By Ruben Gilbert
“What do you mean it won’t get cold here until the end of December!” my Chicagoan wife asked when visiting Moreno Valley for the first time, “don’t you have seasons?” It’s true enough that for a native Chicagoan, the Diocese of San Bernardino is not known for its robust and picturesque seasonal changes, but each of us knows that when the Santa Ana winds whip through, we should prepare by tying down anything we want to keep and steady our hearts to lose our beloved trash cans if we leave them out. Each of us knows to prepare our hearts for late Summer Wildfire season just in case the dry brambles that crawl along the rolling hills near our homes decide it’s their turn to be lit ablaze. And each of us know to prepare our hearts and patience if on Christmas or Thanksgiving we are forced to drive the 91, the 60, 215, or the 10 to visit family outside of the Inland Empire. To be human is to always prepare our hearts for the coming season. And this is because, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal (bodily) and spiritual.” In fact, we have all had the experience of a particular season either souring or uplifting our souls very deeply. This is because what happens externally, the way we prepare for a season, can deeply impact our souls.
Knowing this, the Church has always proposed a change of liturgical seasons that walk us through the life of Christ ever year. It is almost impossible for one’s soul not to be affected by the soft glow of lit candles in the quiet darkness of the Easter Vigil. No soul except the meanest of Scrooges can resist the joy of seeing little ones open presents for Christmas. And yet, even these moments of union between body and soul require the preparation of Lent and Advent. But the Church doesn’t stop here. In fact, the first week of Lent and several other times throughout the year, the Church asks that we fast and prepare to celebrate for the blessing of the changing seasons by asking us to celebrate a little-known tradition called the Ember and Rogation days.
The Ember and Rogation days are three days of fasting (usually Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday) that precede the changing of the weather patterns. They usually, but not always, occur around a major feast of the Church’s calendar. For instance, the Fall Ember days occur leading up to the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September 14th and the Summer Ember days follow the Solemnity of Pentecost.
Rogation days are days of acknowledging our sinfulness, our tendency to think of other things as more important than God, and our need to pray for God’s mercy. Think of them as a mini-Lent. They occur on April 25th, and the three days before the Ascension. Ember and Rogation days are days for the Church to remind us that the gifts that come with the changing seasons, the happy rebirth of Springtime, the joy of Summer fun, the harvest of Fall, and the warm Winter fire of family love, all require preparation and fasting to remember that they came from the very same God whose Crucifixion and Resurrection are always inseparable and whose mercy is the remedy to our sinfulness.
While there is no formal rule for how these days are celebrated in the Diocese, parishes, pastors, and families are encouraged to celebrate them together in preparation for all the blessings that God will provide this year. The first Ember days begin on the Wednesday following the first Sunday of Lent. As the desert Fathers used to say, “there are certain gifts that God will only give through fasting and penance”. We might find that if we encourage each other to celebrate the Ember and Rogation days this year, that God is an even more abundant gift-giver than we could have imagined.
Ruben M. Gilbert is an Associate Director in the Diocesan Office of Divine Worship.