The Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year keep both observances in the reformed calendar. On Rogation and Ember Days, they state, the Church is accustomed to entreat the Lord for the various needs of humanity, especially for the fruits of the earth and for human labor, and to give him public thanks. The Norms then leave the arrangement to the local Church: conferences of bishops determine the time and manner of their celebration, adapting them to the needs of the different regions, and the competent authority sets how many days are kept and what texts are used from the Masses for Various Needs and Occasions. The Ember Days — in Latin quatuor tempora, the four seasons — are among the oldest observances of the Roman Church, attested by the fifth century and probably older. They fell four times a year on a Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday: in Advent after the memorial of Saint Lucy, in Lent after the First Sunday, in the week after Pentecost, and in September after the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. They were days of fasting and prayer marking the turning of the seasons and the harvests, and by long custom ordinations were conferred on the Ember Saturdays, which is why prayer for ministers of the Church became attached to them. The Rogation Days took their name from the Latin rogare, to ask. The Major Litany was kept on April 25, a Roman procession that took over the route of an older civic rite for the protection of the crops; the Minor Rogations, on the three days before the Ascension, began at Vienne in Gaul in the fifth century under Saint Mamertus in a time of earthquake and disaster. Both were marked by processions through fields and streets while the Litany of the Saints was sung. Since the reform these days no longer appear as fixed obligatory observances on the General Roman Calendar, and their practice varies widely. Where they are kept, they take fitting forms: a Rogation procession and blessing of fields in a rural parish in spring, days of prayer for vocations or for the harvest, a parish day of fasting for a local need, or a blessing of workplaces. Their instinct is worth recovering, since it joins the liturgy to the soil, the seasons, and the labor by which people actually live.

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