In search of lost sacred time
Recapturing the power of the Ember Days
The revisions to the church calendar were some of the most dramatic and ill-advised changes of the post-conciliar age: indeed, they were more disruptive and puzzling than the revision of the liturgy. Louis Bouyer, in his memoirs, was caustic:
I prefer to say nothing, or little, about the new calendar, the handiwork of a trio of maniacs who suppressed, with no good reason, Septuagesima and the Octave of Pentecost and who scattered three quarters of the Saints higgledy-piggledy, all based on notions of their own devising! Because these three hotheads obstinately refused to change anything in their work and because the pope wanted to finish up quickly to avoid letting the chaos get out of hand, their project, however insane, was accepted!
The wholesale revision of the calendar largely eliminated a long-developed sense of time and season which helped sanctify life. The old calendar creates a rhythm to the days, weeks, months, and years that was richer, drawing people deeper into the life of faith, particularly through penance and fasting.
One of the great losses were the Ember Days: ancient traditions of fasting and abstinence that occurred four times a year on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of the weeks following the feast of St Lucy (December 13), the first Sunday in Lent, Pentecost, and the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14). On these three days, four times a year, the faithful marked the seasons with fasting and abstinence.
Much folklore was attached to these days. Souls in purgatory could appear to those who were praying for them. They were efficacious times for women to pray to become pregnant and to have safe deliveries. The weather for each Ember Day was believed predict the weather for the following three months (which is about as accurate as you get from the Farmer’s Almanac).
But most of all, they helped make time sacred.
Mysterious Origins
The origins of the Quattuor Temporum (“four times”) are largely lost, and no one can really say where they came from. We’re not even sure where the name comes from: it may be a corruption of the German *Quatember*, or perhaps the Anglo-Saxon ymbren, meaning “revolution” or “cycle”. In England, they have names corresponding to the closest feast: Autumn is Michaelmas Embertide, Winter is Advent Embertide, Spring is Lenten Embertide, Summer is Whit Embertide (Pentecost, or Whitsunday for “White Sunday”).
Similar practices are found in pagan antiquity and Judaism, and in Rome, France, and England the tradition of penitential purification tied to agricultural patterns is certainly pre-Christian. The fasts roughly correspond to Roman feriae which combined purification and thanksgiving. (That’s not a reason to dismiss it: it’s more reason to keep it, because it clearly speaks to something intrinsic in human nature.)
The practice took hold first in Rome, and the Liber Pontificalis attributes the keeping of seasonal fasts on Saturday to Pope St. Callixtus (d. 222). Zecheriah 8:19 is cited as the source:
The fast of the fourth month, and the fast of the fifth, and the fast of the seventh, and the fast of the tenth shall be to the house of Judah, joy, and gladness, and great solemnities.
The tradition certainly predates Callixtus, however. The Liber Pontificalis mentions three harvests corresponding to the fasts: corn, wine, and oil, at the fourth (June), seventh (September), and tenth (December) months. The addition of Ember Days at Lent came at some unknown time.
St. Augustine of Canterbury brought the formal practice of them to England, and English monks then brought them to France during the Carolingian Age. Aelfric counted the Sundays after Ember Days among the 16 times during the year in which Christians would be worthy to take communion, and Ember Saturdays became traditional for ordinations.
They remained traditional in various places until 1078, when Gregory VII established them as a feast for the entire church. They were eliminated in 1966, but remain in use by Anglicans and thus by the ordinariate.
Much fakelore got attached to the origins and meaning of the fasts along the way. Carolingian courtier Amalarius claims they were instituted because the four seasons arouse delights which need to be tamped down by fasting, or that the represent the temptations found in the four hours of the day (morning, noon, evening, night). Egbert of York says it corresponds to the four directions. Others, the elements. You get the idea. Fours are written in nature, and we need to overcome our natural sinfulness through fasting.
