Category Archives: Liturgy

General Convention Legislation on the BCP

I find myself taking a random walk through the digital archives of the Episcopal Church; I’ll note here a few items I find interesting…

Resolution Number: 1979-A058

Title: Authorize Continued Work on the Prayer Book

Legislative Action Taken: Concurred As Amended

Resolved, the House of Deputies concurring, That the Standing Liturgical Commission be requested, and is hereby authorized to continue this work, namely:

3. To make its expert knowledge of the contents of the Book of Common Prayer available to all inquirers;

8. To encourage and, when requested, to assist by advice and editorial comment the publication of scholarly studies bearing on materials contained in the Book of Common Prayer;

Hmmm. I note that this resolution was made in the 1970’s, the days when people used typewriters and stood in buildings connected to cords when they used the telephone but times have changed…

This stuff needs to be available on a web site or ftp archive—or both.

Resolution Number: 1991-A061

Title: Promote Worship, Music and Spirituality in Congregational Life

Action Taken: Concurred As Submitted

Resolved, the House of Bishops concurring, That the 70th General Convention call upon dioceses and congregations to give serious attention during this Decade of Evangelism to the enrichment of the ministry of Word and Sacrament in the congregational life of the Church; in order to glorify God by developing healthy, alive, attracting Christian communities, the following actions are recommended:

  1. the clear, bold, prayerful presentation of the Gospel message, with a high priority given to the preparation of sermons and excellence in liturgy;
  2. the development of individual and corporate spirituality utilizing the richness of approaches and resources available throughout the Church;
  3. the recognition of music as a vital part of our worship life, with special attention to the needs of small congregations and ethnic communities for enhancing music ministry;
  4. the development of small groups in every congregation designed to facilitate evangelism, incorporation into the faith community, and formation and support in the Christian life and mission.

I’d love to see this emphasis on a clear Gospel message through excellent preaching and liturgy actually enacted. I also haven’t seen much in the way of the development of individual and corporate spirituality that’s rooted in the riches of our Anglican spiritual heritage. As for small groups in every congregation have a group on formation and support… I suppose it could be argued that this is your parish Adult/Children’s Education/Formation committee—so what resources to make the above happen is the Standing Committee promoting to develop our spirituality?

Resolution Number: 1997-A076
Title: Request Diocesan Liturgical Commissions to Urge Use of Alternative Liturgies
Legislative Action Taken: Concurred as Substituted

Resolved, That diocesan liturgical commissions urge all congregations, with the permission of their Ordinary, to make use of materials approved by the 72nd General Convention as contained in Enriching Our Worship ; and be it further

Resolved, That diocesan liturgical commissions also urge all congregations to make use of the provision to develop local materials in the context of An Order for Celebrating the Holy Eucharist (“Rite III”), and to share their experiences with both their diocesan liturgical commissions and the Standing Liturgical Commission.

Can I just express my joy that this one’s never really been enforced…? On the other hand, I have heard of the Rite III option as a back-door to the Missal… If we intend to be a Prayer Book People, then let’s focus on being formed by the Prayer Book—not shakin’ things up.

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.

Back to the Liturgy Theses

Thesis 6: Liturgy forms—and it is both vehicle and content. Our liturgy doesn’t “inform” or theology or vice-versa; liturgy is kinetic theology.

  • To go a step further I’ll repeat a comment I made over at Bob+’s place, “Fuzzy liturgy implies fuzzy theology and fuzzy theology damn sure incarnates fuzzy liturgy.”

Thesis 7: Following on 6, any change in liturgy is also a change in the public theology of the gathered local community.

