ortance, however, in the development of the Church's year was
to connect these chief festivals with one another, so as to make them
parts of a whole. The Sundays afforded a convenient means for effecting
this. They were associated with the festal character of the nearest
feast and were connected with it as links in a chain. The way for this
development had been prepared by the season of preparation for Easter,
and the Sundays in the fifty days between Easter and Pentecost--
Quinquagesima--were marked with the festal character with which
antiquity invested the whole period. All that was needed was, first of
all, to connect Christmas, Easter and Pentecost; and, in the second
place, the institution of a season of preparation before Christmas. This
was accomplished between the sixth, and the eighth centuries.

"During the first six centuries the ordinary Sundays of the year had
neither liturgical position or character, since they were not even
enumerated. There was a sort of _commune dominicarum, i.e._, a number of
Masses existed from which one could be chosen at will for each Sunday.
To these Sundays, which were called simply _dominicae quotidianae_,
those after Epiphany and Pentecost belonged.

"They numbered altogether twenty-nine or thirty, according as the
calendar gave fifty-two or fifty-three Sundays in the year.... The
smaller number of these, six at most, come between Epiphany and
Septuagesima, but the larger, twenty-three to twenty-eight, between Whit
Sunday and Advent. The variation depends on the date of Easter. There is
no historical circumstance forthcoming to give these a specially festal
character. ..." (Kellner, _op. cit_., pp. 176, _et seq_.).

Septuagesima Sunday comes nine weeks before Easter. It cannot come
before the 18th January, nor after the 22nd February. It is the first
day of a period of mourning and penance, preparatory to the great
penitential period of Lent. On the Saturday preceding Septuagesima two
_alleluias_ are added to the Benedicamus and Deo Gratias, to intimate
that the period of rejoicing in the Saviour's birth has passed. Violet,
the penitential colour, is used at Mass, and the chapters in Genesis
recording the fall of Adam, warn man to think well, to humble himself
and to do penance. Every part of the Office, the lessons, antiphons and
hymns, bear the notes of mourning and penance.

LENT.

_Lent_.--The Teutonic word, _Lent_, originally meant the spring season.
It has come to