Man is special among God’s creatures. He has one or two things in common with other creatures, but there is something important in which he differs even from those who are most similar to him: animals and angels.

The Lord says at the beginning of today’s Gospel: “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished. For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: and they shall scourge him, and put him to death, and the third day he shall rise again.”

Jesus foretells four things here:

The traditional Gospel for Sexagesima Sunday is Jesus' parable of the Sower. Since Jesus himself explains this parable, it is not difficult for us to understand it: the seed that is sown is the word of God, and different soil is different people who either receive the word of God or not. Unfortunately, there are not many whose heart’s soil is fertile enough to bear fruit a hundredfold.

The word “Septuagesima” comes from Latin and means “seventieth”. The name of the Septuagesima Sunday marks the fact that from this Sunday there are seventy days until Easter, the greatest and most important Christian holiday.

The number seventy reminds, among other things, Moses’ statement that “the days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away” (Psalm 90:10).

Both pre-Lent and Lent are designed to draw our attention from temporary to timeless, from worthless to precious, from our own small, limited and sinful selves to God, who has revealed His amazing grace and love for us in His only-begotten Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ.

A priest recently recalled his trip to Rwanda where he spoke to people about reconciliation. Thirty years ago, from April to June 1994, an unthinkable genocide took place in Rwanda, during which, among other crimes, up to 800,000 people were killed and half a million women were raped. When that priest met and talked with people, he saw two things: on the one hand, how impossible, humanly speaking, it is to find reconciliation in situations like this, and on the other hand, how the amazing grace of God has made it possible despite everything.