Saints’ Feasts are not very numerous during Septuagesima, especially in those years when this Season commences after the tenth of February. Still, we are obliged to introduce a considerable number in this Volume, in order that we may include even those which fall in this period when Easter is kept at its latest.
We begin with the third of February, the Feast of St. Blase, and close with that of St. Gregory, the twelfth of March. The fewness of Feasts, during this long interval, is explained by the spirit of the Liturgy, which, though it does not altogether exclude them in Lent, purposely avoids having as many as at other times of the Year. Our readers are aware that when Septuagesima begins in January, a part of Lent, greater or less according to circumstances, comes in February; so that, Ash Wednesday may sometimes fall on the fourth of that Month.
We shall be obliged, consequently, to repeat, in our Volume for “Lent,” almost all the Feasts we give in this, just as we were necessitated to insert in our “Christmas” the three Sundays of Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima.
With these few words of preface, we begin our explanation of the Saints’ Feasts which occur between the day after the Purification and the furthest limit of the Saturday after Quinquagesima, or the vigil of the first Sunday of Lent.