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The Prayers of the People hit differently when relocated…

Lately I’ve been looking at different orders of service found in different Prayer Books and contemplating (with help from others) the significance of some of the different configurations that are out there. Some changes can be pretty subtle, like how the Prayer of Humble Access has hopped around a few times in the past 500 years. Other variations are a bit more substantial, though, and that’s where the Prayers of the People come into the discussion.

Over the centuries there are three places where they might be located: in the Eucharist Canon, in the Offertory, and in the Liturgy of the Word. Let’s check ’em out.

DISCLAIMER: The term “prayers of the people” is only a feature of modern Prayer Books, and in classical Prayer Book use it’s typically called the “prayer for the whole state of Christ’s Church [and the world]”. Because they are textually equivalent, I’m just going to use the modern title throughout this article. We’ll explore why it makes sense in some cases more than others.

Location #1: Sacrificial Prayers

The 1549 Prayer Book looks like a real oddball in the collection of Anglican Prayer Books. As essentially the first draft, it contains a number of features that promptly vanished, and the location of the Prayers of the People is one of those things. There, the Sursum Corda (“lift up your hearts”) is relatively early in the liturgy, and right after the Sanctus (Holy, Holy Holy) the priest or deacon turns to the people and says “Let us pray for the whole state of Christ’s Church.” And after the familiar ending of that prayer, “Grant this, O Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake…” he continues immediately with the Prayers of Consecration. No other Prayer Book since has done this, making it feel a rather strange option.

What I recently rediscovered, however, is that this is largely how it worked before the Reformation. In a 1526 version of the Sarum Missal, the Sanctus was followed by a few prayers of intercession, akin to what Catholics today might call “mass intentions.” Indeed, the Sarum prayers were lengthened by Cranmer for the first Prayer Book, perhaps setting the stage for a need to move them elsewhere in the service. In any case, the location of the intercessions here, literally at the altar, spoken by the priest, ad orientem (that is, facing the altar, same as the people), makes the character of these prayers particularly sacrificial. These intercessions are part of the Church’s regular sacrifice of prayer as we fulfill our priestly function in praying for one another and the world around us.

Location #2: Offering Prayers

Prayer Book revision quickly shifted the prayers for the whole state away from the eucharistic canon and landed them in the Offertory, where they remained until the mid-20th century revisions kicked in. This diminishes the sacrificial emphasis of the prayers and moves them more into the realm of the people’s offering. Indeed, this prayer even mentioned “our alms and oblations”, explicitly uniting the offering of our money and ourselves with the offering of our prayers. Thus the intercessions became less of a priest’s intentions at the altar and more of the concerns of a congregation, even though the actual text remained the same. At this point “Prayers of the People” starts to make sense, even though the reader of the prayer was still the priest, and the congregation was still referred to as “they” instead of the modern “we.”

Location #3: The People’s Prayers

In the mid-20th century, in the wake of Rome’s second Vatican Council, a huge movement of liturgical revision and renewal was underway, and no tradition was left unscathed. This novus ordo (literally, new order) rearranged much of the liturgy, and for the Prayers of the People this mean that they were now prayed after the Creed instead of after the Offertory. What’s more, the default reader of these prayers became the Deacon, “or other person appointed”, which implies a layman, not the priest. This was matched with a change of wording from “they” the congregation, to “we” the congregation, such as found in the Anglican Standard Text of 2019. The intercessions were now truly the Prayers of the People in the most literal sense. Gone were the sacrificial undertones of our work of intercession, and even the liturgical offerings sense was dramatically decreased. Rather than a sacrifice or an offering, the intercessions now became a work – the work of the people.

Interestingly, “the work of the people” is one of the ways to render the word liturgy into English (though I would prefer “public work” to better capture its meaning). So in that sense, putting the Prayers of the People more into the hands and mouths of the congregation makes a lot of sense. Furthermore, there is another line of precedent for this: in (at least) English custom, there was a practice of “bidding the bedes” before a sermon, which was essentially calling upon the congregation to pray for various needs in the parish, the city, the region, the realm, or indeed the world. This practice existed in parallel with the “mass intentions” in the proper canon of the liturgy, resulting in two points of intercession in the worship service, one dominated by the people’s concerns, and the other dominated by the Church. Indeed, this practice survived beyond the Reformation, and even popped up explicitly in the 1928 Prayer Book (see its page 71 and 47).

If you survey the various forms of the Prayers of the People in the 1979 Prayer Book (and similar texts put out in other provinces since), you will find that most of them have call-and-response elements, giving increased voice to the congregation. Some of them (including 2019’s own Renewed Ancient Text) are even explicit biddings, not technically praying at all, but instead instructing the congregation what to pray (be it silently or aloud).

Why not both?

This migration of the Prayers of the People over the centuries has revealed that there are indeed multiple places in the Communion liturgy where intercessions can (and should) be profitably made. In proximity to the Scripture Lessons, Creed, and Sermon, the people’s prayers naturally arise as we all respond to God’s Word and bring our own various concerns to bear. In proximity to the Offertory, a set of intercessions make sense as the congregation offers united prayer to God as part of its collective work and service. And in proximity to the consecration of Holy Communion, the Church accomplishes a priestly service, bringing to God a sacrifice of prayer, as is our bounden duty and our joy.

Given the history of our English liturgical heritage, we know that we don’t have to choose just one spot and stick with it. We can have intercessory prayers in the modern location (after the Creed) as well as in the medieval location (after the Sanctus). We don’t have to pick one or the other, or the compromise middle location (after the Offertory). All three locations have historic precedence, devotional value, and liturgical sensibility.

One easy way to experiment with this, using a modern Prayer Book such as the 2019, is to use the call-and-response Prayers of the People from the Renewed Ancient Text in the modern location, emphasizing congregational input, and then having the celebrant read the Anglican Standard Text’s Prayers of the People straight through (without responses) either after the Offertory or after the Sanctus. This way we have both the homegrown spontaneous heartfelt congregational prayers and the scripturally rich, authorized, priestly prayers of intercession for the Church and for the world. Together, these complementary postures of prayer teach all of us more about the significance of prayer in the Christian life, and shape us to pray both formally and informally, generally and specifically, as individuals and as one body.

