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Commemorating Saints during Lent

Looking at the calendar of optional commemorations, there are four in a row this week: F. D. Maurice yesterday, Henry Budd today, James Lloyd Breck tomorrow, and Martin Luther King Jr. on Thursday.  Next week has four such commemorations also.  But should we observe these commemoration days?

The first answer is: it’s up to you / your rector.  These are all optional, and the Prayer Book does not mandate how one must handle a weekday Communion service apart from the Red Letter Days.

But if you want to take longstanding tradition and practice into account, things get a bit pickier.  As a penitential season, Lent is best served by maintaining the tenor of penitence at the public worship services.  If four out of seven days in a week is a celebration of a Saint, then there isn’t really much time left for actually observing Lent.  There are also sets of Collects and Lessons for each weekday in Lent that you can find in Lesser Feasts and Fasts and the Anglican Missal and in the Roman liturgy.  I haven’t studied these sources against one another but I suspect they all represent a very similar tradition.  The idea, simply, is that the Church provides for a Lent-focused Communion service every day in Lent, leaving potentially no room for Saints’ days.

Of course, the “Red-Letter Days” take precedence over these; we celebrated the Annunciation last Monday for example.  But among the optional commemorations, there is room for further consideration.  Roman practice has a complex system of liturgical hierarchies: different sorts of holy days take different levels of precedence.  And although post-Vatican-II reforms have simplified their system somewhat, it’s still more developed than most Anglican sources are on the matter.  When it comes down to it, the Romans expect daily mass in their churches and we don’t, so it’s a matter of priority and emphasis.

So if you’re looking for what to do at a weekday Communion service in your church, or for your own devotions at home, you would do well to consider which of the optional commemorations you would “elevate” to observe during Lent, and which you would leave be in order to keep the Lenten disciplines the priority throughout the week.

Ultimately what this is doing is to create a middle class of holy days – what I would prefer to call Minor Feast Days – to stand between the official Major Feast Days and the Commemorations.  How you decide which saints to so elevate is a big question, and one that is better served on its own.  For now, at least, let us remember that Lent is a time of penitence, and it would not serve us well to get carried away with celebrating every commemoration that comes our way.

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Book Review: Common Worship Christian Initiation

Welcome to Saturday Book Review time!  On most of the Saturdays this year we’re looking at a liturgy-related book noting (as applicable) its accessibility, devotional usefulness, and reference value.  Or, how easy it is to read, the prayer life it engenders, and how much it can teach you.

The next volume of Common Worship is subtitled Christian Initiation.  Although the Baptismal liturgy is found in the primary volume of Common Worship, it is repeated in this book with further detail and additional rites, including some key stuff that was omitted from that book.  The Contents of Christian Initiation can be summarized thus:

  • Rites on the Way: Approaching Baptism
    • Thanksgiving for the Gift of a Child
    • Baptismal preparation rites and prayers
  • Holy Baptism & Confirmation
    • Regular and Emergency liturgies
    • Baptism & Confirmation in the same service
    • Baptism and/or Confirmation within a Vigil service
    • Seasonal options for variation
  • Rites of Affirmation: Appropriating Baptism
    • Thanksgivings after an initiation service
    • Admission to Holy Communion
    • Renewal of Baptismal Vows
    • Reception into the Anglican Communion
  • Reconciliation & Restoration: Recovering Baptism
    • Service of Corporate Penitence
    • Reconciliation of a Penitent
    • Celebration of Healing
  • Commentary

common worship

It is interesting to see the sacramental rites of Confession/Absolution and Unction/Healing included under the banner of “recovering Baptism.”  In the 2019 Prayer Book they’re being given their own header “Rites of Healing” without the strictly baptismal context.  This baptism-centered approach to liturgical-theological thinking seems to be characteristic of modern (liberal) Anglicanism, something that we’ve observed to be problematic in cases such as the American 1979 Prayer Book‘s baptismal liturgy.

