Bring Back the Ember Days
Ember Days are days Americans must resurrect and resurrect now. And it’s not just a Catholic or even just a spiritual “thing.” Believe it or not, much fruitful history of it can be read in the Old Farmer’s Almanac.
People today truly don’t understand how much religion played a role in so much we might consider the secular or biological of history.
Frequently in my work, particularly in two specific articles here and here, I have tried to raise awareness and action for the lost devotion of fasting–fasting from food as it has always been intended–as a means to pleading for God’s mercy on ourselves, our state, and our country. A passage in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 17:14-20, shows Christ scolding his disciples for their lack of faith but then extending a word of understanding for their shortfall:
“And when he was come to the multitude, there came to him a man falling down on his knees before him, saying: Lord, have pity on my son, for he is a lunatic, and suffereth much: for he falleth often into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him.
“Then Jesus answered and said: O unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked him, and the devil went out of him, and the child was cured from that hour. Then came the disciples to Jesus secretly, and said: Why could not we cast him out? Jesus said to them: Because of your unbelief. For, amen I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, Remove from hence hither, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you. But this kind is not cast out but by prayer and fasting.”
Traditional Catholicism is at least one faith where fasting is still stressed by its priests. Lost in the comical overhaul of an entire religion since the mid-twentieth century was, among so many other things, the devotion of fasting for vigils before major feast days like Easter, Christmas, and Pentecost. This is just one thing that coincided with the lost treasure of fasting on Ember Days, removed from the official calendar in pivotal 1969 when, as well, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was completely and arbitrarily overhauled, led by one Annibale Bugnini, after experiencing only incremental, organic changes through the centuries–and virtually none after the Council of Trent in the 1500s.
Just for your information, the problem goes well beyond and before the 1960s, but that decade is a great starting point for bridge building.
My passion for Catholicism notwithstanding, one doesn’t have to be a Catholic to partake in this nationwide fast. I speak so lovingly about my religion because I believe God gave it to us as a container to harness the graces showered upon us by the Holy Spirit. Like refreshing cold milk in a glass. When discipline and devotion in prayer go away, you get what we have seen happen to the Church in the last century–everyone and everything is everywhere, spilled all over the floor.
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The Ember Days are special days for prayer and fasting during the liturgical year. They align with the four seasons, focusing weak human beings’ attention especially on the blessings of God’s creation of nature. On these Days, the human race gives thanks for blessings received, but also reminds itself of the need for penance and grace. It is a practice that bears personal and communal fruit, and is a sound way of staying in rhythm with the liturgical year, which I can testify brings much harmony to one’s life.
These concepts are as foreign to most Americans as the thought that keeping the Sabbath day holy for family and God is more important than travel ball or making things due for your students on a Sunday night online, as I have far too often done.
The beautiful thing about this is that we can all repent together.
As goes pretty much everything I’ve talked about so far, the roots of the Ember Days go back to the Old Testament. The Book of Zacharias, Chapter 8:19, describes an ancient practice of fasting four times a year. Under the New Covenant sealed with Christ’s blood, Christians adapted this tradition into the Latin quatuor tempora, or “four times.” Terminology would evolve somewhere through the centuries.
And now, this week, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, we all have a chance to cry out to the Creator in unison with the gift of fasting.
There is one major difference with this week’s. The Ember Days of Pentecost fall during a joyful, glorious season of the liturgical year and during the 0ctave (something else abandoned!) of one of the most solemn feasts of the year. Therefore, at least according to the social media account of my church St Francis de Sales Oratory, the fast should be a joyful one. Honestly I’m not quite sure what that means yet, but I will find out. I admit I am still relearning a lost faith I never knew existed until just a few years ago. It’s been like an old treasure trove discovered in grandma and grandpa’s attic on a rainy Saturday afternoon.
- Spring: after Ash Wednesday
- Summer: after Pentecost Sunday
- Fall: after Sept. 14, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
- Winter: after Dec. 13, the Feast of St. Lucy
A little Biblical forensics will even show that the United States Council of Catholic Bishops is working to remove the word “fasting” from the Bible. This is not just a Catholic or Christian vs secular war as so many of my sleeping loved ones believe, a reality I explore in the Harrison Butker story. As so many great saints have done in the past, it is the laymen and -women of the Church that are going to have to rise in ranks and fight this war, because our generals, except for a small few, have abandoned us.
I end with a few words that will never grow old, not while we’re on this side of Paradise, fighting the war of all wars:
In trying to be tolerant and “loving” to our neighbor, which admittedly is a noble goal on some level, we have forgotten God the Father, the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Kingship of Jesus Christ. In doing so, in serving two masters as Scripture warns against (Mt 6), we have created for ourselves a modern-day Babylon scenario, where all we’re doing is running around in circles babbling nonsense to and about each other. None of it makes sense in the end. None of it is truth.
Because none of it has Jesus Christ as King at the center of it.
We have given tolerance decades of chances. All that tolerance has done is push ancient Christendom to the margins. It has not invited others into ancient Christianity as so many had hoped. It is time to exorcise this demon of sloth, apathy, ignorance, and rejection of the cross of Christ. And it is a good guess that this is one of those demons that can only come out by prayer and fasting….
If we repent as a nation, there may still be time.
“And Jonas began to enter into the city one day’s journey: and he cried, and said: Yet forty days, and Ninive shall be destroyed. And the men of Ninive believed in God: and they proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least.
“And the word came to the king of Ninive; and he rose up out of his throne, and cast away his robe from him, and was clothed with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published in Ninive from the mouth of the king and of his princes, saying: Let neither men nor beasts, oxen nor sheep, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water. And let men and beasts be covered with sackcloth, and cry to the Lord with all their strength, and let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the iniquity that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn, and forgive: and will turn away from his fierce anger, and we shall not perish? And God saw their works, that they were turned from their evil way: and God had mercy with regard to the evil which he had said that he would do to them, and he did it not” (Jonas 3).
May everyone named directly or referenced indirectly ask forgiveness and do penance for their sins against America and God. I fight this information war in the spirit of justice and love for the innocent, but I have been reminded of the need for mercy and prayers for our enemies. I am a sinner in need of redemption as well, for my sins are many. In the words of Jesus Christ himself, Lord forgive us all, for we know not what we do.
