Category Archives: Liturgy

Revised Trial Offices for the Dead

The trial Offices for the Dead that I posted have been seeing some use, and I have received feedback on them. I’ve finally incorporated that feedback into a new pdf version which I’m calling Revision 1.1.

Here are the changes contained in this version:

  • Venite antiphon changed from “O come, let us worship” to “: Come let us adore him.” as in prayer book MP
  • “Rest eternal * grant unto them, O LORD/And let light perpetual * shine upon them.” changed from two bicola to one: “Rest eternal grant unto them, O LORD: */And let light perpetual shine upon them.”
  • Lord’s Prayer offered in Traditional language alongside Contemporary.
  • Minor punctuation corrections
  • In MP2/EP2 “soul of your servant” for “soul of thy servant” in Collect for Recent Dead
  • All occurrences of “LORD” regularized as “LORD”
  • MP2/EP2 Prayer for the Church “eternal” regularized as “ETERNAL”
  • Rite I versions added by request

The major item is the last (Rite I versions added by request). While I prefer to use Rite I when I pray, I recognize that it is not currently the norm across the Episcopal Church. My initial concern was that If I released these in Rite I, they might be seen as by and for a niche community rather than the church at large. 

However, one of the priests who was providing me with feedback said that she and her community would prefer to have them in Rite I. So–it made sense to include them in the revised form.

This PDF groups the contemporary language offices first–Morning & Evening Prayer-Form 1, then Morning & Evening Prayer-Form 2, then the traditional language offices: Morning & Evening Prayer-Form 1, then Morning & Evening Prayer-Form 2

If you do use these, please do give me some feedback on your experience of using them—what works, what doesn’t, what could be added or deleted.

PDF of the trial Offices for the Dead

At the request of some folks who had seen the previous post on my Offices for the Dead, I have compiled them in a PDF.

This contains an introduction that briefly introduces the history and purpose of the devotion (largely adapted from the blog post below)  and also offers some suggestions for how individuals and communities might use them.

Then follow Morning and Evening Prayer for Form 1, then Morning and Evening Prayer for Form 2.

After being asked about it, I decided to remove the rubricized note at the beginning regarding the doubling of antiphons. In a nutshell, in a chockful multi-Office environment,  antiphons were not said in full before and after every psalm. If it wasn’t a fancy day, only the first few notes of the antiphon were sung so the rest of the choir would know what note to start singing the psalm on. (Yes, this goes back to the period of sung Offices and limited books.) Because I left the daggers in for the sake of the liturgical purists amongst us—you know who you are—I included the note in the web versions. For a standalone general-use document for Episcopalians, it is probably unnecessary.

The PDF is located here.

PBS I-XIV

The end of the school year for two different schools has happened for me. That’s been rough, but we’re through it now…

Here’s a quick update on where the Prayer Book Studies digitization project goes. I have now finished Prayer Book Studies volumes I through XV. (Well, almost—there’s still a bit to do on XII, but I’m ignoring that for now.)

This is an important point to stop and make on observation on this collection.

Looking back, it’s clear that PBS I-XIV form a fairly coherent theological and liturgical unit. This body of material goes through all of the main rites and sections of the prayer book and reflects work done since the 1940’s but published in the span between 1950 (with PBS I) and 1959 (with PBS XIV) following the authorization of the series at General Convention in 1949. One of the clear signals of the coherence is that every single one of these volumes begins with an identical preface laying out the premise of the work. Furthermore, that preface makes clear that the work incorporated here did not begin in the 1940’s but, rather, consists on unresolved work and discussions that began in the 19-teens and that did not fully make it into the 1928 BCP:

The last revision of our Prayer Book was brought to a rather abrupt conclusion in 1928. Consideration of it had preoccupied the time of General Convention ever since 1913. Everyone was weary of the long and ponderous legislative process, and desired to make the new Prayer Book available as soon as possible for the use of the Church.

But the work of revision, which sometimes has seemed difficult to start, in this case proved hard to stop. The years of debate had aroused widespread interest in the whole subject: and the mind of the Church was more receptive of suggestions for revision when the work was brought to an end than when it began. Moreover, the revision was actually closed to new action in 1925, in order that it might receive final adoption in 1928: so that it was not possible to give due consideration to a number of very desirable features in the English and Scottish revisions, which appeared simultaneously with our own. It was further realized that there were some rough edges in what had been done, as well as an unsatisfied demand for still further alterations.

The materials we find in PBS I-XIV center around the work of three men, the liturgy professors of the central Episcopal seminaries of the day: Bayard Jones, Morton Stone, and Massey Shepherd, Jr. While Jones died in 1957, the work he had done in the decades prior was still fully incorporated up through PBS XIV.

The overwhelming impression that I get while I go through these documents is of a committee, anchored by these three, that does its work in a careful and thorough fashion. A great deal of thought, discussion, and argument has gone into this work. There are references to earlier liturgical tomes—often those written by one or more of the three—as well as great attention to the sources of antiquity, with a tremendous amount of weight placed on the Apostolic Constitutions (as one might expect in this period of liturgical history).

Nowhere does this stand out more than in the two heftiest and most involved volumes of the collection, PBS IV (On the Eucharist) and PBS IX (On the Calendar). Both of these studies involve searching looks at the past, and an extremely careful survey of the current situation in the Anglican family. I see frequent off-handed and usually silent references to the great minds of the English revision efforts just after the turn of the 20th century. Indeed, it is impossible to read the volume on the Calendar without feeling the tremendous influence of Walter H. Frere’s writing.

The work is careful, thorough, fairly conservative, and completely in touch with sources. I believe I’ve remarked on this before on this blog, but it is worth repeating again: virtually all of the sanctoral collects in PBS XII (Propers for Minor Holy Days) are based on pre-existing collects that have been adapted, tweaked, and modified to be appropriate. Nobody is making stuff up off the top of their heads. Furthermore, this judicious source-based approach was taken up after a test and failure of a “biographical collect” trial run. [As should be well-known to students of our Calendar, this approach and body of work was complete scrapped in 1980 with the triumphal (?) return of the “biographical collect”…]

Furthermore, after PBS XIV we see a shift in the contents of the series. PBS XV is not, actually—despite the name—a volume of study on the prayer book. Instead, coming in 1961 in anticipation of that year’s General Convention, it is a plea. Having established that prayer book revision has been at work in many of the other churches of the Anglican Communion, it has proceeded in those places on the principle of “trial use”: testing stuff out rather than legislative line-editing. Shepherd writes:

For the past three General Conventions (1952, 1955, and 1958) the Standing Liturgical Commission has offered with its report to the Convention a resolution seeking an amendment to Article X of the Constitution that would set up the possibility of trial use in any forthcoming revision of the Prayer Book. This resolution has been defeated in all three Conventions.

The volume is, essentially, a direct appeal to the broad body of General Convention, especially the House of Deputies, for passing a measure that would make trial use possible.