As in the Festivals volume, this book has an enormous collection of additional materials and options to bring variety to the several services herein.  Special Scripture readings are also offered, even with seasonal considerations in mind.  In theory this could be a really nice touch – baptism especially is such a rich sacrament and the different seasons of the Church year could indeed serve as lenses for different angles of teaching on Holy Baptism.  Common Prayer 2011 did a similar thing in providing different readings for the Ember Days according to their respective seasons.  Where this idea falls short, however, is the fact that it’s too much of a big-picture approach that will get lost on the average church-goer.  If one attends all the baptism services held throughout the year, then one will hear all those different Scripture readings and benefit from the variety.  But if people only ever attend one or two baptism services in a given year, then the value of that variety is lost.  Cynically I am tempted to wonder if the variation of readings (and other prayers and materials) is more for the benefit of a bored clergyman who can’t appreciate the beauty of a simple and consistent liturgy?

Another unique feature in this book are its two forms for private confession.  The American book of 1979 contains two, different but recognizably “catholic”, forms for confession and absolution.  The two in this book, however, are clearly modeled after the standard order of liturgy found throughout Common Worship: words of Gathering, Scripture reading(s) and response, the Confession, counsel, and contrition, followed by the Absolution, a Thanksgiving, the Lord’s Prayer, and a Dismissal.  Where a more traditional sacramental confession can be carried out with the confessee needing no more than an index card of scripted text, these rites require a book and a Bible in hand, which strikes me as needlessly complicated.

The ratings in short:

Accessibility: 3/5
Like Festivals, this volume is set out in a decently useable format, though it has more instances where one has to combine its use with another book, such as when celebrating one of the rites in the context of a Communion service.

Devotional Usefulness: 1/5
Unless you’re in the Church of England, none of these liturgies are authorized for your use, and there’s hardly anything in here that can be imported into other contexts.  Some of the corporate penitential prayers are neat – I like the idea of having a Scripture-based litany of penitence or one based on the Beatitudes – but their usefulness in our own liturgical context is extremely limited.

Reference Value: 2/5
Perhaps the most useful feature of this book is its reference value.  The extra Scripture reading and prayer options may be useful for catechesis, and the surprisingly-detailed commentary on the various rites at the end of the book also give a theological rationale for much of the material therein.  One must be cautious, however, of the unhealthy level of liberal theology that has pervaded the Church of England, and therefore take these resources with a grain of salt.

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Laetare Sunday coming up

The Fourth Sunday in Lent is known by two nicknames: Laetare Sunday and Mothering Sunday.

The first name, Laetare, comes from the Introit (the opening hymn, if you like) in Latin.

Lætare Jerusalem: et conventum facite omnes qui diligitis eam: gaudete cum lætitia, qui in tristitia fuistis: ut exsultetis, et satiemini ab uberibus consolationis vestræ.

Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her; that you may suck and be satisfied with her consoling breasts.

These words are from Isaiah 66:10-11a, and serve as an antiphon to Psalm 122, Laetatus sum (“I was glad”).  This joy-filled antiphon, paired with a joy-filled Psalm, start off the 4th Sunday in Lent with a noticeably cheerful mood compared to the rest of the season.  This is, roughly, the midpoint of Lent, and thus serves as a sort of breather from the rigors of the season where the congregation can take their noses off the grindstone, so to speak, lift up their heads, and take a good look at the joy of Easter fast approaching.

This is traditionally matched with slightly “lightened up” vestments from violet to rose, and the historic Gospel is the feeding of the 5,000, adding to the theme of God strengthening us with provisions along the long hard road of the great penitential season.

The modern lectionary’s take on this Sunday, however, is not quite as noteworthy, and undercuts (or at least diffuses) the impact of “Laetare Sunday” compared to the historic lectionary.  It almost doesn’t make sense to retain the rose vestments for this day anymore, and indeed a great many churches, both Roman and Anglican, have not.

The other nickname for this Sunday is Mothering Sunday.  This largely stems from a tradition of masters giving their household servants this day off from their duties so they can go visit their own mothers.  I couldn’t say where this particular custom originates, though it’s probably not a coincidence that the traditional Epistle of this day begins in Galatians 4:21, discussing the allegory of Hagar the slave woman and Sarah the free woman.

Other traditions associated with this day also add to the enhanced cheerfulness of the occasion: the organ, normally silenced during Lent in pre-Reformation practice, was permitted to be used on this Sunday.  Flowers might be placed on the altar.  And weddings, traditionally disallowed during the penitential season of Lent, could be held on this one day of the season.

