Gesimatide
If Lent is the journey to Easter, to the return to our Baptism into Christ, then the three Sundays of Gesimatide (before the start of Lent) are the days when we begin making preparations for that journey. All three Sunday readings invite some thought about the coming Fast and its ultimate goal: the Paschal Feast.
Gesimatide invites some intentional thought and planning about how you will join in the keeping of the Fast (Lent auf Deutsch ist Fastenzeit) and practice the other Lenten disciplines of Prayer and Almsgiving, finding in Christ alone the bread which sustains our new life and which frees us to share our bread with the poor and to experience the joy of time in prayer with our Lord Jesus.
When Ash Wednesday arrives we will have a clear sense of where we are going (to the joys of Easter!) and how we will get there (through repentance, which means following our Lord in His passion!).
Note that the Alleluia is silenced in the Church from Septuagesima Sunday until the Vigil of Easter. On Ash Wednesday the Gloria in Excelsis will drop out. During Passiontide (Fifth and Sixth Sundays of Lent) even the Gloria Patri disappears, as we prepare to enter the great silence before the Lamb reigning victorious in His sacrifice of love on Calvary's tree.
