Ember Wednesday, February 25

Reflections on Ember Wednesday ~ Dom Gueranger, Liturgical Year

The fast on the Wednesday after the First Sunday of Lent is prescribed by a double law—it is Lent, and it is Ember Wednesday. (NOTE: Prior to Vatican II we had Ember Days for the four seasons, Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. Ember Days were obligatory days of fast, as were each day during Lent, excluding Sunday.)  It is the same with the Friday and Saturday of this week. There are two principal objects for the Ember Days of this period of the year: the first is to offer to God the season of Spring, and, by fasting and prayer, to draw down His blessing upon it; the second is to ask Him to enrich with His choicest graces the priests and sacred ministers who are to receive their Ordination on Saturday.

On all the Ember Wednesdays there are read, in place of the Epistle at Mass, two Lessons from Sacred Scripture. Today the Church brings before us the two great types of Lent—Moses in the first Lesson and Elias in the second—in order to impress us with an idea of the importance of this forty days’ fast, which Christ Himself solemnly consecrated when He observed it, thus fulfilling, in His own Person, what the Law and the Prophets had but prefigured.

Moses and Elias fasted for forty days and forty nights, because God bade them come near to Him. Man must purify himself, he must unburden himself, in some measure at least, of the body which weighs him down, if he would enter into communication with Him, Who is the Holy Spirit. And yet the vision of God granted to these two holy personages was very imperfect: they felt that God was near them, but they beheld not His glory. But when the fullness of time came (Gal. 4: 4), God manifested Himself in the flesh: and man saw and heard and touched Him (1 John 1: 1). We indeed are not of the number of those favored ones who lived with Jesus, the Word of Life; but in the Holy Eucharist He allows us to do more than see Him—He enters into our breasts, He is our Food. The humblest member of the Church possesses God more fully then either Moses on Sinai or Elias on Horeb. We cannot, therefore, be surprised that the Church, in order to fit us for this favor at the Easter solemnity, bids us go through a preparation of forty days, though its severity is not to be compared with the rigid fast which Moses and Elias had to observe as the condition of receiving what God promised them.

Nowadays, sinners are not visibly separated from the faithful; the Church doors are not closed against them; they frequently stand near the holy altar, in the company of the just; and when God’s pardon descends upon them, the faithful are not made cognizant of the grace by any special and solemn rite. Let us here admire the wonderful mercy of our Heavenly Father, and profit by the indulgent discipline of our Holy Mother the Church. The lost sheep may enter the fold at any hour and without any display; let him take advantage of the condescension thus shown him, and never more wander from the Shepherd, Who thus mercifully receives him. Neither let the just man be puffed up with self-complacency, by preferring himself to the lost sheep; let him rather reflect on those words of today’s lesson: If the just man turn himself away from his justice, and do iniquity… the justices which he hath done shall not be remembered. Let us, therefore tremble for ourselves, and have compassion on sinners. One of the great means on which the Church rests Her hopes for the reconciliation of sinners is the fervent prayers offered up for them by the faithful during Lent.

The Gospel of today tells of the cure of the infirm man who had waited 38 years at the Probatica pool—a figure of the Sacrament of Penance. How was his cure wrought? First of all, the infirm man says to Jesus: I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pond. The water would have cured him; but observe, he has need of some Man to lead him to the water. This Man is the Son of God, and He became Man in order to heal us. As Man, He has received power to forgive sins, and before leaving this earth, He gave that same power to other men, and said to them: Whose sins ye shall forgive, they are forgiven them (John 20: 23). The penitents, then, are to be reconciled with God by virtue of this supernatural power; and the infirm man, who takes up his bed and walks, is a figure of the sinner, whose sins have been forgiven him by the Church, by the divine power of the keys.