Given that many of those old Lenten traditions are not in place in many of our churches today, there aren’t many ways that we can “lighten up” the 4th Sunday of the season anymore.  Plus, given that our Lenten disciplines and modern lectionary and calendar are also a great less rigorous than the days of old, there is far less cause or need for such a day as this.  But sometimes knowing about how things used to work can help us reshape our modern practice, and rediscover some of the discipline and mentality that were nearly lost in the 20th century.

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The Collect for Grace (Morning)

The Collect for Grace in Morning Prayer, recommended for Wednesdays in the ACNA liturgy, is one of the standard Collects for Morning Prayer in the historic prayer books – where there were always the same two after the Collect of the Day.  Our version of it reads thus:

O Lord, our heavenly Father, almighty and everlasting God, you have brought us safely to the beginning of this day: Defend us by your mighty power, that we may not fall into sin nor run into any danger; and that guided by your Spirit, we may do what is righteous in your sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This one is rather rich in Scriptural references.  After acknowledging the beginning of the day, we pray as in Psalm 43:1 “Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause.”  The Collect expresses a trust in God’s refuge akin to that described in Psalm 62:7 (verse 8 in the Prayer Book numeration) and Psalm 91:2.  We pray this “That we may do what is righteous in your sight” (Deuteronomy 6:18), putting the prayer together in much the same way as part of Zechariah’s Canticle does in Luke 1:74-75.

Note and remember, too, that although our new Prayer Book prints the same seven daily Collects as the 1979 book did, the rubrics identify which two are the traditional two Collects for the Daily Office, so if you want to “roll back” towards traditional Anglican liturgy the option and direction is provided right there!

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Holiness and Marriage and Mary

Yesterday was the feast of the Annunciation, one of the major holy days of the Christian year.  Only one reading in the Daily Office Lectionary was specially altered to befit the day, however.  (This is my main disappointment with this particular lectionary, that it provides only scant observance of the major holy days, often offering only one special reading, and even then often doubling one of the readings from the Communion service.)  But what we did have was an interesting “accidental” convergence of topics.  The evening reading yesterday was from Ephesians 5, and this evening finishes that chapter.  Because it’s the Daily Office Lectionary we’re able (and ought) to read these lessons in the context of the whole book; but in this instance we’re able to read it also in the context the Annunciation.

How does this help?

The strict call to holiness in the first half of chapter 5 leading into the beautiful description of marriage in the second half take an extra sense of oomph with the Annunciation fresh on our minds.  There were have the angel telling Mary that’s she’s a “grace-filled one” (full of grace in Catholic translations, favored one in Protestant translations).  There we have Mary offering her fiat to the New Creation – “fiat mihi…” = “be it unto me…”  There we have her virginity intact, and her betrothal to Joseph.  In short, she is modeling almost everything we see in Ephesians 5.

Whether you go on to believe the historic Marian doctrines or not – her perpetual virginity, her sinless life by God’s grace, her bodily assumption into heaven – at least this moment of the Annunciation sheds a great deal of light on her and her husband-to-be.  They’re called the Holy Family… Christ was literally present in the marriage of Joseph and Mary, and in their life together.

So consider keeping this extra context in mind as you read the rest of Ephesians 5 tonight.  You may just discover a newfound respect and devotion regarding our Lady!  And for some this may finally be that breakthrough in understanding the difference between the veneration of the Saints and the worship of God.

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9 Months to go…

Are you expecting?
Well you should be; as nine months from now the Church will be celebrating the birthday of her Lord.  Today is the Feast of the Annunciation, as some will point out the “real” feast of the incarnation – when Jesus was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary.  This holy day is placed, quite logically, nine months before Christmas Day.  If you thought radios and shops playing Christmas music in early November is excessive, how about starting the countdown clock nine months early? 😉

Simply realizing that the Annunciation is celebrated at an appropriate time of the year relative to Christmas can give one a newfound appreciation for this holiday.  But there is more.

