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Sample “Daily Mass” Schedule for Advent

If you’re a highchurch sort of person, perhaps you dream of a day where you have the opportunity to celebrate or attend a daily Mass.  This is a staple of Roman Catholic practice, and only the most devotedly-Anglo-Catholic Anglican parishes have brought this practice back in full.  The season of Advent, being so explicitly thematic and conveniently short, is a great time of year to consider taking on a special sort of devotion beyond what you usually do throughout the year.

Holding a Communion service every day of the week is nearly impossible for most of us these days, but what can be done is to read and pray parts of the Communion service on your own.  This is basically the “Antecommunion” liturgy – follow the Prayer Book service up until the Offertory and end it there with a few extra prayers.  Given the resources available to us in the 2019 Prayer Book, there is no one way to do this.  As an example of how one might go about this, here is what I’ve mapped out, and hope to observe as a special daily devotion in addition to the Daily Office.

(Remember if you’re an Anglican, especially a clergyman, it’s more true to our tradition to be praying the Office daily before adding optional extras like daily Mass!)

2018 advent

A few words of explanation so you can see where this comes from and why I did it this way…

Contemporary versus Traditional: The classical prayer books have a different logic for Advent than the modern calendar, and is worth learning from.  So I have appointed the “traditional” lessons for Advent on each Monday.  (With the 2019 Prayer Book, the Collects for each Sunday are the same as the traditional ones, unlike in the 1979).

Votive Mass: This is a Roman Catholic term for what the 1979 Prayer Book called “Occasional Observances” or something like that.  In this case I’m electing to repeat, essentially, Christ the King Sunday’s collect & lessons as an Advent devotion.

O Sapientia: in the Episcopalians’ Lesser Feasts and Fasts book, a number of optional seasonal observances are offered.  “O Sapientia” refers to the final week leading up to Christmas Eve, and are related to the “O Antiphons” from which the hymn O come, O come Emmanual is derived.  In a break from tradition, I decided to spread these eight observances out throughout the season.

Hybald of Lincolnshire: No, you’re not crazy, this guy isn’t on the ACNA calendar of commemorations.  He’s on a list of Anglo-Saxon Saints that I compiled a few years ago.  When the new Prayer Book comes out, then I will finish my and my church’s transition to full conformity with its rubrics.  This is on my last flings with extra commemoration days.

Ember Days: These are in our Prayer Book, and I’m sure I’ll write about them when they approach, later this month.  Noteworthy this year is the fact that Ember Friday will be replaced by the feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle.

December 24th: In Latin Christian discipline, a Priest had to get permission from his bishop to “binate” – celebrate two masses on the same day.  Assuming we’ll just be doing Antecommunion, or even just reading the Collect & Lessons as an extra devotion during the day, there’s no reason to pay that old custom any heed.  Besides, it’s good to finish the Advent Sunday contemporary & traditional pairings, even if it is a little crowded with Christmas Eve.

Whether you choose to copy this or do something else entirely, I hope this at least gets you thinking about how to approach a special daily Advent devotional this year.  You could get really creative, and make these observances part of the family devotion, or link it to an advent wreath, or something else like that!

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Happy Saint Andrew’s Day

Good news, everyone!  It’s a Friday, but you shouldn’t be fasting today because today’s the Major Feast Day commemorating Saint Andrew the Apostle.  We already looked at some thoughts about this holiday last week, so let’s just think about some other angles of observing this day.

This is one of the feast days listed in the 1662 Prayer Book as being a day for using the Athanasian Creed instead of the Apostles Creed at Morning Prayer.

Also, there is an ancient custom of churches, both local and regional, having “patron saints”.  Sometimes this was for historic reasons – the saint was said to have lived, ministered, or died in that area.  Sometimes this was for devotional reasons – the story of a particular saint was special to a particular founder or community.  In most cases, the memory of the origin of regional patron saints is probably long lost to history.  That being as it may, there are a number of places that bear the patronal name of Andrew, most notably the countries of Scotland, Russia, Ukraine, and Romania.  I know of a church that celebrates Saint Andrew’s Day every year with a bagpipe leading the procession, celebrating the Scottish heritage of several members of the congregation.  They then go on to celebrate and bless all manner of cultural heritages, using the Scottish patronage of St. Andrew as a starting point to highlight and rejoice in the “many tribes and nations” that are brought into Christ’s Church.

