Category Archives: Church Year

Leo: Sermon 39.1

In former days, when the people of the Hebrews and all the tribes of Israel were oppressed for their scandalous sins by the grievous tyranny of the Philistines, in order that they might be able to overcome their enemies, as the sacred story declares, they restored their powers of mind and body by the injunction of a fast. For they understood that they had deserved that hard and wretched subjection for their neglect of God’s commands, and evil ways, and that it was in vain for them to strive with arms unless they had first withstood their sin. Therefore abstaining from food and drink, they applied the discipline of strict correction to themselves, and in order to conquer their foes, first conquered the allurements of the palate in themselves. And thus it came about that their fierce enemies and crueltaskmasters yielded to them when fasting, whom they had held in subjection when full. And so we too, dearly beloved, who are set in the midst of many oppositions and conflicts, may be cured by a little carefulness, if only we will use the same means. For our case is almost the same as theirs, seeing that, as they were attacked by foes in the flesh so are we chiefly by spiritual enemies. And if we can conquer them by God’s grace enabling us to correct our ways, the strength of our bodily enemies also will give way before us, and by our self-amendment we shall weaken those who were rendered formidable to us, not by their own merits but by our shortcomings.

The paradigm that Leo chooses with which to begin his Lenten reflections is holy war. In what appears to be a reference to 1 Samuel 7, he uses the struggle of the Israelites against the Philistines as a type for how Christians need to deal with the demonic attacks of sin: as fasting enabled the Israelites to triumph over their historical foes, so fasting will enable Christians to triumph over their spiritual foes.

A Leonine Lent

Ok—after consulting my NPNF, I have decided on a schema for holy reading for Lent. I’ll be reading through the sermons for Lent from Leo the Great as translated in the venerable NPNF series. Rather than doing a sermon a day, I’ll be doing a section a day. I’ll be posting them—so feel free to read along…

My plan is to go through all of the sermons for Lent, then to read specific sections of his Passiontide/Holy Week sermons to fill out the rest of the time. I’m doing selections because, while they contain many gems of spiritual wisdom, Leo the Great’s sermons on Holy Week are an afront to Christian charity and partake deeply of the sin of anti-Semitism.

I’m not being overly sensitive here lest you wonder—he says some really vile things.

As a result, I’ll not be meditating on the more offensive sections as their only value towards edification is in examining the depths of our own sin and seeing how sin has entrenched itself within our ecclesial institutions.  While I do think there is value in this, enough of his anti-Semitism remains in sections that I will be present that we will have an opportunity to name it, condemn it, and—hopefully—root out similar failings on our own lives…

That having been said, Leo was termed “the Great” for a reason and is a tremendous preacher. In particular, Leo is strong on the disciplines of penitence, explaining how the three great Lenten disciplines of fasting, almsgiving, and prayer interrelate and lead us to a deeper following of Christ.

We start on Ash Wednesday.

A Liturgy for Families with Kids for Lent

Following the same guidelines as my earlier work for Advent, I’ve put together a slightly expanded form of the brief services found on pages 139ff of the Book of Common Prayer as a Lenten prayer practice that the whole family can do together. (And for those new to this blog, I do this with my kids, one 5 and a half, the other just turning 3—so they’re totally doable by pre-schoolers.)

Again, it’s on two pages that can be printed out front to back and laminated. Lamination is important if you use it like we do—we use the morning prayer side during breakfast and would like to start doing the evenbing prayer side as dinner ends. Therefore it’s near the table and for a sheet of paper in our house to survive being near the table at mealtimes lamination is essential…

What I’ve done is taken the outline from the BCP and:

  • Changed the Scripture sentence. In the Advent trial piece I posted I used the Little Chapter from Lauds and Vespers of the Roman Breviary. I changed my mind for this one and instead selected two of the sentences from the Opening Sentences for Lent from Morning Prayer.
  • Introduced an Optional Observance. In our family we use this space after the Scripture Sentence as an opportunity to help the girls learn a part of the Mass liturgy. You’ll note that here it’s the Decalogue—same as in the Advent one. Well, there’s a reason for that—they’re both penitential seasons! As we started this whole experiment in Ordinary Time last year we started with the Nicene Creed and now Lil’ G has it fully memorized and says it along with us at church; not bad for 5 and a half…
  • With Two Options. The other option is one of the traditional hymns for the season of Lent in Father John-Julian’s translation. My only concern here is that the square notation may cause some families to balk at using this option, simply because square-note is unfamiliar. I’m still considering the best way to handle this.

