Category Archives: Church Year

Important Episcopal News for Today

Today is Friday, the 19th. That makes it the first Friday after September 14, the Feast of the Holy Cross and the traditional start of the Winter side of the monastic year. Thus, today is one of the Autumnal Ember Days (along with this past Wednesday and tomorrow). These days are now remembered as the date postulants send letters to their bishops but these were originally dates for ordinations and such. As a result, they became days of fasting and prayer for the Church and its well-being.

Today’s collect:

O God, who didst lead thy holy apostles to ordain ministers in every place: Grant that thy Church, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may choose suitable persons for the ministry of Word and Sacrament, and may uphold them in their work for the extension of thy kingdom; through him who is the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

As a Friday and an especially penitential one at that, the Great Litany is entirely appropriate at the conclusion of today’s Morning Prayer (along with a commemoration of Theodore of Tarsus, the Syrian Archbishop of Canterbury who founded a flourishing school of learning in Anglo-Saxon England). Fasting and/or refraining from meat today would be in keeping with the spirit of the day.

That is all.

Dream of the Rood for the Tranferred Feast of the Holy Cross

A selection of the classic Old English poem “Dream of the Rood” is up at the Episcopal Cafe. This is a tremendous poem, and one of my personal favorites in any language. The entry at Wikipedia is informative, but I must confess I disagree with the gender-based interpretation section there; my reading is that the cross is depicted as one of Christ’s own warriors.

The full Old English text can be found here, and it’s best experienced by reading along with Dr. Michael Drout as he reads it out.

For those whose Old English may be a little rusty, here’s a full translation into Modern English.

Nativity of the BVM: Words from the “Apocrypha”

The traditional Epistle for today for well over a thousand years was one of those cases when the Epistle is not an epistle. Instead, the first, non-Gospel, reading at mass was from the multi-named Ecclessiasticus, Wisdom of Jesus Ben Sirach, Sirach, etc. This is one of those texts that Bible-reading Christians are not familiar with. Even if you’ve read the Apocrypha, you’ll not find this section as it appears in the Vulgate. Here it is in full from the Douay-Rheims English translation of the Vulgate:

Sirach 24:23-31  23 As the vine I have brought forth a pleasant odour: and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches. 24 I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope.  25 In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue.  26 Come over to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled with my fruits.  27 For my spirit is sweet above honey, and my inheritance above honey and the honeycomb.  28 My memory is unto everlasting generations.  29 They that eat me, shall yet hunger: and they that drink me, shall yet thirst.  30 He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin.  31 They that explain me shall have life everlasting.

Update:

For those playing along with the footnotes…

Here’s the KJV 1611 Apocrypha:

Sirach 24:17-22  17 As the vine brought I forth pleasant savour, and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches.  18 I am the mother of fair love, and fear, and knowledge, and holy hope: I therefore, being eternal, am given to all my children which are named of him.  19 Come unto me, all ye that be desirous of me, and fill yourselves with my fruits.  20 For my memorial is sweeter than honey, and mine inheritance than the honeycomb.  21 They that eat me shall yet be hungry, and they that drink me shall yet be thirsty.  22 He that obeyeth me shall never be confounded, and they that work by me shall not do amiss. 

Here’s Brenton’s version:

Sirach 24:17-22  17 As the vine brought I forth pleasant savour, and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches.   19 Come unto me, all ye that be desirous of me, and fill yourselves with my fruits.  20 For my memorial is sweeter than honey, and mine inheritance than the honeycomb.  21 They that eat me shall yet be hungry, and they that drink me shall yet be thirsty.  22 He that obeyeth me shall never be confounded, and they that work by me shall not do amiss. 

So Breton follows the KJV’s translation, but omits v. 18 in keeping with his base text. So, it appears that the Translators were working with one of those “pauci” texts that Rahlfs mentions which makes me wonder just what they got a hold of… It’s moments like this when I wish I had a Complutensian Polyglot in my library. That would really give us some clues…

Feast of the BVM

Happy Feast of the BVM to all!

M reminded the girls that today is the feast of Mary and Lil’ G replied “Great! Let’s celebrate! I know, we could have a pot roast…”

[In our house Fridays are generally vegetarian pizza nights; pot roasts signal Sunday dinner.]