After the publication of PBS XV (which came out 3 years after PBS XIV), PBS XVI would not be published until two years later (1963) and PBS XVII does not appear until 1967. Beginning with these two publications and continuing through the rest, two things happen with the Prayer Book Studies series as a whole. First, the PBS publications begin reworking earlier material (PBS XVI is a re-working of the Calendar material; PBS XVII is a reworking of the Eucharistic material from PBS IV). Second, the studies begin engaging with changes coming from the Roman Catholic world. While the earlier volumes showed influence from the Ecumenical Movement , the great sea-change had not yet occurred. As you’ll note from the date span (1950-1959), this early body of work occurs before the single biggest bombshell of twentieth century liturgics: the reforms of Vatican II.

There is a definite shift in character between the First Series—those denoted with Roman numerals, comprising PBS I-XVII—and the Second Series—those denoted with Arabic numerals, comprising 18-29. I’ll say more about that as I get into them. However, I did want to note this moment, this turn, with a simple observation.

One way to think about the movement we see in the Prayer Book Studies volumes is that this First Series represents a view of prayer book revision that seeks to complete work left undone in the 1928 revision. Although it draws in ecumenical sources and is influenced by the Ecumenical Movement and work by Roman Catholic scholars, it comes from a profoundly and intentionally Anglican perspective.

And I think that’s where I’ll leave it for now: Prayer Book Studies volumes I through XIV represent an Anglican extension of revisions not yet completed for the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.

The Liturgical Contexts of Julian of Norwich

The Liturgical Contexts of Julian of Norwich

Things have been quiet here, and this is one of the big reasons why. In addition to the Prayer Book Studies project, I’ve been putting together a talk for Julianfest, the gathering of Associates, Oblates, and Affiliates of the Order of Julian of Norwich. It took place this week and was a thoroughly delightful time—I finally met Fr. John-Julian in the flesh, as well as Marguerite and other long-time readers!

Here is the prepared section of my talk. It doesn’t contain the great questions during it or the musings that occurred as we looked through picture at the end. Before you read through this, you’ll also want to make reference to:

The Handout

and

The Slides with All of the Pictures

So, once you have those, here’s the talk…


The Liturgical Contexts of Dame Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love

1 Introduction

The Anglican turned Roman Catholic priest Ronald Knox is responsible for the quip that Mysticism begins with “mist” and ends with “schism.” And, indeed, the modern encounter with much medieval mysticism tends to treat it this way. God is a warm fuzzy ball of light—it says so right here in Meister Eckhardt or Mechtild of Madgeburg—or Julian of Norwich. As a result, our writers and thinkers get coopted by a syncretistic New Age mélange that draws on spiritual authorities of the ages in order to say, “I’m ok, you’re ok—or at least you will be once you’re as enlightened as I am…”

What modern people usually forget about the medieval mystics is that the majority of them were liturgical professionals. The order of their days was shaped by the appointed liturgies of the Church—the Mass and the Offices—and, that’s the correct context for understanding them. So, yes, they might write something that sounds like God is a big fuzzy ball of light, but you have to remember that they’ve already said or sung the Creed at least four times by that point in the day, and they’d likely say or sing it another four by the time they went to bed. And thus we read the mystics best when we read them through and in relation to the liturgies that they experienced on an almost constant basis.

2  The liturgical context of the anchoritic experience

2.1 Psalters and, later, books of hours as the premiere devotional materials for well-off Northwest European devotion

When we look at the lay spirituality of medieval England, we’ll notice that it takes part in a broader tradition that we see across northern France, Burgundy, and the Low Countries and, indeed, many of the resources for English spirituality were produced in artistic centers like Paris, Flanders, and Bruges.

Lay spirituality largely followed patterns laid down in monastic practice. As the mendicant movements took off, their forms of spirituality would be passed on to the laity as well, but at the heart of medieval spirituality lay the Psalter. We see psalters being translated in English for the use of the laity as early as the Anglo-Saxon period as part of Alfred’s flowering of English as a literary language, we see monastic style prayer services being adopted in the households of lay nobles in the writings of ælfric in the 10th century.

2.2 Psalters generally

Liturgical psalters, originally the same versions used in monastic liturgies, were either gifted to or created for lay nobles. We see liturgical psalters fusing with devotional psalters by the time we begin heading into the High Middle Ages. Now, a liturgical psalter is more than just a collection of the 150 psalms. Certainly it has those, but it also includes a liturgical calendar, it includes the canticles and hymns used in the full Daily Office, the litany, suffrages to saints, and it also includes the shorter devotional offices that developed following the model of the regular offices.

The earliest of these is the little Office of the Blessed Virgin which developed in Benedictine circles in the mid eighth century and filtered out into broader monastic and lay use by the 10th century. The basic format was copied for a variety of other supplementary offices like the Hours of the Passion, the Hours of the Trinity, and the Hours of the Holy Spirit. These had the traditional seven plus one hours (sometimes fewer) for use at specific times of the day. Also dating from the 7th or 8th century is the Office of the Dead which consisted of only three hours in two blocks, Matins and Lauds of the Dead (which were often said together) and a Vespers of the Dead.

There’s a distinction I want to draw your attention to here: there are two kinds of these cut-down Daily Office “things.” There are “Offices”: These contain psalms and other parts and are longer. The “Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary” and the “Offices of the Dead” are the two most common of these. Then there are “Hours”; these don’t have Psalms and tend to be said either in place of or after a full-on Office which don’t have Psalms and are usually just Opening Versicles, a stanza of a hymn, then a Memorial which is a little liturgical packet composed of an antiphon/versicle & response/collect packet. Usually the materials for the Trinity, The Passion and the Holy Spirit are just Hours with no psalms, but you will also find some books from some periods that will have full-on offices for these devotions as well.

2.3 The Carrow Psalter, Specifically

The book that kicked off this whole topic is a Psalter that lives in the Walters Art Museum which is a mile away from my house in Baltimore. If you’re an expert in all things Julian, you may well recognize the first part of the name. Carrow Abbey is a Benedictine priory in southeast Norwich founded in the year 1145. According to some theories, Julian may have been trained at Carrow Abbey; of course, that’s not Fr. John-Julian’s take on it, and I’m not about to dispute his expertise! However, he does note that Carrow Abbey played a role in Julian’s life as they were had some authority over the parish.

The Carrow Psalter was created in East Anglia in the middle of the thirteenth century. At some point thereafter it arrived at Carrow Abbey from which it gets its name. In all likelihood, it was there during Julian’s lifetime. Could she have seen it? Who knows… It’s a tantalizing thought. We’ll never know for sure, but there’s no doubt that even if she never held or looked at this particular book, she certainly would have seen others just like it. As a result, this is the perfect book from which to get a sense of the kind of liturgical manuscripts Julian would have known and used.

2.3.1  Overview of the Contents

This is a typical liturgical psalter of the period, meaning that it contains not only the psalms but a full complement of the liturgical extras needed to properly pray a high medieval cycle of offices and additional devotions.

