Category Archives: Spirituality

Random Items

Extreme busyness continues–I need to catch up on emails but haven’t had a chance…

  • Don’t miss Heavenfield’s introduction to St. Adomnan. I do wonder a little how far I’d want to push the lawyer thing. What would seal the case for me (so to speak…) would be a clear presentation of how the three books of the Life of Columba fit into the categories of stasis theory—the “official” lawyerly way of arguing according to period texts like Cicero, the ps-Ciceronean Rhetorica ad Herennium, and Quintillian.
  • LP’s got a new call! I’m happy for him—and worried at the same time. This will be a huge challenge both professionally and in juggling a growing family. Many prayers for Mrs. LP too!
  • Continued prayers are requested for M’s job search, of course…
  • bls has an article on a renewed push on Confession.
  • NLM has some links that clarify the place of music in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass that are helpful for both students of the liturgy and current practicing church musicians.
  • Great question from bls on Why Saturdays on the Ember Days. Wednesdays and Fridays were traditional fast days for Christians going back to the Didache. So why Saturdays? Good question… My most recent thought on the matter is that I read an expectation in the fifth through eighth centuries that Western Christians would be at mass on those days. My logic is based on what we see in the lectionaries—proper Gospels are ideally provided for Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. I say “ideally” because the manuscript evidence is mixed. Sometimes all three ferial days are provided, sometimes only the Wednesdays and Fridays. For instance here’s a page where the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany has a reading for Sunday (EBD V), Wednesday (FR IIII), Friday (FR V), and Saturday (FR VI) But the following two weeks only have readings for Wednesday and Friday. Very fascinating is this page from the same lectionary for the time after Pentecost where there are blank spaces for the ferial Gospels under the appointed Gospels for the Sunday. The scribe knows that these readings *ought* to be there—but he seems not to have the readings… There was a major push to fill all of this in that only hits English lectionaries in the tenth century or later (Lenker’s Type 3 alt.). I’m not sure what happens to these ferial readings after this point…

More Lutheran Discussion

Sure enough, LutherPunk, Chris and Christopher have all weighed in on Pr. Pfatteicher’s article trashing the ELW’s renditions of the Daily Office. (And it looks like Christopher may be offering a series on it…)

I want to lift up in particular Chris’s point in which he cited Augsburg Confession Art. 7: not only is the particular use of liturgy not specified in the Confessions, it is also true to say that the Office has not historically been a major part of Lutheran piety.

Chris is quite right to note this. I have observed this before and, indeed, it is one of the several reasons why I left the Lutheran Church.

Must-Read Article on the New Lutheran Service Books

Lee points us to a must-read article by Philip Pfatteicher, one of the Grand Masters of American Lutheran liturgy.

He writes a devastating critique of the new ELCA work, Evangelical Lutheran Worship, and damns the new LCMS Lutheran Service Book with faint praise. In particular, he focuses upon what these books have done to the Daily Office.

If you run in any sort of protestant liturgy circles (and if you’re reading this you do…), don’t miss this article!

Both the Lutheran Zephyr and Lutherpunk left notes at Lee’s place indicating they might say more; I’d be interested to see what they have to say about it.

From the Rubric Police to the TechnoScribes

The Rubric Policeman who lives within me and who I normally suppress is busting forth this morning…

I ran through MP online this morning. When I can do this, I normally open up both MissionStClare and the C of E’s 1662 MP and use the 1662 ordo with the readings and collects from MissionStClare. Thus, I’m in line with the lectionary and weekly collects so when M and I pray EP together I don’t get liturgical whiplash. (MSC doesn’t maintain a consistent Rite I—hence the English book…)

Neither of these sources had the Collect for the Feast of the Holy Cross. MissionStClare didn’t have the readings for it either. What’s up with that?! I’ll note that Josh’s Daily Office site had both the readings and the collects… (I would have used the Festal Canticles but again—that’s just me.)

I know that to 99.9% of Christians this kind of detail focus comes across merely as nit-picking and a show of liturgical arrogance and that’s really not my point—and why I try to keep my inner rubric cop on a short leash. (I’m trying to repent of years of liturgical arrogance… ;-)) Rather, the point is about formative patterns. What is the rota that we adopt or have adopted by which we will form ourselves? Liturgical formation is a process that happens over a period of years if not decades. And I’ll freely admit, these things jump out at me because I struggle with them—I’m always tempted to toss my current plan out the window in favor of the next great breviary.

The real issue and explanation in terms of the online offices, of course, is that these aren’t really liturgy issues or rubrics issues—as I see them, they’re database issues. That is, the best way to set these things up is not to put them in place manually, rather it’s to program your pie (kalendrical calculations) to seamlessly plop in all the right pieces at all the right times. In fact, as I see it, missals and breviaries are materials that exist only imperfectly in manuscripts or books. These things have pleaded and cried out for integration with relational databases for centuries and our computer technology has finally caught up to our liturgical vision.

