ROMAN CHRISTENDOM: Quinquagesima Sunday - "And the greatest of these is love"

Quinquagesima is the name for the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. It was also called Esto mihi after the opening words of the Introit, taken from Psalm 31:3.

The Gospel tells us the wonderful story of the man who was blind and our Lord, hearing his cry for aid, miraculously cures him.

The name stems from the Latin quinquagesimus (fiftieth) which refers to the fifty days before Easter Day, counting so as to include Sundays.

Since the forty days of the Lenten fast do not include Sundays, the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday, succeeds Quinquagesima Sunday three days later.

The earliest Quinquagesima can occur is 1 February and the latest is 7 March. This year, 2012, it falls upon 19 February.

Needless to say, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini with his egalitarian-republican-Liberal-Modernist preference for the grey, the dull and the tedious did away with this day in his Novus Ordo Missae Calendar, together with the two preceding Sundays, Sexagesima and Septuagesima.

It is, of course, retained in the traditional mass and the lesson is taken from St Paul's Letter to the Corinthians [1 Cor. 13. 1] with that most beautiful of passages so evocative of the Christian Catholic faith.

Let us conclude with it.

THOUGH I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three:

BUT THE GREATEST OF THESE IS

LOVE