The rubric beneath the Collect for the Third Sunday of Advent doesn't give much away: "Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of this week are the traditional winter Ember Days" (BCP 212). What are Ember Days, anyway?
According to the Calendar of the Church Year, the Ember Days are "traditionally observed after the First Sunday in Lent, the Day of Pentecost, Holy Cross Day, and December 13" (BCP 18).
Even church history doesn't shed much light on what the Ember Days are about. F.L. Cross notes in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church that "their early history and original purpose are obscure" (Cross 455). Though they may have begun in the Roman Church as harvest, vintage and seed-time observances, in the Church of England they became associated with times for ordinations.
That's how they are observed in the Episcopal Church today, too. In many dioceses, the four "Ember Weeks" are times for postulants and candidates for holy orders to write to the bishop about their personal, spiritual, and academic formation. After their ordination, clergy may also be required to write the bishop once a year, perhaps during the Lenten Ember Days, to give the same kind of report.
Ordinations are often scheduled during Ember Days -- so it's no accident that in the Diocese of Fond du Lac, our bishop will ordain Jane Margaret Johnson to the diaconate today. I'd be willing to bet that her ordination to the priesthood will happen on or around June 18, during the Ember Days following Pentecost (and her graduation from seminary).
In the Daily Office, occasions like the Ember Days are good times to offer prayers to God not just for the clergy, but "for all members of your holy Church, that in their vocation and ministry they may truly and devoutly serve you" (BCP 100). All of us have a vocation or "calling" and all of us are responsible by virtue of our baptism to reach out in service to others.
The Ember Days, no matter what their origin, offer us an opportunity to hold one another up in prayer, that through our work and service, God's kingdom may come a little closer.
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