What I’d love to see is a Daily Office site where you could select from a range—what version you wanted to use, which lectionary, which kalendar, with Office Hymns and antiphons or without, with each possible Office either readable on screen or printable as a PDF. The technology’s in place—it’s just a matter of the time…

The big liturgical news of the day, though, isn’t about the Office… Rather, M has been invited at the last minute to celebrate mass at our alma mater’s contemplative Eucharist today so I’ll be spending my lunch hour with her there—hopefully in the service if Lil’ H will permit…

Busy…

Life is extremely busy and will be for some time to continue.

In the meantime, here’s a random collection of quotes worth pondering:

“The principle literary sources of monastic culture may be reduced to three: Holy Scripture, the patristic tradition, and classical literature. The liturgy. . . is the medium through which the Bible and the patristic tradition are received, and it is the liturgy that gives unity to all the manifestations of monastic culture.”
Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture (trans. Catharine Misrahi, New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), 71.

“The various [monastic] rules were merely so many individual expressions of the tradition. All the ancient monks considered their real rule, in the sense of the ultimate determinant of their lives, to be not some product of human effort but the Word of God himself as contained in the Scriptures. Monasticism was simply a form of the Christian life itself, and hence it drew its inspiration from divine revelation.”
Claude Peifer, “The Rule of St. Benedict”, pp. 65-112 in RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict in English and Latin with Notes, Edited by Timothy Fry, (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1980), 85.

…[W]hen a monk is endeavouring after the plan of monastic life to reach the heights of a more advanced perfection, and, having learned the consideration of discretion, is able to arrive at the very summit of the anchorite’s life, he ought by no means to seek for all kinds of virtues from one man however excellent. For one is adorned with flowers of knowledge, another is more strongly fortified with methods of discretion, another is established in the dignity of patience, another excels in the virtue of humility, another in that of continence, another is decked with the grace of simplicity. . . . And therefore the monk who desires to gather spiritual honey, ought like a most careful bee, to suck out virtue from those who specially possess it, and should diligently store it up in the vessel of his own breast; nor should he investigate what any one is lacking in, but only regard and gather whatever virtue he has. For if we want to gain all virtues from some one person, we shall with great difficulty or perhaps never at all find suitable examples for us to imitate. For though we do not as yet see that even Christ is made “all things in all” as the Apostle says; still in this way we can find Him bit by bit in all. For it is said of Him, “Who was made of God to you wisdom and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.” While then in one there is found wisdom, in another righteousness, in another sanctification, in another kindness, in another chastity, in another humility, in another patience, Christ is at the present time divided, member by member, among all the saints. But when all come together into the unity of the faith and virtue, He is formed into the “perfect man,” completing the fullness of His body, in the joints and properties of all His members.
John Cassian, Inst. 5.4; NPNF 2.11.234-235.

Benedict XVI on the Daily Office

There’s a full transcript here of B16’s remarks on the Daily Office made at an Austrian Abbey. My only disappointment in these remarks is that he seems to address them specifically to the ordained and the consecrated. The steady procession through Scripture as mediated by the liturgical year and the constant repetition of the Psalms does not belong only to the consecrated and ordained—it belongs to all Christians and should be encouraged among all Christians.

Even if the pattern presented is less than the 7+1 offices of the monastic rota, I encourage you to make the discipline your own. Posted on my side-bar are links to Anglican and Roman sources for the hours, both contemporary and traditional. Too, the purpose of this page is promoting the Office.

Lastly, here’s a little taste of the Pope’s comments:

Our light, our truth, our goal, our fulfilment, our life – all this is
not a religious doctrine but a person: Jesus Christ. Over and above any
ability of our own to seek and to desire God, we ourselves have already
been sought and desired, and indeed, found and redeemed by him! The
roving gaze of people of every time and nation, of all the
philosophies, religions and cultures, encounters the wide open eyes of
the crucified and risen Son of God; his open heart is the fullness of
love. The eyes of Christ are the eyes of a loving God. The image of the
Crucified Lord above the altar, whose romanesque original is found in
the Cathedral of Sarzano, shows that this gaze is turned to every man
and woman. The Lord, in truth, looks into the hearts of each of us.
The core of monasticism is worship – living like the angels. But since
monks are people of flesh and blood on this earth, Saint Benedict and
Saint Bernardo added to the central command: “pray”, a second command:
“work”. In the mind of Saint Benedict, part of monastic life, along
with prayer, is work: the cultivation of the land in accordance with
the Creator’s will. Thus in every age monks, setting out from their
gaze upon God, have made the earth live-giving and lovely. Their
protection and renewal of creation derived precisely from their looking
to God. In the rhythm of the ora et labora, the community of
consecrated persons bears witness to the God who, in Christ, looks upon
us, while human beings and the world, as God looks upon them, become
good.