Perhaps you can find elements of your own family’s culture to “do up” this feast day, too?  A special food, a special activity, certain music, songs, or other arts…

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First Advent Sunday Checklist

Advent begins on this coming Sunday!  There are many customs, local and regional, that probably occupy the attention of you and your fellow church-goers.  Many people like to have advent wreaths in the church these days.  That’s fine, but don’t usurp a beautiful family tradition!  It’s a lovely devotion for the home setting, don’t let the church “take it over” and “liturgize” it, if I might coin a phrase.  Perhaps a new sermon series for the four Advent Sundays is being readied.  Perhaps the music is going to take on a different mood as the expectant, penitential, preparatory, and other connotations of the season.

But for the first Sunday in Advent, you need not look any further than the Prayer Book for ideas of how to especially mark this day in the life of the congregation (or at least in your own household, if you’re not a decision-maker).

Suggestion #1: Read the Exhortation

Back in 1662, despite a hundred years of reformation, people were still not going to Communion every Sunday, and many churches were not offering the Eucharist every week anyway.  So the three Exhortations that Archbishop Thomas Cranmer had written back in the 1540’s stuck around: one to announce that Communion will be celebrated in the near future, one to announce that Communion will be celebrated immediately next, and one to badger people into receiving Communion if they’d been neglecting it for a while.  Today, only the second one survives in modern American Prayer Books.  Weekly Communion is almost completely normalized across the board; there is no need to “give notice of a Communion” for the coming month.

In the 1928 Prayer Book, the Exhortation is instructed to be read thrice a year: the first Sunday of Lent, Trinity Sunday, and the first Sunday of Advent.  The current ACNA rubrics state:

The Exhortation is traditionally read on Advent Sunday, the First Sunday in Lent, and Trinity Sunday.

This means we are not obligated to use the Exhortation, but this is the minimum recommended usage.  Given the enormous theological value of the Exhortation, it is well worth everyone’s time for the celebrant to read it.  You don’t need to add it to the bulletin or project it on an overhead screen, just stand up and read it to the congregation.

Suggestion #2: The Great Litany

Some people today like to argue over whether Advent should be considered a “penitential season” anymore.  Regardless of where you stand on that debate, the Great Litany is an excellent way to prefix the Communion service this Sunday.  Remember that in the historic Prayer Book tradition the Litany was supposed to be said every Sunday (and Wednesday and Friday!) so bringing it back for special occasions like this need not have a “penitential” connotation.  The Advent call to watch and pray for our Lord’s return is more than sufficient cause for instituting the Litany at the beginning of the service.

There are rubrics in our text of the Litany that explain where to end the Litany and how to join it onto the Communion service.  And, although there are no rubrics about this idea, I have always omitted the Prayers of the People from the Communion liturgy on Sundays that we say the Great Litany at the beginning – partly for the sake of time and partly because the function of responsive prayer has already been fulfilled.  You could be a better liturgical purist than I and keep both sets of Prayers… power to ya.

If you’re not a liturgical decision-maker in your church, saying the Litany is something you and anyone can do before the service that morning.

Suggestion #3: Use the Decalogue

In the ACNA Communion liturgy there is a penitential rite near the beginning.  After the Collect for Purity we have two choices: the Summary of the Law & the Kyrie or the Decalogue (Ten Commandments).  The early Prayer Books provided only the Decalogue; the Summary of the Law was a later concession for a shorter option.  If your congregation normally just sticks with the Summary of the Law, hitting them up with the fullness of the Law (well, just the Decalogue) is another effective way of liturgically declaring “the seasons have changed!”

For my part, I use the Decalogue throughout the seasons of Advent and Lent, as well as a handful of other Sundays scattered throughout the year.