It contains an initial section of saints with full-page images, devotions and collects; two cycles of biblical images; a Kalendar; the 150 Psalms; Canticles; the Litany, petitions and collects; the Office of the Dead; the Hours of the Virgin; and the Psalter of the Virgin. So—no Hours of the Holy Spirit or the Trinity, or even the Passion. But, it does have the two cycles of images which are quite interesting. Let’s take a look at some of these sections…

  • Quick look at the Image and prayers for Barnabas and John
  • Biblical Cycle
    • OT focuses exclusively on Adam & Eve, then directly to Christ
    • The handing of the shovel calls to mind the long chapter 51 of the Showings where Julian talks about the lord and the laborer; the Lord dressed in blue with brown hair sitting on the ground and the laborer in his dirty white tunic who is a gardener.
    • I’m not trying to say that there’s any direct connection between this picture and that showing. What I am pointing out is the visual connection and correspondence between Adam the laborer and Christ the Lord who is giving him direction. This picture is certainly representative of the kinds of pictures that would show up in these kinds of books.
    • The life of Christ moves through the Incarnation to the Temptation directly to Holy Week.
    • It’s a little hard to see some of the details so I’m blowing up the Arrest and Flogging, and also the Crucifixion itself.
    • This is definitely a Gothic crucifixion as opposed to an early medieval one, the central difference being that there’s no question that this is a dead Christ on the Cross
    • Then we have the Deposition, the Empty tomb, the Harrowing of Hell, then the moment of resurrection itself with Jesus actively stepping from the tomb.
    • Then we have the resurrection appearances: Thomas touching the side-wound of Christ, The Ascension, Pentecost and then a final image that we should look at more closely
    • Before we get there, here’s a detail of the Harrowing of Hell and the Moment of Resurrection. I want you to notice something here—that is, this is definitely a bloody Christ. Even as a resurrected body, the wounds of Christ are still conspicuously bleeding. And we’ll continue to see this as well.
    • On the left we have Pentecost with the dove descending; on the right we have an image known as the Throne of Grace. This is an image that you will see a lot when looking at depictions of the Trinity in this period and going forward. This is going to be one of the most dominant images of the Trinity. This is an early version as it just shows God the Father holding the Cross containing the crucified Son. In later periods, we’ll see the Spirit as a dove hovering right above the head of the Son—but that’s not in the picture quite yet.
    • The last image from this cycle is the Last Judgement.
    • That’s the end of the first cycle of images. Think about it for a minute: This is an attempt to convey the entire span of the biblical salvation narrative in 34 images. We have Adam—we have Christ. Of these, we have only two full page images where a single folio is devoted to one image—the first is the angel giving Adam the shovel and Eve the distaff; the second is the Last Judgment. This is biblical interpretation at work—this act of selection is a weighing and parsing of what events are the most fundamental, the most significant. Furthermore, the choices about layout and size are interpretive decisions. This framing of the narrative of salvation is going to have an impact on the people who are using these books, looking at these images day after day, week after week, decade after decade.
    • There’s a second cycle that follows the first—this is just scenes from the life of Christ which hit just the high points of Incarnation and Redemption: the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple, Carrying the Cross with a display of the instruments of the passion, the nails and the crown of thorns. We’ll just glance at these two images.
  • The Calendar
    • Then we’ve got the Calendar—this is a pretty standard one, that is localized to the East Anglia area. Folks like Botulph of Bury, Felix of Durwich, Withburga, Edmund, and Sexburga let us know that this manuscript is written in the general area. No real surprises here; there are a lot of English saints, so May has Dunstan and Aldhelm and Augustine of Canterbury; it’s also got the old Roman and North African saints, so all in all, what you’d expect from a native English calendar.
  • The Psalter
    • The bulk of the manuscript is occupied by the Psalms. This is the start of Psalm 27 (The Lord is my light and my salvation)—as is normal in historiated initials like this one, David indicates his eye referencing the “light” mentioned in the text. The text is clear and well written; verses are indicated by small initials that alternate between blue and gold. The mediant is indicated either by a point or by a punctuation mark that looks like an upside-down semi-colon. There are a few abbreviations but nothing too crazy. Psalms that don’t start with a historiated initial get a large gold one. Clear—easy to pray from.
  • After the initial color and decoration of the beginning of the manuscript, there’s not a whole lot of it in the later section. After the Psalms, the Canticles, Litany, and the Little Offices don’t have a whole lot of decoration to distinguish one from another.
  • The Canticles follow on immediately after the Psalms with no indication of a break. Just like the psalms, you have alternating marginal initials and each new Canticle is indicated by a large gold initial
  • The Litany of Saints
    • After the saints the litany moves into the abs, the pers, and the uts just as ours does
  • The Office of the Dead also contains no clear visual signals that it has started
  • When we finally get to the Little Office of the BVM, we do finally get some splashes of color but instead of the normal sequence of images, we just get some heraldic insignia representing a family who owned the book in the sixteenth century, likely modifying some original images.
  • Finally, the book concludes with the Psalter of the BVM, a Franciscan devotional creation attributed to St. Bonaventure and his circle. With that we do get one more image—and it’s a historiated initial with a man kneeling before the Virgin and child. This is likely the original owner of the manuscript, the guy who commissioned it.
    • This is something I want to comment on: we see this a lot—patrons included in a scene with Christ or Mary or—more normally, Christ and Mary. And, not in this case, but especially in later works, we see them holding the book itself.
    • What these images are getting across is the mentality of the prayer book—the book serves as a vehicle to bring the pray-er into the direct presence of Christ and his mother. This is a powerful and important claim.
  • So—the Carrow Psalter: This is a book that Julian might have seen and it certainly stands as representative of the kind of devotional psalters that were in favor amongst the nobility in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
  • Now, we can both compare and contrast that with another Psalter—this is the Burnet Psalter
    • If I had to remark on the differences, it’s that we see the entrance of three big pieces: Indulgenced prayers, Franciscan, and Brigittine affective spirituality.
  • After that we see a shift to a new kind of book which will take these themes and run with them.

2.4 Books of Hours generally

Now—the thing about these early psalters is that they’re big. In form factor, they’re large. The original ones had to be because they had to be big enough for a couple of monks to share them while they were singing in choir. They drop in size as they become books for lay use; so 10 inches by 7 inches is fairly standard for devotional psalters by the end of the thirteenth century but they’re still thick. We see a shift in the fourteenth century in lay spirituality from full Psalters to the Books of Hours which are the direct descendants of the liturgical psalters.

When it comes to contents, the Books of Hours—as the name implies—doubles down on the Little Hours and Little Offices as the primary locus for lay spirituality. Again—there’s lots of variation here, but here are some of the standard contents for a high medieval book of hours:

  • The Little Office of the BVM
  • the Gradual Psalms
  • the Penitential Psalms
  • Litany of the Saints
  • the Office of the Dead
  • additional prayers, devotions, and memorials

They’re certainly spiritually continuous with the Psalters but with three major differences. First, they only have some of the psalms instead of all of them. Second, they’re a lot smaller. These are books for individuals to pray from and with individually. Third, these tend to be highly decorated art objects with full page pictures of biblical events and saints with all manner of additional materials packed into the initials and borders of the pages. These are important devotional objects—but they’re also an important form of medieval bling. They could be hung off the belt in a cloth or a little mesh bag so they could be appreciated and a lady could casually take it out and page through it, showing off the beautiful artistry and fine borders, in a display of not just her piety but also her wealth and good taste. So—in addition to being spiritual texts they were also a form of conspicuous consumption.

