Ember Days

Three short posts from Fr Hunwicke, in the order they were published, on the Ember Days, discarded in the 'Deform' after VII.

Ember Days? (1)

So this first full week of Lent is also an Ember Week!

But, er, what does that mean?

Originally, there were only three Ember Seasons: around Pentecost; in September;  in December. They arose (I still suspect) out of the old pagan Roman celebrations of harvests: respectively, of the harvests of the Corn, the Wine, and the Oil. There were special Masses on the Wednesdays, the Fridays, and the Saturdays within these three weeks.

But unlike more recent harvest celebrations, they were decidedly sober occasions. The Community fasted!

The fast appears to have led to the association of Ordinations with the Ember Weeks, since it is appropriate to approach the Sacrament of Holy Order with prayer and self-denial and even exorcism. The actual Ordinations would be done during an all-night vigil between Saturday and Sunday. The minor Orders, followed by the Major Orders, were conferred one after another in the gaps within the series of Readings.

TRIA TEMPORA.

So how does it come about that we have an Ember week at this time of the year? How did Tria Tempora mutate into Quattuor Tempora? ["Three Seasons" into "Four Seasons".] After all, February and March, in our Northern hemisphere, are not months one would immediately associate with Harvest!

To be concluded. I have tried to find a path through data mainly given by the great Anglican liturgist, student and admirer of the Classical Roman Rite, Fr G G Willis [Essays in Early Roman Liturgy, 1964]. And I have made a few connections of my own.. I do not find Talley convincing.

Ember Weeks (2)

 Most of the Ordinations in the Roman Church happened at the December Embertides. The next Ember season after that would be in June. That left half the year without an Ordination Season. I favour the conjecture that the Spring Ember Season, this week, originated in a need to fill that gap. 

There are clues which point in this direction. Egbert of York, S Leo the Great, and the Liber Pontificalis associate the Ember with Moses. So does 'a short anonymous Carolingian tract' edited by Dom Morin.

Moses. 

Did that make your ears prick up? MOSES!

The Wednesday Ember Mass gives us Exodus 24:12 ... in which HWHY summons Moses up the Mount, and gives him tables of stone and a Law and commandments. On the Ember Saturday in the First reading, Moses brings that Torah down to the People of Israel ... and, in the Second, he commands them diligently to keep it. And, in the Third reading, "The priests made a prayer whilst the sacrifice was consuming ...".

The association of Moses with our Ministry is one the earliest parts of our Traditional Roman Liturgy. It even seems to go back to I Clement and the account there of how Moses arranged the Ministry. I need hardly remind presbyteral readers that the Great Prayer (still surviving) of Priestly Ordination in the Roman Rite is based around the narrative that HWHY took the Spirit of Moses and shared it among the Seventy Elders.

And the last reading in the Ember Saturday Mass is S Matthew's account of the Transfiguration ... in which Moses appears with the Lord and Elias on the Mountain of the Transfiguration.

We are not Marcionites. We know that we are in unbroken continuity with the earliest covenantal relationship between HWHY and his only, his chosen, people. If we have the privilege of Priestly Ordination, that sets us within the Ministries which God gave of old, so very anciently, among humankind. 

To deny this is, I think, practical, liturgical, Anti-semitism. It needs to be hounded out of the Church!

Sadly, the Old Testament texts in the Missale Romanum which witness to us during this Ember Week of Moses and of our Mosaic Priesthood were ruthlessly eliminated by the post-Conciliar 'reformers' from the lections of their newly-confected Unicus usus. 

This vandalism is what the orotund authority of Arthur Roche calls "Enrichment"!

Even worse: when Dom Botte and his colleagues got their hands on the rite of Episcopal Consecration, which made much of the parallel between the Christian Pontiff and the Aaronic High Priest, they ruthlessly smashed it all up.

What they put in its place undoubtedly possesses validity. It even possesses liceity. We must never let any of these slippery operators put us in the wrong by tricking us into appearing to question this. 

But ... AUCTORITAS ... the newer rites certainly do not possess that. 

Not a nanogram.

So where have this week's Ember Masses disappeared to?

 SEPTUAGESIMA/SEXAGESIMA/QUINQUAGESIMA

Where have these gone to? In the 1969 Vatican Document Calendarium Romanum, page 59, reasons are given for abolishing the 'Pre-Lent Season', but this promise then follows: "Textus proprii harum trium Dominicarum alibi ponentur in Missali romano".

"Will be placed somewhere else in the Roman Missal".

So where are they? 

ROGATION DAYS AND EMBER DAYS

In the same Vatican document, we are told that the Masses for these days "non amplius in Proprio de Tempore, sed inter Missas votivas, locum habebunt." 

Oh Yeah? So where are they?

VATICAN II?

When Sacrosanctum Concilium was put together and then promulgated as the first of the Council's decrees, nobody knew ... they had not been provided with crystal balls ... how much of the old would, in less than a decade, be just dumped, and replaced (if replaced at all) by shiny new compositions. It is against that background that the historian will read Paragraph 107. It prescribes that the liturgical year should be so revised that "servatis aut restitutis sacrorum temporum traditis consuetudinibus et disciplinis ... ipsorum indoles nativa retineatur ...".

The Council accepted that many of the contents of the Rogation and Ember Masses related to seasonal agricultural processes which would (for example) differ in the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

This was not an irrational concern. It is not surprising that the Fathers went along with it.

But, even given this awareness, the Council mandated that "Accommodationes autem, secundum locorum condiciones, si quae forte necessariae sint ... "

Good heavens!!!

Remember: this is "the Council!!!" which the Bergoglios and the Roches rely upon for their radical and aggressive agenda.

And notice the phrase "if any changes were perchance to be necessary". And notice the subjunctive verb sint rather than indicative sunt.  

I am making two points: (1) the Council anticipated the retention of much that in fact disappeared; and (2) the Fathers, when they voted for the text of Sacrosanctum Concilium in front of them, had been given not an inkling of the broad, extensive mandate which would be assumed by the post-Conciliar 'revisers'.