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Praying Amidst an Impeachment Inquiry

I am not one known for being particularly #woke.  Following the news is (for me) a low-priority necessary evil.  There’s a lot of distraction out there, far too much commentary posing as facts, and let’s not even talk about the Comment Sections on news-related websites and social media.  Except this blog; comments here are pretty sparse and polite… thanks for that!  For the politeness I mean, I wouldn’t mind if they were less sparse.  Not that I’m begging.

Anyway, it did not escape my notice that a formal call to investigate the President of the United States of America and his conduct regarding foreign relations and electoral procedures, with an eye toward an impeachment inquiry, has been issued.  I had a few emotional knee-jerk reactions deep down inside, and I’m sure lots of people are going to have much stronger, and more public, reactions to this news also.  So I thought this would be a good thing to address in the realm of liturgy and prayer.

To a large extent, liturgical intercessory prayer is a matter of fill-in-the-blank.  We have a standard collection of prayers that we offer for the state, for society, and for leaders in particular.  On that level, our prayers for the nation do not change just because the word “impeachment” is officially on the table in Washington D.C.  We must not, on the one hand, devolve into that silly “sports fan” scenario of prayer, pray that we crush the Angry Orange Man of Doom.  Nor must we, on the other hand, devolve into that nationalism-over-faith sort of idolatry that we’ve seen from certain health-wealth and pentecostal extremes lately, and pray The Lord’s Anointed will be protected from such a demonic assault.  No, the President is still the President, and the inquiry is a perfectly legal procedure, whatever our personal opinions may be about either.  And so on one level we must continue to pray as we always pray:

We pray that you will lead the nations of the world in the way of righteousness; and so guide and direct their leaders, especially Donald Trump, our President, that your people may enjoy the blessings of freedom and peace.  Grant that our leaders may impartially administer justice, uphold integrity and truth, restrain wickedness and vice, and protect true religion and virtue.

2019 BCP, page 110

What does change is the context of our prayers, rather than the content.  With this new inquiry in mind, we must be sure we heartily pray for:

  1. “impartially administer[ed] justice” – that these proceedings will go forward wisely, without assumption of guilt without evidence, and without scorn of evidence without analysis;
  2. “uphold[ing] integrity and truth” – that all involved will proceed with due dignity and gravity of the task before them, without bombast or frivolity, and earnestly seeking the truth of the matter;
  3. “restrain[ment of] wickedness and vice” – if the President is guilty of crimes that he will be held accountable for them; that the proceedings will not be sullied by ad hominem tactics, and our observation will not be an occasion for sin;
  4. and the “protect[ion of] true religion and virtue” – referencing James 1:27 as well as the general plea for clear heads and pure hearts to prevail.

These are four of the major purposes of earthly governments, as we understand the teaching in the Scriptures, and we ought to keep these in mind as we pray.  Whether you want to see Trump out of the White House for good, or whether you want him to remain there, in prayer we learn to set our political preferences aside and come before the Father with a more pure request: to fulfill his Word, to mete out judgement in his own time and on his own terms, and to deliver each of us from temptation and evil in the midst of all this.

We’ve also got Occasional Prayers #29, 30, 33, 37, 38, and 39 on pages 654-7 to help spell this out further.  Resist the temptation to go on internet rampages; take it to the Lord in prayer.

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An Ember Day Hymn

If you’re following this Customary’s plan for Daily Hymnody from The Book of Common Praise 2017, then you’ll find that the hymn appointed for this Ember Day is “Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire.”  In the 2017 hymnal this is set to the Sarum Plainsong tune VENI CREATOR SPIRITUS, which is a bummer for me because I’m used to it being sung to COME HOLY GHOST.  And the way the lyrics are matched to the notes in the 2017 hymnal is different from how it’s done in the 1940 hymnal, so that’s just confusing to me as a musician who has paid attention to that in the past.

Tune-related issues, aside, the text of this hymn is very significant.  It is appointed in the Ordinal to be sung or said at the ordination of a priest and bishop!  This is true for the 1662 as well as the 2019 book, so it’s pretty standard Anglican fare.  And it’s a 9th century text, so it’s a piece of our Western/Latin heritage as well! Let’s take a look at these words.

COME, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire,
And lighten with celestial fire.
Thou the anointing Spirit art,
Who dost thy sevenfold gifts impart.
Thy blessed unction from above,
Is comfort, life, and fire of love.

