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The Collects at Morning Prayer

After the short call-and-response prayers of the Suffrages, the worshiper comes to a set of collects: first the Collect of the Day, then at least one from a list of seven, and a Prayer for Mission. The devotional aim is to move from shorter to longer prayers; where the Suffrages summarize, the Collects dig deeper.

So, traditionally, there are three Collects in a row: the Collect of the Day followed by two set Collects according to the time of day (in the Morning it’s for Peace and for Grace, as the rubrics note). By 1662 additional prayers were added to these, though not required in the rubrics. In the 1979 and 2019 Prayer Books those two Collects got expanded to the seven choices we have today, plus a choice from three Prayers for Mission.

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The Suffrages in brief

The Suffrages have also been known as the Lesser Litany or the Preces & Responses. The seven pairs in our Prayer Book are adapted from Psalms 85:7, 20:9, 132:9, 28:10, Leviticus 26:6, Psalms 9:18, and 51:10-11. Thanks to the many choir settings for Choral Evensong, the English Suffrages are very well known. But there have been changes in the American Prayer Books. The first in 1790 reduced these only to the first and last pairs. By 1928 all the original six were restored in Evening Prayer. The suffrage “save the King/Queen” was rendered “save the State.” The 1979 Book brought them to Mornign Prayer as well as Evening, substantially edited the translation of some, and inserted the suffrage for the the needy. Our edition retains the addition of 1979 and has a mix of old- and new-style translations of the original six.

I’ve got a lot more detail here: https://saint-aelfric-customary.org/2019/02/20/the-suffrage-in-the-daily-office/

Short responsory prayers like these (and like the Great Litany) were not favored by the radical reformers. They argued that prayers should have longer phrases and sentences; whole psalms are more appropriate than recombined clusters of individual verses like these. And yet, some of these litanies and suffrages have survived. There is a time for longer expressions of prayer and intercession – the Psalms Appointed for Daily Morning and Evening Prayer give us opportunity to pray those in their entirety throughout the month, and the Prayers of the People in the Communion service contain prose prayers based on scripture of more substantial length than these Suffrages. But, just as the worshiper is free to use extemporaneous prayer in private and non-biblical yet biblically-inspired prayers in the liturgy, so too is the worshiper free to use biblically-sampled prayers like the Suffrages.

These are, in a way, like the Prayers of the People in miniature. We pray for mercy and salvation, for our earthly governors and church ministers, for all Christians, for peace, the needy, and for sanctification. The full “Great” Litany is traditionally prayed three times a week, so this “Lesser Litany” can indeed be considered its simplified form for daily use.

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The Lord’s Prayer, especially in the Daily Office

All Christian prayer begins here, with the words of the Lord Jesus. His prayer was given not merely as a pattern or template by which to structure our own prayers but also as a prayer itself to be prayed by his followers. Accordingly, every liturgy of the church includes this prayer, and historic spiritual advice has always encouraged the memorization and use of this prayer among the faithful in their own private devotions. As a result, the classic Prayer Books included the Lord’s Prayer twice – once at the beginning of a worship service and once near the end. The exact location has varied (before or after the Confession in the Office) and the use of the doxology at the end of the prayer has varied, but the “two uses” of the Lord’s Prayer was pretty clear: it was both a personal preparation for participating in the liturgy and a piece of the liturgy itself.

Over the centuries, later Prayer Books drifted towards the use of the Lord’s Prayer only once in a worship service, and in the modern editions it has been the first appearance that has been removed in favor of the second.

Lifted from Matthew 6:9-13 and its counterpart in Luke 11, the Lord’s Prayer has been a staple of Christian worship both private and public throughout the history of the Church. When the disciples asked Jesus how to pray, they were expecting a prayer like this, as many teachers in that time had a token prayer that encapsulated their spirituality. This tradition of having such a theme prayer can be seen in later times, such as the Prayer Attributed to Saint Francis, and the existence of different schools of spirituality within the Church. By learning a particular prayer the worshiper is gradually conformed to and fed by the spiritual wisdom of the prayer’s author. The Lord’s Prayer, coming from the mouth of God himself, is thus the greatest prayer in the Christian treasury.

Both its order and contents are informative. We address God as Father, as adopted children, and we bless his holy name, seeking the advance of his kingdom and will on earth, as it is already so in heaven. Then we move to our own petitions – daily bread to sustain us in the present moment, forgiveness of our sins, while also committing ourselves to forgiving others. This is followed with the twin petitions for help against temptation and evil, or the Evil One. So the very logic and flow of this prayer is theological, or God-minded.