2.5 The Loftie Hours, Specifically

Now, there are some really rich and sumptuous Books of Hours. Any owned by Jean, duc de berry qualify for that. I’ll probably sprinkle in some material from the Bedford Hours a little later and show you what that looks like. But not all of these were totally high-end manuscripts. There was some basic stuff too, so I’m going to show you a more simplistic version to start with called the Loftie Hours. This one was written in the mid-fifteenth century—so, probably within 25 years of Julian’s death or so. And it was written in the Netherlands. There are two main ways that we know that. The first is that the calendar is of the Use of Utrecht. The other way we know is because the book is written entirely in Dutch. There are a few reasons I want to show you this one. I’ll give you two right off. First, the artistic style is quite interesting. Second, the particular devotional material pulled together here is very pertinent to our topic and I think connects in some clear and interesting ways to what Julian is up to.

We’re not going to walk through everything here, rather I want us to hit the high points. Let’s start with a look at the contents…

  • Table of Contents
    • Pretty Basic for a Book of Hours
  • Calendar
    • Simple and clear, not nearly as embellished as what we see with others
  • Hours of the Cross
    • The grisaille style: drawn with lamp black then colored in. It’s not because they didn’t have colors, rather, it gives it a certain effect.
    • The first time I saw the deposition in this grisaille style, I immediately thought of Julian’s description of the drying out of the body of Christ
  • Imago Pietatis: The Image of Piety and the Man of Sorrows. We’re going to take this up as a major topic in just a little bit…
  • Last Judgement is in the midst of a set of prayers to Christ
  • The Vernacle—Julian specifically mentions this at the start of the description of the Second Showing in chapter 10
    • She didn’t have to go to Rome or have anyone else go—it’s a very common image in the Books of Hours.
  • The 5 wounds.
  • Office of the Dead
    • This one is pretty tame; there will be some much wilder and more colorful images associated with this later like the 3 living and the 3 dead. (What you are, we were/ What we are, you will be)
    • Reminds me of the Showing of the dead body in Chapter 64. There are many of these: dead bodies with souls coming out of them and also angels and demons fighting over souls that have just left their bodies.

Here’s why this is important. The prayer of the anchoresses, as far as contemporary sources show us, is grounded in the use of the Little Offices as we find them in both the psalters and the Books of Hours. These are their central liturgical texts that they’re praying day in and day out. In the Carrow Psalter the images petered out after the Psalter—with the books of Hours you’re going to see a lot more of images and they are going to be much more thoroughly integrated across the volume and within the text. The images that the anchoresses would have seen in these kinds of books would no doubt have shaped their devotional sense of the life and death of Jesus, specifically, the events of the passion.

2.6 The liturgical pattern as reflected in the Ancrene Wisse

One of the surviving sources that tells us about anchorite liturgical practice is the Ancrene Wisse. Written in Middle English sometime between 1200 and 1230 (so—a good 150 years before Julian), the initial chapter of the work lays out the liturgical work of the anchoress.

At the heart of it is the recitation of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin, the Office of the Dead, and a set of devotions that draw from the Hours of the Trinity, the Hours of the Passion, and the Hours of the Holy Spirit. The Penitential Psalms and the Gradual Psalms are interspersed with liturgical sections meditating on the Passion of Christ giving us, essentially, an Office directed to each of the 5 wounds of Jesus.  The Litany is included as well as the 5 Joys of Mary which is a long and substantial Office in and of itself as well. [See the slides for the layout…]

2.7 The liturgical pattern as reflected in the Myroure of Oure Layde

We see a similar—similar, not identical—set up in the Myroure of Oure Layde which was written for the Brigittine Sisters of Sion at Isleworth on the Thames established in 1415, within Julian’s lifetime. John Blunt, the 19th century liturgist and antiquarians who edited this work for the Early English Text Society in 1873, put its composition sometime between 1415 and 1450, most likely in the 1430’s but—again—around the same time period as Julian.

The Sisters of Sion prayed the Hours of the Blessed Virgin together in choir in Latin—but not all of them understood Latin. The Myroure was written to solve that particular problem. It goes line by line through the liturgy, explaining what it means in English and also giving a variety of liturgical and ritual directions complete with reasons why these things are done. Now—many of these are quite fanciful but their purpose is to explain and instruct so that the sisters can pray more profitably.

I’m not going to go into much detail on the Myroure at this point, but I do want to make a few points about it. First, Brigittine spirituality is a major strand of lay English spirituality, especially women’s spirituality. The Fifteen Oes of St. Brigit are going to become huge and they are an important means of affectively meditating on the Passion of Christ and seeing it from the perspective of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Second, note the emphasis on the presence of the vernacular for the understanding of the women. They wanted to make sure that the women understood the Latin texts they were praying so they put it into the vernacular.

I know this seems out of place, but let me jump back to the Loftie Hours for just a moment. When I was looking at this book, thinking about the kinds of images it had, and the liturgies it had, thinking about the fact that it was in Dutch—in the vernacular—I found myself wondering if it belonged to a woman… It really seemed to fit with what we see in the Ancrene Wisse and the Myroure so I approached it from that direction. Well, lo and behold, there’s a partially erased inscription that has been partially reconstructed…

“Hof” means “court” or “courtyard” in Dutch. Who knows if we’ll ever figure out exactly what that means. However—if we’re left free to speculate—might this women live in or by a courtyard because she’s enclosed there? Could this be an anchoress’s book of hours? It’s entirely possible…

3    The Julian Turn

At this point I want to transition into the directly Julian items which means that, I need to make a confession. I am not a Julian scholar. To be totally honest with you, I’ve never read the full Revelations of Divine Love, and the time that I’ve spent with it preparing for this talk is my longest sustained engagement with it ever. Prior to this I’ve read about it and have read a few short excerpts in college and seminary, but not an engagement of this length.

What this does mean, though, is that my encounter with Julian is thoroughly framed by this liturgical background. I’m only coming at it from the lay liturgical perspective. As a result, the major themes that I see coming out of Julian are very much in coherence with the main body of devotional materials I find in the books: A strong emphasis on the Passion of Christ and the way that is bound up with the Blessed Virgin Mary. The consistent emphasis on the Trinity. Things like the Hours of the Trinity and the Office of the Trinity really emphasize devotionally what we’re used to encountering doctrinally. The affective encounter with the Trinity is different from just thinking theological thoughts about it. The Presence and language around the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a person of the Trinity that does not get left out in Medieval devotion. We’re kinda scared to talk about the Spirit too much now—I mean, we’re good Episcopalians, why would we ever talk about the Spirit? People who do that are weird, aren’t they?! And also intercession and intercessors and how those fit into the divine economy.

So the way I’d like to proceed is to just start throwing some pictures up here. I’ve got observations on some of them, I invite you to make observations and we’ll keep it fairly free-flowing…

[At this point, this is exactly what we did—looking through a set of images and commenting about them. Broadly speaking, the main topics we covered were the Imago Pietatis and Christ as the Man of Sorrows, Julian’s understanding of intercessors and ways that images in the Books of Hours communicate this concept, images of and devotion to the Wound of Christ and how that connects to Julian’s understanding of the Motherhood of Christ, and—finally—a discussion of the 3 showings of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Julian and how these are part of standard representations of the BVM in the Book of Hours tradition.]

Prayer Book Studies: Digital Edition

One of the things I have hoped and intended to do for a long time is to make the Prayer Book Studies series more available throughout the church.

