Ember Days: Pre-55, 1962, and Today

Mr Plese discusses the changes made to the calculation of the Ember Days since Bugnini's so-called "Reform" of the Liturgy beginning in 1955.

From One Peter Five

By Matthew Plese, TOP

The pre-55 counting made the Ember Days coincide with the Cross.

Ember Days: Sanctifying the Seasons of Nature and Work

Among the most ancient observances of the Roman Rite are the Ember Days: the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday fasts occurring four times each year, at the turning points of the seasons. Though largely forgotten by Catholics today, these days once stood among the most important recurring penitential observances of the Church. They joined prayer, fasting, thanksgiving, ordinations, the fruits of the earth, and the sanctification of human labor into a single liturgical pattern.

Their decline is especially important in a series on the pre-1955 Roman Rite because the Ember Days show how the twentieth-century reforms did not merely remove individual feasts or ceremonies. They also weakened the Church’s older way of inhabiting time. The Ember Days remained in the 1962 Missal, but the discipline surrounding them had already been weakened, their calculation was altered in certain years, and after the Second Vatican Council their obligatory fasting disappeared almost entirely. What survived in name became increasingly detached from the liturgical and ascetical framework that had once given it meaning.

What Are Ember Days?

The English word “Ember” is commonly connected with the Latin Quatuor Tempora, the “four times.” These four seasonal fasts occur in winter, spring, summer, and autumn. In the traditional Roman reckoning, they fall on the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after St. Lucy’s Day in December, after Ash Wednesday, after Pentecost, and after the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in September. The familiar mnemonic was: “Lenty, Penty, Crucy, Lucy.”

Their purpose was threefold: thanksgiving, petition, and ordination. The Church thanked God for the blessings of the past season, implored His mercy for the season to come, and prayed for those to be ordained. The Angelus Press 1962 Roman Catholic Daily Missal summarizes their purpose well, stating that the Ember Days were instituted “to consecrate to God the various seasons in nature” and “to prepare by penance those who are about to be ordained.”[1]

This connection with ordination is essential. The Ember Days were not merely agricultural fasts. They were priestly fasts. The faithful fasted and prayed as the Church prepared men for Holy Orders. Canon 1006 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law preserved this ancient connection by stating that ordinations were to be held on Ember Saturdays, Holy Saturday, and the Saturday before Passion Sunday, though a bishop could ordain on other days for serious cause.[2]

The Ember Days therefore united creation, labor, penance, and priesthood. The fruits of the earth were offered back to God in thanksgiving, and the men who would offer the Holy Sacrifice were commended to Him through fasting and prayer.

Ancient, Roman, and Penitential

The Ember Days are Roman in origin and extremely ancient. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that Rome first observed seasonal fasts in June, September, and December, with the precise days announced by the clergy. The Liber Pontificalis attributes legislation concerning them to Pope Callistus in the early third century, while Pope St. Leo the Great regarded them as apostolic in origin.[3] By the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great, the four seasonal fasts were part of the Roman observance, and later medieval legislation fixed their dates more uniformly.

Dom Prosper Guéranger also connected the Ember Days with the seasonal fasts of the Old Testament, writing that they may be regarded as one of those practices the Church received from the synagogue and transformed in the worship of Christ.[4] The Ember Days thus show the Church’s instinct to sanctify what is natural and human. The passing of the seasons, the harvest, the vintage, the winter stores, and human labor were not left to secular custom. They were claimed for God through fasting.

For centuries, the Ember Days were obligatory days of fast and abstinence. The discipline varied by time and place, but the essential fact remained: the changing of the seasons was to be marked by penance. Catholics did not merely admire nature. They fasted as they entered each new season, recognizing that the earth’s fruitfulness depends on divine providence.

The Mid-Century Weakening of Ember Discipline

The Ember Days were not abolished in 1955. That is important to state clearly. Their decline came through a series of weakenings before and after the mid-century reforms. By the time of the 1962 books, the Ember Days still existed liturgically, and they still retained their penitential character, but the older discipline was already compromised.

In the United States, a notable change came in 1949, when the American bishops, following a ruling from the Sacred Congregation of the Council, modified the abstinence discipline. Partial abstinence replaced complete abstinence on Ember Wednesdays and Ember Saturdays, while Ember Fridays remained days of complete abstinence.[5] Thus, even before the 1955 Holy Week changes and the 1960 rubrical reform, the ascetical force of the Ember Days had already been reduced in practice.