The doxology at the end is not now typically thought to be in the original text of St. Matthew’s gospel, but it is attested in documents as early as the Didache (ca. 100AD). Between that and its inclusion in the King James Bible (1611) it endures as a standard ending for the Lord’s Prayer. Liturgical use of the Lord’s Prayer often omitted the doxology, but through sheer familiarity and habit it has become standard in all its appearances in this Prayer Book.

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The Kyrie in the Daily Office

The Kyrie is an ancient prayer, attested by the fact that it remains in Greek even in Roman liturgy. It is based upon the biblical cry found twice in the mouth of blind men imploring Jesus’ help in Matthew 20:30-31, as well as similar pleas in Matthew 17 and Psalm 123. The Kyrie has endured in the penitential portions of the liturgy, often being sung ninefold (each line being sung thrice) or even in a set of forty (as in Byzantine liturgy to this day) early in the Communion service. Its appearance in the Daily Office has been consistent through the English and Canadian Prayer Books, though it was omitted in the American Prayer Books until now.

It is a simple prayer, its near-identical repetition making it both a challenge and an opportunity for devotion. The obvious challenge is how easy it is for the worshiper to utter the words as a parrot, without meaning or understanding. Such is the case with anything memorized. The opportunities, however, are manifold. This can prayed as a prayer of contrition – have mercy upon my sins. This can be prayed as a prayer of intercession – have mercy on my needs. The words “on us” (in the traditional form of the Kyrie) may be directed toward one’s family, one’s church, community, nation, or the entire world.

It also serves as a lead-in for the Lord’s Prayer. There, we have the boldness to address God as our Father, here, we address him as Lord and Christ. The Kyrie, thus, is directed primarily at God the Son, our only mediator and advocate who can bring us to the Father. In fact, a Trinitarian pattern of prayer can be inferred in teh sequence of Kyrie, Lord’s Prayer, and Suffrages: first we call upon the name of Jesus, then we address the Father, and then we pray in the Spirit with some God-breathed words of prayer.

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Holidays about Angels

Today is the feast of Holy Michael and All Angels, according to the 2019 Prayer Book. Throughout the world, many churches are celebrating ‘Michaelmas’ right now. St. Michael is understood (from texts like Jude 9 and Revelation 12:7) to be the chief or captain of the angelic hosts, an “archangel”. Thus, with Michael, we celebrate today also all the other angels who serve God in their mysterious and wonderful ways. This holiday can be traced to the 5th century when a church near Rome was dedicated to St. Michael’s name, and by the 9th century St. Michael’s Day was a widely celebrated feast day.

But this was not always the only angelic feast day. Other churches, particularly in the East, have had feast days for other angels for centuries. Only in the 1920’s did Rome pick up a couple of these holidays: Gabriel on March 24th (sensibly the day before the Annunciation!) and Raphael on October 24th. These did not last long, though; the Roman calendar rolled them into St. Michael’s Day in 1969, though some hardy folks still hang on to that brief-lasting calendar. There is also a roughly-1,000-year-old tradition of honoring the ministry of the Guardian Angels on October 2nd.

But the Prayer Book tradition has typically been one of brevity and simplicity. We have one official feast day for all the angels today, September 29th.

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About that Salutation…

It’s a classic standard across the liturgical-church world:

“The Lord be with you.”
“And with your/thy spirit.”

This exchange, well known today, was used only sparingly in the classical Prayer Book tradition. The 1549 Prayer Book used it twice in the Communion service (before the Collect of the Day and the Post-Communion Prayer), once in the Baptism service, and once in the Daily Office immediately before the three Collects. By 1559 this arrangement had been drastically reduced: the salutation was not to be found in the Sacramental services, and only at the beginning of the Prayers in the Daily Office. By contrast, a Low Mass before the Reformation would include this salutation as many as seven times!

The origin of this salutation is likely an amalgamation of several biblical blessings. “The Lord be with your spirit” (2 Timothy 4:22) is a primary example; some other variations include Ruth 2:4, 2 Thessalonians 3:16, and Galatians 6:18.

In the 1979 Prayer Book and similar contemporary liturgies the response was re-translated to read “and also with you.” It was thought, at the time, to be a fair translation of the ancient liturgies, if more dynamic. Recent revisions in both Roman and Anglican liturgy have tended toward the restoration of the more literal translation, “and with your spirit.”