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Balancing Stability and Variety in the Eucharistic Rite

This can be a touchy subject. Some people are very passionate about their liturgical sensibilities; some people literally couldn’t care less. Some people insist that variety is the spice of life and the worship service must be constantly changing lest it become stale and mindlessly regimented. Others insist that variety is vanity and stability in the liturgy is superior, providing consistent discipleship and formative value that would be undermined by constant changes. And of course there are ways that others still attempt to balance these conflicting poles of thought.

On the whole I am largely in the “stability” camp, and I don’t want a given church to be constantly reinventing its liturgy. I do believe that repetition is essential to growth – this is how we exercise for physical fitness, this is how artists get better at their art, this is how students learn things. Inconsistent worship breeds an inconsistent approach to theology, as worship is really the front line of theology – how we approach and interact with God in prayer is the first step of articulating actual doctrine and teaching. Thus I am very much a Prayer Book loyalist: stick to the text, and keep variation to a minimum.

But therein lies an awkward question: stick to which text?

I’ve heard it joke that the Joy of Anglicanism is getting to argue about worship for the rest of your life. And the potentiality is certainly there: every province has its own version of the Book of Common Prayer, and some are more different than others. And besides the Prayer Book there have been many edits, supplements, occasional services, missals, and alternative lectionaries, such that 100 congregations could each have a different eucharistic service order. Not to say that this is a unique feature: there are multiple versions of the Roman Rite, both historically and in the present day; the Lutherans have long since branched out from Luther’s original German Mass; Presbyterians rarely offer more than “guidelines” for structuring a worship service, and the rest of the Protestant world is largely in do-whatever-you-want mode, which usually means the congregation is at the mercy of their pastor’s private sensibilities.

So if I want a stable, formative, orthodox, and coherent Anglican Prayer Book service every Sunday morning, where do I turn? How do I decide what is best?

STEP ONE: Conformity

“Conformity” is such a bad word in modern American culture, but in terms of church worship it’s very much a value. It is good for churches to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ and to be on the same page as one another. If we are indeed one body then we really ought to be growing together in roughly the same ways. Conformity in my case means using the edition of the Prayer Book that my province of the church (the Anglican Church in North America) has promulgated, the Prayer Book of 2019. 

STEP TWO: Utilizing the Basic Options

In that book there are two Communion rites (the Anglican Standard and the ‘Renewed Ancient’), and of that book there are two version (contemporary language and traditional liturgical English). Therefore there are four choices for Holy Communion. Here’s how I treat them:

To explain, the Anglican Standard Text is the first Communion Rite in the book, and should be understood to be our standard (hence the name), so I give it pride of place. The second rite, somewhat anachronistically called the Renewed Ancient Text, is a consolidation of the liturgical experimentation of the 1960’s and 70’s which became regnant in the Episcopal church, so its place in the Anglican tradition is widespread yet still very recent. I currently only use it on the Sundays from Christmas through Epiphanytide, largely on account of the fact that the eucharistic prayers mention the Virgin Mary, and that’s the time of year most suited to emphasizing the incarnation of our Lord. I also have it down for holy days commemorating relatives of Jesus (Joseph, Mary, her parents, John the Baptist, and his parents).

STEP THREE: Tastefully Dipping into our History

There’s another feature in our Prayer Book which is easily missed, but of great significance: older orders of service are permitted, using the material in the 2019 Prayer Book. The order of events in the Anglican Communion service got revamped quite a bit in the 1970’s: the Creed and Sermon switched places, the Fraction (or breaking of the bread) was given its own place between the Communion prayers and the distribution, the Gloria in excelsis Deo moved from being an anthem at the end to a hymn of praise near the beginning (as in the Roman Rite), the Offertory moved after the Prayers and Confession. And so, in deference to the majority of our history, the 2019 Prayer Brook allows us to re-order the Anglican Standard Text to match the order of a previous authorized Prayer Book. This gives a few major options:

  1. The order of the first prayer book (1549)
  2. The standard English prayer book (1662)
  3. The first & second American prayer books (1789 & 1892)
  4. The third American prayer book (1928)

There are a few other historical options from England and Canada and Scotland, but they are almost identical to others already listed here.

Would I ever want to make use of this permission? And if so, what would be the justification for such meddling? The downsides are obvious:

  • People get tripped up easily when familiar material gets rearranged
  • I, the celebrant, am much more prone to making mistakes when I do something different from the norm
  • Parents trying to manage small children during the service have a harder time keeping up when their full attention isn’t able to be on the order of service

So if we choose to utilize these other options, it needs to be for a very good reason. After all, the rubrics permitting this change exists primarily to service those parishes that are already used to a different order and want to keep it, despite switching over to the 2019 Prayer Book.

I have two main reasons for wanting to make occasional use of the historic orders.

  1. INSTRUCTION: Both in terms of personal awareness as well as historical honesty, I think it’s good for ordinary worshipers to be exposed to samples of “the way things were” on occasion. It’s good to know that the Modern Way is not the Only Way, and to appreciate at least some of the differences that have arisen in the details of our patterns of worship over the centuries.
  2. FORMATION: Despite my preference for stability over variety, there is a value to “shaking things up” a little bit from time to time. Re-arranging a little bit of the worship service according to an historic pattern forces people to pay attention in a way that they normally may not. Hearing and saying familiar prayers in a different sequence than usual can help bring out different emphases that would be missed otherwise.

To implement the inclusion of these alternative orders, though, it struck me as too arbitrary to assign certain orders to certain Sundays of the year. So instead I assigned them to certain groups of minor feast days:

  1. The 1662 Order is for British Saints
  2. The 1549 Order is for other Western Saints
  3. The 1789/1892 Order is for Eastern Saints
  4. The 1928 Order is for Angels, Eve of All Saints, the Faithful Departed

The general logic behind this is that the 1662 order is the most uniquely English liturgy, so it befits the British Saints, the 1549 Eucharistic Rite is more generically Western, the early American Prayer Books (influenced by the Scottish order) has a slight Eastern element to it, and the 1928 prayers give a little more attention to the departed than its predecessors. Plus, by tying these alternative arrangements of the service order to minor saints days, we get a special way of acknowledging these commemorations when they happen to land on a Sunday without actually directly observing them and interrupting the calendar year.