There was also an ancient belief that great persons died on the same day they were conceived – there was a sort of symmetry to their lives.  (Perhaps this was more of a poetic assertion than an actual biological belief, I don’t know.)  Whateverso, the Annunciation, March 25th, is often very close to Holy Week and Easter, the sequence of days that commemorate Christ’s death and resurrection.  A couple years ago March 25th was Good Friday itself, perfectly lining up our Lord’s conception with his death.

Liturgically, this means we hold off (or transfer) celebrating the Annunciation to the Monday after the Sunday after Easter Day, rather than celebrating it during Holy Week or Easter Week.  But it is worthwhile to note, in those years, the confluence of liturgical events.

This year, with a later Easter, the Annunciation gets to stand on its own date quite unaffected by the Holy Week schedule and goings-on.  The season of Lent is still around us, of course, still giving an ominous sort of context to this celebration.  Just as Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, so is this holy day overshadowed by the Lenten season, reminding us of the dire destiny of Mary’s newly-conceived son.  This, more than Christmas, is perhaps a better time to sing those songs about how Jesus was born in order to die on the Cross.  Christmas is a festal holiday and season in its own right, we don’t need to drown its joy in reminders of Good Friday; the Annunciation however is much more ripe for that combination of moods.

Also, one last reminder: this is a holy day, a Red Letter Day, a major feast day.  And that means your Lenten fasts and disciplines are suspended for the day.  Go and celebrate the obedience of our Lady and the conception of our Lord!

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Book Review: Common Worship Festivals

Welcome to Saturday Book Review time!  On most of the Saturdays this year we’re looking at a liturgy-related book noting (as applicable) its accessibility, devotional usefulness, and reference value.  Or, how easy it is to read, the prayer life it engenders, and how much it can teach you.

The first companion volume to Common Worship (reviewed last week) is entitled Festivals.  In the Church of England’s terminology, a Festival is what we’d call a Major Feast Day, or Major Holy Day, or a Red-Letter Day: these are the prayer-book-prescribed days of devotion that fill out the liturgical calendar with specific commemorations beyond simply following the seasons.  This volume also contains a more detailed explanation of the calendar set out in Common Worship, and lists the “Lesser Festivals”, or minor feast days or black-letter-day commemorations.

common worship

One might wonder how these features might merit its own volume.  What more is there to be said about them than what’s already in the Prayer Book or the primary volume of Common Worship?  In the spirit of modern liturgy – which has an insatiable appetite for variety and occasional-specific liturgical features – this book provides special prayers for each holy day.  Instead of simply just a Collect and set of lessons, as Prayer Book tradition has appointed, Common Worship: Festivals now provides the liturgical colour, Invitation to Confession, variant on the Kyrie, Collect, lessons, Gospel Acclamation, Intercessions for the Prayers of the People, Introduction to the Peace, Prayer “at the Preparation of the Table”, Preface and Extended Preface for the Prayer of Consecration, Post-Communion Prayer, Blessing, Acclamation, and extra sentences of Scripture for most of the 29 Festivals in the English calendar.  Those extra resources alone contribute about 100 pages to the book.  The calendar, with detailed rubrics and instructions and liturgical color notes,

It then has a further 50 pages that function similar to parts of the Episcopalian book Lesser Feasts and Fasts, providing a Collect and the occasional specific reading suggestion for the various “Lesser Festivals” or commemorations in the calendar.  Similarly, it provides materials for other Eucharistic occasions such as the “Common of the Saints” and “Special Occasions” not unlike the “votive mass” tradition.  This book also provides chant music for many of the Prefaces and Communion Prayers, which would be very helpful for the celebrant to have in the same volume!

The remaining pages of the book go on to reprint the “Order One” Communion Service from the primary volume of Common Worship.  Why?  Because this volume isn’t just a reference book, it’s able to be used as a Mass Book or Missal all on its own.  People can show up to church on a Sunday and grab the black book (Common Worship) or they can show up on a Festival Day and grab this dark blue book instead.  That makes this book actually functional on its own, which is a smart move.

Of course, outside of the Church of England, there is very little room in our authorized liturgy for additions or substitutions as this volume presents.  Perhaps the Acclamations, Blessings, and material for the Prayers of the People may be permitted by our rubrics in the 2019 Prayer Book, and maybe the special Collects & lessons for the black-letter days will be optional too (we have to wait and see what the new book actually specifies about them).  That makes this book’s value to us mainly one of a limited reference role in the rare opportunity that we can use some of its contents without having to get permission from our bishop.