By the early 1960s, the discipline remained but in weakened form. Father Heribert Jone’s Moral Theology, adapted for the laws and customs of the United States, summarized the then-current practice: complete abstinence was observed on Fridays, Ash Wednesday, and the Vigils of the Immaculate Conception and Christmas; partial abstinence was observed on Ember Wednesdays and Saturdays and on the Vigil of Pentecost; and days of fast included the weekdays of Lent, the Ember Days, and the Vigil of Pentecost.[6]

This meant that the Ember Days were still recognized as fast days in the 1962 period, but the older simplicity and severity of the discipline had been softened. The faithful were still told that these days mattered, but the way they were asked to observe them had already been reduced.

The 1955 Reform and the Loss of Context

The 1955 Holy Week reform did not directly suppress the Ember Days, but it did alter one of the liturgical contexts most closely connected with them: the Vigil of Pentecost.

In the older Roman Rite, the Vigil of Pentecost closely resembled Holy Saturday. It included baptismal elements and prepared the faithful for the descent of the Holy Ghost. The Ember Days after Pentecost then followed within the Octave of Pentecost, forming a richly layered sequence: the Church received the Holy Ghost, celebrated the octave of His coming, and then fasted and prayed for the sanctification of the new season and for those to be ordained.

The 1955 reform drastically reduced the ancient Vigil of Pentecost, removing the ceremonies that had made it one of the great baptismal vigils of the year. The Ember Days after Pentecost remained, but the liturgical doorway leading into that week had been narrowed. The structure survived, but its surrounding architecture had been weakened.

This is a recurring pattern in the mid-century reforms. A practice may not have been abolished outright, yet its context was altered so significantly that its meaning became less visible. The Ember Days after Pentecost still existed in the 1962 Missal, but they stood in a liturgical world already changed by the reduction of the Pentecost Vigil. Later, with the post-conciliar suppression of the Octave of Pentecost, even more of that context would disappear.

The 1960 Change in Dating

The most concrete difference between the pre-1955 calendar and the 1962 books concerns the calculation of the September Ember Days.

Under the older reckoning, the autumn Ember Days were tied to the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14. This is why the old mnemonic says “Crucy”: the September Ember Days follow the Cross. In the 1960 revision, however, the calculation was altered so that the September Ember Days would fall after the third Sunday of September according to the revised method of counting the Sundays of the month.

The difference appears technical, but it has practical consequences. Before 1960, the “first Sunday” of September in the liturgical books was the Sunday closest to September 1, even if that Sunday fell at the end of August. After the 1960 revision, the first Sunday of September was always the first Sunday actually occurring within the calendar month.[7]

This means that in certain years Catholics following the pre-1955 calendar and Catholics following the 1962 books observe the September Ember Days on different dates.

For example, when August 31 falls on a Sunday, the older reckoning can count that day as the first Sunday of September. The third Sunday of September is then September 14, and the Ember Days follow on September 17, 19, and 20. Under the 1962 reckoning, however, the first Sunday of September would be September 7, the third Sunday would be September 21, and the Ember Days would fall on September 24, 26, and 27.

This change is more than a calendrical curiosity. It reveals a shift in the handling of liturgical time. The older system was tied to the structure of the Divine Office and to inherited liturgical reckoning. The newer system regularized the calendar according to a more straightforward civil-month logic. As with other reforms of the period, inherited liturgical time was simplified and standardized, but something of the older internal logic was lost.

Later Confusion

This alteration still causes confusion today. Traditional Catholics may all speak of “the September Ember Days,” yet mean different dates depending on whether they follow the pre-1955 calendar or the 1962 books. The same observance, preserved in both systems, no longer always occurs at the same time.

The confusion is compounded by the fact that most Catholics no longer know Ember Days at all. In the post-conciliar calendar, the “Four Times” are mentioned only in a greatly reduced and adaptable form. The 1970 Missal refers to days on which the Church prays for various human needs, especially the fruits of the earth and human labor, but leaves their arrangement to episcopal conferences. In practice, this meant that one of the most ancient recurring observances of the Roman Rite became optional, localized, and widely forgotten.