(A Few of) My Issues with the ’79 BCP

Inspired by Christopher’s musings, here are some of my thoughts on the American ’79 BCP. Yes, it is a product of the immediately post-Vatican II liturgical culture. Yes, many of the things that they did were good. Yes, it is time to re-examine their efforts. No, we have not had enough to to “live into” these liturgies and to think critically about them before doing another prayer book revision.

Certainly we can circulate trial liturgies like EOW and have discussions, but in my estimation, the time is not yet ripe for change.

I’ll lift up today three major issues to continue the conversation that Christopher started. I’ll confess up front, most of my thoughts here will revolve around the Office and its materials. There is more to be said about the Mass liturgies and the other occasional liturgies, but I’m not prepared to comment on them at this time. Too, I’m going to try and keep these more to bullet-points than fully-fleshed out arguments. (But some rambling will inevitably occur…)

1. The Psalter. I don’t have any huge substantive issues with the translation or poetry of the psalter that currently appears in the BCP. (I do have some minor ones, like that Ps 51:7 must, must begin with an adversitive conjunction! “But” works; “for” does not!) The problem that I do have has to do with the fact that a) there is only one and b) that it is fundamentally a Hebrew psalter.

In regard to a), the lack of a traditional language psalter means that a Rite I service cannot be prayed consistently from this book. Thus, my Rite I Daily Office must necessarily include a Rite II psalter unless I want to book juggle—which I don’t.This lack of a psalter and therefore the lack of a full traditional language rite underscores the fact that Rite I is set up as a transitional rite—it’s a sop thrown to those who prefer traditional language (and structure–and therefore the theology encoded in that structure) and will be disappearing with the next revision.

In regard to b), I’ll need to jump into some history of Bible translation to justify my point. The Bible of the Early Church was the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek translation of the Old Testament with some additions made in Alexandria in the closing centuries of the time before Christ. The writers of the NT worked with the LXX—sometimes referring to either Hebrew or Aramaic if it better communicated their point—but the grand majority of Scripture citations in the NT are from the LXX. The Greek-speaking Eastern churches continued to use it, as they do to this day.

In the West, various people made translations as they were able. And most weren’t very good. Augustine complained about this; Jerome did something about it. In doing his translation work, though, Jerome made a large and decisive break from Church tradition: he decided to translate according to the Hebraica veritas (what would become the Masoretic text [MT]) rather than the LXX. Augustine didn’t like this decision at all, and correspondence survives where they go around on this issue.

Basically, Augustine argues that the Holy Spirit had been at work in the writing of the LXX and that its differences from the MT were because of the Spirit’s unfolding revelation, not corruption or mistranslation. (Jerome disagreed.) I think Augustine may have been unduly influenced by the Letter of Aristeas (which we now believe to be a marketing ploy to increase use and circulation of the LXX above competing versions), but I think that his logic is important to consider from the standpoint of Christian ecclesiology and pneumatology. That is, if the Spirit works through the Church, if the Church is who the Church is because it has struggled with common texts (both of which I believe), then should we use those texts instead of making up an eclectic text or going back to an earlier “unsullied” version? And thus I support on-going study and use of the textus receptus, the KJV, the Vulgate, the Douay-Rheims, even if I disagree on important points with most of the other people who also support them…

So, wait—what does this have to do with the BCP’s psalter? This: Jerome translated the OT of the Vulgate from the Hebrew. But he did the Psalter three different times and the one that stuck was his translation of the LXX. That’s why the psalm numbering of the LXX and the Vulgate disagree with the MT/KJV/RSV/NRSV/etc. Now–enter the Anglicans. When David Myles Coverdale translated his Bible in 1535, he translated it from the Vulgate. Thus, the Psalter in the first BCP was Coverdale’s translation of the Latin which was Jerome’s translation of the Greek. And we’ve been using it ever since…until now. The Psalter of the ’79 prayer book is a break with an almost 2,000 year Christian tradition of using the LXX Psalter in Christian worship. Western (and Eastern!) liturgy and theology flow from the Psalter as much or more than any other book of Scripture. By changing what we use in worship we are alienating ourselves and our liturgical texts from a classic vocabulary which has been continuously shaping catholic Christians of the British Isles from the beginning.