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A Week Ahead: St. Andrew’s Day

One week from today is November 30th, Saint Andrew’s Day.  While I cannot account for the history and reasoning of every Major Feast Day in the Prayer Book, St. Andrew’s does have a fitting explanation for its timing.  November 30th is typically very close to the beginning of Advent, the “new year’s” of the Church Calendar.  Although the timing doesn’t work out this year (with Advent beginning on December 2nd), the idea is basically that Andrew’s is the first feast day of the liturgical year, and All Saints’ Day is the last feast day of the liturgical year.

Having All Saints’ Day at the end makes sense: it’s the catch-all, the summation of all the saints days caught up together in one, the apex of the celebration of the Communion of Saints.  Having Saint Andrew’s Day first is also fitting: Andrew was the first one called by Jesus to follow him (or at least, the named among the first two that followed Jesus).  The point is, he was quick to follow Jesus, and the Collect highlights this fact:

Almighty God, who gave such grace to your apostle Andrew that he readily obeyed the call of your Son Jesus Christ, and brought his brother with him: Give us, who are called by your holy Word, grace to follow him without delay, and to bring those near to us into his gracious presence; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

Whether this factors into your preparations to celebrate this feast day next Friday or not, perhaps this can be a meditation in the back of your mind as the holiday approaches.

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Litany of Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, fellow residents of the USA!

Whether you’ve got a public worship service today or not, this is a great day to pull out some extra prayers of thanksgiving.  In particular, this is great opportunity to make use of the “Litany of Thanksgiving”, or #114 in the Occasional Prayers section of our up-and-coming Prayer Book.  Here’s the full text, so you don’t have to dig around for it:

Let us give thanks to God our Father for all his gifts so freely bestowed upon us:

For the beauty and wonder of your creation, in earth and sky and sea,
We thank you, Lord.

For our daily food and drink, our homes and families, and our friends,
We thank you, Lord.

For minds to think, and hearts to love, and hands to serve,
We thank you, Lord.

For health and strength to work, and leisure to rest and play,
We thank you, Lord.

For all who are patient in suffering and faithful in adversity,
We thank you, Lord.

For all who earnestly seek after truth, and all who labor for justice,
We thank you, Lord.

For all that is good and gracious in the lives of men and women, revealing the image of Christ,
We thank you, Lord.

For the communion of saints, in all times and places,
We thank you, Lord.

Above all, we give you thanks for the great mercies and promises given to us in Christ Jesus our Lord;
To him be praise and glory, with you, O Father, and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen.

You could use this in the Daily Office after the three Collects, in the Communion service as an extension of the Prayers of the People, in the Antecommunion service in place of the Communion Prayers, or simply in your own private devotions beyond the liturgy.  There are several other prayers of thanksgiving following this one in the Prayer Book collection; feel free to peruse and pray those too, today!  In a culture as materialistic as ours, we need to give thanks as much as we can, to counteract the I-need-more-stuff tendency that so easily creeps in.

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Ecclesiasticus / Sirach starts soon

Like all its predecessors, the ACNA daily office lectionary brings us a series of readings from the Ecclesiastical Books towards the end of the year.  If you’ve been using the current draft, you’ll be nearing the end of Judith today and tomorrow, and beginning Ecclesiasticus or Sirach on Thursday.  As many Anglicans today tend to be under-eductated about these “additional books” listed in Article 6, perhaps it’d be prudent to have a quick preview of what that book is about.

Ecclesiasticus, or more formally, The Wisdom of Jesus ben-Sirach is a wisdom book.  It reads a lot like the book of Proverbs, especially the first few chapters of that book which favors discourses of 10-20 verses; Sirach has very few individual proverbs by comparison.

Its first few chapters are largely focused on the benefits of wisdom, frequently using the female personification (Lady Wisdom) introduced in the book of Proverbs.  If you read these discourses keeping in mind the traditional interpretation that Jesus is the Wisdom of God, then you’ll find much good fruit to savor in these pages.

