From Small Sacrifices, Greater Gratitude

Man, Ember Days are tough.

Since I’m going to a Latin Mass church that keeps the traditional observations that existed before the Vatican II reforms, I decided to commit to observing the quarterly Ember Days this past week.

What are Ember Days? I find that most Catholics don’t even know anymore. They’re three days of fasting, and the old church observed them on the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday at the end of each season. As summer officially came to an end today, the latest quarterly Ember Days just wrapped up. The idea is to eat one full meal each day, and that’s it. No snacking, though liquids are allowed. On Fridays, abstinence from red meat is a further requirement.

The Ember Days observation goes back to the early centuries of the church, probably around the fifth century but maybe earlier. It’s possible that they developed as an adaptation of the Jewish practice of fasting four times a year as described in Zechariah 8:19. The church subsequently tied them to the agricultural festivals in ancient Rome, as a way to sanctify the seasons through prayer. It also used to be traditional for new priests to be ordained on Ember Weeks. Overall, they were a big deal. Eventually, the days became a way for people to pause, reflect, and give thanks to God for the earth that sustains us and for nature’s generous bounty.

So if you’re honoring nature’s bounty, why wouldn’t you have a big feast instead? Because fasting reminds you both to use nature’s gifts in moderation so that all may be fed, and to remind us of just how dependent we are on those gifts. As G.K. Chesterton once quipped, “We should thank God for beer and burgundy by not drinking too much of them.” Or, in my case, port and cognac. We won’t talk about my coffee consumption.

I can definitely say that by about 4 p.m. on Friday, when I hadn’t eaten for about seventeen hours and was hungry enough to eat my shoe, the pangs in my stomach did make me reflect on those who are homeless and don’t know where their next meal is coming from, or those who struggle to put food on the table and feed their kids. The fact that food banks exist around here, that we contribute to them, and that people make abundant use of them, reminds me that hunger doesn’t even strike that far from my own front door.

Fasting is very humbling.

All of these observations, once mandated, went away with the reforms of Vatican II. Fasting days now are limited to Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and even then “fasting” consists of eating one full meal and two smaller meals. Scarcely a hardship. There also used to be an expectation that you’d fast from midnight Sunday until you went to Mass to receive the Eucharist. That requirement has today been reduced to one single hour. Since a typical modern Mass is about an hour long, the pre-Eucharist fast basically doesn’t exist anymore.

It’s tempting to say that today’s Catholics have it easy and that the church has gone soft. Considering I never got much of anything out of the modern church, there might be something to that. It never asked anything of me, and it got little from me as a result. The old church places expectations on people, and even though I’ve been doing this for only a few months, I already feel a deeper appreciation for the old ways because of the disciplines and expectations. The church asks more of me, and I find myself wanting to give more in return. Its regrettably bygone approach is definitely an effective way to deepen people’s faith, devotion, and commitment.

Since I’m fighting a cold, I was technically not obligated to observe the Ember Day fasts, as even the old church exempts people who are sick. Yet I found that I still wanted to. Not to prove anything, or to try to win an endurance contest, and certainly not out of guilt: Look how much Jesus suffered for you, and you can’t even do this much? I detest that kind of manipulation. I just genuinely wanted to do it. It was a small sacrifice of thanks that I was happy to willingly make. Besides, anyone who’s seen me knows it’s not going to hurt me to skip a few meals anyway.

But the bigger point is that I now find myself in the happy place of wanting to devote myself to a faith practice — and for someone who’s had a lifelong struggle with faith, that’s really saying something. It seems that personal sacrifice might just have the power to encourage a little bit of spiritual growth.

Photo by Monstera Production: https://www.pexels.com/photo/composition-of-utensils-and-tableware-on-wooden-table-5957131/[Photo: Monstera Production, Pexels.]Photo by Monstera Production: https://www.pexels.com/photo/composition-of-utensils-and-tableware-on-wooden-table-5957131/

Photo by Monstera Production: https://www.pexels.com/photo/composition-of-utensils-and-tableware-on-wooden-table-5957131/