So, without further ado, here’s the file: episcopal-family-brief-breviary-lent

Feel free to spread it around, stick it in a tract-rack at church, give it to your Sunday School coordinator, whatever.

Lent Approaches…

Time to start thinking about how to keep a holy Lent…

I always have a hard time with this. I try to take on too much and rarely sustain it well. I’m thinking of switching to Rite II for the Office and using the Kyrie Pantocrator for the first canticle OJN-style…

I’m also thinking about using Leo the Great’s Lenten sermons as my edifying reading. I may post a section a day with thoughts and comments—but I haven’t fully committed to that one yet.

Update:
For the sake of completeness, I’ll throw in some links to M’s thoughts on keeping Lent and my two-part series at the Episcopal Cafe on fasting: part 1 and part 2.

The Golden Legend: Valentine

From that central source of Christian pious belief—the 1275 Golden Legend on S. Valentine.

Here beginneth the Life of S. Valentine, and first the interpretation of his name.

Valentine is as much to say as containing valour that is perseverant in great holiness. Valentine is said also as a valiant knight, for he was a right noble knight of God, and the knight is said valiant that fleeth not, and smiteth and defendeth valiantly and overcometh much puissantly. And so S. Valentine withdrew him not from his martyrdom in fleeing, he smote in destroying the idols, he defended the faith, he overcame in suffering.

Of S. Valentine the Martyr.

S. Valentine, friend of our Lord and priest of great authority, was at Rome. It happed that Claudius the emperor made him to come tofore him and said to him in demanding: What thing is that which I have heard of thee, Valentine? Why wilt thou not abide in our amity, and worship the idols and renounce the vain opinion of thy creance? S. Valentine answered him: If thou hadst very knowledge of the grace of Jesu Christ thou shouldest not say this that thou sayest, but shouldest reny the idols and worship very God. Then said to S. Valentine a prince which was of the council of the emperor: What wilt thou say of our gods and of their holy life? And S. Valentine answered: I say none other thing of them but that they were men mortal and mechant and full of all ordure and evil. Then said Claudius the emperor: If Jesu Christ be God verily, wherefore sayst thou not the truth? And S. Valentine said: Certainly Jesu Christ is only very God, and if thou believe in him, verily thy soul shall be saved, thy realm shall multiply, and he shall give to thee alway victory of thine enemies. Then Claudius turned him unto all them that were there, and said to them: Lords, Romans, hear ye how wisely and reasonably this man speaketh? Anon the provost of the city said: The emperor is deceived and betrayed, how may we leave that which we have holden and been accustomed to hold sith our infancy? With these words the emperor turned and changed his courage, and S. Valentine was delivered in the keeping of the provost.

When S. Valentine was brought in an house in prison, then he prayed to God, saying: Lord Jesu Christ very God, which art very light, enlumine this house in such wise that they that dwell therein may know thee to be very God. And the provost said: I marvel me that thou sayest that thy God is very light, and nevertheless, if he may make my daughter to hear and see, which long time hath been blind, I shall do all that thou commandest me, and shall believe in thy God. S. Valentine anon put him in prayers, and by his prayers the daughter of the provost received again her sight, and anon all they of the the house were converted. After, the emperor did do smite off the head of S. Valentine, the year of our Lord two hundred and eighty. Then let us pray to S. Valentine that he get us pardon of our sins. Amen.

Who could imagine—Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, compiler of the Legend, completely forgot the incident involving chocolate hearts and saccharine cards…

Epiphany Hymns Note

Several of us at various points have noted the interesting Gospel Antiphon for Second Vespers of the Feast of the Epiphany:

We keep this day holy in honor of three miracles: this day a star led the Wise Men to the manager; this day water was turned into wine at the marriage feast; this day Christ willed to be baptized by John in the Jordan for our salvation, alleluia.