The salutation has come under fire, in recent times, concerning its theological implications. Some argue, in line with Roman tradition, that the language of “and with your spirit” is a reference to the indelible ordination character bestowed upon the priest, thus highlighting the sacredotal character of the ordained ministry. The reduction of the use of this salutation in the first Prayer Book and its near-total disappearance in subsequent versions may be cited as evidence in favor of this interpretation, especially when seeing that the liturgies of the Anglo-Catholic movement increase this salutation’s use.

This is not the only way to understand the salutation, however, nor is it the sole explanation for its disappearance in the more “reformed” Prayer Books. A 17th century commentator, the Rev. Dr. John Boys, observed that the Puritan party at the time was opposed to this and other suffrages and short exchanges and prayers, seeing them as “short cuts, or shreddings” rather than as actual blessings or prayers. Puritan (and other then-radical reformation) liturgies preferred longer, extemporaneous prayers, and this salutation was out of line with their doctrine of worship. John Boys also observed that “the people cannot make a fitter reply than ‘with thy spirit.’ For (as Plato divinely said) every man’s soul is himself.” There was no apparent concern at the time of any sacerdotalism or Romish doctrine of priesthood in this salutation; its real controversy was its brevity. Thus, we ought not today to assign it a meaning more narrow than its simple words merit.

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The Apostles’ Creed in the Prayer Book

Of the three creeds, the Apostles’ is the oldest. It is not likely to be the work of the Apostles themselves, despite the legend that each of the twelve contributed a phrase; its origins are more likely in the baptismal liturgy of the Early Church, first appearing in surviving text from Milan in 390. There it was called a “symbol of the faith”, refering to its role as a token or collection of the Christian faith into a single statement.

Its liturgical use has not been consistent throughout history; it was primarily a document for teaching and memorization, as many catechisms ancient and modern attest. Cranmer’s Prayer Books did not use this creed in the Daily Office, only the Athanasian Creed was appointed for certain feast days in Morning Prayer. The Apostles’ Creed was introduced to Morning and Evening Prayer in the Elizabethan Prayer Book of 1559, where it has remained ever since, though still replaced by the Athanasian Creed on certain feast days, or by the Nicene Creed (in the first three American Prayer Books).

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Meet John Jewel

He’s not in our calendar of commemorations but today is the death date of Bishop John Jewel, who was one of the great defenders of the Church of England during the Reformation. You can read about him on Wikipedia if you like, or this article I wrote inspired by his works last year, or better yet you can read his Apology or Defense of the Church of England, but what I’d like to put down here today is a general introduction to this man.

He was born in 1522; so the early stages of the English Reformation took place during his young adulthood, and was studying and teaching at Oxford throughout the 1540’s. His ministry as a vicar began in 1552, the year the second Prayer Book was published, and he survived the Marian persecution by fleeing to Frankfurt, Strausbourg, and Zurich. Like many of the Marian exiles, he returned when Queen Elizabeth took the throne, and by 1559 he was an official voice for the Church of England in the ongoing disputes with the Romanists. He had already opposed John Knox (the Scottish Presbyterian reformer), and so Jewel became a quintessential representative of the Elizabethan Settlement, standing between the Romanists at one extreme and the Puritans on the other. Some may retroactively called this the via media, but as you explore the polemics of Jewel and others, you’ll find that they were not seeking a middle ground to negotiate between extremes, but The Catholic Faith, to the opposition of heretics on either side.

His most famous and enduring work from these efforts is “An APOLOGY, or ANSWER in defence of the Church of England.” There he set out in passionate-but-sane detail the substance of the Catholic Faith, how the Church of England receives and proclaims it, and how the Romanists do not. Six sections to this work can be traced:

  1. Of true religion
  2. Doctrine received in the church
  3. Source and origin of heresies
  4. Popes claiming headship of church
  5. Church fathers & councils
  6. Of great councils, abused by papists

His sections on true religion and doctrine are informative for any Christian desiring to read a summary of the faith. His sections dealing with the Papacy and the Early Church are informative for any Protestant considering becoming Roman Catholic. Some of the issues he outlines are dated, but many of them remain relevant to this day. He makes the argument (contrary to how we normally use the word today) that the Roman Church is NOT CATHOLIC, and that to be truly Catholic is to be Reformed. Now, this doesn’t mean ‘Reformed’ in the Calvinist sense, but in the general sense of magisterial Protestantism, of which Calvinism is but one offshoot.