So for example earlier this year August 20th was on a Sunday, and that was the commemoration of St. Bernard of Clairvaux. So on that day we used the 1549 order of service to denote his commemoration, though the Scripture lessons and sermon remained in the regular Sunday sequence (I was preaching through Romans at the time). The next time this’ll happen for my church is on January 28th, on which day we’ll again use the 1549 order this time to celebrate St. Thomas Aquinas, a giant of Western Medieval theology. And then in March we’ll use this method to denote St. Patrick’s Day as well!

This approach gives you maybe three or four Sundays per year with historic orders, which is rare enough that it’s not destabilizing the congregation’s ability to follow the regular liturgy, but often enough that they kinda-sorta remember “I think we’ve done this before”. That way it’s a little jarring (“oh right, I have to pay careful attention to follow this”) but not overwhelming and having-to-start-from-scratch each time.

SUMMARY THOUGHT

So that’s generally how I go about trying to balance variety and stability. I’m not saying this is a perfect system that everyone should try to emulate, but I think these are sound ideas that provide just enough variation without throwing people off too much. It really matters to me that people get to know our liturgy, grow to cherish its prayers, and make them their own – and sometimes you need both familiar repetition as well as fresh encounters to make that happen.

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This our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving

I: Story Time

Before I became an Anglican, I was doing my seminary-required units of mentored ministry at a congregational church. It was the church of my childhood; we were not a part of any official denomination (nor are they still), and there was no standard confession of faith apart from a fairly typical statement on the website that pointed to the infallibility of Scripture and the content of the Apostles’ Creed. Thus when it came to many points of doctrine, there was a great deal of wiggle room and it really came down to how much the senior pastor promulgated or enforced his views in and through the board of elders and the various volunteers who taught Sunday School and led Bible studies.

And so it came to pass, towards the end of my tenure there, as I was growing towards Anglicanism, I was invited to assist the senior pastor with the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. It was done monthly there, which is a lot more frequent than your typical non-denom evangelical church, but there was still no consistent form of prayer. It was not seen as a sacrament there, anyway, so the liturgy didn’t really matter as such, so long as the words of institution were quoted along the way. So I, for my portion of the prayers, decided to pick up the Prayer Book and try out a section of it. (Full disclosure, it was the Episcopalian book of 1979, which is all I knew at the time, and probably the best fit anyway since some of its eucharistic prayers are fairly generic and inoffensive across denominational lines.) But I ran into a problem with the pastor when he was proofreading what I’d prepared: “And we offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to you, O Lord of all…” The word “sacrifice” was a problem, and it was axed.

II: The Sacrifice(s) of the Mass

The fear, of course, was that we’d be falling into the errors of the Roman Catholic Church regarding the “Sacrifice of the Mass” and all those other scary terms that evangelical protestants are supposed to be wary of. What this pastor didn’t realize (and what I was yet too untrained to understand either, let alone explain) is that the term sacrifice has quite a broad meaning, whereas the Roman error is quite specific.

The issue which the Reformers raised regarding Roman teaching centered around the notion that the Eucharist is a propitiatory sacrifice that in its very celebration is efficacious toward the remission of sins and relief for the souls in purgatory. The Reformers rightly axed the efficacy of the Sacrament for those in purgatory because they knew Purgatory itself was a false medieval development, and they rightly recentered the efficacy of the Sacrament for the living upon the Cross of Christ, wherein our one, true, propitiation is found.

As a result, the Lutheran Book of Concord asserts

There are chiefly two kinds of sacrifices, and no more, in which all others are comprehended. The one is a propitiatory sacrifice, by which expiation is made for guilt and punishment, God is reconciled, his wrath appeased, and remission of sins obtained for others. The other is a sacrifice of thanksgiving, not to obtain forgiveness of sin or reconciliation, but made by those who are already reconciled, in order to give thanks for the remission of sins, and for other favors and gifts they received.

Augsburg Confession XXIV(XII):19

This exact same distinction was taken up in the English Prayer Books, which describe Holy Communion as “this our Sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving“. It is a phrase which pointedly rejects the Roman notion of Eucharistic sacrifice being propitiatory ex opere operato (from the work itself), and instead highlights that the sacrifice we make is one of praise and thanksgiving before God (hence the name eucharist, meaning thanksgiving).

Another sacrifice that is made at Holy Communion is an oblation or self-offering:

And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively [living] sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that all we who are partakers of this holy Communion, may be fulfilled with thy grace and heavenly benediction.

Book of Common Prayer

This prayer, also found in every Anglican Prayer Book shortly after the “sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving” line, further enriches and expands and corrects our understanding of the Sacrifice of the Mass. Not only do we remember Christ’s own propitiatory sacrifice of himself upon the Cross, not only do we offer our own sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, but we also offer up our selves entirely unto God (directly quoting and applying Romans 12:1).

III: Summary Thoughts

In retrospect, I am still a little disappointed that my congregational pastor was not familiar with the biblical language of sacrifice, in its broadness, to recognize that there is ample room for right (and fruitful, and even necessary) use of the term in Holy Communion, though I recognize that as one of the general blind spots of the modern evangelical tradition. I’m also aware that within Anglican circles we like to argue about liturgy to an incredible degree – in what order our prayers should be said, which translation to use, what the implied doctrinal logic is behind a given liturgical rite and form. But in any case, the language of a “sacrifice of thanksgiving” and the sacrifice of “ourselves, our souls and bodies” are common threads throughout our tradition, whether we say them before or after the ministration of Communion, whether we directly quote the Scriptures or paraphrase them in a modern-language rite.

With such richness of tradition and thoroughness of teaching at our disposal, we are amply equipped to form Christian worshipers with a robust biblical, creedal, and patristic faith precisely as the Reformers sought to restore. While I don’t doubt there is an end in sight to the hand-wringing we are prone to make over details, I firmly believe that we can be absolutely confident in the orthodoxy of our Prayer Book tradition’s handling of Holy Communion. For, when it comes to worship, we mean what we say, and we say what we mean.