What I had never quite realized until last night is that this seasonal understanding is further reinforced by the Office hymns: Iesus Refulsit Omnium and Hostis Herodes Impie (known in these latter days in the Urbanized hack-up version Crudelis Herodes).

Thus in Iesus Refulsit Omnium, stanzas 2 and 3 discuss the arrival of the magi and their gifts to the Babe, stanzas 4-6 deal with the Baptism of our Lord, and stanza7 recalls the miracle at Cana.

In Hostis Herodes Impie, stanza 2 presents the magi, stanza 4 the Baptism of our Lord, and stanza 7 the miracle at Cana. Furthermore stanza 5 points to other miracles that take their place within the old lectionaries Epiphany season by noting “he healed sick bodies and revived corpses”.

Crudelis Herodes is similar but the versions in my Liber and ’62 Missal contain fewer stanzas; in this case stanza 2 is the magi, stanza 3 is the Baptism, and stanza 4 is the miracle at Cana.

Suddenly I find myself wondering the chicken and egg question—which came first: did the antiphon produce the hymns, the hymns the antiphon, or do they all derive from an earlier common source?

More on Religious Art

M is teaching Sunday School again tomorrow and didn’t like any of the activities listed in her curriculum. So we did some brainstorming.

After considering some interesting options like Playdough, etc., she said, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we could do a Where’s Waldo kind of picture search? Kids that age like that…” (We’re dealing with a whole group together split about half-n-half between those who read and those who can’t so coming up with an activity for all of them can be tricky.)

So one thing led to another and a nother and now we’ve got a slideshow of images of the baptism of Jesus from the Renaissance to the present and an accompanying sheet with ten little snippets for them to locate. The plan is to go through all of the pictures slowly first—everybody look and don’t say anything if you see something—then go through them again, point out the “found” items, and talk a little bit about the picture and what it does with the story.

I absolutely fell in love with one of them and given the earlier discussion on religious art decided it had to be posted. So, without further ado, a triptych despicting the baptism of OLASJC by G. David (1505):

baptism_of_jesus-008

Now I just need to figure out what I’m going to tell the adults about the Revised Common Lectionary (and try to keep it civil…)

Liturgy for Families with Kids for Advent

I’ve mentioned online before about how as a family we use the brief services found on pages 139ff of the BCP. At the urgings of bls, Christopher, and others, I’ve put together the first bit of a projected small liturgical project for families with young children tentatively entitled “Episcopal Family Brief Breviary”. It simply uses the framework included in the BCP for the quick office-like services but is made vaguely seasonal by changing the Scriptural sentence to a seasonal one (users of the traditional breviaries will note that it’s the little chapter from Lauds and Vespers respectively) and we introduce either a liturgical text we’re working on or an appropriate hymn. (Again–from Lauds or Vespers.) For the hymns, I’m  indebted to Fr. John-Julian as I’m using his translations.

I call it “Episcopal” rather than either “Anglican” or “Christian” because the bulk of it comes out of the ’79 BCP, but it’s entirely appropriate for any flavor of Christian… It’s here as a pdf (episcopal-family-brief-breviary-advent) that can be printed out in a handy front/back format.

Mass and Office Anglicanism

Christopher has a great post that sparked this one.

What he, I, and a number of us talk and dream about is a way of taking seriously the connection between spirituality and the daily grind: how does the daily grind become transported into a a day that is productive and meaningful yet grounded in the deep mysteries suffused by the love of God?

We keep fussing around the notion of Mass and Office practice that grounds our spirituality in specific daily habits that then give shape to the days, seasons, and years of our lives.

Specifically this means:

  • A grounding in the Psalms: The Book of Psalms is the most human and visceral book of Scripture that explores what it looks like to live a life in the presence of God that acknowledges joy, sorrow, pain, despair, and delight. It offers glimpses of faithful people overly certain of their own apprehension of the mind of God (“…Do I not hate them that hate thee, O Lord?…I hate them with a perfect hatred…”); it shows souls intent on God that yet languish in despair (…Thou hast caused lover and friend to shun me and darkness is my only companion.”) In short, it holds a mirror before our soul and dares us to deny our baser instincts and our capacities to transcend insisting that as realists we embrace both not only as who we are but also as what we bring to the spiritual life and with which the spiritual life must grapple. 
  • An embrace of the seasons: The seasons of the Church Year are designed to guide us through the full rota of the Christian affections—our emotional orientations and ways of being that parallel and bring depth to our intellectual and rational understanding of the faith. That is, joy, hope, repentence, expectation are to characterize our fundamental orientations and outlook, to form the fundamental syllables of our grammar of faith and our song of life. And the seasons enable the patterning process that sets these things in our bones.