Pope Paul VI’s 1966 apostolic constitution Paenitemini completed the practical collapse of the older discipline by removing the universal obligation of fasting on Ember Days. The later 1983 Code of Canon Law preserved Ash Wednesday and Good Friday as universal fast days in the Latin Church, but not the Ember Days. What had once been a quarterly rhythm of penance for the entire Roman Church became, for most Catholics, invisible.

Thus, the Ember Days underwent three stages of decline: first, the weakening of fasting and abstinence discipline before the Council; second, the 1960 alteration of their calculation in September; and third, the post-conciliar removal of their obligatory penitential observance. The result was not a single dramatic abolition, but a gradual unraveling.

What Was Lost

The loss of the Ember Days is not merely the loss of twelve fast days. It is the loss of a Catholic way of sanctifying nature and work.

The traditional Roman Rite did not treat the seasons as spiritually neutral. It marked them with fasting. It taught the faithful to thank God for harvests, to beg His blessing on future crops, to use created goods with moderation, to assist the poor, and to pray for priests. The natural year was taken up into the ecclesiastical year.

This mattered because Catholicism is not a disembodied religion. Wheat, wine, oil, water, wax, fire, salt, ashes, palms, and human labor all enter the Church’s worship. The Ember Days reminded Catholics that the created world is ordered toward sacrifice and sanctification. The same earth that feeds man also provides the matter for the Sacraments and sacramentals.

The Ember Days also taught that labor must be consecrated. The farmer, craftsman, parent, scholar, merchant, and priest all work under God’s providence. By fasting at the turning of the seasons, Catholics acknowledged that their labor depends on grace. They did not simply work and then thank themselves for the result. They fasted, prayed, and offered the fruits of their work back to God.

Finally, the Ember Days kept before the faithful the need for holy priests. Since ordinations were traditionally connected with Ember Saturdays, the entire Church was drawn into prayer and penance for the priesthood. At a time when vocations and priestly perseverance are constant concerns, this aspect of the Ember Days is especially worth recovering.

Recovering the Ember Spirit

Even where the Ember Days are no longer obligatory, Catholics may still observe them voluntarily. The traditional practice is simple: fast and abstain according to one’s ability, attend Mass if possible, pray for priests and vocations, give thanks for the fruits of the earth, and ask God’s blessing upon the coming season.

This recovery is particularly fitting for Catholics attached to the pre-1955 Roman Rite. To observe the Ember Days according to their older dates and spirit is to recover one of the great rhythms of Roman Catholic life. It is also to resist the modern tendency to treat nature as raw material and work as mere productivity.

The Ember Days teach that the earth is the Lord’s. They teach that the seasons belong to Christ. They teach that fasting sanctifies labor and that the Church’s prayer extends to the fields, the workshop, the home, the seminary, and the altar.

Conclusion

The Ember Days survived the 1955 and 1960 reforms in outward form, but not without injury. Their penitential discipline was weakened, the September calculation was altered, and after the Council their obligatory observance virtually disappeared. As a result, one of the oldest seasonal structures of the Roman Rite became obscure and confused.

This matters because the Ember Days were never merely optional acts of private piety. They were part of the Church’s public sanctification of time. They consecrated the seasons, disciplined the body, gave thanks for creation, assisted the poor, and prepared for ordinations.

In losing them, Catholics lost more than fast days. We lost a rhythm by which nature and work were placed under the Cross. And in recovering them, even voluntarily, we begin to recover something of the older Roman sense that all time, all labor, all harvests, and all vocations belong to God.

---

[1] The Roman Catholic Daily Missal, 1962 edition, Angelus Press, summary of Ember Days.

[2] 1917 Code of Canon Law, canon 1006.

[3] Francis Mershman, “Ember Days,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (Robert Appleton Company, 1909), accessed via http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05399b.htm.

[4] Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Liturgical Year: Advent (Burns & Oates, 1910), p. 218.

[5] Maria C. Morrow, Sin in the Sixties (Catholic University of America Press, 2016), p. 121.

[6] Father Heribert Jone, Moral Theology, adapted by Father Urban Adelman for the laws and customs of the United States (The Newman Press, 1961), pp. 261–262.

[7] Gregory DiPippo, “The Calculation of the September Ember Days,” New Liturgical Movement (2015), accessed via https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2015/08/the-calculation-of-september-ember-days.html.