A Catholic's Complete Guide to Ember Days — The Saintmaker Catholic Life Planner

One of the most spiritually potent times of the Catholic liturgical year, they were nearly forgotten after the 1960s. Here’s how to celebrate Ember Days like your Catholic ancestors.

If this is your first time hearing about the Church’s seasonal three days of fasting and almsgiving, that’s par for the course. We all grew up in the post-Vatican II Church and, in the post-Vatican II Church, Ember Days don’t exist.

Liturgical debates aside, the Church offers us an amazing opportunity to reconnect with a beautiful—and very meaningful—ancestral tradition smack dab in the middle of each of the four seasons of the year.

If you’re an Ember Days veteran, this article will help you go deeper; if you’re new to Ember Days (the group of three days is collectively called “Embertide”), let’s stoke those embers a bit and see if we can get a flame.

For some background, we’ll ask the group of Catholic priests formed by Saint Pope John Paul II known as the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP). Like other pontifical-right groups formed by a pope with the specific charism to offer the sacraments according to the Roman Rite as it existed before the liturgical reforms that followed the Second Vatican Council, the FSSP has unique insight into the feasts of the old calendar.

Enter Father Arnaud Devillers.

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what are ember days?

In his excellent 2019 article “Ember Days of Lent”¹, Father Arnaud Devillers explains Ember Days:

“Ember Days are three days (Wednesday, Friday and Saturday) set apart in each of the four seasons for fasting, abstinence and prayer. Tied to the seasonal cycles of farming and harvesting, the purpose of Ember Days is to render thanks to God for the gifts of Creation and to ask His help in using them well. Since 1966, the fasting and abstinence are no longer prescribed but still encouraged.”

Ember Days seem to have originated in the early Church as an attempt to Christianize pagan seasonal celebrations of nature that fall during early Summer (Feriae sementivae: Feast of Sowing), late Summer (Feriae messis: Harvest Feast), and late Fall (Feriae vindimiales: Feast of Wine).

Father Devillers continues:

The first regulations mention only “Three Seasons”. Eventually, the Church added a fourth prayer period (in March). This change seems to have been motivated by the fact that the year contains four natural seasons, and also by the mention of four fasting periods in the Book of Zechariah (8:19).

In 494, Pope Gelasius I added weight to the celebration of Ember Days when he prescribed that the sacrament of Holy Orders should be conferred on Ember Saturdays. Since ordinations were historically preceded by several days of fasting and prayer on the part of the candidates, this provided an opportunity for the faithful to unite their intentions with the future priests in a kind of seasonal spiritual retreat.

But how do we celebrate Ember Days today, at home, at work, and at Church?

how to celebrate ember days like our catholic ancestors

Before we go further, let’s make sure we’ve got the timing right.

Ember Days are a Wednesday, a Friday, and a Saturday set aside four times per year during each season of the year. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, "Ember" is a corruption of the Latin phrase Quatuor Tempora, which simply means "four times".

Here’s when:

Winter: starts the Wednesday after the Feast of St. Lucy (December 13)
Spring: starts the first Wednesday of Lent that isn’t Ash Wednesday
Summer: starts the Wednesday of the week after Pentecost Sunday
Fall: starts the Wednesday after Holy Cross Day/The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14)

If the purpose of Ember Days is a mini spiritual retreat to unify our spiritual intentions with those of priests and seminarians, then what should that retreat look like?

Let’s get into it.

fasting during embertide

I encourage people all the time: if you are not already in a habit of fasting throughout the year, try fasting during Ember Days.

The minimal guidelines, as of the 1962 norms, is:

One day of fasting with partial abstinence on Wednesday
One day of fasting with complete abstinence on Friday
A third day of fasting with partial abstinence on Ember Saturday

(N.B., Any devotion to historical liturgical norms is strictly voluntary. As one priest said to me—I’m paraphrasing—“There is no ‘have-to’ when it comes to the more demanding traditional practices. But we go above and beyond for the people we love all the time out of love and devotion, and we can do the same for our Lord.”)