  • Yes, it does matter if the offering plates get put on the altar or on the credence or if they’re whisked away to the sacristy at the offering. Each decision makes some kind of statement about the whole and that’s a point I want to highlight for a moment. I fully recognize that human motion tends to be multivalent. A movement can mean several different things and individual movements can even be interpreted in contradictory ways. That’s why context is always an important factor in interpretation. For instance, some might say that placing the offering plates on the altar demonstrates that the congregation is truly offering the fruits of its labor and those things that matter most to secular society to God; alternatively, the plates may be whisked away to maintain an uncluttered sanctuary space that communicates a  “noble simplicity” and a focus on full attention to the divine. Neither one necessarily invalidates the other—and indeed the same action in two places may communicate two different things (if not more…).
  • It is precisely because of this multivalence, though, that the worship leaders of the parish—lay as well as clerical—should be able to articulate the theology incarnate in the liturgy and to articulate it at regular intervals to the congregation (preferably in educational settings rather than the liturgy-turned-didactic of an “instructed Eucharist.”)
  • I seem to remember Vicki+ talking about educating her parish by walking through the Eucharistic prayers and discussing the contents thereof; go and do likewise!

Thesis 8: Thus, the authorized liturgies of the Books of Common Prayer offer a complex and interconnected way of being that are intended to mystically unite us to the Triune God in the sacraments, spiritually lead us into the mind of Christ, and pedagogically form us in the faith of the Church

  • I want to especially highlight the phrase “complex and interconnected.” Christian theology and practice are woven in a complex web. Changing something in one place often logically and practically requires changes elsewhere—often unintentional but logically necessary changes that we may not see at the time of the initial change. When major changes are made in the liturgy, it takes a great deal of time and active work to understand all of the implications on Christian belief and practice. Naturally, the best time to do this work is before any change is made.

Chanting the Gospel, Episcopal Style

Previously I’ve noted a Roman Catholic site on chanting the Mass readings and pointed to Grace Church Newark’s (slightly idiosyncratic) collection of pointed Gospel texts, but here’s another resource for you:

One Man’s Offering

The one man is Fr. Bill Gartig who provides us with quite a number of fascinating chant items. Given my lead-in, you’ll not be surprised to see that he’s working his way through the RCL Gospels. His tones accord with both the Liber and the instructions in the Episcopal Altar Book.

Also cool are a number of other pointed items, particularly Eucharistic Prayer A and Eucharistic Prayer B and the Great Litany. Other items including Benedictions are here.

Continuing Theses on the Liturgy

Clearly, these begin where I left off last time…

Thesis 4:  The logic and methods of the Western Liturgical Cycle were uniquely preserved and promulgated in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer and its successors in a way not found in the other Reformation movements nor in the Roman Catholic Church until recently.

  • First, we recognize that the Mass/Office/Liturgical Year appear in the 1549 BCP are are intended to function together. Furthermore, in the preface to that book, contained in the historical documents of our current BCP and coming in large part from Cranmer’s first attempt to reform the Office, Cranmer explicitly cites not only what appears to have been the practice of the churches of Agustine and Chrysostom but to early medieval practice. First, a general reference that seems to fit much patristic preaching:

There was never any thing by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted: as, among other things, it may plainly appear by the common prayers in the Church, commonly called Divine Service: the first original and ground whereof, if a man would search out by the ancient fathers, he shall find, that the same was not ordained, but of a good purpose, and for a great advancement of godliness: For they so ordered the matter, that all the whole Bible (or the greatest part thereof) should be read over once in the year, intending thereby, that the Clergy, and especially such as were Ministers of the congregation, should (by often reading, and meditation of God’s word) be stirred up to godliness themselves, and be more able to exhort others by wholesome doctrine, and to confute them that were adversaries to the truth. And further, that the people (by daily hearing of holy Scripture read in the Church) should continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of his true religion.

