On Sung (And Other) Masses

Let’s clarify some terminology, shall we?

There are, fuctionally, three chief kinds of masses done in modern Episcopal Churches:

  • High Mass
  • Sung Mass
  • Low Mass

Let’s go through these.

Low Mass: This is a service where the priest and deacon say their parts. There’s no singing. It’s purely a said mass. However, this doesn’t preclude the use of hymns. There can be Low Masses with hymns as well as Low Masses without hymns. Your typical 8 AM service (whether Rite I or Rite II) tends to be a Low Mass without hymns; your typical Low Church service also tends to be a Low Mass (whether they’d refer to it as such or not) no matter how many hymns or praise songs get crammed into it.

There also aren’t a whole lot of servers in a mass of this sort, generally only one or two. Incense is not used; it doesn’t make much sense to have a Solemn Low Mass (Liturgically, “Solemn” = Incense).

Sung Mass: Now, when I use the term “Sung Mass” I mean the same thing as a missa cantata. I know that some authorities—particularly those in the earlier part of the 20th century—use “Sung Mass” as a term for a Low Mass with hymns. (This is the position of Ritual Notes, 9th edition.) However, in our current situation, saying “Sung Mass” makes more sense for two reasons: 1) using the Latin term seems a bit too precious, and 2) the literal meaning of the English means “a mass that is sung” not “a mass that is said where  some hymns are stuck in.”

In a Sung Mass, everything that would normally be said by the priest is sung. (Hence the note “Where rubrics indicate that a part of a service is to be ‘said,’ it must be understood to include ‘or sung,’ and vice versa.” on p. 14 of the BCP.) This category is the point of the post so I’m going to stop here and revisit this in a moment.

Generally there are at least two servers, often more. A choir is a nice thing but not essential. It does make sense to have incense here; a Solemn Sung Mass is not uncommon among Episcopal Churches that use incense.

High Mass: High Masses aren’t terribly common around the Episcopal Church and are only seen at some Anglo-Catholic parishes. High Masses are always sung, not said. The difference between a Sung Mass and a High Mass is personnel. A High Mass has a subdeacon as well as a full deacon; a Sung Mass does not. You can be as tricked-out and smokey as you like but without a subdeacon, you’re doing a Sung Mass not a High Mass.

[subdeacon tangent]

The Episcopal Church has formal ranks for priests and deacons—subdeacons, not so much. In the old days, subdeacon was one of the nine grades of ordination through which one traveled, and was the one in order right before deacon. The Liturgical Renewal Movement and therefore Vatican II didn’t like the nine grade system and tossed it out, officially abolishing the subdeacon.  Since no order for such an ordination exists, a subdeacon in the Episcopal Church can be a layperson but ought to have the training and qualities of life to fit the bill. If it were up to me—which of course it’s not—I’d think that officially licensed lay readers ought to be taught how to subdeacon, that being the closest thing to it these days.

It’s frowned upon but permissible to have a priest function as a deacon in a Sung or High Mass. Where there are deacons, a deacon ought to be used. Nothing annoys me more, however, than seeing a priest serve as a subdeacon. If it can be a lay position, than it ought to be one. In a church that puts a great emphasis on the ministry of the Baptized, a layperson serving properly as a vested sacred minister (i.e., not trying to usurp the priestly or diaconal roles) is a good reminder.

[/subdeacon tangent]

Alright—let’s go back to the Sung Mass again in order to engage this crucial question: What parts of a Sung Mass are Sung?

