Ember Days are no longer of precept. Paul VI dropped them from universal Church law in Paenitemini in 19661. Post 1966 the Church basically only binds the fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and in some cases Friday abstinence… unless a local conference permits a substitute, like a prayer or giving a dime to the homeless.
Keeping them is rather inherited discipline, than recovered legalism.
I say that first because serious readers will otherwise smell a trap. Most of us tried to live against the current. Have already read the Church Fathers. And hopefully have already structured a life around the Mass that your neighbours treats as a weird hobby.
You do not need another obligation invented in my newsletter. I think you already know that these days still exists after the sanction died… if you do not, read this.
So… the sanction died. But the Ember Days did not. Pope Leo the Great preached the four seasons as thanksgiving for the earth and as the ordinary time of ordination.
The 1917 Code bound the fast. The 1966 Code unbound it. Maybe for the right reasons, because almost nobody observed them anyway… yet I guess you do not want a 1950s spirit back (it is less romantic than you think).
So… what remains is your own household in which you can keep practices like these when the institution lets them slip.
Today is Saturday, 19 September 2026.
And while I recently discovered the older calendar would observed the Ember Days the past week (maybe one of the few things Paul VI actually restored), for this year I keep the 1960 calendar.
On that count September Ember is next week: Wednesday 23rd, Friday 25th, and Saturday 26th. On the older count, after Holyrood, last Wednesday, Friday and today are the Ember Days. That split is why the comments exploded.
But let us not make it a purity test…
The point here is: the more you live with your missal and the liturgy, the more the seasons become clear to you. Besides all theological errors, this is what the 1969 Liturgy Reforms have taken away. There is no ‘Ordinary Time’ in the Catholic liturgy. Never has been.
Yet.. nobody at your workplace is hungry for harvest. Few volunteers at your parish office will print Ember Days on a sheet. And the gap is not ignorance alone. Even few Catholics live a life that carries the season.
They do not always do this on purpose, it is because modern life has gotten abstract. People wear t-shirts and jeans summer, autumn, winter and spring.
The Ember Days
Just to clarify, this is the difference of the dates that has gotten so much discussion lately. This is what it is about:
The Rubricarum instructum of John XXIII, 25 July 19602, changed how the first Sunday of the month is counted for the August–November Scripture cycle. The Ember week in September is tied to that third week. When 14 September sits early, the two systems part. And 2026 is one of those years…
Again, I was not aware of this before. That is why for this year I keep the 1960 week.
So the practical first step for you:
Pick one liturgical calendar for the year: I assume most of you attend a 1962 Mass, few maybe a 1954 Mass, and others maybe a 1969 Mass. A Catholic who keeps half of this week and half of next week keeps a private invention. If you ate as usual on Wednesday the 16th and you follow 1960, you have not missed Ember. Your week has not started.
If you followed the older week and find these pages on Saturday the 19th, keep Friday and Saturday. Do not do a back-dated Wednesday!
You can use this liturgical calendar daily!
