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Book Review: A Manual for Priests of the American Church

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.

One of the most useful supplementary liturgical texts on my shelf is A Manual for Priests of the American Church by Earl H. Maddux.  Originally produced in 1944, it reached a fifth edition in 1968.  Its subtitle is “Complementary to the Occasional Offices of the Book of Common Prayer” (paired with the 1928).  After the 1979 Prayer Book was released, I don’t believe this book had a successor.  This is partly because the 1979 Prayer Book added to its pages a few things supplied in this book, and partly because what remained useful in this book didn’t really need any updating for those who were disposed to its it.

The book consists of three sections: Offices, Blessings, and an Appendix of extra material.

The “Offices” supplement what’s in the 1928 Prayer Book, adding some instructions for emergency and conditional baptism, admitting catechumens, sacramental confession, communion from the reserved sacrament, blessing civil marriages, ministry to (including anointing of) the sick, prayers for the dying and departed, particular situations for Burial services, and the like.  Much of this is found in the 1979 Prayer Book in one form or another.  The 2019 Prayer Book provides a form of most of this material too.  If you’re a 1928 Prayer Book user, this part of the book is still immediately practically useful; for the rest of us it’s informative reference material to see how some of the “new” parts of our prayer book were previously rendered.

The “Blessings” section is the part that I don’t know if can be found in any newer books.  It begins with a set of rubrics about how priests and bishops are to handle priestly blessings, how to vest, what sort of contexts and permissions are necessary, and starts the list with the blessing of holy water, as that is what’s typically used in blessing nearly any other object or locale.  If you are open to this line of tradition, this collection is invaluable, as it represents an Anglican adaptation of traditional Western liturgical material.  My congregation is not particularly high-church in their devotion and piety, but there have been times when they’ve asked me to bless new crosses, bibles, and the like.  Rendering some of this book’s blessings into contemporary English has been a handy resource for me!  It’s got blessings for advent wreaths, vestments, pictures, pregnant women, children, books, candles, houses, other types of buildings, prayer beads, vehicles, even including…

WIN_20190705_13_40_24_Pro

you know… just in case you’re the chaplain to NASA or something.  Clearly the star-gazing 60’s had an impact on the later editions of this book!

The Appendix section of this book is a sort of catch-all for various bits and bobs.  More blessings and offices, including the Asperges, the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, imposition of ashes for Ash Wednesday, and large pile of additional blessings and prayers, fill another 70 pages of the volume.  A few of these features (like ashes for Ash Wednesday) have found their way into modern prayer books, and therefore make for interesting comparative liturgical study as we consider how mid-20th-century highchurchmen sought to restore ancient traditions such as the imposition of ashes into the Anglican context.

The book closes with a set of indexes, making its rather scattered contents much easier to find, especially if you find yourself “is there a blessing/prayer for this?”

As you can probably tell from a number of the features listed in this book by now, this is a decidedly highchurch, Anglo-Catholic, resource.  It is to such a degree that many would consider this in violation of the Anglican formularies by (re-)introducing prayers for the departed, traditions that suggest a “sacerdotal” priesthood, and so-called Roman superstitions concerning the Sacrament of Holy Communion.  A lowchurch or charismatic Anglican may find elements of this book useful on a careful pick-and-choose basis, but on the whole this book is unashamedly Anglo-Catholic.  However, before you dismiss this book entirely on theological-party grounds, it should be noted that this book is presented as complementary to the Prayer Book; nothing in here replaces the authorized Prayer Book.  So let us not regard this book as representing a divisive element who wanted to replace the Prayer Book; that is an extreme to be found elsewhere, not here.

The Saint Aelfric Customary, apart from its primary role of parsing out the execution of the 2019 Prayer Book liturgy in a traditional manner, also aims to provide some supplemental liturgical material, and many of the blessings in this book will be drawn upon, adapted into contemporary English to match our new Prayer Book’s style.  If you are priest with even just a little bit of high-church interest, I recommend this book very highly; it is a useful resource to have around, even if it’s only practically useful once in a blue moon!

The ratings in short:

Accessibility: 4/5
Because it’s been through a few additions, some of its sections, especially the Appendix, aren’t as logically ordered as one might wish.  But the index section in the back is simple, making it easy to find what you’re looking for.  The fact that its material is in traditional English may also be a slight deterrent for those unused to it.