Let’s start by looking at our resources. The loose-leaf Altar Book edition of the BCP has a Musical Appendix that begins on p. 215 and goes through p. 238. It includes:

  • Opening Acclamations for the various seasons and occasions
  • Salutations  for use before prayers
  • 2 Collect Tones (the first of which is specifically identified for the Collect for Purity)
  • Directions and tones on chanting the “Lessons Before the Gospel”
  • 2 Gospel Tones
  • Prayers of the People, Forms I and V
  • [The Sursum Corda (Lift up your hearts) and Proper Prefaces are elsewhere in the book depending on rite, season or occasion]
  • The Christ Our Passover fraction anthem
  • 2 Invitation to Communion Tones
  • Blessings
  • Dismissals
  • Baptism Material

Hey, that’s quite a lot of material. Let’s flip over to the Hymnal now. The Eucharistic service music is found from S76 through S176. The Glorias are found in the Canticle section from S272 through S281. These items include:

  • Opening Acclamations (S76-83)
  • Kyries in Greek and English (S84-98)
  • Trisagion (S99-102)
  • Nicene Creed (S103-105)
  • Prayers of the People: Forms I, III, IV, and V (S106-109)
  • The Peace (S110-111)
  • Rite I Eucharistic Prayers
    • Sursum Corda (S112)
    • Sanctus (S113-117)
    • Conclusion of Prayer and Amen (S118)
    • Lord’s Prayer (S119)
  • Rite II Eucharistic Prayers
    • Sursum Corda (S120)
    • Sanctus (S121-131)
    • Memorial Acclamations (S132-141)
    • Conclusion of Prayer and Amen (S142)
    • Amen (S143-147)
    • Lord’s Prayer (S148-150)
  • Fraction Anthems (S151-172)
  • Episcopal Blessing with Responses (S173)
  • Dismissals (S174-176)
  • Glorias (S272-281)

Between the Hymnal and the Altar Book, the clergy and congregation have music for basically every part of the service except for the Confession of Sin, the middle parts of the Canon of the Mass, and the Post-Communion Prayer (both of which could be monotoned if you had to).

What I’ve seen in practice and what makes sense is to have a few different levels in the Sung Mass:

  • One where everything singable is sung except for the Lessons which are read
  • One where everything singable is sung on the Simple Tones
  • One where everything singable is sung on the Solemn Tones

These seem like good differences to distinguish between various parts of the liturgical year.

If you’ve stuck with me this far, you’ll notice an option that I don’t list here. In fact, one of the most commonly encountered Episcopal services isn’t found here. That’s the one where the service is said up until the Sursum Corda, then the Sursum Corda and the Proper Preface are sung and everything else is said.

This way of proceeding is common. It is also legal according to the rubrics of the prayer-book. But logically—theologically—what is this arrangement saying? That the Eucharist is a completely different kind of thing than what preceded it? Is this something that we want to be saying?

Galley is of the opinion that this is fine:

It is . . . important to point out that it is fully legitimate to sing [the Gloria and the Sanctus], or at least the Sanctus, even at celebrations at which there is no other music whatever. (It is also appropriate to sing the Sursum corda dialogue and the preface in such circumstances.) (Ceremonies of the Eucharist, 46)

Really? Why “appropriate”? To use my terminology, Galley is making the argument that the Gloria and the Sanctus should be considered songs and that, as in a Low Mass with hymns, they can be dropped in. I see his point here. In point of fact, these two parts of the Ordinary are angelic hymns in ways that the rest of the Ordinary is not. What does not make sense to me is the approval to then sing the Sursum corda and the Proper Preface that lead into the Sanctus without singing anything else. Again, what makes this appropriate? If the priest sings these parts, why not the rest? If the congregation can handle singing the Sursum corda dialogue and the Sanctus, then why not the Amen and other parts as well?

You wouldn’t usher in a subdeacon at the Offertory to switch a Sung Mass to a High Mass in the middle of a service. You wouldn’t sing the mass through the creed, then start speaking everything. So why speak until the Sursum corda and only then begin to sing?

Important Cafe Piece

I have a new piece up today at the Episcopal Café. It’s a response to Jim’s challenge that we start confronting the problems facing the Episcopal Church head on. In this piece, I focused on what I see as not negotiable. Clearly, the thing that I identify—the prayer-book—will be no surprise to regular readers.