Prayers addressed to the Holy Spirit are rare in the liturgical tradition.  Confirmations and Ordinations are among the few times we actually do this.  The seven-fold gift of the Spirit is a long-standing image in Church literature, stemming from the New Testament itself, and includes an Old Testament precedent that is not often in favor with Protestant interpretation.  You can read more about that here if this is unfamiliar to you.

Enable with perpetual light
The dulness of our blinded sight.
Anoint and cheer our soiled face
With the abundance of thy grace.
Keep far our foes, give peace at home;
Where thou art guide, no ill can come.

These are the primary specific petitions of this hymn.  Open our eyes, cheer us, grant us peace… if you think back to one of the titles our Lord gave for the Holy Spirit – The Comforter – these all make perfect sense.  Christ has won the victory, Christ has redeemed us; it falls to the Holy Spirit to apply these truths to our hearts and minds, to point us back to Jesus.  Such sight, cheering, and peace are all thereby ministries of comfort and help.

Teach us to know the Father, Son,
And thee, of both, to be but One;
That, through the ages all along,
This may be our endless song:
Praise to thy eternal merit,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Finally our plea is that we would know God the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that in this knowledge we would be able to worship and praise him forever.  Knowledge and worship, doctrine and doxology, teaching and liturgy, these are pairs that should never be separated.

Interesting that this hymn doesn’t actually mention anyone getting ordained, huh?  Yes, its function in the ordination liturgy makes it into a prayer especially for the candidate for ordination, but but textually it need not be so limited.  By all means, sing this and pray for your clergy.  But you can pray this for yourself, for all the Church, just as easily and honestly.  In the context of ordination, it makes sense that we should pray for clarity, for sight, for knowledge – not just for the candidate but for the whole congregation.  Calling a new minister of the Gospel, in any Order, is a “big deal” – one that will impact many lives for many years to come.  The Church needs to be in her right mind when placing the collar of recognizable authority upon another servant.

So on these Ember Days, be sure to pray for your Bishop and his clergymen, as well as for those individuals considering or seeking Holy Orders and the congregations in discernment with them.  The process is useless if the aspirant is surrounded by “Yes Men” whose eagerness to support blinds them from asking any hard questions about his true calling.  So pray this hymn with them and for them.

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Long Psalm 89

Evening Prayer today, the 17th day of the month, is occupied in its psalmody solely with Psalm 89.  This psalm is quite lengthy, and one of the big challenges with long psalms is keeping the attention span alive, and the comprehension alive, all the way through.

In short, Psalm 89 is a celebration and lament in a single package.  God has given a covenant to the house of David, promising the eternal kingship to his servants.  Yet God has allowed Israel, in their unfaithfulness, to fall into misfortune at the hands of their enemies.  Which mood wins out?  Let’s look at a little outline of its verses:

  • vv1-2 Introduction
  • vv3-4 Summary of the Davidic Covenant
  • v5-19 Hymn to God the Creator
  • 20-36 Celebrating the promise to David
  • 37-44 Lamentation for the fall of David
  • 45-50 Reproaches
  • v 51 Benediction

So there’s a logical, or even sort of chronological, order to the main body of the psalm: from verse 5 through 44 we have a movement from God’s lordship over creation, God’s covenant-making, and God’s withdrawal of the blessings of that covenant.  The “Reproaches” at the end are similar to the Lamentations, bewailing the loss Israel has suffered, beseeching God for mercy, and expressing glimmers of hope that His faithfulness will pull them through.

Plus, if you take the promises seriously in the celebratory part of the psalm, the language of “forever” is pretty strong – even if curse and calamity should befall God’s people, it must only be for a season – God’s covenant promises carry eternal weight.  This is especially true from the New Covenant perspective we have as Christians, since the Davidic Covenant is fulfilled in the kingship of Christ Jesus.  It is unsurprising, therefore, that Psalm 89 is featured on holy days like St. Joseph‘s and Christmas Day.  This reality transforms the lament and reproaches even more for us: now when we see the Church suffering on earth, we know all the more undeterred that our Lord and King stands firm, victorious even over death and the grave.

So, as usual, keep the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in mind as you’re praying through this long psalm.  Perhaps the verse groupings listed above can give you places to pause for breathe and recollect your attentions, too.

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Readings Review & Planning Propers 9/16

What we’re doing on this blog on Mondays is looking back and forth at the Daily Office readings (or lessons) so we can better process together what the Scriptures are saying, and list the recommended Propers for the Communion or Antecommunion service for each day of the week.

