Hanukkah
The Ember Days have been part of the Roman liturgical tradition since time immemorial, and as such they have invited much reflection. Today, as we did in September, let us turn to the author of the Golden Legend, Bl. Jacobus de Voragine (1230-98), for help in how to observe today and tomorrow, this time the Ember Friday and Ember Saturday of Advent. Jacobus offers several thoughts, which I consolidate into three categories: looking backwards or forwards; looking out; and looking in.
Looking Backwards or Forwards
Jacobus finds it commendable that we incorporate aspects of the Hebrew calendar into our liturgical and ascetical lives. Such an incorporation is not a superstitious or slavish Judaizing of the New Covenant, but an allegorical attempt to fulfill, in the path of Our Lord, every jot and tittle of the Law. It also pays due respect to our spiritual ancestors in the right key.
For the Jews fasted four times in the year, that is to wit, before Easter [Passover], before Whitsunside [the Jewish feast of Shavuoth], before the setting of the Tabernacle in the Temple in September [Yom Kippur and Sukkoth], and before the dedication of the Temple in December [Hanukkah].The September Embertide is a good example of “looking back” insofar as some of its propers honor the Hebrew calendar. The first lesson (Lev. 23, 26-32) and the Epistle (Heb. 9, 2-12) of the September Ember Saturday are about the Feast of the Atonement or Yom Kippur, and the second lesson (Lev. 23, 39-43) is about the Feast of Tabernacles or Sukkoth.
The December Ember Days, however, are dominated by the liturgical season in which they find themselves. And since that season, the season of Advent, looks forward to the coming of Jesus Christ, so do they. Ember Saturday is replete with Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah, while Ember Wednesday honors the Annunciation and Ember Friday the Visitation.
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| Fra Angelico’s Cortona altarpiece of the Annunciation, 1433-34. |
Looking Out
In the Northern hemisphere, December is wintertime, and for Jacobus, this season of want and lifelessness is a call to go and do likewise:
In December there is also a fast, and this is the fourth: in this time the herbs die, and we ought to be mortified to the world.
Looking Within
Combining the qualities of seasonal weather with the four humors (and drawing from St. John Damascene), Jacobus also sees an opportunity for addressing particular temperamental weaknesses and vices throughout the course of the year. Since winter is cold and moist, it produces more phlegm in the human body, and thus the Advent Embertide is for phlegmatics and for a battle with "the phlegm of lightness and forgetting" (to which phlegmatics are prone) as well as a battle against the "coldness of untruth and malice" (to which all are prone). The Lenten Embertide, by contrast, is for sanguines and for a battle with concupiscence and luxury, the Whitsun Embertide is for cholerics and for a battle with wrath and avarice, and the September Embertide is for melancholics and for a battle with pride.
The Four Temperaments by Virgil Solis, 1530-62, via The British Museum, London
The phlegmatic temperament in the above illustration is personified as a woman sitting on water (a link to the elemental connotations of the four humors). She holds a spit in her right hand and a rattle in her left. An owl is on her shoulder, and behind her is an ass. Can anyone make out the Latin inscription? And any guesses on the various symbols?