(Ok, that went on longer than I expected…)

2. Variation in the Offices. The major change between the Office in ’79 Book and its predecessors is the amount of tolerable variation. This occurs most notably in the canticles of Morning Prayer. Classically, we have used the Te Deum, the Benedicite, and the Benedictus. These texts are still present, but are occasional rather than constant. I have a real problem with this because of the formative power of these canticles, especially the Benedictus. The pattern and texture of this canticle has deeply formed Anglicans for centuries. Is there a suitable rationale for watering it down to become one option of several? I’ll give you two for-instances to back me here.

a) Take a look at the General Thanksgiving at the end of the Offices. do you see that phrase “holiness and righteousness” embedded in there? Guess where it’s from… And the more you look for that phrase, the more you’ll find it scattered throughout our prayer book. This is no accident—it’s formation.

b) I was reading a Harry Turtledove sci-fi book a while ago. It was an alternate history work–what if the South had won the Civil War? At the end was a speech from a politician. Turtledove, Jewish–not Anglican, had adapted an actual period speech to fit the circumstances of his novel. I caught my breath when reading it because as it unfolded its form followed, alluded to ,and even directly quoted portions of the Benedictus. It was clear even with Turtledove’s changes that the author had been an Anglican, formed by that text.

3. The Elephant in the Middle of the Liturgy. The greatest failure of the 79 BCP in my estimation is its failure to address the single biggest and most important change to liturgy for centuries. It’s a failure held in common between the Catholic and liturgical Protestant churches; how we address it–whether we address it–will speak volumes for the on-going tale of the liturgy as a vehicle for Christian formation. I speak, of course, of the three-year lectionary.

The heart of the Western one-year lectionary in place up until Vatican II can be traced as far back as our sources will go. One of the earliest surviving lectionaries, the Comes of Murbach, stands as a clear witness to the continuity from the late patristic/early medieval period up until the 1960’s. The Western understanding of the Church Year coalesced around that lectionary. Through centuries, the Church refined the year, its readings, its practices, its ethos, to make it a comprehensive tool for Christian formation. Now–it didn’t teach it well, or make it very accessible to the non-monastic/clerical crowd, but by the end of the early medieval period, this form existed to give incarnate expression to the doctrine of the creeds and the primary religious affections of the Christian life.

Key points of unity which often drew everything together—especially in the festal and fasting seasons–were the collects. That is, language and images from the appointed Gospel or Epistle often make an appearance, helping to bring everything together. I’ll argue that as Anglicanism developed, collects became even more important. If the BCP is the source of our unity and theology, the doctrine and ethos expressed by the collects have a central role in determining how we fill out the theology of the creeds.

But now we have a one-year cycle of collects and a three-year cycle of readings. We are faced with a choice. On one hand, we can let go of the old vision of the unifying power of the liturgical year and choose to move in new directions. On the other, we can adapt the theological and formational logic of the old year to the new system and study and work at introducing a three-year cycle of collects that will once again connect with the Mass lectionary. We have these choices—and I hope and pray that we actually think about them, pray about them, and consciously make a choice one way or the other instead of losing our classical understanding of Christian Time by default.

There’s more to say about these topics—and more topics to raise—but that’s it for now. Thoughts?

Saints and Psalms

Someone else has taken up my usual refrain at the Episcopal Cafe… I firmly believe that the more we talk about these things and bring the Office to people’s attention, the more will come to appreciate it.

Update: I have now added a new page on Promoting the Daily Office. It does not yet contain any new material, but it does gather together the Office stuff in a more convenient package.

Thinking about Psalms

The editors who write the headlines at the Episcopal Cafe have decided that my native genre is the encomium; my previous post received the title: “In Praise of the Daily Office” and now my latest is entitled: “In Praise of the Longest Psalm“…

In working on this piece I have been doing some thinking about where I am with the Psalms, particularly as regards the whole “monastic” vs. “cathedral” understanding of how to pray them. These terms arose a few decades ago but I know them best from Paul Bradshaw’s great book Two Ways of Praying (which I heartily recommend). As grand caricatures, these two classifications work, but lived liturgy never fits itself into such neat categories.

As a student of lectionaries, I find it more helpful to back off these terms and to return to the two main impulse that direct Scripture selection. One is the impulse to read in a way that is timely or apt (roughly corresponding to the “cathedral” style); the other is the impulse to read comprehensively (roughly corresponding to the “monastic”).

Since I’ve started doing the Offices years ago my preference has always been for the comprehensive and therefore my preferred way of reading the psalms is in course through Cranmer’s original 30-day pattern contained in the BCP’s psalter. Recently, however, I’ve been gaining an appreciation for using selected psalms, especially when memorized, in conjunction with the monthly rota. So, I’m trying to hold to the Prayer book offices as my mainstay with its comprehensive round, but supplementing it with selected psalms as in the Anglican Lauds that I pray on my commute.

I’d also like to—in the spirit of the EC post—try adding in some Little Hours through the day that use Ps 119 as well. We’ll see…

Collects Are Up

The Collects are up at the Liturgies of the Order of Julian of Norwich page. This completes the text I received entitled “The Divine Office according to the Use of the Order of Julian of Norwich.” I plan to add the Office Hymnal next in a format that will mesh with the Offices so that the whole set can be conveniently printed out (front-to-back ideally) and used with a minimum of book-juggling.