Readings Review

Last week: 1 Kings 1-5, 1 Chronicles 28, Ephesians 5:18-6, Hebrews 1-5, Micah 6-7, Nahum, Habakkuk 1-2, Matthew 8:18-12:21
This week: 1 Kings 6-11, Hebrews 5-10, Habakkuk 3, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah 1, Matthew 12:22-16:12
Special reading Saturday for St. Matthew’s Day: Matthew 9:9-13

The Old Testament lessons in Evening Prayer are still powering through the Minor Prophets (or slogging through, depending upon how you feel about them).  In the next few days we finish up the middle group of minor prophets, covering the “late kingdom era”, that is, the prophets who served at the royal court in the final century of Judah’s existence as a kingdom.  Later this week we’re starting into the last three (Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi) who wrote during the Second Temple Era, that is, during the rebuilding of Jerusalem after the exile in Babylon was complete.  The short book of Haggai is one with which I’m particularly familiar, having preached through it a few years ago.  Click here to find eight articles and sermons about Haggai and his themes!

Meanwhile in Morning Prayer we started the Epistle to the Hebrews last week, and are now working our way through the thickest part of that book culminating in chapters 9 and 10.  The gist of Hebrews is basically “Jesus is better than __!” where the blank is just about anything important from the Old Testament religion.  The priesthood descended from Aaron is the particular focus of what Jesus fulfills and transforms in chapters 9 and 10, and have much to teach us about priestly sacrificial atonement.

Planning Propers

This is the week of Proper 19 (or 13th after Trinity in the traditional calendar), so keep in mind that the historic Prayer Book default is that a mid-week Eucharist will repeat the Collect & Lessons (the propers) for yesterday.  Otherwise, we recommend…

  • Monday 9/16 = Votive (of the Holy Spirit) * or St. Ninian
  • Tuesday 9/17 = Votive (of the Holy Angels)
  • Wednesday 9/18 = Ember Day I
  • Thursday 9/19 = Votive (of the Holy Eucharist) or St. Theodore of Tarsus
  • Friday 9/20 = Ember Day II
  • Saturday 9/21 = SAINT MATTHEW

* A Votive is a “Various Occasion” (page 733 in the BCP 2019) and label in parentheses are simply a traditional suggestion.

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Holy Cross Day Round-up

Today is the feast of the Holy Cross, a red-letter day newly introduced into the Prayer Book tradition in the 20th century.  Historically, this holiday commemorates the date that Emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena, found the True Cross in a rubbish heap outside of Jerusalem, thus beginning the veneration (not worship) of the instrument whereby Christ redeemed the world.  In modern Prayer Book context, this holiday focuses on the glory of Christ on the Cross, thus instead of the Gospel lesson being about the crucifixion, it’s from John 12 wherein our Lord declares that when he will be lifted up the whole world will be drawn to him.

Here’s a round-up of different sorts of writings to help explore different facets of the Cross and this holy day.  (In general the first three links are shorter reads and the latter three are longer, in case you need to budget your time.)

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Common Prayer, Common Thought

I don’t presume to claim that this blog & website are super popular right now.  But I do know that there are a number of regular followers and readers.  So I thought it’d be nice to devote the occasional entry to pointing beyond the confines of these pages.  For, just as we are passionate in our pursuit of common prayer, the constant goal and ideal of worshiping our Lord with one voice, we should also be passionate in our pursuit of common thought, that is, pursuing the goal and ideal of knowing God with one mind.  If theology is not common, prayer will not be common, and vice versa… that’s one of the implications of lex orandi, lex credendi.

One blog that really helped keep my post-seminary momentum going in learning about Anglicanism is The Conciliar Anglican.  Staffed almost exclusively by one priest, this blog used both prose and videos, and even some really clever memes, to communicate a number of distinctions of the Anglican tradition over against our Roman and Protestant neighbors.  He generally leaned in a high-church direction, but I don’t recall partisanship within Anglicanism being a particular interest of his.  The Conciliar Anglican ceased to update in 2016, as Fr. Mitchican went on to focus on other things.  As I understand it, he eventually poped too (that is, joined the Roman Church), so that’s kind of a bummer.  Most of his old Anglican content is still up though: https://conciliaranglican.wordpress.com/

Something that is currently active, and much larger in its scope of authorship and voice, is The North American Anglican.  It features writers from the ACNA as well as other Anglican jurisdictions, primarily in North America.  There are discourses on Anglican polity, liturgy, theology, some book reviews, and also poetry.  If a renaissance of Anglican tradition is ever going to be stirred up, it will be through the collaborative work and creativity of a site like this one.  http://northamanglican.com/  Some of the book reviews we’ve had here will eventually find their way over there, and Yours Truly is hoping to become a contributor there in other ways when life and time allow.