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Beyond Sunday Communion part 4: Morning Prayer & Litany & Communion

The Prayer Book tradition of worship is rich and robust, providing not only rites and rituals for individual worship services but indeed for an entire life of Christian worship. As a part of this ambitious large-scale schema, it should come as no surprise that there’s more to worship than simply going to Holy Communion every Sunday morning. There are the daily rounds of prayer, punctuated by the [Great] Litany a couple times per week, various pastoral offices for key stages in the natural and spiritual lives of a congregation and family, and pointers toward the development of private devotions to enable the individual worshiper to flesh out his or her own life of worship apart from the gathered Church.

What is often missed in today’s church culture, however, is that the original Prayer Book pattern for worship on Sunday morning was actually a three-part affair: Morning Prayer, The [Great] Litany, and the Holy Communion. Until relatively recent times, all three of these were appointed to be said in every church every Sunday and Holy Day. Granted, this was often shortened in actual practice, and by the late 19th century it was probably more common for people to attend just one service rather than all three in a row. Yet the full pattern of worship is still present even in our modern Prayer Books, and the typical malnourished Christian of today could benefit greatly from a retrieval of the spiritual rigor of our forebears. To that end, we’ve been looking at different combinations of worship services that you could carry out on Sunday mornings in your church.

Morning Prayer & The Litany & Holy Communion

We’re wrapping up this sequence of articles by going for the gold: how might you run a 100% Authentic Anglican (TM) Sunday Morning Worship Service? I’m going to present three ideas on how to execute this trilogy of Prayer Book services: the start-and-stop approach, the compound marathon, and the finessed liturgy.

The Start-and-Stop Approach

I would consider this the ideal for Sunday morning worship, personally. You start with Morning Prayer by the book, with a little bit of music. Then there’s a little break for study, discussion, catechesis, whatever’s going on. Then you return to the pews and kneel for the Great Litany. But rather than concluding the Litany outright, you open it up for spontaneous prayer. Or if the congregation is charismatic-influenced, open it up for prayer and praise! After the reading and studying of the Word in Morning Prayer and the long detailed prayer coverage of the Litany, and with the climax of the Eucharist ahead, this is also a perfect opportunity for the Rites of Healing: offering sacramental confession and the anointing of the sick. Then, after another breather, it’s time for the full Communion service.

While this would be quite a full morning for all involved, there are mitigating factors worth considering. First of all, the priest doesn’t have to lead everything! He should be present to pronounce absolution in Morning Prayer, available for ministry after the Litany, and only then must he take up the mantle to officiant Holy Communion. As for the congregation, not everyone necessarily comes to all three services. Prospective members and “seekers” will receive the instruction and prayer they need in the first two services; Holy Communion isn’t for them yet. Lots of people would probably still show up only for the Communion portion and skip the first two. But imagine the robust spirituality that would be fostered in those who did show up for all three! What a blessing that could be to the church and the community.

The Compound Marathon

Like the first approach, the Compound Marathon is a walk-through of the Morning Office, Litany, and Communion in full, one after another, with no breaks in between. You could omit the closing sentences from Morning Prayer, just so it doesn’t feel too much like you’re sending everyone away 1/3 of the way through, but otherwise this is literally three worship services in a row.

This is the least attractive idea to my sensibilities. With no transitions between each service, people will be very aware of an awkward “we’re done, but we’re not done” sense and the overall impression will probably be very foreign to everyone involved.

But it is the simplest way to bring the three services together. The less verbal guidance required to help the congregation through the liturgy, the better, so finishing out each service before moving on to the next is going to be the path of least confusion. This is also the most instructive approach: those who’ve never experienced Morning Prayer or the Litany before will get to experience them both in full without anything clipped out! In that light we find where this strange idea might actually make sense: the church could make a special occasion of “exploring the fulness of our tradition of worship” and do Morning Prayer, Litany, and Communion all together as a one-off special event.

The Finessed Liturgy

But if you want to use all three liturgies together on a regular basis, and/or the congregation is already at least somewhat familiar with them, then you’re best off following the actual rubrics when it comes to moving from one service to the next.

Morning Prayer starts off on page 11 and runs until (but not including) the Prayer for Mission on page 24. Then the Litany begins (page 91) and runs through the Kyrie on page 96. At that point, the Communion service begins with the Collect of the Day on page 107/125.

Additionally, some other factors could be considered:

  • The Confession & Creed may be omitted from the Office.
  • The Psalms and Lessons in Morning Prayer may be able to be shortened.
  • Reading the Canticles is much quicker than singing them.
  • The Great Litany can be lengthened or shortened at the officiant’s preference, so abbreviating its intercessions is a legitimate move, as long as the congregation is able to follow you.
  • A hymn (or the Gloria) might sit nicely between the Litany and the Eucharist’s Collect of the Day.
  • The Prayers of the People in the Communion liturgy technically aren’t supposed to be skipped, but in light of all the prayer that has come before you’d be well within your rights to shorten them drastically.

This sounds super long, yes. But don’t be intimidated! The two biggest time-sinks in a worship are the sermon and the singing. And remember that the great majority of the Prayer Book liturgy is about reading and praying the Word of God (Scriptures) to the Word of God (Jesus), so there’s no such thing as time wasted there.

Personal note in conclusion

Of all the combinations, this is the one I’ve never tried before in my church, I must admit. On paper, I was set to try it out a couple times, but I always chickened out. Someday I probably will muster up my resolve and give it a go, and when I do I will almost certainly use the Finessed Liturgy approach, as well as clearly identify the Sunday ahead of time with a special reason for observing the full tradition of Prayer Book worship. It may be a special holy day, or a historically-minded occasion. And I will make it clear that it’s a once-time event so as not to scare my flock with an unasked-for spiritual workout in overdrive. If I were to make the observance of all three services a regular part of parish life, I’d separate them out (as in the first approach) to provide space for particular ministerial and practical needs in between.