There are parts of the book that exalt the Law higher than a Christian should – after all, the New Covenant was not yet known.  There are parts of the book that seem elitist, classist, or even misogynist in a couple places – again, its cultural context is very different from ours, and again the New Testament sheds better light on the breaking down of human-imposed barriers.

Starting in chapter 44, the book takes a grant tour of Old Testament history, much like “the hall of faith” in Hebrews 11, except much longer.  These chapters highlight the great men of the past, telling of their faithfulness to God and the Wisdom displayed in them and through them.  It must be remembered, reading this, that the intention is not to teach history, but to uphold positive role models.  The author, ben-Sirach, is not sugar-coating history, but pointing out the good things God’s people should imitate and learn positive lessons from.

Unlike the original Prayer Book lectionary, we’re not going to get to read the whole book.  But you will see a decent majority of its contents over the next month or so.  Enjoy it!  I have found this book very quotable, in my own experience.

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Wrapping Up All Souls’

In Eastern and medieval Western practice, many Major Feast Days had “octaves” – eight days of celebration and observance.  None of these survive in the Prayer Book tradition today (nor really in modern Roman Catholicism for that matter), though echoes are found in our observance of the Baptism of Christ on the Sunday after the Epiphany and the usual practice of observing All Saints’ Day on the Sunday following when November 1st is a weekday.

Today is the “octave day” of All Souls’ Day – that is, a full week has passed since the commemoration of the faithful departed.  To my knowledge, there was never any such thing as an “All Souls’ Octave;” rather, All Saints’ Day was and is the primary celebration going on in early November.  But, just for kicks, sometimes it’s worth re-visiting recent commemorations, and doing so a week later is a convenient time for doing that.  I’m not proposing anything crazy or complicated; how about just grabbing the hymnal off the shelf and adding once of the Burial hymns to the Daily Office today?  The following came to mind:

Now the laborer’s task is o’er;
Now the battle day is past;
Now upon the farther shore
Lands the voyager at last.
Father, in thy gracious keeping
Leave we now thy servant sleeping.

There the tears of earth are dried;
There its hidden things are clear;
There the work of life is tried
By a juster judge than here.
Father, in thy gracious keeping
Leave we now thy servant sleeping.

There the penitents, that turn
To the cross their dying eyes,
All the love of Jesus learn
At his feet in paradise.
Father, in thy gracious keeping
Leave we now thy servant sleeping.

There no more the powers of hell
Can prevail to mar their peace;
Christ the Lord shall guard them well,
He who died for their release.
Father, in thy gracious keeping
Leave we now thy servant sleeping.

“Earth to earth, and dust to dust,”
Calmly now the words we say,
Left behind, we wait in trust
For the resurrection day.
Father, in thy gracious keeping
Leave we now thy servant sleeping.  Amen.

On a practical, unrelated, note, it is wise for ministers to have the “occasional services” like the Burial Rite periodically refreshed in memory whether we have any planned or not.  These are events that can crop up suddenly without warning, and it is very helpful when ministers have the liturgical mindset behind those services intuitively grasped ahead of time!

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Looking ahead: Thanksgiving Day

Two weeks from today, in the USA, is Thanksgiving Day.  Apart from family traditions that may involve your efforts in the meantime, let us give consideration to some of the liturgical resources we have available for the observance of that day.

The Collect of the Day could be imported into the Daily Office:

Most merciful Father, we humbly thank you for all your gifts so freely bestowed upon us; for life and health and safety; for strength to work and leisure to rest; for all that is beautiful in creation and in human life; but above all we thank you for our spiritual mercies in Christ Jesus our Lord; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

The lessons for a communion service that morning (or perhaps the evening before):

  • Deuteronomy 8; Psalm 65:1-8(9-14); James 1:17-27; Matthew 6:25-33

Additional prayers (link) and thanksgivings #20-22 and #114-123 are also excellent additions to the Daily Offices or other devotions for Thanksgiving.

