toward spiritual self-sufficiency. Authority in the Church arises where Christ’s power rests upon those emptied of confidence in their own action.
Sexagesima therefore presses a question that is both corporate and personal. Are we prepared to listen devoutly, to allow Scripture to burn and purify, to accept pruning that enables fruit? Are we willing to trust in no action of our own and to be fortified instead by the protection of the Doctor of the Gentiles? The answer unfolds in time, through constant contact with the Word, through prayerful listening, through endurance when the thorn remains.
It is not wrong to ask God for relief. Paul did. The Lord did. What follows belongs to the mystery of divine wisdom. Sometimes relief comes. Sometimes silence persists. In both, God’s glory seeks manifestation in those who bear His image. Pre-Lent teaches us to stand before that mystery honestly, reverently, and without illusion, so that when Lent arrives, the seed may fall where it can truly live.