Gesimatide and the Long Approach to Repentance: Preparing for Great Lent in the Western Orthodox Tradition

 By Bishop Stephen

In an age that prizes immediacy and resists restraint, the Church’s ancient instinct to prepare slowly, deliberately, and penitentially stands as a quiet rebuke. The Western Orthodox observance of Gesimatide, Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima, embodies that instinct with remarkable wisdom. Far from being a quaint archaism or an optional prelude, Gesimatide forms a spiritual vestibule to Great Lent, teaching the faithful how to enter the fast rightly, soberly, and with humility of heart.

Gesimatide is not Lent. That distinction is essential. The Church, like a wise physician, does not demand sudden exertion from weakened limbs. Instead, she stretches the soul before the long race. These three Sundays before Ash Wednesday (or Clean Monday in the East) function as a gradual withdrawal from festivity and a reorientation of the Christian imagination toward repentance, mortality, and hope in God’s mercy. They prepare the ground so that when the hard soil of the heart is struck by the plow of Lent, it may actually yield fruit.

Septuagesima: Exile and the Long Memory of Sin

The name Septuagesima suggests “seventy,” gesturing symbolically toward the seventy years of Israel’s captivity in Babylon. This is not arithmetic; it is theology. The Church invites her children to see themselves as exiles, baptized, yes, but still wandering east of Eden, still longing for restoration. The liturgy suppresses the joyful Alleluia, a silence that is more eloquent than words. One feels its absence instinctively. The Church is teaching without lecturing.

The Epistle traditionally drawn from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians (9:24–10:5) warns against presumption. Many ran; few received the prize. Many were baptized in the cloud and the sea; many nevertheless fell in the wilderness. The message is bracing and necessary. Baptism is not a talisman. Orthodoxy is not a museum pass. Salvation is worked out in fear and trembling, not because God is cruel, but because we are forgetful.

Septuagesima reacquaints the faithful with the seriousness of sin and the patience of God. It is a Sunday that whispers, “Remember who you are,” and, more importantly, “Remember whose you are not.” The Church is reminding us that we are not yet home.

Sexagesima: The Seed and the Soil

Sexagesima deepens the lesson. The appointed Gospel, the Parable of the Sower, confronts the listener with an uncomfortable truth: the problem is not the seed. The Word of God is not defective. The problem is the soil. Some hearts are hardened by habit, some are shallow with enthusiasm but no endurance, some are crowded with thorns of anxiety and wealth. Only the good soil bears fruit.

This parable is not a lesson in optimism; it is a summons to self-examination. Gesimatide is mercilessly honest in this way. Before the Church asks us to fast, she asks us to listen. Before she bids us repent, she asks whether we have even heard the Word at all. The Western Orthodox liturgy, with its restrained tone and sober collects, presses the question gently but firmly: What kind of soil am I?

Here the genius of Gesimatide becomes clear. Lent is not about self-improvement projects or spiritual theatrics. It is about receptivity, about becoming the sort of person in whom grace can actually take root. Sexagesima teaches that without this interior preparation, Lent becomes either legalism or despair. Both are equally barren.

Quinquagesima: Blindness, Mercy, and Love

Quinquagesima, the Sunday immediately preceding Lent, brings the preparation to a point. The Gospel of the blind man near Jericho crying out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me,” is paired with St. Paul’s great hymn to charity in 1 Corinthians 13. The juxtaposition is deliberate and profound.

The blind man knows two things: that he cannot see, and that Christ can heal. That is the essence of repentance. It is not sophisticated. It is not eloquent. It is honest. Quinquagesima strips away any lingering romanticism about the spiritual life. We are blind, and unless Christ gives sight, we remain so.

At the same time, St. Paul insists that without charity, without love, all spiritual exertion is noise. Fasting, almsgiving, prayer, and discipline, if detached from love, become hollow rituals. Gesimatide therefore guards Lent from becoming a Pelagian exercise. The Church reminds us, just in time, that asceticism is not a ladder we climb to reach God, but a posture we assume to receive Him.

One might say, with a touch of affectionate humor, that Quinquagesima is the Church’s way of clearing her throat before speaking plainly: “If you are about to fast, learn first to love. If you are about to repent, learn first to ask for mercy.”

Western Orthodox Continuity and the Recovery of Memory

For Western Orthodox Christians, Gesimatide is more than a seasonal observance; it is an act of ecclesial memory. These Sundays belong to the undivided Church of the first millennium. They are not medieval novelties, nor Roman peculiarities, but part of the common inheritance of East and West before the rupture of communion. Their preservation within the Western Rite is a quiet testimony that Orthodoxy is not confined to one cultural expression, but embraces the fullness of catholic tradition.

In recovering Gesimatide, Western Orthodoxy resists the modern temptation to truncate the liturgical year for the sake of convenience. The Church does not rush us into Lent because souls are not microwaved into holiness. They are slow-cooked, often over a lifetime. Gesimatide teaches patience, God’s patience with us, and ours with the work of grace.

Pastoral Wisdom for the Faithful

Practically speaking, Gesimatide invites gentle adjustments rather than abrupt reforms. The faithful are encouraged to begin simplifying life, moderating excess, restoring habits of prayer, and cultivating silence. The absence of Alleluia alone can become a daily reminder that joy is not lost, but deferred, like seed waiting for spring.

Families, parishes, and clergy alike benefit from this measured approach. Children learn that the Church’s seasons matter. Adults rediscover that repentance is not an emergency brake but a way of life. Clergy find that preaching during Gesimatide allows the Law to be proclaimed honestly, without cruelty, and the Gospel to be anticipated without sentimentality.

Conclusion: The Long Way Is the True Way

Gesimatide stands as a rebuke to haste and a defense of hope. It insists that repentance is not a switch we flip on Ash Wednesday, but a disposition cultivated over time. In its quiet severity and pastoral gentleness, it prepares the faithful not merely to endure Great Lent, but to enter it with understanding.

The Church, in her wisdom, knows that those who rush into Lent often rush out of it as well. Those who walk the long road of Gesimatide, however, arrive at Pascha not exhausted, but transformed—having learned again how to see, how to hear, and how to cry out for mercy.

The old ways, it turns out, endure not because they are old, but because they are true.