Devotional Usefulness: 2/5
It’s hard to rate this book on this scale.  If you’re an Anglo-Catholic Priest, in a high church 1928 Prayer Book parish, then this book is probably a 4.  For the rest of us priests, though, this is much more of an occasional resource.  If you’re not ordained, this book will almost never be “useful” to you at all.

Reference Value: 3/5
From the standpoint of the History of Liturgy, or liturgiology, this is a really cool text.  You get see, here, several examples of Anglo-Catholic recoveries of traditional liturgical material before it gets appropriated the Liturgical Movement of the 1960’s as represented in the 1979 Prayer Book.  In this sense, then, this book is a fascinating study to anyone interested in the subject.

By way of a last word, this is a book that I think all Anglican priests should know about, most should have, even if only a few will use.

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BCP 2019 Corrections!

A few weeks ago there was a big to-do over a sketchy rubric that snuck into the Additional Directions for the Communion service back in 2018.  The Saint Aelfric Customary did its part in advocating for the correction of potential sacrilegious malpractice, and together we all successfully made our voices heard!  The College of Bishops agreed to amend the offending text.  Here’s the result:

sacrilege averted!

Admittedly this is not a perfect correction; the witness of every historic Prayer Book regardless of churchmanship or theological party, is that excess consecrated wine is to be drunk up by people, not the ground or a special sink called a piscina.  So the line “except as authorized and directed by the Bishop” still leaves room for such malpractices, though now you need your Bishop’s permission to abuse the Sacrament.

Apart from this, there are a number of minor corrections to the first printing of the Prayer Book (2019) that the committee has tried to make people aware of.  If you got your new Prayer Book at Assembly a couple weeks ago, or just received it from a pre-order, you need to make the following corrections to it (like I did in the picture above).

bcp2019 errata first edition

As you can see, most of these are just grammatical issues.  It’s normal for the first edition of a book to have a handful of little mistakes like these – I’ve seen stupid spelling mistakes in respected theological text books before.  It happens; it’s an imperfect world.  Just grab a black pen and make these little edits in your book if it needs them, and carry on your merry way.

We’re not here to complain about the quality of our worship books, after all; we’re here to worship.  Let us pray!

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Praying the Collect for Purity

One of the most famous prayers in Anglican liturgy today seems to be “The Collect for Purity” which is found near the beginning of the Communion service.  It seems like every “introduction to Anglicanism” article or series of articles eventually turns to this prayer as a quintessential example of a collect, and the enduring nature of liturgical prayer and worship.

Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

So I probably don’t need to tell you that this was originally a “vesting prayer” said by the celebrant alone before the actual Mass began, and that Archbishop Cranmer moved it to the beginning of the Communion liturgy itself when he first wrote the English Prayer Book.  Besides, you don’t need me to harp on about the history of liturgy too much, lest you think I’ve lost my edge when it comes to giving practical advice 😉

Ye who are used to modern liturgies (1979 Prayer Book and newer) are probably accustomed to praying the Collect for Purity with the whole congregation.  For many people, this is the one Collect they definitely have memorized.  You may be surprised to learn, though, that before the modern era of liturgical revision, this Collect was still said by the priest alone.  The first directional rubric in the 1662 Prayer Book’s Communion liturgy, for example, concludes with this sentence:

And the Priest standing at the north side of the Table shall say the Lord’s Prayer with the Collect following, the people kneeling.

It is interesting to note that in our own (2019) Prayer Book the rubric attached to this Collect reads:

The Celebrant prays (and the People may be invited to join)

which indicates that the “primary” fulfillment of this rubric is that the Celebrant says it, and the “secondary” option is that the congregation might be invited to say it too.

If you take that rubric prioritization along with the historic rubrics – that the Priest prays it alone at the holy table (or altar, as many commonly say today) – this gives us a suggestion for how we should go about praying this Collect in our worship services today.

The people were standing for the Acclamation immediately before this, so what if we all kneel to pray this prayer?  That would make sense, especially with the Summary of the Law or Decalogue following, to hear those spoken over us by the priest while we kneel.  If you’re the celebrant, you too should consider (with the historic prayer books) turning toward the altar and kneeling for the Collect for Purity.  Even if the congregation remains standing for it, the extra time and motion involved in you kneeling for the prayer and then standing up to address them in the following penitential rite will be a significant action that reinforces the message of this prayer – namely, that we need cleansing in our hearts by the Holy Spirit in order to love God perfectly and magnify his holy name in a worthy manner.

