Feria Quarta Quatuor Temporum Quadragesimæ (III classis)
The Ember Days of Lent summon us to the mountain. They are days of fasting, recollection, and sacred ordination—days in which the Church withdraws from noise and descends into holy silence. The lessons appointed for this Ember Wednesday—Exodus 24:12–18; 3 Kings (1 Kings) 19:3–8; and Matthew 12:38–50—are not disparate fragments, but three movements of a single mystery: the soul called upward, purified by trial, and incorporated into the true family of Christ through obedience.
I. Moses on the Mountain: Entering the Cloud
In Exodus, Moses ascends Sinai at the Lord’s command:
“Come up to Me into the mount, and be there: and I will give thee tables of stone.”
The mountain is covered with a cloud for six days. On the seventh, God calls Moses from the midst of the cloud, and Moses enters into it. For forty days and forty nights he remains there.
The Church reads this in Lent not accidentally. Forty days—already the shadow of our sacred season—speak of purification and preparation. Moses ascends not merely to receive stone tablets, but to enter divine intimacy.
St. Gregory of Nyssa teaches that Moses’ ascent symbolizes the soul’s unending progress into God. The cloud that covers the mountain is not mere obscurity but divine mystery. “For,” he writes, “the true vision and the true knowledge of what we seek consists in this: in seeing that God is invisible.” The cloud humbles the intellect; the ascent purifies desire.
The six days of waiting before entering the cloud signify the labor of purification. St. Bede sees in them the toil of this life, through which the soul is prepared for the Sabbath-rest of divine contemplation. Only on the “seventh day” is Moses called into deeper union.
Thus Lent calls us upward. The fast is not an end in itself; it is the ascent. The cloud is not a barrier; it is the veil of divine presence.
II. Elias in the Desert: Sustained by Heavenly Bread
In the third book of Kings, Elias flees into the wilderness, exhausted and despondent. Sitting under a juniper tree, he prays for death:
“It is enough for me, Lord.”
Here we see another forty days. Strengthened by bread baked on the coals and a vessel of water provided by an angel, Elias journeys forty days and nights to Horeb—the same holy mountain.
St. Augustine remarks that both Moses and Elias fasted forty days, prefiguring Christ’s own fast. But unlike Moses, Elias does not begin in strength; he begins in weakness. His is the path of the soul wearied by persecution, temptation, or spiritual dryness.
The angelic bread is a figure of the Eucharist. St. Jerome calls it “a mystery of our daily nourishment,” by which we are strengthened for the journey to the true mountain. Just as Elias could not complete the journey without heavenly sustenance, neither can we persevere through Lent by natural resolve alone.
The desert reveals a paradox: God is found not in noise, but in stillness. Though not part of today’s reading, what follows—God’s manifestation in the “whistling of a gentle air”—completes the image. St. Gregory the Great teaches that the Lord was not in the wind, nor the earthquake, nor the fire, but in the quiet whisper, because He comes to the humble soul not in tumult, but in interior peace.
If Sinai represents the majesty of divine law, Horeb reveals the tenderness of divine mercy. Both are mountains of encounter.
III. The Sign of Jonas: From Wonder to Obedience
In the Gospel, the scribes and Pharisees demand a sign. Our Lord answers:
“An evil and adulterous generation seeketh a sign: and a sign shall not be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet.”
Christ directs them not to spectacle, but to Paschal mystery—His death and resurrection after three days. The true sign is not marvel, but sacrifice.
St. John Chrysostom notes that those who ask for signs are often those unwilling to believe. They demand wonders while ignoring the greater miracle already before them: the Incarnate Word.
The Queen of the South and the men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment because they responded to lesser lights—Solomon’s wisdom and Jonah’s preaching—while a greater than Solomon and Jonah stood before Israel.
Thus the Gospel rebukes spiritual superficiality. Lent does not offer us spectacles; it offers us repentance.
IV. “Who Is My Mother?” — The New Kinship
The passage concludes with a startling declaration. When told that His Mother and brethren stand outside, Christ replies:
“Whosoever shall do the will of My Father, that is in heaven, he is My brother, and sister, and mother.”
St. Augustine carefully guards against misunderstanding: Christ does not reject His Mother; rather, He praises her. For Mary is blessed not only because she bore Him in the flesh, but because she heard the word of God and kept it. “She conceived Christ first in her heart before she conceived Him in her womb.”
In this, the Gospel completes the ascent begun in Exodus and continued in Kings. The mountain of God is not only external; it is interior. To enter the cloud, to reach Horeb, is to do the will of the Father.
The true family of Christ is formed not by blood, but by obedience.
Ember Wednesday: A Day of Priestly Formation
Traditionally, the Ember Days were times of priestly ordination. The readings thus acquire deeper resonance. The priest must be a man of the mountain:
- Like Moses, he must ascend into divine mystery.
- Like Elias, he must endure desert trials, nourished by heavenly bread.
- Like the disciples, he must belong to Christ not by external privilege, but by doing the Father’s will.
And so must every Christian.
The Lenten Synthesis
These three readings reveal the path of Lent:
- Ascend — Enter the cloud of prayer and fasting.
- Persevere — Be strengthened by heavenly bread in the desert of trial.
- Obey — Become true kin to Christ by fulfilling the Father’s will.
St. Leo the Great teaches that the discipline of Lent is meant to restore in us the image of God obscured by sin. The ascent of Moses, the perseverance of Elias, and the obedience of Christ converge in this restoration.
The mountain is before us. The desert stretches ahead. The sign of Jonas shines in the promise of Easter.
May we, strengthened by fasting and sustained by grace, enter the cloud—not in presumption, but in reverent awe—until, passing through the forty days, we behold not fire and darkness, but the glory of the Risen Lord.