The reason that I call this “important” is because I’ve done a couple of things here that I think are significant.

First, I’ve presented in a nutshell what I understand to be the animating spirituality behind the prayer-book system. This isn’t something that we talk about much. In most presentations that I’ve heard where clergy present the prayer-book to their congregations (when such a thing is even done), this is the biggest piece left absent.

Second, I’ve tried to be systemic and show how our Anglican spirituality ties to our liturgical practice and how that, in turn, identifies directions that we should head in. Now—if our chief goal is  revitalizing the Episcopal Church as a local political action committee, then my suggestions will be quite unhelpful. If we’re interested in revitalizing it as a prayer-book people, then these thoughts may be of more use. As other people write responses or posts of their own, this is the kind of thinking I hope we will see. Not just narrow suggestions on how to tweak organization or structure, but attention to the whole system going back to our first principles and an interest in how attention to these principles will help us develop a leaner but fitter body.

‘Cause, folks, “leaner” is coming whether we want it or not; our decision is whether we want it to be “fitter” and what that looks like.

Rising Spiritual Honesty?

Fr. Bryan Owen comments on a USA Today news story that’s been making its way around the religion blogs. It’s on what appears to be rising spiritual apathy among the young.

What struck me in this post was a quote from a guy who had written a book on the topic named Kinnaman:

Kinnaman himself says this: “‘Spiritual’ is the hipster way of saying they’re concerned with social injustice. But if you strip away the hipster factor, I’d estimate seven in ten young adults would say they don’t see much influence of God or religion in their lives at all.”

I think that what he says here is probably true for a certain segment of that group. But an even more important point is that we don’t all mean the same thing when we say “spiritual.”

But here’s the thing: I think it’s always been that way. I don’t think this is a new phenomenon. Rather, I think society is more permissive about people expressing what they think on these matters. Church is no longer one of the main social glues in American life. You won’t be missing out or harming yourself socially or professionally if you don’t go to church. Without church being one of required elements of conformist culture, there’s a new freedom to just say what you truly think on these things and to act on it.

I believe that people come hardwired with differing levels of religiosity. Some people seem to be just fine with the hour a week on Sunday morning thing. Others seem to be ok with even less than that. Questions about meaning, purpose, what it’s all about are just on different places on their radar screen. Some, like myself, think that these are some of the most important questions that we can ask and are continually wrestling with them.

On the other hand, I think that our culture is also getting better at dulling us to the import and impact of these questions. My evidence would be the tremendous growth of the entertainment and mass media industries over the past century. Humans have always had news, sports, music, entertainment—but never at levels like this before, and never so closely aligned and coordinated around a global consumer culture.

Fr. Owen is right; the church has a hard row to hoe. But these are my take-aways:

  • Just know that different people are looking to satisfy different levels of apparent religious need. Not everybody is going to be hardcore church people (We sometimes forget that.)
  • However, there can be a real difference between perceived religious need and actual religious need. Crises—whether societal or personal—are often the great drivers that make people sit up and take notice and realize that there actually is a gap between their perception and their true reality (but crises usually only provide a short window after which they go back to sleep).
  • We need to be providing a clear understanding of what “spiritual” really means (or “religious” for that matter) and encourage people to figure out what they think they mean when they say it. That’s an important part of developing an honest and authentic spirituality.

Preaching Polls

Ok—I need your help.

I’ve got some questions that I’d like some completely honest (and completely anonymous) answers to. I’m wondering about the process of preaching—particularly in terms of sermon composition—both from the clergy and the lay perspective. As a result, I’m going to put up a couple of informal, unscientific polls in order to get a sense of where things are for the clergy and the laity in the audience.

Like I said, this is completely anonymous. please don’t try to second-guess the questions, just lay it out there. I’d love some follow-up comments as well if you’ve got them or want to clarify an answer or add a more precise one. Again—be as public or as anonymous as you want to be.