The churchmanship of The North American Anglican is varied; the commitment there is to classical Anglicanism, which can chafe at low-church evangelicals and high-church Anglo-Catholics alike.  If you want to see how historic Anglicanism is not just being preserved or observed but actually brought to new life, follow them on Facebook or bookmark their page or something, because they’re the real deal.  The same can be said for another website: https://forums.anglican.net/ The “Anglican Forums” is a forum page, that is, you sign up and read or participate in discussions, Q&A threads, and whatever else comes up.  It’s more about interaction with real people, and again the variety of churchmanship is remarkable.  The maintainers of the forum also have a main page – https://www.anglican.net/ – where they have re-published a bunch of important 16th and 17th century Anglican writings, such as the critical Apology for the Church of England by John Jewel, who was one of the first to make a clear case in writing why the Catholic Faith had to be Reformed, defending the integrity of the Anglican Church over against the claims of Rome.

The last page I’ll mention today is Full Homely Hours, which is more back onto the liturgy subject, but less about the church and more about the home.  There don’t seem to be a lot of brand-new posts there these days, but they’ve built up a wealth of resources in the past where they recommend crafts, decorations, family devotions, even foods, to bring the liturgical year to life.  They, too, follow a more classical Anglican tradition (meaning those of us who use the modern calendar will sadly not be on the same page as they, much of the time).  Nevertheless, it’s a great resource that can help get the liturgy into the life of the individual and family.   https://thehomelyhours.com/

Happy reading!

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An Apt Prayer for a Friday

Since the first century, Fridays have been a day of special devotion and discipline in Christian tradition.  You can see this spelled out in the Didache – Wednesday and Friday are put forth as the two normal weekly fast days for Christians, as opposed to the Jewish Monday and Thursday.  The Prayer Book tradition receives, upholds, and passes along to us the practice of a regular Friday fast with few exceptions.  (Modern prayer books like the 2019 tend to be pretty soft on this this point, but if the 1662 is our liturgical standard, we should take note that the modern language “day of special discipline” really ought to be understood as “fast day”.)

The particular reason for Friday to be one of the regular fast days (or the primary one, as Wednesday seems to be seen as a ‘lesser’ fast than Friday) is linked to why we worship together on Sundays: as we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord on the Lord’s Day, we observe the death of our Lord with a fast on Friday.  It is the part of the weekly rhythm of the Christian spiritual life: fasting and penitence upon our Lord’s death, sabbath rest on the day of his repose, and gathering with joy to worship the risen Lord on his resurrection day.

Imagine if that’s what you thought of first when someone mentioned “the weekend”.  Wow.

Anyway, what I thought might be nice to observe together today is one of the Collects for Evening Prayer that is suggested for Fridays.  This is not one of the historic Daily Office Collects, but an addition in the 1979 Prayer Book that has been retained in the 2019.  You don’t have  to use this Collect on Fridays; the rubrics allow you to stick with the traditional two (for Peace and for Aid Against Perils) if you like.  But the prayer suggested for Friday is very appropriate for the penitential tenor of this day of the week.

A COLLECT FOR FAITH

Lord Jesus Christ, by your death you took away the sting of death: Grant to us your servants so to follow in faith where you have led the way, that we may at length fall asleep peacefully in you and wake up in your likeness; for your tender mercies’ sake.  Amen.

In the scheme of “every Sunday an Easter” and “every Friday a Good Friday”, this prayer directs us right to the death of Christ, celebrating the victory Jesus wrought thereby, referencing Hosea 13:14 and/or 1 Corinthians 15:56.  We then turn to the reality of our own death – we pray that we would die a “peaceful” (that is, prepared-for and accepting) death, faithfully following Jesus through death toward our own resurrection unto glory.  It is an eschatological prayer, looking ahead to the end of all things, through and beyond even death itself.

Is this prayer traditional?  Not strictly speaking; only 40 years of the past 470 have seen this prayer in the Office.  But is this prayer appropriate?  Absolutely.

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The celebrant may then say the Exhortation.

When was the last time you heard the Exhortation read in your church?  Or if you’re a priest, when was the last time you read the Exhortation to your flock?  Or when was the last time you read the Exhortation at all?  Do you even know what the Exhortation is?  I’ve resisted the urge to give this entry a click-bait title, but I have a sinking feeling that a lot of people are grossly unfamiliar with this uniquely Anglican feature of the Communion liturgy.