I’m back in Mary’s Land from the second clean-up trip but chaos reigns–and will for the next few weeks probably as we settle in and get used to new schedules. I probably won’t be online too much in the near future.

Bullets of Kalendrical Crap

  • The ’79 BCP has commons for these classes of saints: martyrs, missionaries, pastors, theologians and teachers, monastics, and generic saints. The general idea of a “common” is that you designate in the kalendar what class of saint a given person falls in so you know which elements to use. If you look in the kalendar in your BCP you’ll find martyrs, missionaries, pastors (bishops, priests, deacons), monastics, and general saints. But why are none of them designated as theologians or teachers?
  • I wonder why Kings and Queens are noted in kalendars. There may be a hierarchical “divine right of kings” thing going on there but from my reading of histories and such I suspect it’d be like noting lawyers—the Church is so shocked a member of the royalty achieved sainthood that we mark it especially carefully.
  • I’ll note that lawyers don’t appear as a category. Draw your own conclusions…
  • The Romans counted days backward. That is, they counted down towards a fixed date (the Kalends, Nones, Ides). So a typical Roman date format would be “the 5th day before the Kalends of March”. Which is why by ancient tradition the Feast of St. Matthias moves a day forward in leap years. The official date is, in fact, the 5th day before the Kalends of March, not February 24th. Thus, when an extra day is added at the end of February, the feast remains on the 5th day before the Kalends.
  • This “Roman Datestamp” appears as late as the kalendar of the 1662 BCP.
  • Nevertheless, this BCP doesn’t mention the feast moving…
  • There are a number of minor date variations between the Universal Kalendar and the BCP. The date for St. Bede is one of them (25th vs. 27th). As I recall, there was a perpetual impedance issue that required some shuffling of dates in this particular case.
  • It (perpetual impedance issues) makes you wonder why saints don’t have the good sense to die on a day that no one else has died on… ;-)
  • Noting the number of entries in the Universal Kalendar followed by P.M. (Pope & Martyr) reminds us that there was a time when being pope meant more than occupying a chair in Rome and telling people what to do.
  • Ditto for St. Alphege, B.M. ([Arch]Bishop [of Canterbury] & Martyr).

Liturgy is Not Enough

As my readers know, I love the liturgy a great deal. I believe, in fact, that the liturgical cycle as it came to fruition by the end of the early medieval period is the greatest tool for Christian formation that the Western Church has ever produced. Much of the great writings of the medieval monks, mystics, and others could have only been produced in relationship to this cycle. It is a great and powerful engine for the formation of disciples.

But it is an engine that has largely gone untuned.

At the time of its creation, it was only accessible to a small number—namely those who lived within intentional liturgical communities, had the capacity to become fluent in a language other than their mother tongue, and had the temperament to turn their wonder, creativity, and intellect to its majesties rather than to other arenas.

At the time of the Reformation, the English Church was the only dissenting group that preserved the key elements of the cycle—the Mass and the Office—but even these were severely pared back, breaking, obscuring, and eliminating many of the connections that had bound the cycle into a harmonious whole.

For most of its history, the Episcopal Church has been an either/or body: either Office or Mass. With the coming of the ’79 BCP and Eucharist becoming the normative Sunday celebration, two hundred years of Office supremacy came to an end—but balance has yet to be achieved. Too, the ’79 book has recovered more of the classical links with its inclusion of seasonal material than any other BCP with the possible exception of the failed English ’28 text.

And yet the discipling inherent in, promised by, the liturgy has not appeared.

And it will not appear.

The experience of the liturgy is not enough.

Certainly there will be some who will start to see and make connections. Who will discover a hunger and turn to earlier and other sources to learn of the connections, to recover or recapture the mystery and the power they feel near its surface—but this is not “most”. Nor necessarily even “many”.

If the liturgy were enough, the discipling would be happening.
If it were enough, there would not be people in our churches who have stood, sat, and knelt through decades of liturgies and not been formed by them. If it were enough, there would not be clergy in our churches who have
stood, sat, and knelt through decades of liturgies and not been formed
by them.

The liturgy is not enough. And yet it is an engine of great power. It does not choose to sit idle; we allow it to do so.