If you’re wondering what this is for, it’s more coming out of my own curiosity as much as anything else. Folks who’ve been around for a while know my background–for those who haven’t hitting a few biography points may be helpful. I have a Ph.D. in New Testament but my main interest in the field is how the New Testament gets applied congregationally, particularly in preaching and the liturgy. Homiletics (the upscale term for preaching) was my outside area (secondary specialty) in my Ph.D.  I served a Lutheran congregation for a year as a pastoral intern and preached at least twice a month, often more, and did supply work before my move to the Episcopal Church. So I know what it’s like to write a sermon in the midst of a busy clergy schedule. I’ve also been a clergy spouse for 6+ years; I’ve seen my wife juggle sermon-writing with all of her other duties. I’ve taught 6 semesters of preaching n seminary in addition to my academic work so I know what’s taught and what pitfalls preaching teachers are trying to help their students avoid. I’ve also sat in congregations for 30+ years as a regular pew-warmer and listened to (and analyzed and judged) sermons from that perspective. All in all, I think I have a pretty well-rounded experience around the process. So—I know what I did when I preached; I know what my wife does when she preaches. What do you do? Or what do you want to hear?

(I’d also appreciate links to this post so I can get a wider set of responses!)

Please be honest—this is for posterity… :-)

For the Clergy…

 

For the Laity…

Chant Book Internet Reference

If you have any interest at all in Gregorian chant, then you must MUST visit this site: Gregorian chant books for the Roman Catholic liturgy. It’s the best source that I’ve seen anywhere that pulls together not only the massive corpus of chant materials but links to where such things can be found on the web.

In terms of medieval material, the editor only skims the top, pointing out the key manuscripts of the San Gall library and does not connect to the many other chant manuscripts in many other digitized collections around the web, but this does not at all diminish the vast volume of work that has gone into this.

They say that to the man who has a hammer the whole world looks like a nail. I’m more than guilty of this myself, but—as a database guy—I can’t help thinking that supplementing this long tabular format with a basic database interface for easy access would make it that much more useful.

h/t to Jeffrey Tucker and the good folks at the Chant Cafe.

Dates and the 7-Week Psalm Cycle

Alright, this post is more for my reference than anything else. I.e., this is a collection of a few random liturgical facts that are more necessary than important.

The Daily Office lectionary contained in the ’79 BCP has a 7-week psalm cycle.

The cycle begins on a Sunday when the psalms are 146, 147 (Morning) and 111, 112, 113 (Evening).

The cycle moves as follows:

  • It begins on the Week of 1 Advent.
  • It’s interrupted on the weekdays of Advent 4; Sunday is normal but the rest of the week is not. Some of the normal psalms of that course appear, but other ones are introduced not normally seen in this portion.
  • The numbered days after Christmas don’t follow the scheme either, but the psalms appointed for the First and Second Sundays after Christmas do replicate the next two Sundays from the psalm cycle.  (Actually, the evening of 2nd Chr doesn’t though the others do.)
  • The cycle begins anew with the Week of 1 Epiphany and moves through its completion at the end of  the Week of 7 Epiphany. Because it’s moving through Ordinary time with no intervening special events, this is the first full repetition of the unbroken cycle provided that we get to the Week of 7 Epiphany.
  • The cycle begins anew with the Week of 8 Epiphany. Note that it continues into the next printed week—the Week of Last Epiphany. Thus, even though the cycle is printed in continuous form, in years when Easter falls early—and thus when there are fewer weeks of Epiphany, both the end of the previous cycle and the beginning of this next one will be truncated in actual use.
  • Ash Wednesday receives proper psalms but other than that, the cycle rolls into Lent with no change.
  • Thursday of Lent 4 has a break in the cycle: 69 and 73 replace the two halves of 105, presumably because 105 ends with “Halleluiah.”
  • The Monday of Lent 5 likewise places 31 and 35 rather than the two halves of 106. Where normally we’d expect 140 & 142 on Friday Morning of Lent 5, they’ve been shifted to the evening before replacing 134 & 135. Ps 22 takes their place on Friday morning. The Eve of Palm Sunday (Saturday of Lent 5) ends the cycle with Pss 42, 43 replacing the usual 104.
  • Palm Sunday morning receives 24, 29—a standard Sunday morning set—but the rest of Holy Week and Easter 1 are proper.
  • The cycle begins anew with the Week of 2 Easter.
  • There is a minor interruption as the Eve and Day of the Ascension receive proper psalms.
  •  Both the Eve and Day of Pentecost follow the cycle, thus receiving standard Sunday cyclic psalms but not proper psalms.
  • At this point we do a little dance… Pentecost begins the last week of the cycle. The next printed day is the Eve and Day of Trinity but we’re going to ignore them for just a minute. The next day logically after Pentecost (pretending that Easter falls at its earliest point) are the week days of Proper 1 (recall that neither Propers 1 nor 2 have Sundays as in the years when these readings are used, Pentecost and Trinity would take the place of their Sundays). The psalms for the last week of the cycle are used to fill in the weekdays of Proper 1. Flipping back now to the printed order we see that Trinity receives the initial set and the weekdays for Proper 2 pick up the successive order meaning that…
  •    The cycle begins anew with Trinity Sunday & Proper 2 and runs through the Week of Proper 8. As with the end of the Time after Epiphany, though, the end of the previous cycle and the beginning of this cycle will likely be truncated in use depending on where Easter falls.
  • The cycle begins anew with Proper 9 and runs through the Week of Proper 15. Depending on how the fall of Easter has affected things, this may be the first full cycle that you experience in some years!
  • The cycle begins anew with Proper 16 and runs through the Week of Proper 22.
  • The cycle begins anew with Proper 23 and finishes on the last day of the liturgical year on the Saturday of Proper 29.

One of the psalms every Wednesday is a part of Ps 119. It’s cut into seven portions which are read, alternating between morning and evening, through the body of the cycle.

The cycle repeats, either partially or completely, 8 times. The last three of each year are guaranteed to be complete (except, of course, for the psalms potentially skipped as detailed in the previous post…).

While it’s an interesting way to do it, I’d still rather stick with Cranmer’s 30 day scheme.

Squeamishness in the Psalter

I’m proof-reading lectionary tables again.  I must say it’s one of the worst parts of maintaining an electronic breviary…

However, I do have interesting things pass before my eyes. At the moment, I’m considering the pieces of the psalter that the ’79 BCP doesn’t want you to hear in public worship. The way I’m assessing this, is calling out all of the passages that are marked as optional and therefore skippable.