Posted on by Fr. Brench

Beyond Sunday Communion part 3: Morning Prayer & Holy Communion

The Prayer Book tradition of worship is rich and robust, providing not only rites and rituals for individual worship services but indeed for an entire life of Christian worship. As a part of this ambitious large-scale schema, it should come as no surprise that there’s more to worship than simply going to Holy Communion every Sunday morning. There are the daily rounds of prayer, punctuated by the [Great] Litany a couple times per week, various pastoral offices for key stages in the natural and spiritual lives of a congregation and family, and pointers toward the development of private devotions to enable the individual worshiper to flesh out his or her own life of worship apart from the gathered Church.

What is often missed in today’s church culture, however, is that the original Prayer Book pattern for worship on Sunday morning was actually a three-part affair: Morning Prayer, The [Great] Litany, and the Holy Communion. Until relatively recent times, all three of these were appointed to be said in every church every Sunday and Holy Day. Granted, this was often shortened in actual practice, and by the late 19th century it was probably more common for people to attend just one service rather than all three in a row. Yet the full pattern of worship is still present even in our modern Prayer Books, and the typical malnourished Christian of today could benefit greatly from a retrieval of the spiritual rigor of our forebears. To that end, we’ll be looking at different combinations of worship services that you could carry out on Sunday mornings in your church.

Morning Prayer & Holy Communion

The most complicated pairing of traditional Prayer Book services is that of Morning Prayer and Holy Communion. The American Prayer Book of 1928 hints of the concept of running the two services together but provides no rubrics on how this is meant to be done. The 1979 Prayer Book finally followed that up with a set of instructions: cut the Morning Prayer service off after the collects and before the Prayer for Mission, and then start the Offertory of the Communion liturgy (1979 BCP page 142). Additional Prayers might be expected in between, however, to ensure the requirements for the Prayers of the People be fulfilled. The practical result of this schema is that the Daily Office serves as the “Liturgy of the Word” within the Communion service.

However, the framers of the 2019 Prayer Book consciously and intentionally did not repeat that rubric. They asserted that the integrity of the Daily and Communion offices should be maintained, and there was nothing to be gained by blending them together like that. So now we have an interesting situation, because on pages 24 and 50 of our Prayer Book we still have the same rubric as in 1979: “Unless the… Eucharist is to follow, one of the following prayers for mission is added.” So if you want to combine Morning Prayer and Holy Communion into one worship service, the Office ends at the same place as it does for switching to the Litany, which is the same place the original Office ended, which is the same place as the 1979 Book to move on to the Offertory in Holy Communion. Except in our case, the “Liturgy of the Word” in Holy Communion can’t be overwritten. This leaves us with a curious range of options.

First, literally start at the very beginning of the Communion service. You could smooth the transition a little by singing a hymn to be the hinge: functioning both as the Anthem near the end of the Office and the Opening Hymn of the Eucharist. Needless to say this is the longest option in terms of the worship service’s duration. Though the other options aren’t going to be all that much shorter.

Second, skip everything you’re allowed to skip. If you want to remain obedient to the rubrics, but try your hardest to shorten this combined service, here are the things you can skip:

  • The Confession in Morning Prayer
  • The Apostles’ Creed in Morning Prayer
  • The Gloria in Excelsis Deo in the Communion service
  • The Comfortable Words and certain other marked prayers during the celebration of Communion

This is often overlooked by liturgy planners, but the real key to “saving time” when you’re concerned about a worship service lasting too long is not about breezing through the Prayers and skipping sections of the liturgy. The biggest time-user is music. This is especially true in the modern charismatic-influenced evangelical tradition – those songs can go on much longer even than the old hymns! So if you’re the sort who’s concerned about attention span and a set “finish time”, look at how you can reel in the music, rather than cut corners with the actual canonical liturgy.

That said, there is something to be said for the spirit of the rubrics rather than just the letter. Along those lines, here are some other things to consider to smooth the transition from Morning Prayer to Holy Communion and make it feel a bit more unified and a bit less repetitive.

  • Use the Confession in Morning Prayer instead of the Communion (that way you can skip a bunch of the follow-up material, including that oft-time-consuming Peace!)
  • Trim the Prayers of the People (after all Morning Prayer does have some basic intercessions built in already)
  • Alternatively, chop off all the prayers from Morning Prayer (concluding it with the second lesson & canticle, and then moving on to the Communion. This way you get the benefit of the extra Scripture readings and none of the prayers thereafter which will get duplicated.)

In my early years as a priest, I tried out all three of those last ideas (possibly all at once). I did this on a couple festive Sundays of the year – Christmas, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity, All Saints’ Sunday – for the benefit of getting two different collects of the day (in most of those cases) and extra Scripture lessons. I thought it’d be a good way to heighten the celebration of the high holy days in a way that was both Bible-centered and Prayer Book -honoring, analogous to how the especially penitential Sundays would be punctuated by the Great Litany.

Unlike my appointing of the Litany, however, the Morning Prayer + Holy Communion combo pack did not last. It’s significantly longer, it’s clunkier, and on the days that I appointed this there was usually a lot of wonderful music that we wanted to sing as well. It may be that the Office & Eucharist combination would work better in a low-music setting. It may be that this combination may better be achieved as two separated worship services with a time for Bible Study or Sunday School or Catechesis in between.

Or, hey, maybe you actually do want to plan a worship that’s 1½-2 hours long, and then a full Morning Office with a full Eucharist back-to-back is a perfectly Anglican way to achieve that!

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Beyond Sunday Communion part 1: The Litany & Communion

The Prayer Book tradition of worship is rich and robust, providing not only rites and rituals for individual worship services but indeed for an entire life of Christian worship. As a part of this ambitious large-scale schema, it should come as no surprise that there’s more to worship than simply going to Holy Communion every Sunday morning. There are the daily rounds of prayer, punctuated by the [Great] Litany a couple times per week, various pastoral offices for key stages in the natural and spiritual lives of a congregation and family, and pointers toward the development of private devotions to enable the individual worshiper to flesh out his or her own life of worship apart from the gathered Church.