Here’s an über-simple fasting program that lines up with the current fasting requirements of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops² and that can be used year-round, whether it’s optional fasting on Ember Days or required fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday in Lent:

Breakfast: [option 1] one egg and a piece of toast; [option 2] a small bowl of oatmeal or cereal
Lunch: [option 1] a small cup of vegetable soup and some crackers and cheese; [option 2] 1/2 of a sandwich; [option 3] a small salad with handful of nuts
Dinner: a slightly smaller-than-usual dinner (with meat on Ember Wednesday and Saturday and without meat on Ember Friday)

One final rule (and I’m guessing this is where most of us end up “fasting” with quotes, rather than fasting without quotes): NO SNACKS.

If you’re feeling ambitious, the above may not seem like much—and, in the context of Church history, it’s really not (medieval Lent required strict fasting until 3 pm, followed by a single meal of fish, bread, vegetables, and salt)—but if you do this religiously for the three days of Ember Days, you will notice it. And it will bear spiritual fruit.

Fasting has cumulative effects over multiple days—and you can always “take it up a level” by adding additional days throughout the year or cutting out additional ingredients.

Be merciful with yourself. Trust the Church’s wisdom. Get started.

PRAY FOR PRIESTS and priestly vocations

It’s repeated so often that it’s become a cliché, but we’re in a crises of vocations.

Cardinal Robert Sarah writes in God or Nothing, “God is still calling as many men as in the past; it is the men whose hearing is not what it used to be.”

Oof.

In short, Catholic seminarians, Catholic priests, and young Catholic men with a potential priestly vocation need our prayers today more than ever. So this is reason enough to restore the tradition of Ember Days, when Catholics are called to that exact thing.

What can you do?

In the evenings or mornings during Embertide, consider adding this Prayer for Priestly Vocations, which comes from the “Prayer” (or “Collect”) of the traditional votive Mass for Propagation of the Faith³:

“O God, Who desirest that all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of Thy truth: send, we beseech Thee, laborers into Thy harvest, and grant them grace to speak Thy word with all trust: that Thy words may run and be glorified: and that all nations may know Thee the one true God, and Him whom Thou hast sent, Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord; Who with Thee liveth.”

Whether your diocese is still ordaining priests on Ember Saturdays or not, the Church needs your prayers for priestly ordinations, and those individual priests who are awaiting ordination will be eternally grateful.

And don’t forget current priests. Our priests can always use this powerful prayer⁴:

O Jesus, Eternal Priest, keep Thy priests within the shelter of Thy Sacred Heart,
Where none may touch them.
Keep unstained their anointed hands, which daily touch Thy Sacred Body,
Keep unsullied their lips, daily purpled with Thy Precious Blood.
Keep pure and unearthly their hearts, sealed with the sublime mark of the priesthood.
Let Thy Holy Love surround them and shield them from the world’s contagion.
Bless their labors with abundant fruit,
and may the souls to whom they minister be their joy and consolation
here and in heaven their beautiful and everlasting crown.
Amen.

SEASONAL reflection, discernment, and goal setting

At this stage in your Ember Days “retreat”, you should incorporate some reflection on your past season.

It is not an accident that our Saintmaker Catholic Life Planner is based on a seasonal cycle that begins with a personal reflection on the past season. Personally, I like to save my Saintmaker seasonal reflection for Embertide and carefully set aside time on each of the three days to review my season, examine my progress in virtue, assess my goals, and make plans for the upcoming season.

If you don’t have a Saintmaker yet, you could accomplish the same by pulling out your journal or a piece of paper and answering the following questions over the course of the three days of Embertide:

What happened this past season? What general spiritual lessons did you learn?
What blessings has God has provided you over the past season? Does this give you any general insight into what he is calling you to?
Where have you have fallen short (including patterns of sin)? How are you cutting yourself off from God’s grace and His holy will for you?
How can you respond to his call in the upcoming season? What habits could you develop, what goals could you set and meet, what could you change or do differently to align yourself more fully with his intentions for you?

When you’re done with your reflection—maybe on the Sunday after Embertide?—scan your answers to pick out 3-5 goals for the upcoming season.

For each goal do the following:

Describe your motivations for accomplishing it
List your first several steps
Decide who you will ask for help with your goal
Describe how you’ll reward yourself when you’ve met the goal

Finally, offer it up to God (and, I cannot recommend enough, to St. Joseph!).

CATHOLIC STEWARDSHIP AND ENVIRONMENTALISM

God called us to be stewards of the natural world.

