Here’s a new piece up at the Cafe.
It’s the first of two.
bls and others have mentioned the need for us to talk about the spiritual disciplines more and to remind the Church of the treasures it holds. This is a first step in that direction.
Here’s a new piece up at the Cafe.
It’s the first of two.
bls and others have mentioned the need for us to talk about the spiritual disciplines more and to remind the Church of the treasures it holds. This is a first step in that direction.
I have been alerted through a broken link notice (thanks, bls!) that there is new material that the Order of Julian of Norwich’s Liturgical Publications page. There are three new items: a new set of collects, a 2008 kalendar, and—perhaps most exciting—the order’s hymnal from Advent through Lent. I’d posted Advent bits but did not have the time to get to the rest. Thankfully, they have…
Here’s another one up at the Cafe. It’s more practically oriented than most of mine…
“I know what yer thinkin’, punk…
“The evening of the 20th by all rights oughtta be the First Vespers of St. Thomas the Apostle, a second class universal double feast. But yer thinkin’ maybe–just maybe–the Second Vespers of a second class feria in Sapentia-tide just might take it…and you can get away with usin’ the ‘O’ antiphon with the Magnificat instead of the one appointed for St. Thomas…
“Ya gotta ask yerself a question: do I feel lucky? Well, do ya–punk?”
(The answer, of course, is that the antiphon for the Magnificat is that appointed for St Thomas [Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; * blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed] However, the “O” antiphons appear on the 20th and 21st as commemorations—after the collect of the day, with their versicle & response [if you’re using them] and followed by the collect of the Third Sunday of Advent.)
I’ve got another piece up at the Episcopal Cafe.
As I look across some of the pieces I’ve been writing both here and there over the past several months I’m noticing some common themes, particularly around the idea of “place” and the feeling of “sojourning”.
Two items for Advent:
The traditional (i.e., Anglo-Saxon/Sarum/Tridentine) Office hymn distributions are:
Links go to the Latin and English parallel texts at the wondrous hymn page at Thesaurus Precum Latinarum.
M mentioned something to me the other day and it’s quite stuck in my head now…
Why don’t we ever see pictures/icons/statues of the pregnant Mary? Seems like an ideal Advent image… Even the “pre-Christmas” pictures just tend to have her as a lump on a donkey and don’t really show her as what she was—a pregnant mother.
Much has been made of Philip Pullman’s antipathy to Christianity and the film The Golden Compass based on his novels has been refered to as “Narnia for atheists.”
After seeing an ad for the film featuring a regal woman assisting the protagonists, Lil’ G turned to me and asked, “Hey Daddy, is Mary in that movie?”
Here’s a thought I’ve been rolling around a bit recently: The higher your sacramental theology, the more necessary it becomes that you have a robust theology of the saints.
That is, if we understand Baptism as a true joining of the self into the reality of God through Jesus, then we must (or perhaps “should”?) take more seriously our mystical connection with our fellow baptized. If we understand Eucharist as the share of the one bread that joins us in the one Body (as 1 Cor speaks about it) then—again—our relation to the “communion of the Saints” is that much more important. In essence, we must posit a stronger eschatological bond between the members of the Body.
But, a thoughtful evangelical student pushed me on this when I mentioned it in a class discussion of the saints: does this mean that a sacramentally higher church has a “better” understanding of Christian community than a sacramentally lower church? Furthermore, does it necessarily have a better embodiment of Christian community?
My answer was that it is not necessarily better—it is just different. I think it can be said that a higher sacramental theology requires a less individualistic understanding of spirituality and salvation—but does it play out this way in reality? And in how we embody our theologies communally?
…well, ok, great if you’re an Anglo-Saxon liturgy geek… (so maybe “invaluable” is a little extreme, but since I don’t have consistent access to Milfull you have no idea how helpful this is to my dissertation.)
bls directs us to the Anglo-Saxon Hymnarium produced by the Surtees Society under the editorship of the Rev. J. Stephenson reprinted as the volume for 1851. (Here’s the alphabetical index if you want to check for any particular hymns. [Important note: this text contains only the Latin and the Old English gloss. It does not contain modern English translations/paraphrases/equivalents.])
What this means is that yes, it contains a transcription of the Durham Hymnal; no, it does not necessarily follow current editorial standards–caveat lector! So, for basic information this is a great reference to have sitting on your hard-drive; for academic citation, go look it up in Milfull first.
This is also helpful and fascinating for those with an interest in the history of the Ritualist/Anglo-Catholic movements. In terms of “what did they know and when did they know it”, this date establishes the available presence of a classical Anglo-Saxon hymn cycle before the first publication of Hymns Ancient and Modern (TOC here) which first appeared in 1861 (in planning since 1858) and which included some Anglo-Saxon options in the Sarum Office Hymn list of 1904.
For the Aelfric folk in the crowd, there are some interesting connections between the Durham Hymnal and Aelfric. For instance, I believe that the Hymnal was bound with an edition of Aelfric’s Grammar—which may make the glossing that much more interesting since his grammar included a glossary (a list of Latin words and their Old English equivalents). When the two texts were bound together I cannot answer and should look up… Furthermore, the order of hymns in this hymnal can be compared with the list that Aelfric gives in the Letter to the Monks at Eynsham the temporal cycle of which I mostly reproduced here. IIRC, they are similar but by no means identical (reminding us once again of the inevitable variation in medieval liturgy).