Why do you do that?!

The Ember Days

Well, as promised in my earlier post on Rogation Days, I owe you an explanation of the Ember Days.  There are four sets of Ember Days, corresponding to the four seasons of the year.  The winter Ember Days are the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday in the 3rd Week of Advent.  The Spring Ember Days are the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday in the First (full) Week of Lent, the summer Ember Days, begin tomorrow as the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday (are you seeing  the pattern here) of the first week in Pentecost.  And the Fall Ember Days will be (you guessed it) the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday following September 14th (The Feast of the Holy Cross).

The specific origin of the Ember Days is not exactly known.  They were never observed in the Eastern Orthodox churches so they are strictly associated with the Christian West.  Sources are fairly clear that in England the observance of these days originated with Augustine the first Archbishop of Canterbury. So it doesn't get much more Anglican than that!

The Ember Days were set aside as special days of prayer and fasting.  According to Pope Leo (ca. 400) the idea was to carry spiritual discipline and the Law of Abstinence into every season of the year.  The Days have also been deemed particularly appropriate for scheduling ordinations.  As such they have traditionally carried a particular significance for the ordained ministers of the Church and those in the formation process.  It is not unusual for bishops to require their ordination candidates and sometimes even their clergy to write them an Ember Day letter to share their growth, struggles and overall progress in the formation process.

As with all of the observances of the Christian Calendar, the root idea is to remind ourselves, and proclaim to the world, that our God is a God who is sovereign over time.  Our days, weeks, months and years are all under the watchful care of the Eternal One.  And as always, days of prayer and fasting are set to remind us that we are not controlled by our need to produce wealth or feed our stomachs.  "Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you as well."

Why do you do that?!

Rogation what?! 

So, what are the Rogation Days?  These are the three days leading up to the Feast of the Ascension (always Thursday in the 6th Week of Easter).  The name comes from the Latin rogate (long o, short a, short e) which means, "ask ye" or in contemporary English, "y'all ask."  Traditionally these are days of prayer and even fasting making supplication to God for seasonable weather, rain and a bountiful harvest during the Spring season of planting.  

That these days remain a part of our liturgical calendar (despite the fact that a good number of us no longer live our lives tied to the agrarian cycles of planting and harvest) is a reminder that the Church still takes very seriously the mission of all believers as a Kingdom of Priests unto God.  To pray for planting and harvest reminds us that it is our priestly duty to make intercession for all spheres of society.  Often we can get caught up in focusing our prayers narrowly on our own needs and the needs of those immediately around us.  But through myriad ways, the Rogation Days being only one example, the Church calls us to participate with Christ in making intercession for every aspect of our society and our world.

We'll talk about the Ember Days some other time.