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."