The main reason the Exhortation is almost completely gone from the modern Anglican landscape is because the 1928 Prayer Book (and other books since) almost completely buried the Exhortation.  It’s still there, and there are rubrics to direct its location within the liturgy, but the primary text of the liturgy itself makes no mention of it.  It’s a dinosaur, a relic of ages past, preserved in the liturgical appendix to appease the grumpy old traditionalists.

In the 2019 Prayer Book however both our Communion rites have this rubric between the Prayers of the People and the Confession:

The celebrant may then say the Exhortation.

You then have to turn to pages 139-40 for its suggested uses: it can be part of a special “Penitential Order” at the beginning of the Communion liturgy (for those who want the service to be more Lutheran I guess) and that it “is traditionally read on the First Sunday of Advent, the First Sunday in Lent, and Trinity Sunday.”  This is an appeal to the precedent of (at least) the 1928 Prayer Book which requires the Exhortation to be said on those three Sundays at least (though again you have to find the Exhortation and its rubrics after the conclusion of the Communion liturgy).

So what is the Exhortation?

You can read it on pages 147-8 of the 2019 Prayer Book.  Originally there were three Exhortations: one for the Communion Service itself, one for the Antecommunion when the Communion is coming up (next week or so), and another one for the second setting with a particular emphasis on calling people to receive the Sacrament when they have been “negligent to come.”  Now that weekly Communion is almost universally normalized, the latter two aren’t really useful anymore; only first remains.

If you haven’t read it yet, please do so.  Like, literally, now.  Grab your prayer book, click the link, whatever.

Read it?

Seriously, don’t think you can fool me; I may technically still be a young priest but I’m that naive anymore.

Okay, great, let’s continue.

The Exhortation as found in the 2019 Prayer Book is pretty similar to its traditional form, though you will find that it incorporates elements of all three.  (The 1979 version was re-written to emphasize a fairly liberal agenda regarding the love of God and downplaying the judgment of God, so don’t bother digging that one up anymore.)  Rather than one giant block of text it is spaced into six more readable paragraphs.

The first paragraph gets you started on the right foot: if you intend to receive Communion today, make sure you follow the scriptural mandate to approach with penitence and faith.  The benefits and dangers are great, appealing to 1 Corinthians 11.  The second paragraph continues the same line of scriptural reference, honing in on the call to “judge yourselves lest you be judged by the Lord,” including full confession and restitution as much as is possible.  The third paragraph is drawn from the “Communion is next week, guys!” speech, and that shows because it’s kind of too late to make the invitation to private confession to the priest not five minutes before the celebration of Holy Communion begins.  Nevertheless, the offer is there, and in this day of cheap grace and faux-forgiveness I think our congregations need to know that private confession to a priest is a real ministry that is available to them.

The remaining three, shorter, paragraphs, take a more cheerful tack – “above all, each of us should give humble and hearty thanks to God…. Because of his exceedingly great love for us…”  The facts of the Gospel surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus are summarized as a show of great love, which he desires to communicate to us in “these holy mysteries” of bread and wine.  We are called to love and to joy in submitting to Christ, and that is the last word before the call to confessing our sins.

If you are familiar with the eucharistic canon of the Anglican Standard Text, or any pre-1979 prayer book, you will find several echoes of language between the Exhortation and the Communion prayers.  Because of the close similarity in language, I would highly recommend using the “Anglican Standard” instead of the “Renewed Ancient Text” whenever giving the Exhortation.

As for the dates, our rubric only recommends Advent 1, Lent 1, and Trinity Sunday.  For the most part, I’ve adhered to that pattern in my church since Advent 2013.  The freedom afforded us in this rubric, though, should not be taken as a wholesale opt-out option, but rather, to choose different Sundays or more Sundays to read the Exhortation.  People need to know why we celebrate Communion, and how to prepare for it – especially those many who have come into Anglicanism from an evangelical background where the Sacraments hardly played a role in their spiritual life at all.  I find that Advent 1 is often a low-attendance week due to post-Thanksgiving-Day travel, so sometimes I save the Exhortation for Advent 2 when they’re all back.  Sometimes Trinity Sunday also has that beginning-of-summer slump, too, so I might move the Exhortation up to Pentecost instead.  Use your freedom on this part of the liturgy responsibly, not as an excuse to be lazy.