Worshiping God is kind of a big deal.  Praying that he would help us to worship, even enable us to worship, is not a prayer we should take lightly.  Go kneel before the altar, use your body’s posture and motion to express the seriousness of this prayer!

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Overview of the book of Esther

Evening Prayer in our Daily Office Lectionary begins the book of Esther in a couple days.  I had the joy and privilege of preaching all the way through this book a few years ago; it was a lot of fun, and I get kind of enthusiastic about it.  So please forgive me as occasionally stutter over my words in excitement as I talk about this book!

Subject Index of the video in case you want to skip around:

  • 00:00 – it’s an unusual book
  • 02:11 – Characters
  • 05:46 – A Tale of Two Esthers (Hebrew & Greek)
  • 09:50 – Authorship & Origin Questions
  • 13:58 – Canonical Purpose of the book of Esther
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Pairing a Collect with a Hymn

One of my favorite things about the 2017 hymnal, “Book of Common Praise“, is that among its extensive indices it has a liturgical index that suggests hymns to match each Collect, OT lesson, Epistle lesson, and Gospel for each Sunday and holy day in the traditional calendar.  (Yes, traditional calendar, not the modern 3-year lectionary, because the REC made this book, and they still use the classic Anglican calendar.)  If you pay attention to the traditional Collects and find where they are in the modern (2019 Prayer Book) calendar, then you can profit from this liturgical index.

Take, for example, the Collect for Proper 9, which is this coming Sunday.  It corresponds with the 9th Sunday after Trinity (most of the post-Trinity collects numerically line up from the old to new calendars like this, which is handy).  The collect reads as follows:

Grant us, O Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who can do no good thing apart from you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord…

The 2017 hymnal recommends the following hymns to match with this Collect:

“Dear Lord…” right off the bat reveals its connection with this collect: “Forgive our foolish ways!  Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives thy service find…”  The recognition that we need God to enable us to good is clear throughout the hymn.

“Breathe on me” is perhaps better known.  It’s not as “negative” about the sinful self, but its plea for reliance on God is just as sincere: “Fill me with life anew, That I may love what thou dost love, and do what thou wouldst do.”

“O thou who camest” is a hymn for Confirmation in this hymnal.  It isn’t until verse 3 that this hymn’s connection to the Collect is clear: “Jesus, confirm my heart’s desire to work, and speak, and think for thee”.  Verse 4 also contributes: “Ready for all thy perfect will,
my acts of faith and love repeat”.  Its emphasis on doing the desire of one’s heart is revealed to be the godly intention of desiring what God desires, and thus plays into the main theme of the Collect.

“Take my life, and let it be” may be cliche to some.  But the entire song can serve as a meditation on this Collect’s prayer for God’s spirit which alone enables us to do good.  Verse by verse this hymn hands to God our life, hands, lips, heart, voice, and finally our will:

Take my will, and make it thine;
It shall be no longer mine.
Take myself, and I will be
Ever, only, all for thee.  Amen.

If you want to make use of these hymns to reinforce the Collect of the Day on this coming Sunday, one of the best spots to do this is either between the Gloria in excelsis and the Collect.  The rubrics on pages 107 and 125 indicate that the Gloria may be substituted for a different song of praise, which my congregation traditionally stretches a little such that we say the Gloria and then sing a hymn.  I know of other congregations that take this idea even farther and put a whole “praise and worship set” after or in place of the Gloria… that strikes me as a stretch of the rubrics too far.  Whateverso, placing one of these hymns immediately before the Collect maximizes the potential for people to hear the thematic echo of the hymn in the Collect when the celebrant reads it.

If you place the related hymn elsewhere in the liturgy, it may be necessary for the preacher to identify that connection during the sermon.  And honestly, that’s not a bad idea either.  Include an explication of the Collect in the sermon, quote a piece of the hymn that connects to it, and then have the congregation sing that hymn during the Offertory or something.  That way the liturgy stands as a more coherent whole, and you the ministers are helping your flock see that, recognize that, and learn to make those connections on their own. For if we truly believe lex orandi lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief) and vice versa, we should take care to see that our form of worship is just as coherent as our biblical preaching and doctrinal catechesis.

