Septuagesima Sunday will be celebrated in a High Mass at St. Stanislaus Church, New Haven, this Sunday, 17 February, at 2:00 pm. The celebrant will be the Rev. Matthew Mauriello.

The three weeks between the end of the Christmas-Epiphanytide season of joyful celebration of the nativity and revelation of the incarnate Christ among us, and the penitential season of Lent anticipating Our Lord’s redemptive sacrifice of himself on Calvary on Good Friday, constitute a transitional period of meditation on our sinfulness and utter dependence on God. From the opening of the introit of the Septuagesima Mass, “The sorrows of death surrounded me, the sorrow of hell encompassed me …” the texts of the liturgy are filled with a dark foreboding. The Gospel presenting the parable of the laborers in the vineyard is a reminder that we are all called to work in this lifetime for God’s glory in order to receive from Him according to His mercy the wages of eternal life.

Music for the service performed by the Schola Cantorum of the St. Gregory Society, will include the Gregorian chant Missa Cunctipotens Genitor Deus (Vatican ed. IV), the chant proper for the Mass (Circumdederunt me), polyphonic motets by Josquin DesPrez and Johann Christoph Willibald von Glück, and organ music by Girolamo Frescobaldi and Claudio Merulo.