Now—while the evidence suggests that the Scriptures were read in course in various times and places within the patristic period, there seems to be no scheme that we know of that connects the readings of certain books to specific times. Indeed, the first record we have of such a scheme is Ordo XIII. This text in the form we have it seems to have been written down in the first half of the eighth century. This is the ideal cited by Cranmer later in his preface:

But these many years passed, this godly and decent order of the ancient fathers hath been so altered, broken, and neglected, by planting in uncertain stories, Legends, Responds, Verses, vain repetitions, Commemorations, and Synodals, that commonly when any book of the Bible was begun, before three or four Chapters were read out, all the rest were unread. And in this sort the book of Isaiah was begun in Advent, and the book of Genesis in Septuagesima; but they were only begun, and never read through. After a like sort were other books of holy Scripture used.

While recognizing this shema, though, we must note that in a fit of protestantism, Cramner neither enacts it nor includes it in his work, preferring to begin the Office lectionary in January with Genesis and to procede in biblical order without regard to the liturgical seasons. Certainly we who have played in more missals and breviaries than can easily be counted appreciate the truth of Cranmer’s words : “Moreover, the number and hardness of the Rules called the Pie, and the manifold changings of the service, was the cause, that to turn the Book only, was so hard and intricate a matter, that many times, there was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out.” …even when we don’t agree with his solution.

  • In contrast, no other Reformation group attempted to hold Mass/Office/Liturgical Year together to this extent. Nor has the Roman Catholic Church promoted the observence of the Office to the laity to the same degree that the Anglican intention did.
  • I do think there has been forward progress in this matter recently within the Roman Catholic Church with the allowance of the vernacular and the creation of the Liturgy of the Hours, but the Daily Mass culture, I think, obscures and displaces a Daily Office culture.
  • That having been said, Anglican practice has never measured up to Anglican intention. In the main, one is hard-pressed to find a consistent Daily Office culture within the Episcopal Church. There are pockets of practice, but it is not widespread nor as widely known as it ought to be.

Thesis 5: The logic and methods of the Western Liturgical Cycle because of its central place in our normative texts—the Books of Common Prayer—describe the heart of authentically Anglican Christian Formation.

  • I see that “Western Liturgical Cycle” has become a technical term to refer to the complex of Mass/Office?Liturgical year. This is handy but may become problematic—it’s current use is provisional…

Initial Theses on the Liturgy

Thesis 1: The liturgical cycles of Mass/Office/Liturgical Year as envisioned by the 7th century and enacted in various places by the 9th/10th is the single greatest system for Christian formation ever produced by the Western Church.

  • When I say “produced by the Western Church” it’s important that we realize that I do mean quite a lot of the Western Church was in on creating it. That is, the liturgy was not something created in Rome and exported out.  To quote a heavily underlined and starred passage in my copy of Vogel:

The period that extends from Gregory the Great [590-604] to Gregory VII [1073-1085] is characterized by the following facts regarding liturgy:

a) the systematization of the liturgy of the City of Rome and of the papal court (the Roman liturgy in the strict sense);
b) the spread of this liturgy into the Frankish kingdom through the initiatives of individual pilgrims and, after 754, with the support of the Carolingian kings;
c) the deliberate Romanization of the ancient liturgy of Northern Europe (Gallican) at the behest of Pepin III and Charlemagne
d) the progressive creation of a ‘mixed’ or ‘hybrid’ set of new rites in the Carolingian Empire through the amalgamation of the Roman liturgy with the indigenous ones;
e) The inevitable liturgical diversification resulting from these Romanizing and Gallicanizing thrusts;
f) the return of the adapted Romano-Frankish or Romano-Germanic liturgy to Rome under the Ottos of Germany, especially after the Renovatio Imperii of 962;
g) the permanent adoption of this liturgy at Rome because of the worship vacuum and the general state of cultural and religious decadence that prevailed in the City at the time. (Vogel, 61)

  • The gap between the 7th and 9th/10th centuries that I allude to refers to the gap between planning and execution.  I.e., here’s People’s Exhibit A of what I mean. This is a lectionary list from the late 9th century that shows that, while Masses from Wednesday and Friday in the time after Pentecost ought to have appointed Gospels, at that time the scribe couldn’t locate what they were… The gaps got filled in by a standardized system in the 10th century (Type 3 alt).
  • The Western Church has produced a lot of great writers, thinkers, and teachers. And yet I don’t believe any of them have ever surpassed this construction of the liturgical year as a method for forming Christians into the mind of Christ. Partly because so many Spiritual writers assume these liturgical cycles as the starting place—their works proceed from here.

