With Septuagesima the long preparation for the Passion commences. The extended Lenten season begins at this time, with its emphasis on annual confession. It is, therefore, also a time when the Church renews its affirmation of Christ's continuing mystical presence through the sacraments. The pattern of readings in the Missal between Septuagesima Sunday and Quadragesima, the first Sunday of Lent, is set out in Table 2 (see page 67). Readings of gospel accounts of Christ's Ministry continue, but the thematic focus of the readings changes, and begins to look forward to the Passion, with parables and other gospel texts in which the Passion and the Second Coming are overtly prophesied. The early pattern closes on Quinquagesima Sunday, immediately before Ash Wednesday, with the Gospel from Luke 18: 31–43 which describes Christ's prophecy of his own death and the performance of the first miracle on the road to Jerusalem.

None of this gospel material is dramatised in the York Cycle. However a sequence of readings from the Old Testament in the Breviary for the period between Septuagesima and Quadragesima closely parallels the cycle's selection of Old Testament pageants. The sequence begins with the Creation on Septuagesima Sunday, followed by the story of Noah on Sexagesima Sunday, and Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac in the ferial responsories in Quinquagesima. On Quadragesima Sunday, the original first day of Lent, the Gospel reading at Mass concerns Christ's Temptation in the Wilderness, and thereafter readings in the Missal again coincide with the subject-matter of the final group of pageants recounting Christ's adult life which lead up to the treatment of the Passion itself.