Reading this sort of thing could give the worshiper an extra kick of certainty and assertiveness when reciting the creeds – “we believe in the holy Catholic Church”! His legacy reminds us of our catholicity, neither fretting about the Roman deviancy from catholicism, nor being so lenient toward the radical reformers so as to stretch the term “catholic” to include virtually anything. Ours is a distinct heritage, firmly grounded in the Scriptures and the historic Church. We cannot allow Rome to steal the word “catholic” from us as if it rightly theirs, and we cannot allow the radical Protestants to expunge the word “catholic” from our vocabulary as if it is evil.

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The Apostles’ Creed: didactic and devotional

The 8th Article of Religion lists this Creed as one of the three which “ought thoroughly to be received and believed: for they may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.” A great many proof texts may be cited for such “most certain warrant” but it may be more beneficial for the worshiper to recognize the biblical foundation of the creedal tradition in general.

The Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) has as its primary verb “make disciples”, supported by the participles “going”, “baptizing”, and “teaching”. These are different stages of evangelism and catechesis, passing on the faith. The use of the trinitarian name – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – is the beginning of a theological synthesis; among Jesus’ last words to his disciples are summary statements that began the Church’s work of theology. This trinitarian formula can also be seen echoed in the Epistles; Saint Paul adapted it into a blessing (2 Corinthians 13:14). Thus the early liturgy paved the way for systematic theology to follow.

A similar example can be found in another text, Romans 10:8-10, wherein Paul gives us a summary of soteriology (the doctrine of salvation), beloved to this day. In a short span he links confession of faith and belief to justification and salvation. And he introduces this as “the word of faith that we proclaim”. He both quotes and uses an Old Testament text (Deuteronomy 30:14) to summarize grand sweeping doctrines in miniature – he gives us a sort of proto-creed. This need to contend for the faith was felt by other biblical writers too (Jude 3), and several texts rose to prominence in the formulation of miniature creeds ranging from the Jewish Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4) to the Epistles (1 Corinthians 3:5-11).

There is one line of the Apostles’ Creed that has occasioned controversy among Protestant scholars: “He descended into Hell.” We affirm this statement in the 3rd Article of Religion, and all the American Prayer Books have offered an alternative translation to clarify its meaning: “He went into the place of departed spirits” or “He descended to the dead.” That is, we affirm that Jesus truly died, as any human does, and God the Son was present where dead souls reside. (You can read more about this from Fr. Jeffries here.)

There is great value in reciting the Creed in the course worship; it is both didactic and devotional. Its didactic, or teaching, value is obvious: it symbolizes or summarizes the essentials of the Christian faith. Since all Scripture speaks of Christ and the Gospel (Luke 24:27, 44-48), the worshiper can anticipate every Scripture reading attesting to at least one part of the Creed; the Creed can serve as a sort of sermon. Devotionally, the Creed is also an offering or confession of faith that the worshiper brings to God. It is like a twice-daily renewal of faith, spoken prayerfully, not simply a teacher keeping us in line but the individual heart’s oblation. In that sense, it is appropriate that we conclude the Creed with the word “Amen.”

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A brief history of the Benedictus

This canticle has been a part of the Morning Prayers of the Church (particularly Lauds) at least since the 5th century Rule of Saint Benedict. The Prayer Book tradition has consistently maintained its position as the second canticle – the one read after the New Testament lesson. Its legacy in America, however, has been curious. The 1790 Prayer Book printed only the first few verses, ending with “from the hand of all that hate us.” The 1892 and 1928 Prayer Books included the full text of the Benedictus, but noted that “the latter portion thereof may be omitted”, permitting the short version of 1790. Only in 1979 did the American Prayer Book tradition return to the reading of the full Benedictus without omission.

From the English Prayer Book of 1552 through to the American 1928, the Jubilate (Psalm 100) was offered as an alternative to the Benedictus. This originated from the Puritans’ hesitancy to use anything but the Psalms as hymns and canticles, but by 1662 had settled into an alternative to the Benedictus only when the text of Luke 1 would be found in the New Testament reading on a given morning. The first three American Prayer Books swapped the preferential order between these two canticles, 1979 offered extremely flexible guidance about the choice of canticles, and 2019 has reaffirmed the priority of the Benedictus as the second canticle in Morning Prayer.