Thesis 2: The full formative potential of the Western liturgical system, however, was rarely—if ever—fully realized due to the vocational and educational limiting factors placed upon it.

  • Engagement with the full liturgy was restricted to those who lived in intentional liturgical communities: only monastics (of both sexes) or canons ever got the “full experience”. The laity got the leavings.
  • Too, it required a fluent knowledge of Latin. Not only was this not open to most laity, but not all clergy and monastics had both the ability and the education necessary.

Thesis 3:  The formative power of the Western liturgical cycles was not due to its superiority in a single mode of instruction but due to its comprehensive character;  it integrated the intellectual, doctrinal, emotional,  affectional, aesthetic, kinetic, and dietary elements into a holistic system.

  • to poach a paragraph directly from chapter 3:

Within the life of the early medieval monastic establishment, a change of liturgical seasons signaled a change in life—liturgical and otherwise. The beginning of a season marked a change in the biblical texts that a community read, a change in the musical settings and the textual contents of the life of prayer, possibly changes in the colors of vestments in the oratory, even changes in what the monastics ate and wore. The changes of seasons affected life around the monastery; as a result, they affected thinking around the monastery. The seasons were comprehensive periods of formation, mimetic modeling of an aspect of Israel, her Christ, or his Church that engaged the mind with doctrines, the heart with religious affections, and the body with acts of penance, ascesis, or holy joy. Reading the gospels within these contexts foregrounded either primary or latent meanings in the text that accorded with these doctrines, affections, and acts…

These are the initial historical theses that seek to a lay a foundation before moving to the contemporary issue.

For Fans of the New Roman Missal

(Ok—since it’s me I’ll clarify: “new” in this case doesn’t mean Trent, I mean the Vatican II revision…)

Word of the availability of this version of the missal is leaking out slowly because the hosts don’t want the server over-run. Nevertheless, it’s a wonderful resource, and people should know that it’s available. I’m shooting for balance here; I’m letting you know it’s there but to reduce googability I’ll not mention it by name…

The pdf I’ll be linking to contains:

  • The full Novus Ordo mass in both Latin and English (yes, all four Eucharistic Prayers)
  • Square notation chants for the Latin of the mass—not the English
  • The Sprinkling rite with the Asperges Me and Vidi Aquam
  • Chants for the Ordinary of the Mass according to 18 settings, identified as to when and for what they ought to be sung
  • 6 Credos
  • Propers through the year with the chant from the Gradual; English translations without the chant; the lectionary readings on the three year schema

Whether you’re Roman, Rome-leaning, or just a liturgy/chant nut, this is a great volume to have. And it can be found here.

(And for those who did think I was referring to the Tridentine Mass, it can, of course, be found here…)

Traditional and Contemporary Revisited

Donald Schell has a piece up at the Cafe that sounds a whole lot like what I posted a bit back. These were written completely independently of one another and I’m amazed at the similarity of themes that run through them. Especially when one considers the very real difference that exist between Donald and myself.

I actually believe that we have similar philosophies here but there are very real differences in how we put them into practice and would wager that the central difference is what we here the Spirit calling us to do.

But where do you go from there? Do you argue that one is hearing the Spirit right and not the other? Or do we suggest that the same Spirit is calling us in different directions based on our different social/spiritual locations? Certainly I prefer the latter to the former but–let’s face it–that raises as many questions as it solves…

However it continues, I think that the whole relation of “tradition” and what we do with it to our liturgy/public worship is an essential discussion and will have implications on our future shape.

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?