 

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Collect for “Proper 8”

This week’s Collect of the Day is drawn from yesterday’s position in the calendar, “Proper 8”.  This is a prayer for God’s fatherly ordering of our lives:

O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and on earth: Put away from us all hurtful things, and give us those things that are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

On its own, simply, this is a prayer that highlights God’s parental role over us.  If you have had children, or have cared for or ministered to children regularly, you know on an experiential level just how important a prayer like this is.  Children often have a hard time accepting or understanding the difference between the “hurtful things” and “those things that are profitable”… what they want is what they want, and that’s that!  Of course, we adults fall into the exact same mentality all the time, we’re just usually a little more sophisticated about it.  “I deserve to indulge myself today”, “Just one ___ won’t hurt me”, “I know it’s bad for me, but I can keep it under control”.  This prayer demands of us an honesty that we’re not always prepared to attain to on our own.

In the traditional calendar, this Collect was appointed for the 8th Sunday after Trinity, and was paired with Romans 8:12-17 and Matthew 7:15-21.  That epistle is very clearly in mind in the construction of this Collect:

For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.

The Gospel contains a warning against false teachers – wolves in sheep’s clothing.  This adds to the Epistle’s concern with things that are morally and spiritually harmful or profitable the further level of doctrinal harm and profit.  It is critical that we do not scratch our “itching ears” as it is written elsewhere in the New Testament.  We must pray that God will keep, or make, us open to receive his true teaching rather than the teaching we want to hear.  Our fleshly, sinful, self-centered tendencies can easily overrule our moral, spiritual, and doctrinal commitment to Christ and his Church, so let this Collect remind you in the Daily Office throughout this week to “mortify the works of the flesh”, to discern the disguised wolf from the true sheep, and endeavor to follow Christ as he leads, not as we would have him lead.

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Saint Peter (and Paul)

Happy feast of Saints Peter and Paul!

Or is it just Peter? All our prayer books before the liturgical revolution of the 1970’s list this as the feast of Peter only. Yet the idea that this is the commemoration of the martyrdom of both of them can be found in earlier times.

I don’t presume to know the details of how and why these changes came about. I do know that the English reformation had an emphasis on simplifying the calendar and liturgy so it focuses on the main things with fewer distractions. But what I can observe is this:

Whichever prayer book you look at, there is a balance between Peter and Paul. The historic prayer books had one feast for each of them: (the conversion of Paul on January 18 and Saint Peter on June 29). The modernist family of prayer books (like the 1979, Common Worship, and the 2019) has two feasts each:

  • Confession of Peter (18 Jan )
  • Conversion of Paul (25 Jan.)
  • Peter & Paul (29 June)

So there’s your little bit of trivia for the day.

I’m out of state this weekend and preparation for this trip caused me to fail to prepare this entry ahead of time. Back to normal service next week… let us continue to pray for one another.

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1 & 2 Thessalonians

This morning in the Daily Office, our new lectionary starts our brief journey through 2 Thessalonians.  We just finished 1 Thessalonians.

There are a few New Testament books that have both the same author and same recipient: Luke & Acts, 1 & 2 Corinthians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy, and probably 1 & 2 Peter.  When this happens, it pays to look at what some of the primary concerns of each book is, and see why a sequel or follow-up was necessary.

In the case of the epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians, one of the noteworthy themes is that of eschatology – the return of Christ at the end.  A handy oversimplification of these two could be:

1. Christ is coming soon!  2. But not that soon.

For in 1 Thessalonians there is that famous passage in chapters 4 & 5, “we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope“, and “the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God“, and “the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night“.  Popular evangelicalism has right and truly muddled up many believers’ understanding of these verses with erroneous teachings about a “rapture” and I encourage you who preach to make sure you help people rightly understand verses such as these.

But then in 2 Thessalonians St. Paul encourages them “not to be quickly shaken in mind or excited, either by spirit or by word, or by letter purporting to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come” and teaches them “if any one will not work, let him not eat.  For we hear that some of you are living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work.”  It was as if there was a group of people there so excited for the return of Christ that they gave up their earthly labors to focus entirely on spiritual exercise until the Day of the Lord.  Those who misunderstood his first letter to them needed the correction of a second letter to help them get balanced.