Parts of Psalms

  • Ps 21:8-14: “8   Your hand will lay hold upon all your enemies; *
    your right hand will seize all those who hate you.
    9     You will make them like a fiery furnace *
    at the time of your appearing, O LORD;
    10     You will swallow them up in your wrath, *
    and fire shall consume them.
    11     You will destroy their offspring from the land *
    and their descendants from among the peoples of the earth.
    12     Though they intend evil against you
    and devise wicked schemes, *
    yet they shall not prevail.
    13     For you will put them to flight *
    and aim your arrows at them.
    14     Be exalted, O LORD, in your might; *
    we will sing and praise your power.”
  • Ps 110:6-7: “6     He will heap high the corpses; *
    he will smash heads over the wide earth.
    7     He will drink from the brook beside the road; *
    therefore he will lift high his head.”
  • Ps 63:9-11: “9     May those who seek my life to destroy it *
    go down into the depths of the earth;
    10     Let them fall upon the edge of the sword, *
    and let them be food for jackals.
    11     But the king will rejoice in God;
    all those who swear by him will be glad; *
    for the mouth of those who speak lies shall be stopped.”
  • Ps 139:18-23: “18     Oh, that you would slay the wicked, O God! *
    You that thirst for blood, depart from me.
    19     They speak despitefully against you; *
    your enemies take your Name in vain.
    20     Do I not hate those, O LORD, who hate you? *
    and do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
    21     I hate them with a perfect hatred; *
    they have become my own enemies.
    22     Search me out, O God, and know my heart; *
    try me and know my restless thoughts.
    23     Look well whether there be any wickedness in me *
    and lead me in the way that is everlasting.”
  • Ps 68:21-23: “21     God shall crush the heads of his enemies, *
    and the hairy scalp of those who go on still in their wickedness.
    22     The Lord has said, “I will bring them back from Bashan; *
    I will bring them back from the depths of the sea;
    23     That your foot may be dipped in blood, *
    the tongues of your dogs in the blood of your enemies.””
  • Ps 69:24-30: “24     Let the table before them be a trap *
    and their sacred feasts a snare.
    25     Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, *
    and give them continual trembling in their loins.
    26     Pour out your indignation upon them, *
    and let the fierceness of your anger overtake them.
    27     Let their camp be desolate, *
    and let there be none to dwell in their tents.
    28     For they persecute him whom you have stricken *
    and add to the pain of those whom you have pierced.
    29     Lay to their charge guilt upon guilt, *
    and let them not receive your vindication.
    30     Let them be wiped out of the book of the living *
    and not be written among the righteous.”
  • Ps 109:5-19: “5     Set a wicked man against him, *
    and let an accuser stand at his right hand.
    6     When he is judged, let him be found guilty, *
    and let his appeal be in vain.
    7     Let his days be few, *
    and let another take his office.
    8     Let his children be fatherless, *
    and his wife become a widow.
    9     Let his children be waifs and beggars; *
    let them be driven from the ruins of their homes.
    10     Let the creditor seize everything he has; *
    let strangers plunder his gains.
    11     Let there be no one to show him kindness, *
    and none to pity his fatherless children.
    12     Let his descendants be destroyed, *
    and his name be blotted out in the next generation.
    13     Let the wickedness of his fathers be remembered before the LORD, *
    and his mother’s sin not be blotted out;
    14     Let their sin be always before the LORD; *
    but let him root out their names from the earth;
    15     Because he did not remember to show mercy, *
    but persecuted the poor and needy
    and sought to kill the brokenhearted.
    16     He loved cursing,let it come upon him; *
    he took no delight in blessing,
    let it depart from him.
    17     He put on cursing like a garment, *
    let it soak into his body like water
    and into his bones like oil;
    18     Let it be to him like the cloak which he wraps around himself, *
    and like the belt that he wears continually.
    19     Let this be the recompense from the LORD to my accusers, *
    and to those who speak evil against me.”
  • Ps 108:7-13: “7     God spoke from his holy place and said, *
    “I will exult and parcel out Shechem;
    I will divide the valley of Succoth.
    8     Gilead is mine and Manasseh is mine; *
    Ephraim is my helmet and Judah my scepter.
    9     Moab is my washbasin,
    on Edom I throw down my sandal to claim it, *
    and over Philistia will I shout in triumph.”
    10     Who will lead me into the strong city? *
    who will bring me into Edom?
    11     Have you not cast us off, O God? *
    you no longer go out, O God, with our armies.
    12     Grant us your help against the enemy, *
    for vain is the help of man.
    13     With God we will do valiant deeds, *
    and he shall tread our enemies under foot.”
  • Ps 143:12: “12     Of your goodness, destroy my enemies
    and bring all my foes to naught, *
    for truly I am your servant.”
  • Ps 137:7-9: “7     Remember the day of Jerusalem, O LORD,
    against the people of Edom, *
    who said, “Down with it! down with it!
    even to the ground!”
    8     O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, *
    happy the one who pays you back
    for what you have done to us!
    9     Happy shall he be who takes your little ones, *
    and dashes them against the rock!”