For those not familiar with it, “Prayer Book Studies” was a concept set into motion by the Episcopal Church’s General Convention in 1949. This would be a study of liturgy, liturgical principles, and the rites of the church that would guide progress towards a new Book of Common Prayer. Prayer Book Studies I/II (containing the first two studies) appeared in 1950; Prayer Book Studies 29: Introducing the Proposed Book of Common Prayer was published in 1976.  Appearing (mostly) in floppy blue pamphlets of varying length, these booklets are invaluable looks into the thoughts, logic, knowledge, and assumptions of the men (mostly men…) who shaped our present American Book of Common Prayer (1979).

As we discuss liturgical revision at this time, and as we have memorialized the 1979 BCP—whatever that means—it is imperative that we as a church gain a clear sense of this book that we have and the principles and priorities that produced it.

And these topics are discussed and made explicit in the volumes of the Prayer Book Studies.

I have signed a contract with Church Publishing to produce a digital edition of the full series. Exactly how they will be gathered and distributed is a marketing decision, and not entirely in my hands. Nonetheless, the goal is to produce the complete text containing footnotes (and introducing editorial footnotes where I think something needs to be added or clarified) for the reflection and edification of the church.

Want to know why a text was chosen? Check here first.

Want to understand the reason for a rubric? Check here first.

Want to get a better sense of why we do what we do? Check here first…

We plan to move quickly on this. I’ve already begun the first series, and PBS 1-3 are in the hands of the good folks at CPG. I intend to finish the first series (Prayer Book Studies I-XVII) by the early summer; I don’t know what that means exactly for a release date, but I hope not too long after that. I plan to blog as I go, sharing some of the gems I discover, and whetting your appetites for the arrival of the full set.

(Work on the Psalms book still continues, albeit at a sluggish pace, and will be back on the front burner when this is done…)

So—check back frequently for more updates, ask me if you don’t see any, and keep me in your prayers as I work to make this great set of resources available for the church!

GC Wrap-up: Prayer Book Revision

General Convention has concluded for another triennium. The sky has not fallen.

Lots of people with far more time on their hands than I have been and will continue to be commenting on a host of things. Rather than trying to do all things poorly, I shall focus exclusively on three resolutions and what changes they may (or may not) effect. I’ll do it a post at a time so as not to mix things up too much…

A068: Plan for the Revision of the Book of Common Prayer

For as long as the link endures (I’m told at least Labor Day?) the text of this resolution as passed can be found here. After that point this link will no longer work and there ought to be a new one from the Episcopal Archives folks.

This resolution:

  • Creates a new Task Force (a thing that exists in a different canonical space from the SCLM) on Liturgical and Prayer Book Revision. The SCLM will still exist; this will also exist alongside it. Exactly how they will relate to one another is unclear at the present time.
  • The TFLPBR (pronounced Tiffle-Pibber) is supposed to report to GC80 (held in Baltimore!! Woohoo—church nerd party at my house!!). But—here’s the thing: the resolution doesn’t say what it is to report on… It is not tasked with “presenting a new prayer book” and there are no timelines for anything like that. General Convention has given the TFLPBR a very open-ended charge.
  • The emphasis is on a dynamic process of watching local organic revision that contains several broadly construed themes: fidelity to our historic rites, a continued emphasis on Eucharist and Baptism, loving reconciliation, creation care, the riches of our collective multi-dimensional diversity, inclusive and expansive language and imagery for humanity and divinity, and emerging technology.
    • Wow, that’s a lot of stuff… We’re casting the net broadly and not very specifically.
  • The intention of the resolution reads to me like we are not asking the the TFLPBR to be drafting things as much as we are asking them to watch the local level, identify good stuff/best practices, and to share those perhaps with an eye to coming up with things based on them at a later date.
  • The 1979 prayer book has been “memorialized” and the TFLPBR has been asked to draw up new constitutions and canons to provide legislative space for the identification and dissemination of liturgical creativity. So—the current books stay in the pews; more books are appear there—or maybe things will start appearing in your bulletins or in downloads on your smart devices.
  • The work of drafting and revising, then, is not actually in the hands of the TFLPBR—at least not at this point. Instead, it is supposed to happen at the local level. This could become chaos. In theory, the choke-point to prevent it from dissolving into a liturgical free-for-all in which each go their own way is the bishop: the bishop will engage the congregations and expansive, experimental efforts will be collected—and, one supposes, assessed?—at the local level for broader dissemination to the TFLPBR and the Church.

 

What the heck does all of this mean?

Honestly, there’s enough fluidity in the language and potential gaps in understanding that it still remains anyone’s guess. Check back with me in three years… However, this is the way that I am reading the situation right now:

The center of gravity for revision under this resolution is not with national bodies. Specifically, it does not reside within the SCLM. Neither the SCLM nor the TFLPBR will be drafting liturgies for imposition on the church. (At least, not at this point nor under these directions.)

The center of gravity is at the local and diocesan levels. We are the ones who are supposed to be doing the work which will then be sifted and assessed. If there are gate-keepers in the process, the gate-keepers will be operating at the diocesan level: the diocesan liturgical commission that will “collect, reflect [upon? one hopes?], teach and share these resources with the TFLPBR.”

If you are interested in classically grounded, theologically astute, inclusive, truly Anglican liturgies coming out of this process, then it seems to me your two best moves are these: 1) talk to your bishop what experimentation will look like in your diocese, and 2) volunteer to be part of the liturgical commission.

The regnant assumption is that all experimentation will be tilted in a free-form, free-church-ish, breezy kind of direction. And perhaps it will be—if people who think otherwise don’t step up! That’s exactly why I drafted this liturgy when permissions to use Rite III were passed by the previous General Convention: to remind you that all revision doesn’t have to be like that. Don’t let yourself be locked into these mental frameworks! Instead, consider what it means to do inclusive/expansive revision that truly is grounded in the historical liturgies around our sacraments.

For what it’s worth, I am planning to speak to my bishop, seeking permission for the St. Bede’s Breviary to engage in some experimentation on the Daily Office. I will retain the prayer book forms as options, of course, but will also seek to do some (modest) experimentation on the Offices that I believe will improve the rites while connecting them into the history and theology of the Office in the West. Don’t expect these changes anytime soon, though—I have a bunch of other things on my plate to complete first. (Including the Anglican Breviary. Work on that continues…)

Brief Notes on GC & Prayer Book Revision

  • Prayer Book Revision was passed by the House of Deputies.
  • As of this writing, it has not been passed by the House of Bishops which is required for it to become actual passed legislation. [Update 7/9/2018, 12:53 PM EST—The bishops are at work on it; according to the version in the virtual binder, they have taken off the table any changes to Rite I, the Historical Documents, and the Lord’s Prayer.]
  • If Because the bishops make made changes to the resolution and then passed it, it will have to be re-debated and re-passed without amendment in the House of Deputies. Because if they do amend it, it will then have to be re-passed in the House of Bishops… And if any approval in either place does not occur before convention ends, the thing as a whole is dead.
  • The Project, Budget, & Finance committee has not yet released a budget. What work gets done depends on what funding is given and with which strings.

Ok—say it passes. What next?

