The Ember Days of Lent are younger, but still early: Pope Gelasius (r.492-496) speaks of all four sets of Ember Days. Zechariah says that these fasts are to be “joyful” occasions: and as thanksgiving fasts, the Ember Days perpetuate this idea of joyful fasting. However, the days were clearly designed to stand in continuity with Jewish worship, too: early Roman liturgical books call the Ember-tides of Pentecost, of September, and Advent respectively the “fast of the fourth month,” “the fast of the seventh month,” and “the fast of the tenth month,” following Zechariah 8:19-which is itself part of a reading on the Ember Saturday of September. Tradition holds that the papacy instituted the Ember Days to supplant pagan Roman agricultural festivals. In any case, since first they were instituted, each set of Ember Days has celebrated a particular harvest: at Advent, the faithful gave thanks for the olive-harvest during the days of Pentecost, for the early wheat harvest and in the days of September, for the grape harvest (the vintage)-each one a harvest of produce used in the sacraments. Leo the Great (r.440-461) says that the Ember Days are of apostolic origin-that is, they find their origin in the earliest days of the Church. The 15th-century Liber Pontificalis claims on good grounds that Pope Callistus (r.217-222) ordered the observance of these original three sets of Ember Days. The Ember Days of Advent, Pentecost, and in September are very ancient indeed. In Latin the days are called the Quattuor Tempora, ‘the four times’ their English name-“Ember”-is derived from the Old English ‘ymbrendæg’ (“circle/revolution day”). As we shall see, what links these two themes is humility: humility before God’s creative power, and hence humility about our creaturely sinfulness. These days all bear two main themes: penitence and seasonal thanksgiving linked to the cycle of the year. The Ember Days are four sets of three fasting days (Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday) that fall roughly at each of the quarters of the year: respectively, on the Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays after Gaudete Sunday in Advent, after the First Sunday of Lent, after Pentecost Sunday, and after the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on the 14th September. As we shall see, both the Ember Days and the Rogation Days remain part of the liturgy of the Church and yet they have almost entirely disappeared from Catholic life since the 1960s, perhaps because they have no set, clear place in the Church’s revised calendar, nor any specific Masses or offices in that form.Ĭontinuing my study of lost riches from the old liturgy (I have written about Septuagesima and the Pentecost Octave on previous occasions), I want to consider the history of these two sets of days, their value and their purpose, and how the usus antiquior celebrated them, in order to suggest ways of reviving them today. Two very ancient means by which she has done this are the Ember Days and the Rogation Days. Hence the Church, who by her faith reconciles, perfects, and fulfils all man’s good religious instincts, and all his striving after God, has always sought to “baptize” the natural spirituality of the seasons and of food production. Our Lord himself talked to us in terms drawn from agriculture, viticulture, shepherding, and the like in fact, scripture is replete with agricultural references and metaphors. Though obviously inadequate, this season-based worship contained much that was salutary: a sense of wonder before the mysteries of growth and creation a feeling of creaturely humility a sense of the dependence of all things upon the divine. Indeed, primitive man’s natural religion-his un-evangelized, intuitive glimpse of his Creator-always seems to have followed the cycle of the seasons, with festivals and prayers at the solstices, at seed-time, and at the harvest. For most of human history, men have structured their lives around the natural seasons and the demands of food production, sowing in the spring, reaping in the autumn, harvesting the olive in winter, and so on.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |