The proper collect, epistle (I Cor. 13:1–13), and gospel (Luke 18:31–43) for Quinquagesima, the Sunday before Lent, combine to focus our attention on ἀγάπη (agape), that is, charity, the queen of the theological virtues. With this, the Sunday before Lent, sets the tone of the great season of fasting.
The placement of this gospel pericope at the entryway of this season and its pairing with Paul’s hymn to charity invites the one about to take on the Lenten disciplines with the blind beggar who encounters Jesus as He goes up to Jerusalem to sacrifice Himself for us beggars, embodying the utter selflessness of divine love. We are the helpless ones who cry out, ‘Jesu, thou son of David, have mercy upon us’.
J. S. Bach’s Cantata for Quinquagesima, Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn (BWV23) provides the perfect musical entry into the season of Lent. BWV23, described by Craig Smith as ‘one of the densest and greatest of all the cantatas’, reflects on the proper gospel for this day in which a blind man at Jericho persistently cries out to the son of David, whom he hears passing by with a great crowd.1