What is often missed in today’s church culture, however, is that the original Prayer Book pattern for worship on Sunday morning was actually a three-part affair: Morning Prayer, The [Great] Litany, and the Holy Communion. Until relatively recent times, all three of these were appointed to be said in every church every Sunday and Holy Day. Granted, this was often shortened in actual practice, and by the late 19th century it was probably more common for people to attend just one service rather than all three in a row. Yet the full pattern of worship is still present even in our modern Prayer Books, and the typical malnourished Christian of today could benefit greatly from a retrieval of the spiritual rigor of our forebears. To that end, we’ll be looking at different combinations of worship services that you could carry out on Sunday mornings in your church.

The Litany & Holy Communion

Perhaps the simplest combination of Anglican traditional rites is the use of the Great Litany with the Communion service. The Litany is a longish prayer list with full congregational participation throughout. It’s repetitive to the modern sensibility, but instructively thorough and succinct – a real balm for the “Father God we just—” prayers that often ramble on too long in current popular evangelical practice. There are three main ways that the Litany may be appended to the Communion service.

The first and probably least desirable method of including the Litany in the Communion liturgy is to replace the Prayers of the People with the Great Litany – starting at its beginning (page 91) and ending it just before the Kyrie on page 96. This is not how the Litany was or is meant to be used, and this has no historical precedence. I mention this only because it is permitted by the Communion rubrics to replace the Prayers of the People with something else that meets certain standards, the Litany easily fulfills those standards, and a congregation who has never seen the Litany before in their entire lives might be most easily introduced to it in a familiar spot in the known Communion liturgy.

The second and third ways to bring the Litany into Sunday worship, connected to the Communion service, is by starting with the Litany itself and switching over to the Communion at a certain point.

One way to do this is to treat the Great Litany as if it were a “hymn, psalm, or anthem” at the start of the worship service. You go through as much of the Litany as you want, using whichever ending you prefer to choose (the rubrics on page 97 note what these two endings are), and after that begin the Communion service at the Acclamation. This has the benefit of simplicity and breadth of coverage: the congregation experiences the Litany in its full, nothing of the regular service is omitted, and (as a handy bonus) they’ll experience the two worship services most closely to how the historic Prayer Books intended for them to be observed. The downside, of course, is the length of all this. Plus the stop-and-start where Litany ends and Communion starts may be a jarring experience for a congregation unused to the larger breadth of Prayer Book worship.

Lastly, the other approach is to utilize the rubric on page 96, which direct that the Litany be terminated there at the Kyrie and the Communion liturgy picked up at the salutation leading into the Collect of the Day. This is the “combo-pack” invented for the 1979 Prayer Book, and honestly makes for a smooth transition from one service to the other, thanks especially to the Kyrie being a familiar component to both orders functioning as a hinge linking them together. The 1979 Prayer Book further allowed the Prayers of the People to be skipped when the Litany is used like this, though our 2019 Book has not retained that particular allowance.

In my own experience, I have used (parts of) the Litany in place of the Prayers of the People once or twice, but most often I go with the third, rubrical, choice. With occasional exception, I appoint the Litany seven times a year: Advent 1, Epiphany 3, Lent 1, Lent 5, Easter 6 (Rogation), Proper 10, and Proper 20. This way, my flock develops at least a little familiarity with the Litany without feeling overburdened by a lengthy devotion that “nobody else has to do!” You may find another pattern of use may suit your context better. The Additional Directions on page 99 provide a few suggestions to this end, also.

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an All Hallows Eve liturgy

As most of my readership probably knows already, October 31st is the eve of All Saints’ Day, from which the name Halloween (or more old-school, Hallowe’en) derives. So, as this blog is inclined to explore, how might a church observe this night in anticipation of the great feast of All Saints?

Ask and ye shall receive! Provided here is a simple liturgy of Antecommunion – that is, the Communion service before (ante) the actual celebration of Holy Communion. You can just do a regular Communion service, for sure, but you may not be a priest, or you may be a priest with no congregation present. Why not just Evening Prayer, you might ask? Well, please, yes, say Evening Prayer too; that’s supposed to be said every day. This is something additional, extra, most appropriately said after Evening Prayer, and probably after the rounds of trick-or-treating are complete as well.

all-hallows-eveDownload

Three things distinguish it from a normal worship service.

First is the sequence of Old Testament lessons. This is like a light version of the Easter Vigil, wherein as many as twelve OT readings (with Psalms or canticles) are provided. Here we walk through the call of Abram followed by a number of stories of suffering, martyrdom, and perseverance. This is also an excellent opportunity for people to discover the close connection between Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) 44 and Hebrews 11, the former being one of the lessons in the lectionary for All Saints’ Day.

The second distinction is the provision of additional prayers that reference the saints and the departed. As the Prayers of the People in our prayer book end with a petition which acknowledges them, these work either as a replacement for that line or as an extension to it.

Lastly, the ending dialogue is taken from the Prayers for a Vigil that the Prayer Book provides for when someone has died.

Because this is not a sacramental service, full vestments are not appropriate; the minister would only need a surplice and preaching scarf (tippet). But if Communion were to follow, purple/violet vestments would be appropriate, as this liturgy is largely a vigil preceding the feast rather than an early observation of the feast itself. October 31st should also be considered a fast day, as it is a day preceding a major holy day, though good luck telling your kids that as they collect candy!

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Paedocommunion: a feature or a bug?

There are a couple inconsistencies in the 2019 Prayer Book that I would like to address, gently, carefully, and with respect. Both involve doctrine and practice that were changed in the 20th century and are accepted by some otherwise-conservative Anglicans today without even batting an eye, yet grumpily condemned by the more traditionalist brethren. And the 2019 Prayer Book, perhaps predictably, has ended up awkwardly with a foot in each camp, so to speak. Is this a feature or a bug?

The issue that I’m going to address here is paedocommunion, the practice of serving Holy Communion to infants and small children, requiring only that they first be baptized. From what I have seen, this practice has been found among some of the more strictly traditional Anglican provinces, not just the ACNA, but there are still people in our midst who are hesitant or outright opposed to this practice. Historically, the Prayer Book tradition has required that one be Confirmed, or at least “desirous to be confirmed” in order to receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion. That loophole exception proved useful in the early years of the Episcopal Church in the USA when bishops were scarce, but that temporary situation soon went away and regular discipline was eventually resumed, as far as I know. Other Protestant (as well as Roman) traditions were all on the same page: receiving Communion requires a confession of faith, repentance of sin, and the desire to commune with Christ. Basically, if you just read 1 Corinthians 11:27-32 at face value, you get the rule that all of Western Christianity observed for over a thousand years.