Is it wordy?  Yes.  Can it be boring?  Yes.  Is it difficult to read if you’re not used to it?  Yes.  But don’t let that stop you.  This is a valuable piece of liturgy, and the more you expose your congregation to it, the more of it will sink in.  Use it in Sunday School or Confirmation preparation when teaching on the Sacraments!  Maybe dedicate a Maundy Thursday sermon to exposit its text; it’s basically a sermon on 1 Corinthians 11 anyway.

If you’re a priest, learn to love the Exhortation.  It is a valuable tool, ally, and resource, and it’s right there in the liturgy.  You don’t have to go full 1662-style and use it every single service, but it’s too good to let it fall into obscurity forever.

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Let’s pray Compline together tonight!

We’ve sampled every other major office in the new prayer book; it’s time for Compline.  Like Midday Prayer, Compline is a very static, or stable, piece of liturgy; it has very little about it that changes.  It does have a few options to choose from (roughly 4 psalms, 4 lessons, and 4 collects), and there are additional lessons offered as well, but on the whole this is a devotion that sees little variation.  It’s supposed to be short and simple.  In that spirit, I didn’t even chant any of the psalms this time, so you can hear (and participate in) this office in all its simplicity.

Index: Compline starts on page 57 of the 2019 Prayer Book (online text here)

  • Opening Blessing & Confession & Prayer for Forgiveness (p. 57-58)
  • Invitatory Dialogue (p. 58)
  • Psalms 31:1-6 & 91 (p. 59-60)
  • Lesson: 1 Peter 5:8-9 (p. 61)
  • The Prayers (p. 62-64)
  • Nunc Dimittis with Antiphon (p. 64-65)
  • Blessing (p. 65)
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Readings Review & Planning Propers 9/2/19

One of the things we’re doing on this blog on Mondays is look back and forth at the Daily Office readings (or lessons) so we can better process together what the Scriptures are saying.  The other thing we’re going to do on Mondays starting today is list the recommended Propers for the Communion or Antecommunion service for each day of the week.

Readings Review

Last week: 2 Samuel 12-18, Colossians, Philemon, Ephesians 1:1-14, Amos 6-9, Obadiah, Jonah 1-2, John 19-21:, Matthew 1-3

Next week: 2 Samuel 19-24, 1 Chronicles 22, Ephesians 1-5:17, Jonah 3-4, Micah 1-5, Matthew 4-8:17

Something that begins at the end of this week and will last into early November is the supplementing of readings from 1 & 2 Kings with readings from 1 & 2 Chronicles.  As you may be aware, the books of the Chronicles cover the same span of time from 2 Samuel 1 (David’s ascension to the throne of Israel) to the end of 2 Kings (the conquest and destruction of Jerusalem).  This means that there is a lot of repeat material in the Samuel-Kings books and the Chronicles, rather similar to the overlap between the four Gospel books.  There are a few “glitches” along the way – different numbers for the reigns of certain kings, or census results, and so forth – most of which can be explained by means of different cultural perspectives (namely, who counts in a census? does a king’s reign begin when his father dies or when he begins a co-regnancy during his father’s life? etc.).  There are also a few stories that are told in slightly different orders.  In general, the Samuel-Kings books are considered the more “historic” books, and Chronicles, having been written later, are more of a theological commentary on the history.

In the context of our daily lectionary, though, the role of 1 & 2 Chronicles is simply that of “filler.”  When those books supply a story that Samuel-Kings does not, the lectionary adds it in a the appropriate place.  It makes for a slightly unpredictable reading experience, because you’ll be going through one book and suddenly a chapter from another book will jut in, but narratively it works.  And, for what it’s worth, the original Anglican daily lectionary went for the simpler course and just omitted Chronicles completely, so rejoice in re-gained ground!

Planning Propers

This is the week of Proper 17 (or Trinity 11 in the traditional calendar), so keep in mind that the historic Prayer Book default is that a mid-week Eucharist will repeat the Collect & Lessons (the propers) for yesterday.  Otherwise, we recommend…

  • Monday 9/2 = Labor Day or Martyrs of Papua New Guinea
  • Tuesday 9/3 = Votive (of the Holy Angels) *
  • Wednesday 9/4 = St. Birinus (missionary bishop)
  • Thursday 9/5 = Votive or Mother Theresa (renewer of society)
  • Friday 9/6 = Votive (of the Holy Cross)
  • Saturday 9/7 = Votive (of Blessed Mary) **

* A Votive is a “Various Occasion” (page 733 in the BCP 2019) and label in parentheses are simply a traditional suggestion.

** Choose between the Annunciation, the Visitation, or St. Mary’s Day.