Perhaps this example will help you as you read through this epistle, reminding you to think back to what was read in the first one, and see how the situation, and St. Paul’s response, has developed over time.

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The Trinity Acclamation

For most of the rest of 2019, our Thursday posts will be walking through the Communion service of the 2019 Prayer Book.  Today we’re starting at the beginning, the Opening Acclamation.

We’ve looked at these once before during Advent, and have noted how the Opening Sentences of the Daily Office have taken on a similar role in modern liturgy.  So let’s look at the Acclamation that occupies the majority of the Church Calendar Year.

The people standing, the Celebrant says this or a seasonal greeting.
Celebrant Blessed be God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
People   And blessed be his kingdom, now and forever.  Amen.

Besides this, the Prayer Book has about eight other Acclamations to choose from, according to the season or occasion.  Most of them are quotes from or references to Scripture; a couple of them (like this one) are not.

Functionally, these are what one might entitle “The Call to Worship”, and is very similar to the beginning exhortation in the Office right before the Confession, or the Invitatory dialogue and psalm.  A traditionalist might look down his nose at these Acclamations, however, for they are not a part of Prayer Book tradition before 1979.  But there is more background to them than meets the eye.

In Western liturgical tradition, the introit is a “proper” – a text that is paired with the Collect and lessons of the Mass.  It’s usually a few verses from a psalm, though sometimes other Scriptures or texts comprise an introit.  It usually ends with a Gloria Patri (Glory be to the Father).  Each Sunday and holy day (and, I presume, minor saints day and votive mass) would have its own introit.  These Acclamations in modern tradition is actually a reduction and simplification – instead of having a particular introit for each mass of the year, there are just these nine or so Acclamations.  The Roman Catholic Church has done something similar with its liturgy; some of their Acclamations are very similar to ours.

An attentive reader or worshiper may notice that this Acclamation is different than it was in the 1979 Prayer Book.  That book rendered it:

Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We, meanwhile, have added “the” to each person of the Trinity.  Why?

It’s more explicit about trinitarian theology.  The previous format can leave one with the unconscious impression that God is a nebulous entity with three aspects, and fall into the heresies of sabellianism or modalism.  But stating, instead the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we subtly emphasize that these are three distinct persons, not just modes of being that God can switch between.  Yes it’s subtle, and yes it’s implicit, but that’s one of the important things about worship and common prayer: little things repeated enough times can have a huge impact.

Did this phrase along cause the catastrophic descent of the Episcopal Church into theological chaos in the latter quarter of the 20th century?  No, probably not.  More likely it was a symptom of pre-existent trends.  But it is a phrase that we found we could adopt and improve for a clearer proclamation of the identity of the God we are gathering to worship that day, and every day.

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Collect for Proper 7

After Monday’s brief interruption with the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, the Collect of the Day for the Daily Office this week has gone back to Sunday’s “Proper 7.”  Hmm, we should probably look at what “Proper #” means, one of these days.  But right now we’re looking at the Collect.  Here it is:

Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

It is written in James’ epistle that “true religion” involves caring for those in need.  As the Collect suggests, that is what the original set of Scriptures, in the traditional one-year lectionary, dealt with.  This Collect was originally paired with Mark 8:1-10 (wherein Jesus feeds the 4,000) and Romans 6:1-23 which provides a more detailed explanation for this: we can either be “slaves” to sin or to God; slavery to one is freedom from the other.

A critical lesson of this traditional set of propers (collect & readings) is that being a truly religious slave of God is active, not passive.  This informs our reading of the Collect as a whole, too.  “Graft in our hearts the love of your name” is a prayer not just for an internal disposition, but for external transformation.  It leads to (or includes) an increase in “true religion”, a nourishment “in all goodness” (that is with God’s goodness or righteousness), and “the fruit of good works” brought forth in our lives.

If you look back at the Scripture lessons in our modern (2019) lectionary, you’ll find this Collect is a good answer for the Epistle lesson, Galatians 3:23-29, which spoke of faith that is free from the law.

As this week continues, perhaps this Collect will take you back to that lesson on Sunday.  Or perhaps it can lead you in new directions, deeper into what it means, tangibly, to love God, increase in true religion, be filled with his goodness, and bear the fruit of good works.  It is a prayer to aid us against sloth and lethargy – faith is to be active and productive; internal realities are to have external consequences.  Pray for your growth in Christ, this week!