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Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Oxford Pilgrimage: photos

Monday, September 15, 2025
On the Ember Days
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High Mass for the Ember Saturday of Advent in Holy Rood, Oxford, 2017 |
I wrote this for the Catholic Herald in 2017, but it is no longer available on their website, so I thought I'll post it here. I'm a keen supporter of celebrating the Ember Days with solemnity, and look forward to a sung Ember Saturday Mass in London which is currently in the works for Advent.
Since the earliest centuries, the Church in Rome has
celebrated special days of fasting spread over the year, the ‘Ember Days’. They
are today a feature of the calendar of the Extraordinary Form, although they
are not found in the Universal Calendar of the Ordinary Form.
They are also found in the Calendar of the Ordinariate
of Our Lady of Walsingham, having been preserved in Anglican usage over the
centuries.
The origin of the term English term ‘ember’ is
unclear; it may derive from the Old English ‘ymbren’, meaning a circuit or
revolution. Other European languages use some version of the Latin term,
‘Quatuor tempora’, ‘four times’. These celebrations may have been brought to England
by St Augustine of Canterbury, and seem to have become established here before
they spread from Rome to France and elsewhere.
The days consist of Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of a particular week. The weeks are the last full week of Advent (associated with St Lucy’s feastday, 13th December), the first full week of Lent (that is, after Ash Wednesday), the week following Pentecost, and a week after the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (14th September). (This was adjusted to fall slightly later in 1960: since then the Ember Wednesday falls between 18th to 24th September.)
Monday, September 08, 2025
Discussion about Walsingham on Radio Immaculata
Friday, September 05, 2025
LMS Walsingham Pilgrimage: photos
Thursday, September 04, 2025
Prayer in times of tragedy: in Catholic Answers
It has become a regrettable feature of American public discourse that tragedies, like mass shootings and natural disasters, are greeted by some public figures and commentators with mockery of the idea of prayer.
I seem to remember, some years ago, when Christian politicians assured the victims of some disaster of their prayers (“our thoughts and prayers are with the victims” and so on), non-Christian commentators would react angrily, saying that what the victims needed was food and shelter, or else that something should be done to mitigate such events in the future, like flood defenses or gun control.
It might, indeed, be reasonable to question politicians’ sincerity if they offer prayer as a substitute for action (see James 2:16), if that were really what was going on. Now, however, we seem to have moved on to a new phase, in which the idea of prayer in itself is ridiculed, because it didn’t save the victims. We have entered a dark place, where the principles of those scoffing at the Crucifixion have found their way into public discourse in a still majority-Christian nation: “Let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him” (Matt. 27:42).