by CCW | 17 September 2020 19:00
Ember Days coincide more or less with the seasons of the natural year, explicitly so with the Autumn Ember Days. There are the Advent Ember Days just on the cusp of winter; the Lenten Ember Days in the spring, and the Ember Days which fall on the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday of the Octave of Pentecost. But all of the Ember Days have as an essential and central focus the ordained ministry and its meaning in the life of the Church. Thus the readings for Pentecost Ember Wednesday are appointed for each of the Wednesdays in the Ember Seasons.
The Ember Days recall us to the life of the Spirit in the Church and so to the role and place of the ordained ministry. For Anglicans, in particular, the focus is on the office in the person, not the person in the office; a calling attention to what the ordained ministry of deacons, priests and bishops is for. It is for all of us together in the body of Christ. The ordained ministry exists for the glory of God and the good of the Church and its people. It is rooted in service and sacrifice through which we are all reminded of the forms of our ministry.
In a way, it is all about grace, the grace that is given through the different gifts of the Spirit, gifts which belong to the building up of the body of Christ, to our life in Christ through our lives of prayer and praise, of sacrifice and service. The ordained ministry exists for the good of the whole body of Christ in preaching and teaching, in the proclamation of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments which belong to our life in the Spirit in the body of Christ.
Each Ember Season has a special focus of concern and prayer. The Autumn Ember Days pray for Labour and Industry; the Advent Ember Days for Peace in the World; the Lenten Ember Days for Missionary Work in our own Country; the Ember Days of Pentecost for the Unity of the Christian Church. Such matters of concern remind us of the wider dimensions of prayer that reach out into every aspect of our lives. Christian life is a whole life, the whole of our life in, with and towards God.
The Gospel belongs to the themes of Pentecost in the gifts of the Spirit bestowed upon the ministers of the Church, unworthy as we are, for the good of the whole Church. Austin Farrer famously observed that a priest is a walking sacrament, the ordained means by which the kingdom of God is near us. The Ember Days remind us of the ways in which we are enfolded in grace.
Fr. David Curry
Eve of Ember Friday
September 17, 2020
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2020/09/17/meditation-for-the-eve-of-ember-friday/
Copyright ©2026 Christ Church unless otherwise noted.