Some traditions of the Catholic Church have been forgotten in recent decades. Not yet obscured by the mists of time, here are six beautiful traditions you might want to bring back!
ONE
The Ember Days
The Ember Days are a series of Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays dedicated to prayer and fasting. They occur four times a year and correspond to the natural seasons of autumn, winter, spring, and summer.
As Exodus 90’s Jacob Zepp writes, the observance of these days is oriented toward:
- praying for priests and priestly vocations,
- asking God for our universal needs and thanking Him for fruitful harvests,
- and renewing our individual souls.
“Embertide has not been formally suppressed and should be revived in the Church today as it is a fitting way for the people of God to renew the lost virtues of asceticism and to entreat the Lord for the various needs of humanity,” states Zepp.
St. John Cantius Church sums up:
Embertides thus afford us the opportunity to ruminate on a number of important things: the wondrous cycle of nature and the more wondrous story of our redemption, the splendid differentiation of God’s ordained servants—and lastly, the condition of our own souls.
TWO
Popular Practice of Meatless Fridays
Not many people know this, but Catholics are in fact still bound under penalty of sin to abstain from meat every Friday of the year.
As canon law states, “The penitential days and times in the universal Church are every Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent. Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday….”
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) was one of many bishops’ conferences that decided to allow Catholics to substitute an alternative penance on Fridays:
Among the works of voluntary self-denial and personal penance which we especially commend to our people for the future observance of Friday, even though we hereby terminate the traditional law of abstinence binding under pain of sin, as the sole prescribed means of observing Friday, we give first place to abstinence from flesh meat. We do so in the hope that the Catholic community will ordinarily continue to abstain from meat by free choice as formerly we did in obedience to Church law.
Even though the Church still calls us to observe every Friday as a day of penance for our sins and those of the world, many Catholics have largely fallen out of the practice.
Deacon Stephen Greydanus outlines how the penance of abstaining from meat unites us to Christ and one another in a unique way:
Penance is not man’s idea, but God’s. God says we must do penance. What sort of penance and when is not specified by the divine law, but as human beings, members of a community, and heirs to a tradition, it behooves us to have forms of penitential observance that bind us together, linking us to one another and to our common past.
One important way we can be united in our penitential practices is by observing common penitential days and seasons. Friday, of course, has always been a day of penance for Christians because Jesus died on a Friday…
By abstaining from meat on Fridays, in the first place, we freely and out of love for Christ Crucified show our solidarity with the generations of believers to whom this practice frequently became, especially in times of persecution and of great poverty, no mean evidence of fidelity to Christ and His Church.
THREE
Rorate Mass
St. John Cantius Church writes of this tradition:
The “Rorate” Mass is an ancient Advent tradition that takes its name from the first word of the Introit: Rorate, caeli, desuper, et nubes pluant iustum, “Drop down dew, O heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down righteousness.” This Mass in honor of Mary is a beautiful candlelit Mass that begins in the darkness of early morning. The interplay of light and darkness as the church becomes progressively brighter with the sunrise symbolizes the coming of the Eternal Light, whom we await during the Advent season.
This votive Mass may “be celebrated on any weekday during Advent that does not have a special feast associated with it,” according to Aleteia’s Philip Kosloski.
Ask your priest about celebrating the beautiful Rorate Mass at your parish next Advent!
FOUR
Pentecost Octave
You know about the Christmas Octave and the Easter Octave, but did you know about the Pentecost Octave?
Once one of the most ancient and solemn practices of the Church’s liturgical calendar, the Pentecost Octave was liturgically suppressed in 1970.
Father Raymond de Souza writes: “Octaves have a venerable standing in the Church’s Tradition, extending an important feast for an entire week (eight days, with the feast itself counting as the first day) and often crowned with another feast on the eighth day, or “octave” day.”
The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity is the octave day of Pentecost.
Edward Pentin writes:
Critics say this [suppression] has had various detrimental effects on the Church’s liturgical life, not least because the celebration of octaves answers to a fundamental human need: to linger over something momentous, to savour events rich in meaning, the need to prolong a feast.
“The overall end result, critics say, is that the Holy Spirit is not given adequate attention and reverence in the Church’s liturgical calendar, and it’s perhaps therefore unsurprising that the Paraclete remains the ‘neglected Person of the Trinity,’” he continues.
Although the octave is no longer included in the liturgical calendar, Fr. de Souza encourages the celebration of the octave through private devotional prayers.
“Litanies of the Holy Spirit, acts of consecration to the Holy Spirit, images of the Holy Spirit adorning the home, singing of the Veni, Creator Spiritus and the Veni, Sancte Spiritus — all this can be done to live out the Pentecost Octave.”
FIVE
Rogation Days
Aleteia’s Philip Kosloski offers a history of the observance of Rogation Days:
Since the very beginning of Christianity there has been a custom in the Roman Church of processing throughout the city (or countryside) on certain days of the year, begging God’s blessing and protection over the people. These were called “Rogation Days,” from the Latin rogare, meaning “to ask.”
He explains that Rogation Days became more agriculturally oriented with the faithful imploring God that the fields yield fruitful harvests.
Processions for rural parishes “would often take the form of walking the parish boundaries” and “going through the fields of the many farmers, blessing their crops in hopes of a bountiful harvest in the fall.”
Although no longer included on the General Roman Calendar, the dates of Rogation Days are now determined by individual bishops’ conferences to be adapted to their regions.
As Kosloski points out, the celebration of Rogation Days in parishes and homes “provide[s] us with an opportunity to recognize the providential care and dominion God has over creation and to ask him for blessings on the future harvest.”
SIX
The Brown Scapular
Given to St. Simon Stock in the 13th century by the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Brown Scapular is “a miniature habit” of the Carmelite Order that all Catholics can wear as a sign of their devotion to Mary.
Perhaps the best-known fact about the Scapular is Mary’s promise to St. Simon Stock that “Whosoever dies wearing this Scapular shall not suffer eternal fire.”
Joseph Pronechen writes of this astonishing promise:
People can’t think of the Scapular as an avoid-hell-and-get-into-heaven-free cloth and excuse us from living a Christian life. To do otherwise misses the Scapular’s meaning or misuses it to think a sinful life is okay.
Wearing the Scapular means you show your devotion to Our Lady and choose to live following Jesus through Mary who will help you to do so.
Those who wish to wear the Brown Scapular should ask to be “enrolled” (a simple rite which can be performed by any priest).
In the past, children were often enrolled in the Brown Scapular immediately after receiving First Holy Communion – a tradition you might suggest reviving at your parish!