But there are rumblings concerning the varied practices in the Early Church, and there is the ongoing witness of Eastern Orthodox practice wherein a child is baptized and “confirmed” (properly, chrismated) all at once, and then go on to receive Communion before what Westerners would call the Age of Reason. But we’re not confirming our infants, like they are, so what changed in Western Christian thought that has led so many Anglicans (and certain other traditions) to make such a radical change in practice?

The answer is largely found in the doctrine of Holy Baptism. It is no secret that the 1979 Prayer Book contains a severe shift in baptismal theology compared to the Prayer Book tradition previously. It became less about cleansing from sin and the beginning of the new life in Christ and more about joining the family of God and belonging to the mission of the Church. The Preface to the 2019 Prayer Book, on page 4, even calls this out:

Baptismal theology, especially in North America, was affected by radical revisions to the received Christian understanding, and came perilously close to proclaiming a gospel of individual affirmation rather than of personal transformation and sanctification.

The poster child for this was “The Baptismal Covenant”, which took some traditional elements of the examination of the candidates and set them in a context that shifts the emphasis from Baptism being a gracious gift of God toward Baptism being a commitment that we make as individuals.

All that being said, the question now arises: what does the 2019 Prayer Book do about all this? The Preface expresses clear concerns about the previous baptismal liturgy, and the 2019 Baptism service does a good job of bringing back several elements of historic prayers. There is still a thread of emphasis on “welcome to the family of God”, but that’s fine because it is (first of all) correct, and (secondly) not a theme original to 1979 but already cropping up in 1962 and 1928 alongside the historic liturgical forms. One might quibble over the quality of the balance between “welcome to the family” and “this child is now regenerate”, but it can safely be said that our baptismal liturgy is once again within the bounds of Anglican orthodoxy.

And yet, nearly the entire ACNA communes its not-yet-Confirmed members. And so do some of the Continuing churches who never even adopted the 1979 Prayer Book in the first place. So when you look at the 2019 Prayer Book and observe the utter lack of direction over whether not-yet-Confirmed children may receive Holy Communion or not, one has to conclude that this is a feature and not a bug as such. It is an inconsistency, yes, because we’ve called out the baptismal errors of the Episcopalians since the 70’s and yet we often retain their practice of communing our children on the basis of their Baptism alone. But it’s an inconsistency that we share with others, and therefore one that we cannot simply “solve” in our new Prayer Book alone.

If you or members of your congregation are uncertain about the practice of paedocommunion, I highly recommend you avoid it. If there are scruples or doubts about doing something, then it would be done in fear and not in faith, and therefore should not be done (Romans 14:23).

If this is a subject you’ve never thought about before, then please go read 1 Corinthians 11 and the Exhortation to Holy Communion in our Prayer Book. I have a doctrinal walk-through of it here for you, and an historical summary of it here.

Whatever you decide on this, make sure that you are able to do so in the confidence of the Holy Scriptures and the directions of your Church.

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A Brief History of the Exhortation

One of the most distinctive marks of classical Anglican liturgy is its exhortations.  Relatively unknown in medieval liturgy, the English reformers saw fit to add several points of instruction into various worship services, especially Holy Baptism, Matrimony, Burial, and Communion.  The opening words of most of these exhortations, “Dearly beloved…” resound in the ears of worshipers of many traditions to this day.  The Exhortation to Holy Communion is one of the longer Prayer Book exhortations and certainly the most complex.  The first Prayer Book appointed two Exhortations: one to be said when Communion was about to follow, and one to coax people to the Sacrament who have been negligent to participate.  Both exhortations were provided within the Communion liturgy itself.  The first could be said as rarely as once in a month where there was normally daily communion, but the other was expected to be read every Sunday that Communion was to be celebrated and offered.

Lay people were slow to increase their participation in Holy Communion, however, many having been entrenched in the Easter-only pattern for centuries under the medieval Roman tradition.  Subsequent Prayer Books, therefore, took the reality of monthly Communion being normal into account, and provided three different exhortations: the first was to give “warning for the celebration of the holy communion (which he shall always do upon the Sunday or some holy immediately proceeding)”, the second “in case he shall see the people negligent to come to the holy communion”, and the third “at the time of the celebration of the communion, the communicants being conveniently placed for the receiving of the holy sacrament.”  These three endured from the 16th century until the Liturgical Renewal in the mid-20th century when weekly Communion truly became the normative pattern across the Anglican tradition.

But the use of the Exhortation was already on the decline.  The American Prayer Book of 1892 kept only the third Exhortation (for the immediate celebration of Communion) within the liturgy, moving the first two into an appendix after the service.  This perhaps anticipated the trend toward weekly Communion, especially in light of a rubric added that the Exhortation need only be read once in a month.  This was taken a step further in the 1928 Prayer Book in which all three Exhortations were moved to an appendix position immediately after the liturgy (in the new order established in 1892), with a further-edited rubric that the now-first Exhortation (for the immediate celebration of Communion) “shall be said on the First Sunday in Advent, the First Sunday in Lent, and Trinity Sunday.”  By 1979, the Exhortations had almost entirely disappeared.  The American Prayer Book of that year contained only one Exhortation, with elements of all three combined together.  It was appended to the liturgy and provided with no rubric guidance on its proper use.  Thus the Exhortation has declined in the American use for over a century.

The present Prayer Book proposes to reverse that trend somewhat by providing a rubric authorizing The Exhortation within the text of the Communion liturgy for the first time in the American Church since 1892.  One of the Additional Directions notes that the Exhortation is “traditionally read” on the same three Sundays as appointed in the 1928 Prayer Book.  Still only one Exhortation is provided here, again combining elements of the traditional three, but it is not identical to the version provided in 1979.  The pointed language of self-examination and worthiness to receive the Holy Sacrament, as was traditional, has been more robustly restored.