The ratings in short:

Accessibility: 4/5
Functionally, this book is remarkably usable, albeit mostly because it has one “Order” for Holy Communion and no other liturgies included.

Devotional Usefulness: 2/5
Common Worship: Festivals is only for the Communion service; no notes are provided for the Daily Office.  As such outside of England, only a priest or other liturgical planner will be able to use this book.  Within the C of E, folks in the pew can use it on Festival Days, but there still isn’t really anything “to take home” as it were.

Reference Value: 2/5
Having extra Collects and prayers and things for the major and minor feast days can be handy resource.  If that’s all you need this book for, then it’s not worth going out of your way to buy it, and there are a lot of pages therein that you simply won’t need.

 

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For glory and for beauty

This morning’s Old Testament lesson is Exodus 28 (or excerpts thereof) in the ACNA Daily Lectionary.  Shortly after chapter 20 is where lots of people who attempt to read the Bible cover-to-cover start to falter and lose momentum… all this stuff about the Tabernacle and its furnishings starts to wear on the reader.  Chapter 28 details the vestments for Aaron the Priest and his sons.  This might be interesting at first, but 43 verses of it can feel rather tedious.  So let’s give a bit of insight into this chapter, which will perhaps stir up some interest and clarity!

A refrain that bookends this chapter (found in verses 2 and 40) is “for glory and for beauty.”  This is a significant structural device in the writing style of this chapter, which is related to a variety of literary devices and structures found throughout the Old Testament.  This simple refrain both introduces and concludes the entire “vestment law” contained in this chapter, and sheds light on the purpose of everything therein.  All the attention to detail, all the colors and pieces that come together to form the whole.  Even the symbolism which is explained in the text, such as the Breastplate of Justice having twelve precious stones that represent the twelve tribes of Israel that the priest bears on his heart, is subject to this “glory and beauty” principle.  It’s not just symbolic, but it’s glorious and it’s beautiful.

Some traditions are (or are a least stereotyped to be) overly-focused on one side of this or the other.  “Everything about the OT vestments was symbolic, and we can preach the Gospel from that!” says one group of people, who often overlook the “glory and beauty” principle and thus fail to make any connection to the use of vestments in the New Testament.  Others may focus on the glory and beauty and forget about the explicit symbolism, and thus go on to make up their own symbols for their own modern sense of vestiture.  But it is important that we take in the whole teaching of chapter 28: vestments exist to glorify God and to be beautiful to the human eye, and they carry with them explicit symbolic weight.

Therefore, as we look to Christian vestments, we must remember the same principle: is the detail and appearance of our vestments glorifying to God, or is it simply thrown together?  Is it beautiful, or merely functional?  Further, various Christian vestments carry certain symbolic meanings – are these symbols known to our congregations?  Does the appearance of a particular vestment cooperate with its symbolic purpose or reinvent it?

Liturgical vestments aside, the “glory and beauty” principle could even be considered, to some degree, for how everyone dresses when going to church.  The reason for wearing one’s “Sunday best” is not mere tradition, but actually has a root in seeking to be glorifying to God (testifying that He is Worthy) and beautiful to the human eye (that person values worship)!

I’m not going to get into the specifics of Anglican vestments here, but if you want to read some of the absolute basics, the Anglican Pastor blog has a beginner’s guide.  It’s very much from a “current practice” perspective, without much historical scope, but it’ll get you started toward understanding what you’ll see today in a lot of churches.

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St. Joseph, a “New” Feast

When you go through the classical Prayer Book tradition, compared with modern Prayer Books such as ours in the ACNA, you’ll find that the list of Holy Days, or Major Feast Days, or Red-Letter Days, has grown rather noticeably.  A number of Anglo-Catholics were probably already “unofficially” adding some of these feasts to the Prayer Book calendar in practice, which perhaps helps to remind us that these are not truly “new” feasts in the modern Prayer Books, but simply old traditions that the early Prayer Books omitted and 20th century Anglicans have decided to bring back.  Saint Joseph’s Day, on March 19th, is one of those holidays.

