Ember days in Arbia

Is the Church returning to the pre-Vatican II celebrations of the seasons called Ember Days? If a recent announcement fro Rome for a missionary region of the world is any indication, Ember Days may be making a comeback in the Church.

The Vatican announced on August 18th, that there had been some changes to the particular calendar of the Vicariate of Southern Arabia (which includes the nations of United Arab Emerates, Oman, and Yemen). The new calendar is not promulgated for the Vicariate of Northern Arabia (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait). These changes included the celebration of three Ember Days: one on the first Friday in March to pray for peace and vocations; the first Friday of June to celebrate the coming of Summer, and the first Friday of November to celebrate the coming of Winter.  The Vicariate itself defined their new Ember Days as “three special days of penance and prayer for the fruits of the earth and priestly vocations.”  These Ember Days are not exactly in line with the old Ember Days, but maybe the developing Church has stumbled on a way to combine the old with something new?

Ember Days used to be celebrated on days symbolic for the start of the four seasons and certain liturgical needs from the agricultural community: in Spring to celebrate the harvest of beeswax to make candles for churches; in Summer to celebrate the harvest of wheat to make bread for Mass; in Autumn to celebrate the harvest of grapes to make wine for Mass; and in Winter to celebrate the harvest of olives whose oils became the holy oils of the Church.

After Vatican II, when Pope St. Paul VI instituted new norms for the general and particular calendars, he did not mention Ember Days, leaving their celebration up to bishops’ conferences in each nation. The U.S. bishops, along with most bishops’ conferences in the developed world, chose to not include Ember Days on their nations’ particular calendar, so they are not celebrated except by Catholics who are keen to remember this old set of rituals.  But the new Ember Days for southern Arabia may change the way we celebrate Ember Days.

At first glance, it looks like the new Ember Days for Southern Arabia are different. One is for Winter, yes. And another is for Summer, yes.  But the third Ember Day is just a Friday in March.  And no mention is made of either a liturgical need (candles, bread and wine, oil) from the agricultural community or of any sacrificial practices. And the Ember Days are a single day, and not three days like the old Ember Days.

When one thinks about where these Ember Days have been instituted, one can see that there are only two seasons in such an Equatorial region as the Arabian Peninsula: Summer and Winter. All three countries in this vicariate are in the tropic zone (although the Tropic of Cancer does split the United Arab Emirates).

The third new Ember Day, although reminiscent of Spring (but celebrated during Lent), is not specifically in celebration of Spring, but it a special day to pray for peace and for vocations. This little calendar insertion in early Lent may be the insight needed to discovering a new way to look at seasonal celebrations. Maybe Ember Days could be redefined and at the same time reinvigorated by the Church, with southern Arabia being the first phase.

Our agricultural world has moved to an industrial world that has moved to an information world. Consumerism has risen and is flourishing, as is a lack of placing God in our way so that we cannot miss Him and must worship Him.  We no longer have the Angelus prayed three times a day. How many Catholics pause their day to pray a Rosary?   Pope St. John Paul the Great said that consumerism “reduces man to the sphere of economics and the satisfaction of material needs” in his encyclical 1991 Centesimus Annus.  We need God in our lives and these new Ember Days may be how.

Ember Days of the past used agricultural happenings to make Christians stop for three days in a particular week (Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday), fast as if was Good Friday and go to Mass.  In some areas, a day of confessions was held at the parish on Fridays before a Friday evening High Mass.  Those who grew and harvested our crops celebrated, and so did everyone else who consumed the fruits of the harvest in their receipt of the Sacraments. Ember Days were celebrations and also catechetical tools to teach and re-teach the beauty of the Sacraments and the seasonal year instituted by God. They still can be.

Whether a nation has two, three, or four seasons, we still have them. And if Southern Arabia has only Summer and Winter, then their third Ember Day in the liturgical season of Lent (an historical season of penitence) becomes their third season. So seasons are celebrated there, even if only for one day. But the Vatican has, presumably by request of the Vicariate’s officials, included the purpose of each day to be to pray for peace and priestly vocations.

Peace is needed everywhere, of course. Every nation and diocese in the world (with the exception of some African and Asian dioceses) need priestly vocations. Bishops and bishops conferences from all over the world have called for decades for Catholics to pray for vocations. In the United States, we even have a month for prayers for priest vocations (November). Having seasons and needing priests might be what the Vatican elders see as an important pairing with peace, which is always desired everywhere.

Redefining a fifteen hundred year old practice that has gone our of practice for sixty years, and out of fashion even for devout Catholics, re-inventing Ember Days might be a much needed injection of new purposes for old devotions.