In the September Ember Wednesday Mass as observed in the Vetus Ordo, the Usus Antiquior, Holy Church offers a promise of abundance within a call to fasting. A seeming paradox.
Amos foretells vineyards planted and enjoyed, gardens yielding their fruit, and a people restored to their land (Amos 9:13–15). These are gifts received from the Lord. At the turn of the season, the Roman Church gives thanks for them and asks that their enjoyment be governed by gratitude and charity.
The second lesson moves from the harvest to the hearing of God’s word. Ezra reads the Law and the people weep as they listen. Then they are told to send portions to those who have none, for “the joy of the Lord is our strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). Their repentance bears fruit in generosity, and their joy makes room at the table for someone else. The Missal repeats that invitation in the Communion antiphon.
In the Gospel, a father brings his afflicted son to Christ and cries, “Credo, Domine: adjuva incredulitatem meam … I believe, Lord; help my unbelief” (Mark 9:23). His prayer is painfully familiar. We may believe firmly and still discover how much fear, habit, or self-reliance remains in us. Christ takes the boy by the hand and raises him.
When the disciples ask why they could not drive out the spirit, He speaks of prayer and fasting. The Ember discipline thus leads us to seek His strength for struggles our own strength cannot resolve.
There is a seeming paradox in the formulary. This is an Ember Day, which underscores fasting and penance. Yet, there is a strong theme of joy. I am reminded of the tension in Advent between joy and penance. Is it is season of joyful penance or penitential joy?
The joy of this Mass formulary grows out of dependence on God.
In the Gospel the father cannot heal his son and the disciples have discovered the limits of their own strength. Ezra’s listeners cannot undo their failures by wishing them away. Each must receive what only God gives: mercy, instruction, healing, and the promise of a fruitful life.
Fasting makes room for that reception.
A chosen hunger can disclose larger and unhealthy hungers that we have learned to conceal beneath comfort and routine. Chosen hunger gives us occasion to ask what governs our desires, what we fear losing, and where we look first for relief.
Joined to prayer, the need in our hunger becomes something like the appeal to the Lord who raised the boy.
The harvest imagery is also at play. Amos promises a land so fruitful that the ploughman overtakes the reaper. Another paradox. Thus the fast begins to bear the fruit it celebrates.
Ezra’s people are invited to both tears and a feast. Their sorrow at hearing the Law – and understanding the gulf between God’s will and how they have lived – winds up in the joy of hearing that their new day – and they – belong to the Lord. They are told to send portions to others, making the feast generous.
The Ember Days return with the change of the seasons because we need to learn this more than once.
By the way, today is the Autumnal Equinox.
Thank you very much for this, and especially its illumination of the place of that (at first impression) astonishing Lesson from Amos!
Your Equinox reminder got me looking up Reginald Poole’s section on Seasons in his handy little Medieval Reckonings of Time (1918) as scanned in the Internet Archive:
The year was popularly divided into four Seasons, the middle of each of which was fixed at the time of the Equinoxes and Solstices. The dates at which they began are variously stated. Strictly, of course, they should be placed as nearly as possible halfway between the Equinox and the Solstice; and so Bede made Spring begin on February 7, Summer on May 9, Autumn on August 7, and Winter on November 7—that is, in every case on the 7th of the Ides of the month. But he noticed also that Isidore of Seville put the dates more than a fortnight later: on February 22, May 24, August 23, and November 23.* [* “De ‘Temporum Ratione,” xxxiii.] In medieval calendars both dates are sometimes entered; but in time the Isidorian system prevailed, though two of the dates were shifted one day. Hence, at least in the later Middle Ages, the seasons were taken as beginning on the Feasts of St. Peter in Cathedra (February 22), St. Urban (May 25), St. Bartholomew (August 24), and St. Clement (November 23).”