If the time of Septuagesima taught us to enter—to change our inner climate—, the Sunday of Sexagesima takes a step further: it places us before the real drama of listening. It is no longer just about preparing for Lent, but about seriously asking ourselves if the Word of God finds habitable ground in us.
The Roman liturgy, faithful to its slow and wise pedagogy, advances without haste. Nothing is rushed. The Alleluia remains absent. The Gloria continues in silence. The purple color does not threaten: it warns. The Church does not reproach; it questions.
The Gospel brings us a decisive parable. The center of Sexagesima Sunday is the parable of the sower. There is no moralism or superficial psychology here. The text does not dwell on the sower who sows generously, broadcast, but on the soils. The question is: what kind of soil am I? The Word of God places before us four real possibilities: superficiality, dispersion, suffocation by worries, or fruitfulness. They are not abstract categories, but states of the soul. Before asking for conversion, the Church invites me to ask to live in truth. Before fasting, it exhorts me to examine. Before ascetic effort, open and receptive listening to the Verbum Domini is imposed. That is why this parable is proclaimed before Lent: if the Word does not take root, no penance will bear fruit.
In the Epistle—second to the Corinthians—Saint Paul enumerates fatigues, dangers, sleepless nights, persecutions, hunger, cold. There is no romanticism, but apostolic realism: the Apostle shows that the Word is not only heard; it is paid for; that bearing fruit implies wear and tear; that spiritual fruitfulness is not compatible with a comfortable life protected from all friction. That, as the Saint said, “prayer and gift do not go together”
Thus, the liturgy masterfully links the Gospel and the Epistle: the seed that falls on good soil is the same that sustains the apostle in the midst of trial. Where the Word takes root, there is resistance, perseverance, and fruit.
The other liturgical texts—collect, secret, postcommunion—insist on the same tone: confident fragility. Success is not asked for, but protection; strengths are not presumed: help is implored, with a humble supplication. The Church prays as one who knows that the soil can harden, that thorns grow on their own, that the bird steals the seed easily. That is why it supplicates to be guarded, defended, sustained.
The liturgy prepares us without deceiving us: Sexagesima is not yet Lent, but it no longer allows distractions. It is a Sunday of spiritual lucidity: it teaches us that before the Word of God, always living and effective, the availability of the heart is imposed.
Today, when so much is spoken of participation, Sexagesima tells us that there is no true participation without interiority, nor fruit without silence, nor Easter without obedient listening. This Sunday does not appeal to religious emotions, but to a decisive question: what is happening with the Word of God in me?