On the Ember Days

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, 13^th 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 (14^th September). (This was adjusted to fall slightly later in 1960: since then the Ember Wednesday falls between 18^th to 24^th September.)

Discussion about Walsingham on Radio Immaculata

I had a pleasant discussion on Radio Immaculata, the platform of the Marian Franciscans, about the history of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.

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LMS Walsingham Pilgrimage: photos

The LMS Walking pilgrimage took place from 21st to 25th August, with a brave group, for the second year, walked all the way from south London, starting on Sunday 17th.

Above, Mass in Cambridge, in the Dominican Rite (Fr Robert Verril OP).

One chapter of people walking from Cambridge to Ely.

Prayer in times of tragedy: in Catholic Answers

When children and their parents were shot and killed in the USA by a militant anti-religious transsexual, Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, responded to those who talked about praying in response to this terrible event, with a tweet: “These children were literally praying as they got shot at.” The post is still up, you can see it here, and others responded in a similar way.

I responded to the story with an article for Catholic Answers. It begins:

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).

Read it all on Catholic Answers.

I see they have turned the argument of my article into a Twitter thread, which is rather fun.

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LMS Residential Latin Course 2025: photo

Last month the Latin Mass Society's annual Residential Latin Course took place, at the Carmelite Retreat Centre at Boar's Hill near Oxford.

St Catherine's Trust Summer School 2025: photos

At this year's Summer School we had 66 children and a staff of seven, at St Cassian's Centre, Kintbury, including our chaplain, Fr Andrew Southwell.

 

At St Cassian's we have to create a makeshift chapel in a modern room.

Absolute Uniqueness of Monsignor Gilbey: now available from the LMS

On 19th July we had a very successful book launch for The Absolute Uniquness of Mgr Alfred Gilbey by Alexander Haydon, which was addressed by the author, me, and Fr Ronald Creighton-Jobe of the London Oratory.

The book is now available from the Latin Mass Society shop here.

It is also available from Amazon here.

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