The Collect and lessons look to be the same in our Prayer Book as in the 1979:

O GOD, who from the family of your servant David raised up Joseph
to be the guardian of your incarnate Son and the spouse of his virgin mother:
Give us grace to imitate his uprightness of life and his obedience to your commands;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

2 Samuel 7:4,8-16; Psalm 89:1-4(5-18)19-29; Romans 4:13-18; Luke 2:41-52

There aren’t a lot of stories about Joseph in the Bible.  Most of his active presence therein is in Matthew 1 & 2, where he is visited by the Archangel Gabriel, and then leads the family to Bethlehem, Egypt, and Nazareth.  But our version of the Revised Common Lectionary covers most of those in Advent and Christmastide.  So instead we get the Gospel story in Luke 2 about the Finding of Jesus in the Temple.  In the historic calendar (before the 1970’s) that Gospel was appointed for the First Sunday after the Epiphany.  But the modern Epiphany season leaves that story out entirely, apparently giving it over to Saint Joseph’s Day instead.  It may not be the most interesting or even the most actively Joseph-centric Gospel story with Joseph, but that’s what we’ve ended up with.

Much more interesting, I daresay, are the other readings.  2 Samuel 7 and Psalm 89 together set up a wonderful emphasis on the covenant of eternal kingship God established with David and his descendants.  This is mentioned in the Collect as well, and expanded further in the Epistle, which adds the covenant with Abraham into the mix.  Joseph, therefore, is presented as the last step in that family succession (alongside Mary of course) from Abraham and David to Jesus.  The human parentage and family of Jesus is what legitimizes God’s fulfillment of all the previous covenants in Jesus – the faithful offspring of Abraham, the eternal King of Israel.

There’s more to be said about Joseph, of course, and the Collect hints at some of that.  Imitating Saint Joseph’s uprightness and obedience is a shout-out to the stories in Matthew 1 & 2, wherein Joseph gets the incredibly rare introduction as “a righteous man.”  Virtually every biblical hero character has reported flaws and sins; Joseph has scarcely a blemish recorded in sacred writ!  A role model he is, indeed.

So there are quite a number of directions one can go in observing St. Joseph’s Day today, and hopefully this is a helpful starting point.

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Still using the Ash Wednesday Collect?

During the seasons of Advent and Lent, in Prayer Books before the 1970’s, there was a special tradition of repeating the first Collect of the season on every day throughout the season.  For example, this is what you find in the 1662 Prayer Book:

The first Day of Lent commonly called Aſh Wedneſday.

The Collect.
ALMIGHTY and everlaſting God, who hateſt nothing that thou haſt made, and doſt forgive all the ſins of thoſe who are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our ſins, and acknowledging our wretchedneſs, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remiſſion and forgiveneſs; through Jeſus Chriſt our Lord. Amen.

¶ This Collect is to be read every day in Lent after the Collect appointed for the day.

(I kept the “long s” typeface in for fun this time; usually I edit them to the regular S.)

Anyway, notice the rubric underneath the Collect: it is to be used throughout the Lenten season in addition to whatever the Collect of the Day normally would be.  For example, yesterday was the Second Sunday in Lent, so we could have read that Collect followed by the Ash Wednesday Collect near the beginning of the Communion service.  You could even be using this extra Collect in the Daily Office every morning and evening!

Now, there is no such rubric in the 1979 or 2019 Prayer Books.  But there is no prohibition against reviving this traditional practice either.  I’ve made a practice of retaining the Collect for Ash Wednesday (sometimes nicknaming it the “Collect for Lent” or “for the season”) on each Sunday in my congregation.  Yes, it does make an awkward break in the rhythm of the liturgy: people are used to sitting down after the Collect but suddenly they have to wait through a second one.

But this can be a good kind of awkwardness.  This Collect is one of the great gems of our Prayer Book tradition, capturing the wretchedness of our sin and the great love and mercy of God in one beautiful little prayer.  It’s a good interruption to receive in the ordinary course of worship.  I can’t say that anybody has ever come up to me after the worship service to comment on it before, but I do think it is a subtle-but-meaningful tradition to hang on to.