"So serve Thee with fasting and prayer": Cosin's collect and Advent Embertide

This week is one of the four Ember weeks.

So said Anthony Sparrow of the Third Sunday in Advent in his 1655 A Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer.  Sparrow, of course, was at this stage referring to the 1559 BCP, in which the collect for the Third Sunday in Advent made no reference to the Ember Week:

Lord, we beseche thee, geve eare to our prayers, and by thy gracious visitacion lighten the darkenes of our hearte, by our Lorde Jesus Christe.

Sparrow's recognition of the relationship between the Third Sunday in Advent and the Ember Week is suggestive of the significance of Advent Embertide.  Cosin's 1638 Notes on the Book of Common Prayer (1638) similarly draw attention to the relationship, saying of the Sarum rite:

And in this week (being Ember- week) there was a special service, epistle, and gospel appointed for the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, all relating to the Advent.

It is, however, in Cosin's 1626 A Collection of Private Devotions that we find the most compelling recognition of Advent Embertide in the piety of the Carolinian Church:

In the time of Advent. 

Grant, we most humbly beseech Thee, O heavenly Father, that with holy Simeon and Anna, and all Thy devout servants, who waited for the consolation of Israel, we may at this time  so serve Thee with fasting and prayer, that by the celebration of the advent and birth of our blessed Redeemer, we may with them be filled with true joy and consolation, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

This prayer beautifully captures a number of Advent themes.  It gives expression to the well-established understanding of Advent as preparation for the celebration of the feast of the Lord's Nativity.  Cosin himself declared in his Notes:

Therefore beginning at Advent is the memory of His incarnation celebrated, and after that His nativity.

Sparrow would later say:

The Principal Holy-days as Christmas, Easter, and Whitsunday, have some days appointed to attend upon them: some to go before, some to come after: as it were to wait upon them for their greater solemnity.

Before Christmas are appointed four Advent-Sundays, so called because they are to prepare us for Christ his Advent or coming in the flesh.

Cosin's evocation of waiting with "for the consolation of Israel" with "holy Simeon and Anna" echoes the Advent antiphons and provides something of a foretaste of the imaginative power of John Mason Neale's 'O come, O come Emmanuel' in later Anglican Advent piety.  Alongside this is the recognition that Advent also requires a penitential character and that this is the particular function of these Ember Days: "so serve Thee with fasting and prayer".

It is against this background that we can see Cosin's purpose in replacing the older collect for the Third Sunday in Advent with his new composition.  For some, it may be an inelegant collect, lacking both Cranmer's craftsmanship and the older collect's evocative use of dark and light, particularly resonant at "the year's midnight".  The strength of Cosin's composition, however, was to recognise Advent Embertide within the collect for the Sunday and the week.  

Even the simple fact that the collect is unusually directly addressed to Our Lord Jesus Christ can alert us to a difference in this week.  The reference to "thy messenger" inevitably suggests a penitential theme in light of the Baptist's ministry and preaching, while the petition "to turn the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just" further reinforces the penitential focus.  Unlike the collects for the Second and Fourth Sundays in Advent, Cosin's collect concludes with an explicit with acknowledgement of "thy second coming to judge the world", an acknowledgement repeated, of course, in the Advent collect prayed directly after.  

Cosin, then, provided a collect particularly suited to Advent Embertide, with an enhanced penitential character embodying the character of the Ember Days.  It is noticeable that the alternative collects provided for the Third Sunday in Advent by, for example, TEC's BCP 1979 and the CofE's Common Worship have nothing like the penitential nature of Cosin's collect and thus fail to provide any recognition of Advent Embertide.  This loses an opportunity to both enact and recommend the discipline of Advent Embertide as an appropriate preparation for the festive season.

Observance of the Ember Days, and recognition of their penitential nature, was commented upon by a number of post-Restoration authorities.  Thomas Comber, for example, in his 1674 Short discourses upon the whole common-prayer, pointed to the provisions in both the BCP Kalendar and in statute: 

at these very times they are still observed as times of Fasting in the Church of England; and by the Statute Law a Penalty is laid upon all that eat Flesh on these Embring days.

Archbishop Sancroft in his 1689 Instructions to the Clergy of the Church of England drew attention to Ember Days as times when public prayer should be offered, alongside other penitential times and seasons:

That they perform the Daily Office publickly (with all Decency, Affection, and Gravity) in all Market and other Great Towns, and even in Villages, and less populous Places, bring People to Publick Prayers as frequently as may be; especially on such Days, and at such Times, as the Rubrick and Canons on Holy-days, and their Eves, on Ember and Rogation Days, on Wednesdays and Fridays in each Week, and especially in Advent and Lent.

Such examples are a reminder of how the practice of observing 'The Ember Days at the Four Seasons' was integral to the Prayer Book's liturgical year, ensuring specific times of penitence in each season of the year. The three Ember Days of Advent offer a realistic opportunity for abstinence, fasting, and repentance before the celebrations of Christmas.  They do not require the rather silly and inevitably self-defeating rejection of popular anticipations of the festive season, as urged by some Advent purists (often indicative of a neo-Puritan dislike of popular festivity).  They do provide a spiritually serious and meaningful way of preparing ourselves in heart and soul for the joy of the Lord's Nativity.

Precisely because Advent - in the words of a 1685 sermon - is "rather of a mixt nature; partly Eucharistical, and partly Penitential", there is a need to sustain the penitential nature when the proximity of festive celebrations can (quite naturally) be overwhelming.  Cosin's collect, with its reminder of Advent Embertide, provides a key means of ensuring that the season's "partly Penitential" character is neither obscured nor lost.