Ember Days II

There seems to be a lot going on right now. In the Office we wind our way towards the end of Job; Paul, Silas, and Timothy travel through about 57 countries trying to spread the Word; and Jesus enters Jerusalem triumphantly on a donkey, with crowds waving palms in the air around him. (The Leviathan also returns for a wonderful and almost comic appearance in Job. He was last seen on Pentecost, in the Sunday lectionary.) In my personal life, I'm working about 10,000 hours per week--or at least it feels that way. I worked overnight Saturday into Sunday (with no sleep, ouch) and I'm on call again at a different hopsital tonight. The irony is that when I don't have work to do at the moment, I stare at my pager, almost too anxious to sleep for fear I might miss a page. So sleep is fitful even when there's time to lay down.

As if all this weren’t enough, tonight is the eve of the autumnal Ember Days, and Thursday is the Feast of St. Matthew. In cooperation with the Church calendar, which welcomes us tomorrow into autumn, it’s going to be windy, cold, gray, and about 40 degrees outside tonight. As I said earlier, I think that marking the Ember Days with some sort of personal devotion makes sense and sounds really wonderful. Those studying for Holy Orders use the Ember Days to write letters to their bishops; what about those of us in the laity?

St. Mary of the Angels (in Hollywood, of all places) has created an Anglican guide to feasting and fasting, which recommends "fast and abstinence." By fasting, they mean reducing the quantity that you eat, maybe by eliminating breakfast or lunch. By abstinence, they recommend leaving out a particular food item that you enjoy—just like many Anglo-Catholics abstain from meat on Fridays.

So here’s my personal devotion for the upcoming Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday: attend mass, skip lunch (fast), and avoid meat (abstinence). I challenge all my readers to find some personally meaningful way to mark these days as summer ends, the year moves into autumn, and ordinary time drifts closer towards Advent. If anyone has any other ideas for Ember Day devotions, think about posting them in the comments section here to share with other readers.

I've had to put my study of the Breviary away for a while, until work cools off a little. But here's my over-ambitous, grandiose, self-important idea as it stands so far:

• Master either Vespers or Lauds
• Translate it into Rite II language
• Add it to my daily devotions (or else substitute it for Morning or Evening Prayer)
• Then use Rite I during Lent, and Rite II for the rest of the year

Sounds like about a million years of work. I've got to be nuts.