  • The resolution as currently written directs the SCLM to follow the plan proposed in the Blue Book. which includes both qualitative and quantitative listening. This is where my “big data” Bulletin Collection Project is laid out.
  • Does this mean that the Bulletin Collection Project will happen? It’s likely—it depends on the funding and the degree to which the funding is designated. If it has a line-item or is directed towards the Episcopal Archives (who would be the ones directing it), it will almost certainly happen. If the money is given in a big bucket to the SCLM to decide how they want to parcel it out, then it will depend entirely on the next iteration of the SCLM and to what degree they follow the directions given to them.
  • (If you don’t know what I mean by “Bulletin Collection Project,” the Blue Book has a garbled form of it, but the big picture for it is laid out in this post written after last GC which lists the two other things that I still think we need 1) big-data bulletin collection, 2) transparent input from the church, and 3) transparent drafting mechanisms.)
  • What “next iteration of the SCLM”? Remember that appointment for clergy and laity to the SCLM is only for two triennia; bishops serve only one. Each triennium, half of the membership turns over for the clergy and laity—and all the bishops do. Thus, several of my friends and colleagues will be rolling off and we do not know who will be put on it. And you can bet that if you thought trying to get on the SCLM was difficult and contentious before, it will only be moreso now with revision in the air!
    • (I’ve seen a few comments online wishing I hadn’t resigned. It wouldn’t have made a bit of difference, because my term would have been up now anyway and I accomplished what I could do while I was there.)

That’s enough for now—time to get some actual work done…

Expansive Language Rite II

Friend of the blog Mother Laurie Brock has posted a resolution for General Convention that would offer an immediate trial use first reading of an expanded language version of the Rite II Eucharist. The resolution with liturgy is here, the liturgy alone is here.

As readers should know, I’m not a fan of revision and I’m usually wary of expansive language. Imprecise or incorrect theology is always the number one concern when liturgy gets tinkered with. But, poetics are a major concern of mine as well.  All too often expansive language comes from a well-intentioned place but produces bad liturgy. Effusive wordiness creating overly imaginative metaphors causes clunky sentences. Liturgy is not just poetry, it’s poetry that occurs out loud. Liturgy is inherently spoken. As it result, it must have the right rhythms for speaking it aloud and at volume.

Laurie took the Rite II services that we currently have and went through them, making gentle modifications to tone down both the male language and the dominion (kingdom/Lord) language that many in the church are finding problematic.

Here are my initial thoughts on a read through of the liturgy…

  • I don’t love the initial acclamation: “Blessed be God: holy, glorious, and undivided Trinity./And blessed be God’s reign, now and for ever. Amen.” I was initially unsure about “holy, glorious” thinking that it might be a little out of character from the styling of the rest of the service but was reassured when I realized it was riffing on “O holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, one God,” from the Litany. The response is more the issue. I get that we have a shift from “kingdom” to “reign” but I’m not a fan of the homophone especially in the first line of the service (rain=water from the sky? rein=God’s kidney? rein=part of a bridle?). I don’t know what would be a better replacement, though.
  • I like that the option is given to use either “God” or “Lord” in the collect dialogue.
  • I like the three options for responses to the reading, and that the “The Word of the Lord” remains the top one. This is a theological affirmation of the content that grounds the others. Just the “Spirit” options on their own makes me wonder if the Spirit is only in the act of hearing and not in the source material itself. The Spirit can speak to me from the NY Times; retaining “Word of the Lord” liturgically affirms that the text is God’s revelation even if one of the other responses is chosen.
  • That both Gospel acclamations have “Lord Christ” is great. In other places, the “Lord” language is de-emphasized but I agree that this is a key spot where we ought to retain it. That’s key–knowing when to be expansive and where the traditional language really is essential.
  • I like the treatment of the Creed.
    • It retains the language of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These are non-negotiables for Christian liturgy. Get beyond them in the creed and you’re doing something else.
    • “became truly human” is a good change. Yes, the incarnate body of Jesus was a man—it had a penis. However, the creed’s statement on this account is not about the personal plumbing of Our Lord but his humanity which this change accomplishes.
    • The use of relative clauses beginning “who” regarding the Holy Spirit is a good strategic move. It removes the unnecessary “he”s and forestalls revisionist “she”s that I frequently hear around the church.
    • [Update: I’m not a fan of the removal of the filioque, so I’m not thrilled about that. I’m well aware it’s not in the ecumenical version, but the West has used it for centuries and too many Episcopalians have Arian tendencies already…]
  • In the opening dialogue for the Eucharist, while the initial “Lord” is optional, its use later is not. I think that is a good move. Again, there’s a difference between expanding and expunging. Too often the former becomes the latter. I’m less concerned than some about the shift to “our” in the last response because the priest’s line makes it clear that our thanks and praise are, in fact, directed to “the Lord our God.”
  • Prayer A
    • “Son” language makes appearances while “maker and preserver” tones down the male language.
  • The Lord’s Prayer is untouched with both traditional and contemporary options retained.
  • The rhythm is off in the dropping of “Son” from the second line of the first post-communion prayer. What about “of our Source and Savior Jesus Christ?” It expands while retaining both the alliteration and the rhythm.
  • The second post-communion prayer retains a “Son” and “kingdom” but I’m not sure about “we are living members of the Body of your Child.” My own (likely idiosyncratic) mental image is that I will become the arm of a baby or toddler. Sorry—that’s just my mental word association with “Body of your Child”…
  • I like that a blessing is called for in the rubrics but nothing is directly stated. I think that’s a wise move because it permits a classic “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” blessing if so desired, and does not legislate, recommend, or encourage a modalist option.
  • Prayer B
    • There’s something about the flow of “In Christ’s sacrifice, unite us that we may be acceptable…” that feels off to me. Not sure what it is exactly… (It maybe the pile-up of sibilants at the start.)
  • Prayer C
    • “your only Child, born of Mary” is a good change. Of course, to my way of thinking, more Mary in our prayers is always a good change!
    • “God of Abraham and Sarah” is the choice taken to deal with one of the infamous hiccups in this prayer. This is a good option, but not my favorite option. Abraham and Sarah were the parents of Isaac, the child of promise who both indirectly begets and typologically represents Christ. So—there’s nothing wrong with this and it doesn’t raise the question of why Hagar isn’t named. I still prefer to the retention of the ancient title for God, “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” but want to see it balanced with “, the God of Miriam, Deborah, and Ruth” or something like that which includes women but doesn’t get into elaborating wives/concubines/sex partners of the patriarchs which gets messy really quickly.
  • Prayer D
    • There was a pretty light touch on D which is wise given that one of our reasons for including it is ecumenical.

I have some anxieties about piecemeal revision of the prayer book. I don’t know if that’s a road we want to go down, and it worries me about the precedent it would set.

However, if General Convention is bound and determined to do something right now to make things more inclusive, this is something that I can get behind. I have yet to see anything in Laurie’s revision that is problematic. Yeah, a few minor term and rhythm things I’d do differently, but those are quibbles. This is way better than EOW, and miles beyond what could be foisted upon us!

It gets an up-vote from my side. That having been said, I’m a straight white guy: I don’t get triggered by male or dominion language. I imagine some who do might say that this is too conservative and has not gone far enough. For my perspective, though, Laurie has done a wonderful job with this and I hope it receives proper consideration.

Random Antiphonage

Doing some psalm antiphon transcribing.

