This poem was in the most recent issue of Lydwine. Please check it out and give them a shout if you enjoy the work they put out.
As well as being the first week of Lent, it’s also an Ember Week. I typically start off fairly well with Lent, lasting 48 hours or so, before completing failing. This year was no different so the Lenten ember days come just in time to maybe, hopefully, please God, get me back on track.
The Ember Weeks occur four times throughout the year at the beginning of each season. Liturgically they take place during Advent (usually between the 2nd and 3rd week of Advent after the Feast of St Lucy), Lent ( week following Ash Wednesday), Whitsun (week of Pentecost), and Michaelmas (week of the Exultation of the Holy Cross).
During Ember Weeks, the Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays are special days set aside to thank God for our blessings and to ask for continued graces in the seasons ahead by fasting, abstinence, prayer, and almsgiving. The Ember Days are an ancient, beautiful practice, that has sadly fallen by the wayside.
The days - Wednesday, Friday, Saturday - have particular significance. Wednesday is the day that Christ was betrayed, Friday, the day Christ was crucified, and Saturday, the day Christ spent in the tomb.
The Ember Weeks are associated with a particular season, and each of the Ember Days is associated with a corresponding month. Lenten Embertide is associated with Spring, and the months of March, April, and May correspond with Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of Lenten Embertide, respectively.
Legend has it that the weather on each day portends the weather on one of the following months, so, for example, the weather today predicts the weather for March. I hope this is so because so far February has been tough, too much cold, too much snow. Today, though, looks to be lovely.
The Gospel reading for today is the same as for every Lenten Embertide Wednesday, Matthew 12:38-50, when Jesus answers questions from “certain” scribes and Pharisees by recalling the story of Jonah in the belly of the whale and predicting His own “three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
The above poem obviously uses this Gospel reading as a jumping off point, but I also found an interesting article (here) that discusses a less literal explanation for the story of Jonah getting swallowed by the whale. I don’t know if I could ever really explain how a poem gets written, but somehow Jonah, the constellation Cetus, Lent, last year’s bad news (Wednesday of Lenten Embertide was March 4th last year) with COVID taking hold of us all mixed together to help me make the above poem, for what it’s worth.