Whole Psalms

  • Ps 53
  • Ps 59
  • Ps 58
  • Ps 60
  • Ps 70
  • Ps 79
  • Ps 83
  • Ps 100 (ok—this is understandable if the Jubilate is used as the Invitatory)
  • Ps 95 (I suppose here the concern is over-repetition of the Venite is the usual Invitatory)
  • Ps 120
  • Ps 127
  • Ps 133

Funny true story on one of these… On one of my first nursing home visits as a pastoral intern, the senior pastor and I went to one of the elderly women of the congregation. The pastor introduced me to her and said, “Oh, this guy’s great, you’ll love hearing him read you the psalms. Let’s see, your favorite is Ps 109, right? Derek–why don’t you read that one for her. ”

So I did as I was told. That’s the one with that terrific cursing section in it and I remember thinking to myself as I was reading it: “Man, it sounds like we’ve got some *serious* end-of-life issues to deal with here around forgiveness!”

When I finished, there was a long pause, and she tactfully said, “Ah, I don’t actually think that was it…” as my senior pastor attempted to sink through the floor in embarrassment.

Initial Thoughts on Stripping of the Altars

For some reason, the books I most like to read are quite expensive. With no lending seminary library in the area, that means I normally have to wait until Christmas time to get a fresh crop of theological reading material. Well—Christmas has come and so has my reading list!

At the top (thanks to my awesome in-laws!) is Eamon Duffy’s Stripping of the Altars. For those unfamiliar with it, this book was originally published in the late 90’s and is now into a second edition. It is at the heart of a revisionist reassessment of the state of late medieval catholicism and the history of the English Reformation(s). The old view was that late medieval catholicism was a mass of impenetrable superstition just ripe for a Reformation which was eagerly embraced by all right-thinking English-speaking people. In this work, Duffy has two main sections: the first uses social historical techniques (looking at wills, bequests, court cases, etc.) to document the vibrant and coherent character of late medieval devotion; the second section challenges the assumption that the Reformation was a movement just waiting to happen that had wide popular support.

I’m about a third of the way through it and have a few thoughts which will likely be expanded later (and as I read more):

  • This is a great book—learned yet still very readable and highly informative! In this first part in particular, it shows what can be done when social history is done well.
  • This is also a very large book, tipping the scale at 700 pages. While I’ve seen it referenced quite a lot, I’m guessing that this is a text that falls in the same class as Dix’s Shape of the Liturgy: it’s referenced more often than actually read…
  • It’s both informing and corroborating my earlier hunches concerning the prymers and their relationship to the early Books of Common Prayer. I suspect I’ll be writing quite a lot more on this connection.
  • In a sense, sections of it remind me strongly of Percy Dearmer’s little book on the history of the Church of England. That is, it portrays the 15th century in mostly idyllic terms and the Reformation as a rupture caused by a powerful few. I’m looking forward to the second section where I hope he will draw a clearer picture of this.
  • Sometimes he seems to suggest that the evidence he gathers means more than it does. Being able to point to texts is important (and is often all we have to go on); demonstrating how widely read, held, and representative they are is a different story entirely.
  • Social history is a terrific tool but always errs in the direction of the anecdotal. As a result it must be well deployed in using it to help solve the previous problem. But its anecdotal character can be used to conceal as well as reveal.
  • As he points out in the intro, Lollards rarely appear and they are reckoned as naught in the main. On the other hand, he’s quite right that so often scholars focus on the marginal groups rather than trying to sketch a picture of mainstream orthodoxy. I appreciate that and am thinking of how Aelfric fits into his time.
  • All in all, so far, I highly recommend it!

On the Sanctity of Saints

Red State Mystic asks a very leading question at the end of his comment to the previous post:

As a rabbit-trail, perhaps, I’d be interested in your thoughts about whether Saints are Saints primarily because of what they do or because of who they are in Christ. It seems to me that the older-style prefers their identity as definitive of their Saintliness, whereas HWHM sees it for what they do.

I’m sorry that this even has to be asked as a question.