Christopher notes: “Paul Bradshaw asks, ‘What is our intent for the Office?'” And I answer from my research and grounding in early medieval monastic liturgy that the function of the Office is catechetical while the function of the Mass is mystagogical. That is, the Office gives us the basic data that forms our life. In it we ceaslessless read through the psalms. In it we read through (ideally) the whole of Scripture. It forms us in the basics. The Mass excerpts and illuminates particular facets of the light of Christ as perceived through season and Scripture that illuminate the mysteries within which we live.

The Office provides the fundamental context within which we understand the Mass. The Mass gives us the moments (and means) of grace that shock our daily patterns deeper into a life hid in God with Christ. 

Without the Office the Mass offers disjointed and discontinuous vignettes offering little by way of a framework and master narrative. Without the Mass the Office becomes pedantica basic teaching repeated again and again lacking the hints that direct us to the spiritual depths therein.

Historically within the Western liturgy—and I think primarily here of my early medieval research subjects—Mass and Office have been bound to one another and to the season by four fundamental links:

  • Antiphons: both seasonal texts and materials from the Mass lectionary informed the psalm and canticle antiphons used with the psalms in the Office.
  • Hymns: The sense of each season was provided by the hymns which, placed after the psalms and the short Scripture “chapter” (usually a line or two long) sounded the key notes of the season that moved the prayer of the Office from the Psalms to the gospel canticle 
  • Preces: Particularly in major seasons the Epistle from the Sundays Mass would work its way into the preces, the systm of bids and responses that followed the gospel canticles in the major offices of the psalms in the minor ones.
  • The Collects: The collects of the major offices bound the season, Mass and Office together, uniting them in a common, brief, memorizable and memorable prayer. Snatches of Scripture from the Mass Lectionaries—both Gospel and Epistle tied (or had the potential to tie) the connections between season, Mass, and Office even tighter into a harmonioous whole. 

Looking at traditional Anglican Offices, though, the Books of Common Prayer have consistently jettisoned the first three and retained only the forth. However the combination of the ’79 American Prayer Book and the adoption of the Revised Common Lectionary have, through ignorance or disregard, further eroded the ties that bound the three together in the collects.

Nothing short of a complete overhaul of the prayer-book collect system will make this pedagogical and theological vehicle operative again. 

And yet we are not without classically Anglican resources or hope. Catholic-leaning Anglicans have kept the breviary hymn tradition alive for centuries forwarding both Roman and Sarum options for the continued use of praying communities. And the 1662’s use of seasonal collects for Advent and Lent, the octave retention of the Collect for Christmas  signal an awareness and a need for the seasonal patterning in both Office and Mass.

Beginnings

Ok—that’s all very theoretical and all. So what do we do now? I’ve got a suggestion. It’s a simple one but it’s a place to start.

Can busy modern households manage full offices everyday?Can we incarnate full-on Mass and Office Anglicanism in modern family communities? Well, it’s not been our experience. Individuals in the households can pray the Offices given schedules with flexibility, but not the whole family, not together. However, what has been working for us is the use of the Brief Offices on pages 137 to 140 of your BCP. At breakfast we pray the morning one (p. 137) at night we use Compline (p. 140) for bedtime prayers. 

Lil’ G (the 5 yr old) memorized the latter when she was 3 and is the major driving force for morning prayer at breakfast.

No, it’s not immersion in the psalter but a bit of a couple of psalms everyday is surely better than none at all. Why not include a seasonal hymn in the space provided for it there and add in the collect of the day before the concluding collect of the office?

It’s basic. It’s doable. It points us towards the pattern of Mass and Office Anglicanism.