That relationship is clear in the presence of natural products such as bread and wine in our ceremonies, but it is also clear in the simple fact that He wants us to care for what we have that he has provided to us.

As we note in The Saintmaker’s suggested Ember Days devotions, in addition to attendance at traditional Ember Days Masses (use latinmassdir.org), fasting, and time spent in personal retreat praying for priestly ordinations, traditional observation of the days would have included prayers for an abundant harvest of the crops used in the liturgy: flowers for the altar in Spring, wheat for the sacred Host in Summer, grapes for sacramental wine in Autumn, and olives for our sacred oils in Winter.

The ever-helpful Fisheaters⁵ advises:

Be mindful of your effects on our dear earth and don't allow people to "politicize" the issue of our stewardship of God's creation! But to be mindful of nature, it helps to actually see her first. Go outside and look! And praise God for all you see, hear, smell, feel, and taste as you allow His glorious works to touch your senses!

As an outdoorsman and lover of nature myself, I couldn’t agree more.

From the beginning, Ember Days have been connected to the cycles, fruits, and beauty of nature. Today, through the renewal of Ember Days, we Catholics have an opportunity to continue to sanctify our human relationship with nature in the light of God’s amazing gifts.

St. Bonaventure said⁶,

“If there is anyone who is not enlightened by this sublime magnificence of created things, he is blind. … If there is anyone who, seeing all these works of God, does not praise Him, he is dumb; if there is anyone who, from so many signs, cannot perceive God, that man is foolish.”

We cannot allow the secular world to hold a monopoly on “environmentalism”. Lacking the wisdom of Catholic tradition and a proper understanding of man’s role in nature, the environment becomes both a weapon in the culture wars and an object of abuse and degradation.

During Ember Days:

If you have kids, take them fishing or hunting.
If you’re dating or married, take your wife or girlfriend out for a walk in the park.
Want to grow your own food or flowers? Plant—or plan—a garden.
Interested in birds? Buy a pair of binoculars and a copy of Sibley’s Birding Basics and learn to use them.
Read St. Robert Bellarmine's book, "The Mind's Ascent to God by the Ladder of Created Things”

TL;DR: get outside and read sacred literature about seeing God in creation. Don’t let the neo-pagans have all the fun.

TOWARDS A RENEWAL OF TRADITION

We’re passionate about a “renewal of Catholic tradition” here at The Saintmaker, but, to be clear, that isn’t a renewal to the exclusion of “new” and beloved traditions that have been built up during this modern period of Church history.

We’re all brothers and sisters in Christ—the Church Militant on Earth, the Church Triumphant in Heaven, and the Church Suffering in Purgatory.

This is our spiritual family.

The beautiful thing about restoring old traditions like Ember Days is that, in the words of Catholic philosopher G.K. Chesterton, “Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.”⁷ In his seminal work Orthodoxy, Chesterton goes on to say:

“Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.”

But, while the love of our ancestors is certainly a worthy purpose, we’re not “doing” Catholic renewal just for them.

We doing it because we know it to be True, Good, and Beautiful.

Blessed Ember Days!

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Sources

¹ Devillers. Fr. Arnaud. “Ember Days of Lent.” Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, 25 Mar. 2019, www.fssp.com/ember-days-of-lent.

² ”Fast and Abstinence.” USCCB, https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/liturgical-year-and-calendar/lent/catholic-information-on-lenten-fast-and-abstinence.

³ Lasance, Fr. Francis Xavier. “Mass for Propagation of the Faith.” The New Roman Missal. Christian Book Club of America, 1993, p. 1453.

⁴ Heuser, Herman Joseph. “Studies and Conferences.” The American Ecclesiastical Review: A Monthly Publication for the Clergy. The Dolphin Press, Vol. 50, 1914, pp. 608-609.

⁵ “Ember Days.” Fisheaters, https://www.fisheaters.com/emberdays.html.

⁶ Thigpen, Paul. A Dictionary of Quotes from the Saints. TAN Books, 2017.

⁷ Chesterton, G.K. Orthodoxy. Ignatius Press, 1993.

A Modern Catholic’s Complete Guide to Ember Days

7 days to SPIRITUAL FREEDOM

what are ember days?

7 days to SPIRITUAL FREEDOM