The fourth antiphon for Lauds on Pentecost—so the one intended to go with the canticle… We all know the Benedicite, right? That’s the one on Saturday morning that never ends. Love this twist on it:

O ye Wells of Salvation, † and all that move through the baptismal waters thereof, * sing praises to God, alleluia.

This is the kind of theo-liturgical play that antiphons offer.

That is all.

Xunzi’s Take on Ritual: Part 2

Here’s the second part of my presentation for the Society of Scholar Priests. Part 1 introduces Xunzi as a pre-modern person interested in how ritual practice forms virtue; part 2 is here, part 3 is looking at classical Anglican liturgy with Xunzi’s thoughts in mind.

(Production on the next Liturgical Look Forward is running behind, but it should be up at some point today…)


 

I’m going to abstract out of Xunzi’s thought four big picture points.

  1. Human nature is bad; because it’s bad it must be corrected by means of external tools following an external pattern.

  2. The efficacy of ritual lies chiefly in its ability to channel emotion and shape affect.

  3. Ritual is essential, but for ritual to be most effective requires teachers.

  4. Ritual creates a harmonious society by inculcating proper relationships

 

1. Human nature is bad; because it’s bad it must be corrected by means of external tools following an external pattern.

Mengzi—a Confucian teacher in the previous generation—teaches that human nature is good. Since it’s good, in order to know what is good, we simply have to look within ourselves. Goodness is inate. While our good nature may be corrupted by society or through some other problem, it’s always there and its development is a natural process. Thus, meditation and introspection are key tools for forming the virtues because they enable us to look inwardly and tap into that inherent good nature. As a result, Mengzi can use the metaphor of growth. So, seeds of virtue within human nature will naturally grow. It’s one-directional process and there’s a certain natural inevitability to it. Just like a plant, if human nature is given what it needs and is not interfered with, virtue is going to grow. So, Mengzi can use agricultural metaphors.

Xunzi doesn’t. He’s deliberately setting himself up against Mengzi and he uses no agricultural metaphors for the human spirit or for the acquisition of virtue. Instead of being agricultural, all of his metaphors are about crafts; they’re technological. A piece of clay is never inherently going to become a pot. If you don’t do anything to it, it’s just going to sit there.  In the same way a piece of wood is never going to spontaneously turn into a wheel. Instead, it requires an artisan to steam the wood and use a jig to shape and bend it into a new configuration. These are the metaphors he employs before turning to the construction of virtue within humans.

Someone may ask: if man’s nature is evil, then where do ritual principles come from? I would reply: all ritual principles are produced by the conscious activity of the sages; essentially they are not products of man’s nature. A potter molds clay and makes a vessel, but the vessel is the product of the conscious activity of the potter, not essentially a product of his human nature. A carpenter carves a piece of wood and makes a utensil, but the utensil is the product of the conscious activity of the carpenter, not essentially a product of his human nature. The sage gathers together his thoughts and ideas, experiments with various forms of conscious activity, and so produces ritual principles and sets forth laws and regulations. Hence, these ritual principles and laws are the products of the conscious activity of the sage, not essentially products of his human nature. (Burton, 160)

[All quotations come from Burton Watson’s translation of sections of the Xunzi whom he romanizes as Hsun Tzu]

So—there are two external things at work here. There is the tool and then there’s the pattern. So, there’s the means by which character is shaped, then there’s the pattern of what you’re trying to shape it to. So where do these come from? This is directly related to the question that Lizette Larson-Miller raised in her talk: if liturgy is primary theology, where does liturgy come from? What’s it’s initial source? Xunzi invokes the sage kings of antiquity and points to the rites handed down in the traditional documents:

In ancient times the sage kings realized that man’s nature is evil, and that therefore he inclines toward evil and violence and is not upright or orderly. Accordingly they created ritual principles and laid down certain regulations in order to reform man’s emotional nature and make it upright, in order to train and transform it and guide it into the proper channels. In this way they caused all men to become orderly and conform to the Way. (158)

Well, ok, great—but where did the principles come from?

The former kings looked up and took their model from heaven, looked  down and took their model from the earth, looked about and took their rules from mankind. Such rules represent the ultimate principle of community harmony and unity. (107-108)

Xunzi is invoking a received pattern here. The Five Classics refer to a triad between heaven, earth, and humanity. Each of these has a Way, a Dao. As far as the Daoists—like Laozi and Zhuangzi–were concerned, these three ways are interwoven into one great unnameable indescribable Dao and human virtue consists of cooperating with and conforming one’s life to the Dao of heaven and earth. You align your pattern with the cosmic pattern. Xunzi says, no, that’s not going to work—because if you look at heaven and earth, things aren’t perfect, orderly, and harmonious. The natural world has lots and lots of disorder in it. So as far as he’s concerned, you can extract some principles of right living by the observation of heaven and earth, but humans are the ones who bring order to both heaven and earth. Our job isn’t to passively float along accord to their Dao; instead, we need to discern the patterns, figure out how order needs to be brought, then to accomplish it. Thus the first job of the sage kings is to ask—what’s the cosmic pattern supposed to look like. Where is it orderly and harmonious, and where is it not? What are the patterns that do work? So—from that work of observation the sage kings figure out what the patterns of humanity are supposed to look like.

Next, the tools. Then they abstracted from that big-picture goal what rites and rituals and ceremonies are needed to do the work of shaping people to create virtue. Ok—so how do they figure this out? Here we get to Xunzi’s anthropological principles and to his functional approach to ritual and that leads to our second point:

 

2. The efficacy of ritual lies chiefly in its ability to channel emotion and shape affect.

Emotion is at the heart of Xunzi’s anthropology: “The basic nature of man is that which he receives from Heaven. The emotions are the substance of the nature and the desires are the responses of the emotions” (151).So, Xunzi sees us principally as emotional beings. We act out of our emotions and our emotions give rise to our desires. Alright so what’s the problem here? Well—here’s where we get to why he says human nature is bad:

Hence any man who follows his nature and indulges his emotions will inevitably become involved in wrangling and strife, will violate the forms and rules of society, and will end as a criminal. Therefore, man must first be transformed by the instructions of a teacher and guided by ritual principles, and only then will he be able to observe the dictates of courtesy and humility, obey the forms and rules of society, and achieve order. (157)

So, this is where I’m going to qualify his language a bit. When Xunzi says that human nature is bad, a precise way to frame it is that human nature is inherently anti-social because our tendency is to follow our desires regardless of the consequences for ourselves or for anyone else around us. That’s our nature: we’re selfish and will live a disordered existence in order to satisfy these desires.

[In many ways, I see his perspective as parallel with an Augustinian post-lapsarian anthropology: while humanity is created good in the image of God, the corruption of Original Sin does make us inherently selfish and disordered—a condition from which we need to be redeemed. Obviously, we and Xunzi disagree on how that redemption happens!]

