Today is Friday, the 19th. That makes it the first Friday after September 14, the Feast of the Holy Cross and the traditional start of the Winter side of the monastic year. Thus, today is one of the Autumnal Ember Days (along with this past Wednesday and tomorrow). These days are now remembered as the date postulants send letters to their bishops but these were originally dates for ordinations and such. As a result, they became days of fasting and prayer for the Church and its well-being.

Today’s collect:

O God, who didst lead thy holy apostles to ordain ministers in every place: Grant that thy Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may choose suitable persons for the ministry of Word and Sacrament, and may uphold them in their work for the extension of thy kingdom; through him who is the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

As a Friday and an especially penitential one at that, the Great Litany is entirely appropriate at the conclusion of today’s Morning Prayer (along with a commemoration of Theodore of Tarsus, the Syrian Archbishop of Canterbury who founded a flourishing school of learning in Anglo-Saxon England). Fasting and/or refraining from meat today would be in keeping with the spirit of the day.

That is all.