St. Jacobus de Voragine has many similar sets of symbols, such as this:
Because March corresponds to infancy, summer to youth, September to steadfast age and virtue, and winter to old age. We fast then in March that we may be in the infancy of innocency. In summer to be young by virtue and constancy. In harvest that we may be ripe by temperance. In winter that we may grow old in prudence and honest life, or at least that we have done penance for our sins.
Thanksgiving for the seasons of the agricultural year and purification are simply an ancient combination. They go together like cereal and milk. An offering in penance and thanksgiving for the crop harvested and the one to come is a natural way to sanctify both agriculture and the passage of time. The agriculture roots run very deep, and leave their mark in the earliest remaining liturgies. (See Willis, Essays in Early Roman Liturgy.) As more people become disconnected from the sources of their food, they should be reminded of their dependence on the work of farmers and the mercy of God for the abundance of his gifts.
Life has its seasons, and that’s what the old calendar did so well. It made time, which is also the creation of God, holy. The Ember Days are a time for rebooting, renewal, purging, casting out the demons, starting again. Having that opportunity to pause, the repent, to renew, and to be thankful four more times a year is a treasure we shouldn’t have discarded. It’s a beautiful tradition, and one you are perfectly free to start again.
For more details on how to keep the days, Fr. Christopher Smith has an excellent pdf.
Addendum: Leo Preaches the Ember Fasts
Pope St. Leo the Great was particularly attached to these practices, preaching many homilies on the subject.
In Sermon 20 (preached after 445 AD), he attributes the origins of the fasts to the Apostles, and urges the faithful to follow them in thanksgiving for the harvest.
Clearly instructed by this reasoning, dearly beloved, we join in the fast of December by the Church’s rule, and we call this to your devout attention, as is the custom. It is a matter full of mercy and full of justice that, when the harvest of the fruits of the earth is gathered, we should give thanks to God and pay our “sacrifice of mercy” to him with the offering of the fast. Let all rejoice in their own abundance and let them be glad that they have brought much into their barns, but only so that the poor might also be glad in their wealth. Let the overflow of souls imitate the abundance of crops, the spreading of vines, the fruit of trees. What the earth has given, let our hearts give, so that we can say with the prophet: “Our earth has yielded its fruit.”
In Sermon 19 (preached December 14, 452 AD) he likened the four Ember fasts (counting Lent among the four) to the four gospels.
The usefulness of this observance, dearly beloved, is established especially in the Church’s fasts, which, by the teaching of the Holy Spirit, are so distributed throughout the whole year that the law of abstinence is assigned to all seasons. So we celebrate the spring fast in Lent, the summer fast after Pentecost, and the autumn fast in September, but the winter in this month, December, knowing that there is nothing lacking in the divine precepts, and that all nature serves the Word of God for our instruction.
Through all the turning points of the year, as if through the four Gospels, we learn from the unceasing trumpet both what we should preach and what we should do. The prophet said, “The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament proclaims his handiwork, day pours out the word to day, night imparts knowledge to night.”5
What is there through which the truth does not speak to us? Its voice is heard in the day, it is heard in the night, and the beauty of all things, established by the work of one God, does not cease to put into the ears of our hearts a ruling order, to let us see the “invisible things of God through those which have been made intelligible to us,” and it is subject not to the creatures but to the Creator of all things. When all faults are destroyed through self-restraint, and when whatever avarice thirsts for, whatever pride aspires to, whatever luxury longs for, is overcome by the firmness of this virtue, who does not understand how great a protection is brought us by fasting?
St. Leo moderates his love for fasting with pastoral concern for those who are unable to do it, but considers its spiritual benefits so great that it becomes a consistent motif in all his preaching.
Leo the Great, Sermons, ed. Thomas P. Halton, trans. Jane Patricia Freeland and Agnes Josephine Conway, vol. 93, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996).
Very interesting explanation of the ember days! I’m trying to incorporate them into our family life and this inspires me.
Wonderful overview and context. I always wondered about the origin of the name, and only had the slightest awareness of them beyond that.
So you know, a sentence seems to have been clipped: “There were foods that enabled people to”