What the liturgy needs from us are three things:

  1. We must be open to it. This is the first and greatest step. We must open our hearts to its leading in confidence that the Holy Spirit speaks through its ways and its means.
  2. We must recognize the treasure that we have before us. The liturgy is many things. It is a path, a discipline, a place where aesthetics, intellect, the affections and emotions are all engaged. We must recognize its value and allow it to have its own authority over us. That is, we must live in it before presuming to change it. And I don’t mean existing alongside of it—I mean living in it. Opening ourselves to it and following where it leads. Because this isn’t really about the liturgy. The liturgy is a path and discipline that leads us into the mind of Christ. And that’s what this is really about.
  3. We must share its riches. Specifically, this means we must testify to its power and capability to transform, and we must educate. The liturgy is not self-evident. You must be open to it—but it also must be opened to you. Preeminently, this means communicating that the liturgy is an embodiment of essential Christian theology. We don’t do a solemn high mass or evensong just because we like it (though we do, of course…) but because of what it communicates about who and what God is and who we are in light of that reality. Liturgy is theology made kinetic and aesthetic. Even when we succeed in our first two tasks, this is where we have failed in the past and are continuing to fail today. The Episcopal Church is moving towards a new prayer book; protesting at its arrival is too little, too late. If we hope to see a prayer book whose liturgies stand in continuity with our Anglican, our catholic, our Benedictine roots, then we need to start learning, talking, and teaching now while it is yet on the horizon and not yet here at our doorsteps.  

All of us who love the liturgy must be intentional about these things if we wish it to exercise even a quarter of its full power within us and within our communities. Through the centuries, I believe the Holy Spirit has crafted this great work as a faithful and true means of guiding humanity into the mysteries of God. But we have to be faithful and true to it as well.

Maundy Thursday Vigil Devotion

I’m theoretical in charge of the vigil over the reserve sacrament between the end of the Maundy Thursday service to Good Friday’s Masses of the Pre-Sanctified at my congregation. Due to my bite I’ve mostly been writing bits for newsletters, announcements, etc. instead of doing real organizing work.

I completed my final task here at the last moment; it’s a booklet of devotions for use at the vigil. Two I borrowed with light adaptations from the St Augustine Prayer Book produced by the Order of the Holy Cross some years back. I also edited one myself out of George Herbert poems and hymns. Since, to the best of my knowledge, these are not under copyright I’ll post them here: Herbert-Hymn Devotion

I noted something interesting in the midst of preparing the other two. The St. Augustine’s Prayer Book is an Anglo-Catholic book that runs in line with current (or current then) Catholicism rather than being the medievalist sort of Anglo-Catholicism. My congregation is not Anglo-Catholic. It’s MOTR to low and very broad. The Maundy Thirsday vigil itself is perceived as being “too Catholic” in some quarters. In any case, I decided to tone down some of the elements that might scandalize and disrupt devotion should a MOTR to low parishoner read through one of these. One item I took out was a concluding prayer after intercessions that was a devotion to the Sacred Heart. I substituted instead the Prayer for All Sorts and Conditions from the BCP.  In reading through the final copy, it stood out like a sore thumb; it has a dignity, poise and spare eloquence that the surrounding prayers lacked. I’m not saying they were bad prayers or anything—I’m just saying that they weren’t the BCP. . .

Weekend Update (aka Big Rant on the RCL)

Here are two things not to be missed from the weekend…

First is the Lutheran Zephyr’s commentary on two postcards he received from local churches inviting him to Easter services. It seems Jesus is going 0 for 2… I understand not wanting to scare people off, but if we don’t seem to take our faith seriously, why would that inspire someone else to join us?

Second, bls points us to the fresh-out version of the RCL made suitable for your local copy of the BCP. This depresses me…

I’m not a huge fan of the RCL. In fact, I’m of the opinion that all of the “new” lectionaries since Vatican II have missed the mark because they’ve lost sight of—or chosen to ignore—the key issue of function in Mass lectionaries. Yes, it’s good that our congregants are getting more Scriptures on Sunday morning (but huge swaths are still missed—especially the more troubling, complicated, and thought-provoking sections). Yes, it’s good that denominations can share resources across traditions (but we don’t necessarily share theology across denominations and, sad to say, many clergy don’t have a strong enough sense of their own traditions to know when an otherwise good resource contradicts it).