One of the real failures in the theological life of the Episcopal Church is the perspective that we can talk about Christology, ecclesiology, eschatology, the theology of death, and the theology of the sacraments and that we are therefore discussing five different things. We are not. We are discussing one thing: Christology, and are looking at four of its implications.

We celebrate the saints because at the heart of our theology is the principle of incarnation. Incarnation is the belief that the divine and the spiritual do not eschew physical matter and form, but that God has chosen to reveal himself and his realities in flesh and matter, preeminently in Jesus Christ who, as both fully God and fully human, constitutes the ultimate revelation of God’s self-identity. Furthermore, God’s self-revelation through the mode of incarnation did not cease with the end of the physical, visible, sojourn of Christ among humanity. In Baptism we are bound into Christ, as true mystical members of his Body. We are nurtured deeper into the reality of that life through the Eucharist. We are invited in the sacraments to participate deeply and fully within the divine life of God. Not all who are invited choose to participate. Not all who are invite participate as deeply and earnestly as they could (my hand’s up here…). There are those who are invited who even in (and necessary through) their humanity and limitation nevertheless share with those around them the truth of the reality of the life of God. These are the saints. They inhabit the life of God; they reflect the life of God to those around them.

It’s my blog so I’ll give myself permission to be a bit hyperbolic: We do not celebrate the saints because of their virtues. Rather, we celebrate the saints because of Christ’s virtues. Yes, that’s hyperbole but it’s necessary to focus on the main thing: saints are incarnational icons. The self-revelation of God happens in many ways–through their participation in the incarnation, the saints are one of them. Looking at the saints helps us to learn about who Christ is. In particular, I see the saints teaching us two very important lessons about who Christ is and they do it because they’re able to clarify generalities by means of particularities.

First, by looking across the array of the saints, we perceive the patterns that display the virtues of Christ. We learn what faith, hope, and love look like in embodied form. Too often we consider and discuss these virtues in their “ideal” form and any one given person’s understanding of “ideal” can veer quite a bit from the Church’s intended understanding of the term. Love is, of course, the major term here especially given its wide range of possible meanings, only a few of which legitimately capture the Church’s intent.  By looking at a thousand discrete acts in a thousand different situations, we gain a composite understand of the contours and depths of virtues what the virtues of Christ really are. By contemplating the lives of the saints, we learn that love is not just a fluffy feeling but that any definition which does not include and account for sacrifice and discipline is not the kind of love which the Scriptures and the Church affirm.

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why inclusion of the unbaptized into our roll of saints is not helpful. It’s not that we believe that only Christians have and exhibit virtue. Rather, we look at these people because we believe that their lives show us the lingering and enduring effects of being bathed in the life of God. We learn Jesus through them by virtue of the baptismal connection. Looking at, say, Gandhi, can teach us about virtue—no doubt!—but does not teach us about Jesus in the same way as when we study the life of the baptized and what a fully Christian understanding of faith, hope, and love is.

Second, we talk about the “full humanity of Christ”. But what exactly is “full humanity”? On one hand we’re affirming an anti-Macedonian position and asserting that Jesus wasn’t a human body with a divine soul or some such nonsense. On the other hand, we get a sense of exactly what “full humanity” means when we survey the catalog of the saints. This is one of the reasons why I welcome as much diversity as possible within the legitimately acceptable roll of the holy ones: we need to see the dazzling array of colors, and histories, and contexts, and trials, and travails in which and through which humans have proclaimed the identity, life, and love of God. We don’t understand what “full humanity” means if we restrict our vision to a set of Mediterranean ecclesiastics (which is a charge that has been laid at the feet of the pre-conciliar Roman kalendar). We are part of the “full humanity” of Christ. In Baptism, we  bring our own humanness to who he is. Not creating it—for he already encompasses within him full humanity—but as visible representatives of exactly what that means.

So–that’s the long answer to the short question: Sainthood is not a profession nor professionally determined, it’s an expression of being.