Hymn ideas:

  • Come, ye thankful people, come (also known as Harvest Home)
  • We plow the fields (refrain “All good gifts around us“)
  • Praise to God, immortal praise
  • For the beauty of the earth
  • Let us, with a gladsome mind
  • Now thank we all our God

If you among the growing number of people who want to push back against the Black Friday shopping craze, consider adding these prayers and hymns to your private and/or congregational worship from Wednesday through Sunday, or even the whole week!

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Offering Imperfect Praise

A shortcoming of contemporary worship music is a frequent sense of overconfidence in one’s own worthiness.  There is a severe lack of penitence and contrition among the popular spiritual songs of today, particularly in the mainstream.  There are, of course, more excellent local and grassroot corners of the contemporary worship music movement that are much more biblical, especially Psalms-based, but you kind of have to know where to look in order to find them.

One of the issues this relates to is the idea of offering God worthy praise.  There is a common assumption (usually taken up and reinforced) in contemporary music that our heart-felt worship is worthy of God.  This falls apart at the definition of heart-felt, however.  The human heart, the Scriptures tell us, is full of evil and deceit.  No matter how much emotion and enthusiasm we muster up, our worship of God will always be imperfect, as long as we are sinners.  Only the fully redeemed, sanctified, and glorified Church in Heaven offers God truly perfect praise.  The Psalms are full of reminders of our imperfect praise: Psalm 51’s prayer “open my lips and mouth will proclaim your praise” shows that it is the Lord who opens our lips and enables us to worship him; Psalm 15 reminds us that only the sinless Saint is truly worthy to enter into God’s presence.

John Mason’s hymn Now from the altar of my heart is another example of this reality.

Now from the altar of my heart
Let incense flames arise;
Assist me, Lord, to offer up
Mine evening sacrifice.

Minutes and mercies multiplied
Have made up all this day;
Minutes came quick, but mercies were
More fleet and free than they.

New time, new favor, and new joys
Do a new song require;
Till I shall praise thee as I would,
Accept my heart’s desire.  Amen.

Like many contemporary songs, this hymn expresses the desire to worship God in an honest heart-felt manner.  But it also devotes its second stanza directly to the issue of our sinfulness – the need for God’s mercy was more frequent than the passage of minutes!  To many modern ears, such an assertion sounds like an exaggeration… we’re not really that sinful are we?  Regardless, the hymn ends with the acknowledgement that we desire to worship God for all his mercies, and asks him to accept what we do offer until we reach the point when we finally can and do worship him as we wish we could.

Give this some thought today, and perhaps pull it up to sing at Evening Prayer tonight?

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All Hallow’s Eve

Virtually everyone knows that the word “Halloween” is derived from “All Hallow’s Eve”.  What is less-commonly remembered is that this is a real Church holiday: the Eve of all the Hallowed Ones – that is, of All Saints.  Yes, in the liturgical tradition All Hallows Eve is a real thing, it is the beginning of the All Saints celebration!

This doesn’t mean you need to be a party-pooper and boycott all vestiges of secular Halloween – the costumes, the candy, walking the neighborhood, all of these can be great family fun.  However much you do or do not take part in these activities, they can be a launch point and reminder for celebrating this church holiday.  Candy and sweets are one of many ways that we can “feast” on a feast day.

As the evening quiets down, think about the costumes you saw today and what variety of saints the Church has enjoyed in years past.  Saw some superheros?  Take a moment to think about some of the “superheros” of the faith like Ignatius of Antioch, Martin Luther, or any number of the 19th century missionary martyrs.  Saw some children dressed up as doctors, train engineers, or other professions?  Take a moment to think about the saints who came from various walks of life – not just the lofty kings, bishops and monastics, but also Mary Magdalene with her colorful past, Caedmon the farmer-poet, or Florence Nightingale the nurse of great renown.  Granted, not all costumes can be so fruitfully inspiring (I’ve seen some truly obscene items out there, without even getting into the “sexy” versions of various outfits), but make use of what you can.

And, of course, don’t forget to pull up the All Saints Collect of the Day at Evening Prayer tonight!