The Mass lectionary is not supposed to be the only place where Christian people encounter Scripture. As I’ve ranted before, the Mass lectionary developed in conversation with the Office lectionary; the Office lectionary worked through the entire Bible every year while the Mass lectionary made selective engagement with the Scriptures to highlight the themes and theologies of the mysteries of redemption embodied in the Temporal cycle. We’ve lost that sense that the Mass lectionary is a pointed return to material that we already know and are re-examining from a different perspective…

The RCL is an attempt to meld the continuous reading strategy of the Office lectionaries with the selected reading strategy of the former Mass lectionaruies. It tries to be too many things and ends up—in my eyes at least—not accomplishing its goals.

One of my biggest frustrations with the scheme Church Publishing has put out is that it keeps both first lesson courses of ordinary time. I think this was a big mistake—they needed to choose one or the other. Either go with the typological set that reinforces the whole point of the Mass lectionary or go with the marginally continuous schema that tries to do what the Office does, but worse. (My prejudice isn’t showing through much, is it?)

Lenten Preparation from M

I thought I’d posted this before but couldn’t find it—here’s a bit from one of M’s sermons that I think captures the proper perspective on Lent:

The season of Lent is often associated with deprivation or giving something up. Our Prayer Book reminds us that Lent in the Early Church was about fasting and penitence and invites us today into a period of prayer, fasting, repentance, and self-denial. But Lent can also be a time to add things to our lives, especially holy habits. The Prayer Book also invites us into a period of self-examination, reading and meditating on God’s Word. If you’re like me, though, the idea of
adding just one more thing to your life is almost unbearable. I mean—life is hard enough as it is with juggling children, jobs, and relationships. How can you hope to fit in more spiritual things?

The word Lent comes from an old word meaning springtime. One way to think about Lent without stressing yourself out is to think about it like an early springtime garden. In the early spring last year’s beautiful garden can look like quite a mess. Heaps of leaves from the fall lay around, dead plants from the previous year poke up, and maybe some industrious weeds have already gotten a head start on you. If you want a beautiful garden again this year, then it’s time to begin again. You have to start by getting rid of the stuff that’s there—maybe even stuff that once was living, vibrant, and beautiful but isn’t anymore. So you start raking…what activities in your life seem to just exist to fill space—and don’t really add anything to your life? And you start pulling up last year’s dead plants…what are those intentions that you always wanted to do but never got around to and
now feel guilty about? Or those things that you use to do because they gave you joy and peace, but now don’t? Finally you go after those little weeds…what new little things are poking up in your life that you’re not terribly proud of?

Once all of the clutter has been cleared away, it’s time to put in some new plants. Now some people may just put in fully-grown plants right away but most start with new plants, with young plants that require care and nurturing or else they will die right a way. They have to be tended for a while until they can live on their own without constant watering and care. This is the helpful way to think about adding things to your life—not piling yet another thing onto an already full schedule. If you’re going to give something up, give away something that sucks up your time and energy, and plant something beautiful and life-giving in its place. Like taking a few minutes to read the Bible with your morning cup of coffee or reading one or more of the daily devotions in the Prayer Book with your kids, spouse, or a friend.

So instead of thinking just about giving things up or piling things on, think of Lent as your early springtime garden that needs cleaning up the old overgrowth and putting in some new things. These are the holy habits. Holy habits are the things that we are called to nurture and, like young plants, habits really do have to be nurtured before they become natural. These are the holy habits that discipleship demands and that today’s Gospel tells us to take up during
Lent.

Discipleship, taking up our cross, is a life-long process, not just something we do during Lent. It is a daily task that requires discipline, strength, prayer, and assistance from God. We as Christians are called to be disciples each day whether things in our lives are going well or not. Discipleship is not something to be taken lightly, done only when we feel like it, when it’s popular, or when it’s convenient. It is living out holy habits, something we do each day of our lives until we die. The hymn we just sang illustrates this well
when it says in verse 5: “Take up your cross, then follow Christ, nor think till death to lay it down; for only those who bear the cross may hope to wear the glorious crown.”

Lent can be a great time to begin this process, to begin growing the holy habits that will last a lifetime—and beyond. Jesus calls us to discipleship. Jesus calls us to take up our cross. Not to be popular or to follow an easy road but follow him wherever he leads.