Dearly beloved in the Lord…  The first paragraph corresponds to the first third of the traditional Exhortation At the Time of the Celebration of the Communion (1st in 1928, 3rd in 1662).

Therefore, judge yourselves…  The second paragraph corresponds to the second paragraph of the traditional Exhortation That Giveth Warning (2nd in 1928, 1st in 1662).

If you have come here today with a troubled conscience…  The third paragraph corresponds to the last paragraph of the traditional Exhortation That Giveth Warning (2nd in 1928, 1st in 1662).

Above all…  The fourth, fifth, and sixth paragraphs correspond to the second half of the traditional Exhortation At the Time of the Celebration of the Communion (1st in 1928, 3rd in 1662).

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The 2019’s “Rite II”

Much ink has been spilled on the subject of a modern eucharistic canon in an Anglican Prayer Book.  Until the mid-20th century there was indisputably one set of Anglican Communion Prayers, in a few minor variations between England, Scotland, America, Canada, and other former colonies of the British Empire.  Accusations were leveled, often justly, that Anglican doctrine was being tampered with in the writing and promulgation of so many new alternative prayers.  Admittedly, 20th century ecumenism has blurred the borders of many denominations and traditions both for their betterment and their detriment.  In light of the great influence of the classical Prayer Book upon Protestant, Orthodox, and Roman liturgies in the English language, traditionalists have a fair point in being wary of the need for such modernist intrusions.

Yet, for better and for worse, the Liturgical Renewal of the mid-20th century has left a lasting mark on the liturgical practices of the Church, and has become a part of the history of Anglicanism.  The present Prayer Book, therefore, does not roll back the stone and seal it off forever, but gathers it up and encapsulates it into a single option: the Renewed Ancient Text.  Where previous modern Prayer Books offer as many as five, six, or even ten sets of Prayers of Consecration, this one offers two: the standard historic rite and a single representative of the past half-century of liturgical experience and development – the Renewed Ancient Text.  It is authorized here with the intent that its theology and doctrine should be understood as fully consonant with the historic Anglican faith.

This set of prayers is derived from a document known as The Apostolic Tradition, attributed to one of the earliest Anti-Popes, Hippolytus.  Writing near 200AD, Hippolytus was reacting to a succession of bishops in Rome who were tolerating various heresies such as Montanism and what came to be known as Sabellianism.  Tensions grew over the years and eventually sought episcopal ordination himself to set himself up as the truly catholic Bishop of Rome over against Zephyrinus and Callistus.  The Apostolic Tradition is his rebuttal to the now-unknown liturgical practices in Rome at the time, and because he wrote in Greek rather than in Latin his liturgical writings have seen influence in Eastern liturgy far more than in Western.  The Apostolic Tradition was reexamined in the mid-20th century and became hugely influential in the Liturgical Renewal Movement that guided the Second Vatican Council in the Roman Church and resulted in several new Communion liturgies both in Roman and Anglican churches.  Modern rites, such as Prayers A and B in the American Prayer Book of 1979, and Prayer B in the Church of England’s Common Worship (2000), as well as the present Renewed Ancient Text, are inspired by the work attributed to Hippolytus. These prayers most closely resemble Prayer A from the 1979 Prayer Book.

One of the most noticeable differences between the two rites is the theological scope.  Where the Standard Text is narrowly focused, delving deep into the doctrine of the Cross, and Christ’s death and resurrection, the Renewed Ancient Text is shallower yet marks of a far larger picture of the Gospel, connecting the dots from Creation to the Last Day.  This is most noticeable in the first paragraph, perhaps giving these prayers a particular fittingness to the seasons of Advent, Christmas, or Epiphany.

The first paragraph is the anamnesis.  Our creation, the fall, and the incarnation are recalled, specifically naming the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary (which is the primary contribution from 1979’s Prayer B).  Christ’s obedience unto death on the cross, resurrection, and ascension close the anamnesis, concluding that the worshipers therefore have confidence to approach the throne of grace.

The Words of Institution follow, and are identical to the form found in the Anglican Standard Text.

Then follows a Memorial Acclamation, or “the mystery of faith”, giving the congregation a voice amidst the Prayers of Consecration.  Although this has no representative in historic liturgies, this call-and-response element has become popular in modern liturgies, particularly in the several rites offered in Common Worship.  This part of the prayers corresponds to the first paragraph of the Oblations in the Standard Text (“Therefore, O Lord and heavenly Father…”) in that both introduce the prayers of self-offering with a recapitulation of the anamnesis or remembrance. The Memorial Acclamation doesn’t just give the congregation more lines to read, but also thereby gives common assent to the celebrant’s prayers beyond the final “Amen.”

The Oblation of “these gifts” follows, acknowledging the Church’s sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, now drawing from the language of historic Anglican liturgy. “We celebrate the memorial… and we offer you these gifts” summarizes elements of the first two paragraphs of the Standard Text’s oblations.  “Sanctify them…” is an epiclesis, similar to the placement of the epiclesis in the classical American Prayer Books.  “In the fullness of time…” concludes the oblations with a prayer for the final glorification of God’s people.  The Prayers of Consecration of the Renewed Ancient Text thus ends as it begins – with a broader scope of the Gospel story than the Anglican Standard Text.  This advantage is gained, however, at the cost of the detailed centrality of the Cross.

The epiclesis has already been discussed before.  Its placement here amidst the prayers of oblation is both a return to the order of the first three American Prayer Books and a subtle way of de-emphasizing the blessing of the bread and wine, because it continues immediately with an epiclesis of the people: “Sanctify us also”.  As in historic Prayer Book piety, there is greater concern for right reception of the Sacrament than for the metaphysics of the Body and Blood in the bread and wine, as the end goal of participating in Holy Communion is not knowledge per se but unity with Christ: the mutual indwelling of he “in us and we in him.”  This unity is for eternity: that the worshipers will be so fed unto eternal life that they will enter into God’s heavenly kingdom with all the saints, beholding the face of God.

The final Doxology is the same as in the Standard Text, only with a different lead-up text.