What do we do about desire? Well, some philosophies said that desires can be extinguished—whether through force of will or meditative training, desire can be stopped. Xunzi had a very clear teaching on this point: “Beings that possess desire and those that do not belong to two different categories— the living and the dead” (150). Desire is not the kind of thing that can be extinguished. Instead, it can be channeled and directed and modulated:

What is the origin of ritual? I reply: man is born with desires. If his desires are not satisfied for him, he cannot but seek some means to satisfy them himself. If there are no limits and degrees to his seeking, then he will inevitably fall to wrangling with other men. From wrangling comes disorder and from disorder comes exhaustion. The ancient kings hated such disorder, and therefore they established ritual principles in order to curb it, to train men’s desires and to provide for their satisfaction. They saw to it that desires did not overextend the means for their satisfaction, and material goods did not fall short of what was desired. Thus both desires and goods were looked after and satisfied. This is the origin of rites. (89)

If the people have emotions of love and hatred, but no ways to express their joy or anger, then they will become disordered. Because the former kings hated such disorder, they reformed the actions of the people and created proper music for them, and as a result the world became obedient. (115)

Music and ritual, then, are the means by which emotions are channeled and expressed in appropriate ways. They take the urges that are going to arise in humans naturally, but they place boundaries and limits on them. He points in particular to the way that burial and mourning rituals function:

Rites trim away what is too long and stretch out what is too short; eliminate surplus and repair deficiency. Extend the forms of love and reverence, and step by step bring to fulfilment the beauties of proper conduct Beauty and ugliness, music and weeping, joy and sorrow are opposites, and yet rites make use of them all, bringing forth and employing each in its turn. (100)

So—rites and music don’t suppress feeling, they direct it. They guide it. Sometimes they may need to temper it, but Xunzi’s starting place is with humans as emotional animals whose responses and anti-social tendencies can be remedied by means of ritual patterns that can model and inculcate proper desires and proper social relationships.

3. Ritual is essential, but for ritual to be most effective requires teachers. 

So—rites are essential. But, they are not self-evident. They can lead individuals in certain directions but are going to be less efficacious if they are not fully understood. You can’t just be self-reflective. You can’t look into yourself and figure out they are or aren’t working because the principles are external to you. You need a teacher to get the most out of them. Here’s the long version:

In learning, nothing is more profitable than to associate with those who are learned. Ritual and music present us with models but no explanations; the Odes and Documents deal with ancient matters and are not always pertinent; the Spring and Autumn Annals are terse and cannot be quickly understood. But if you make use of the erudition of others and the explanations of gentlemen, then you will become honored and may make your way anywhere in the world. Therefore I say that in learning nothing is more profitable than to associate with those who are learned, and of the roads to learning, none is quicker than to love such men. Second only to this is to honor ritual. If you are first of all unable to love such men and secondly are incapable of honoring ritual, then you will only | be learning a mass of jumbled facts, blindly following the Odes and Documents, and nothing more. In such a case you may study to the end of your days and you will never be anything but a vulgar pedant. If you want to become like the former kings and seek out benevolence and righteousness, then ritual is the very road by which you must travel. (20-21)

Learning by itself is no guarantee of virtue. You’ve got to have a teacher. Here’s the short version:

Ritual is the means by which to rectify yourself; the teacher is the means by which the ritual is rectified. If you are without ritual, how can you rectify yourself? If you have no teacher, how can you understand the fitness of ritual? If you unerringly do as ritual prescribes, it means that your emotions have found rest in ritual. If you speak as your teacher speaks, it means that your understanding has become like that of your teacher. If your emotions find rest in ritual and your understanding is like that of your teacher, then you have become like a sage. Hence to reject ritual is to be without law and to reject your teacher is to be without a guide. . . . Therefore learning means learning to regard ritual as your law. The teacher makes himself the standard of proper conduct and values that in himself which finds rest in ritual. (30)

4. Ritual creates a harmonious society by inculcating proper relationships 

Confucian thought is not modern Western thought. It is not egalitarian. Instead it is inherently hierarchical and, indeed, hierarchy is very much seen as a good thing. Kongzi [aka Confucius) himself laid out five fundamental relationships between unequals that must be kept in correct relationship in order to ensure the smooth functioning of society. Xunzi insists that the correct relationships are embedded within ritual:

Heaven and earth are the beginning of life, ritual principles are the beginning of order, and the gentleman is the beginning of ritual principles. Acting on them, practicing them, guarding them, and loving them more than anything else—this is the beginning of the gentleman. Therefore Heaven and earth produce the gentleman and the gentleman brings order to Heaven and earth. The gentleman forms a triad with Heaven and earth; he is the controller of all things, the father and mother of the people. Without the gentleman, Heaven and earth will lack order and ritual principles will lack unity. There will be no true ruler or leader above, no true father or son below. This is what is called the extreme of chaos. The correct relationships between ruler and subject, father and son, elder and younger brother, and husband and wife begin and are carried through to the end, end and begin again. They share the order of Heaven and earth, they last for ten thousand generations. They are what is called the great foundation. The rules that govern mourning and sacrificial rites and the ceremonies of the court and the army are based upon this single foundation.  (44-45)

Men, once born, must organize themselves into a society. But if they form a society without hierarchical divisions, then there will be quarreling. . . . This is why I say that ritual principles must not be neglected even for a moment. He who can follow them in serving his parents is called filial; he who can follow them in serving his elder brothers is called brotherly. He who can follow them in serving his superiors is called obedient; he who can follow them in employing his inferiors is called a ruler. (46)

The patterns in ritual lay out the social scripts for how one is supposed to behave towards those arrayed around you in social relationships. If we live into the ritual then we will be taught the proper kinds of actions and the proper kinds of attitudes that we should use for people all of the way up and down the social scale. This happens most powerfully in full scale, whole community ritual activities.

Most of the time that Xunzi talks about ritual it’s rather generic and in passing. There are only a few specific rites that he goes into detail on. Otherwise he just assumes that we’re familiar with the ritual environment of 3rd century BC China. The two he does dig into in detail have very specific social hierarchy connects. One is burial and mourning rites for parents, the other is a community feast that takes place at a village school. He describes how the host treats the guest of honor, and then how all of the people in attendance are served. He ends his description of it and summarizes the ceremony like this:

When the distinction between eminent and humble is made clear, when the complexity or | simplicity of the ritual is adjusted to distinctions of rank, when there is harmonious pleasure without abandoned behavior, drinking according to distinctions of age but with no one left out, and drinking and feasting without disorder—when these five types of conduct are achieved, they will be sufficient to insure moral training to the individual and peace to the state, and when the state is peaceful, the world will be peaceful. (119-120)

I find this significant. His ideal ceremony for describing what a well-ordered society looks like and how a well-ordered society is formed in the first place is a community feast where everything is done in good order and where no one is left out. It’s really hard for me to read this and not to make the move to the Eucharist! So—let’s go ahead and do that. Let’s move away from Classical China and move into Classical Anglicanism. After making one over-arching concluding point.

For Xunzi, ritual is about moral formation, virtue acquisition, through training a new habitus formed in and through ritual action. Even though there’s a lot of talk about learning, and a teacher is essential to get the deepest meaning out of ritual patterns, the most important thing about ritual is to do it and to gain a new way of being through ritual action. We perform our way into virtue. We don’t think it. Our emotions are trained and modulated and the affections are shaped. This is an incarnate and incarnational process. We’ve mentioned muscle memory several times across presentations. And here it is again. The renewing and redirection of desire is trained through ritual participation and the way we relate to one another is formed through deliberate patterning. Ok—now that we have that piece in place—let’s take a look at some Classic Anglican patterns and practices and see if we can find anything new…