Sexagesima in the Book of Common Prayer
Sexagesima is the traditional name for the second Sunday before Lent in the calendar of the Book of Common Prayer. It belongs to the short pre-Lenten sequence of Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima, which prepares worshippers for the penitential discipline of Ash Wednesday and the forty days of Lent. In Anglican use, Sexagesima has chiefly been known through its appointed collect, epistle, and gospel, and through its place in the ordered movement of the Prayer Book year from the manifestation of Christ in Epiphany toward the Passion and Resurrection.
Place in the Prayer Book calendar
The name Sexagesima comes from the Latin word associated with the number sixty, reflecting the older Western custom of naming the Sundays before Lent by approximate reckoning before Easter. The name is not a precise count of days in ordinary modern usage, but it places the day within a traditional sequence: Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima. These Sundays were inherited by the English Prayer Book tradition from the medieval Western calendar and were retained in the classical editions of the Book of Common Prayer.
In the Prayer Book year, Sexagesima stands between Septuagesima and Quinquagesima. It therefore forms part of a gradual transition. The festal emphasis of Christmas and Epiphany has begun to recede, but the full observance of Lent has not yet begun. The result is a period of preparation rather than a sudden liturgical break. Anglican parishes that follow the traditional calendar often use these Sundays to introduce Lenten themes of repentance, humility, discipline, and dependence upon divine grace.
Propers and theological themes
The classical Prayer Book appoints a collect, epistle, and gospel for Sexagesima. These propers give the day its theological character. The collect asks for divine aid in the face of human weakness and danger, a theme consistent with the Prayer Book's wider emphasis on grace preceding and sustaining Christian obedience. The appointed epistle and gospel have traditionally been read as calling attention to perseverance, receptivity to the word of God, and the testing of faith.
The gospel traditionally associated with Sexagesima is the parable of the sower. In Anglican interpretation, this reading has often been heard as a summons to receive the word with patience and fruitfulness. The parable fits the season because it places responsibility and grace together: the word is sown broadly, yet its fruitfulness is seen in lives prepared to receive it. This theme makes Sexagesima a natural point for preaching on Scripture, catechesis, and the habits of prayer and self-examination that belong to the approach of Lent.
The epistle, drawn from Saint Paul's account of apostolic hardship and divine strength, reinforces the same pattern. Christian ministry and discipleship are not presented as self-sufficient achievements, but as lives sustained under trial. In this respect Sexagesima reflects a characteristic Anglican balance: moral exhortation is joined to a strong awareness of human frailty and the need for God's mercy.
Anglican use and later revisions
Sexagesima remained familiar in churches using the 1662 Book of Common Prayer and in Anglican provinces that preserved the traditional Prayer Book calendar. Its observance was especially visible where the older sequence of Sundays before Lent continued to shape preaching, hymnody, and parish preparation for Ash Wednesday. In such settings, the pre-Lenten Sundays provided a pastoral bridge into the more demanding disciplines of fasting, penitence, and intensified prayer.
Some later Anglican liturgical revisions reduced or removed the older Latin-named pre-Lenten Sundays, often replacing them with a longer season after Epiphany or with ordinary numbered Sundays before Lent. Even where the name Sexagesima is not used in the official calendar, its themes may remain present in the readings and pastoral practice of the weeks before Lent. Traditional-language parishes, Prayer Book societies, and communities attached to classical Anglican liturgy have continued to value the day as part of the inherited structure of the Christian year.
Sexagesima is therefore significant less as an isolated feast than as part of the Prayer Book's discipline of time. It shows how Anglicanism received the older Western calendar and adapted it for parish worship centered on Scripture, common prayer, and preparation for the paschal mystery.