Two Things

1. Michelle of Heavenfield has diversified her blog holdings as well. Heavenfield will remain focused on early medieval history and texts while Selah will focus on the Psalms and Daily Office/Book of Hours type material. Check it out and add it to your readers…
2. I’ve been invading LutherPunk’s brain!

Liturgy is Not Enough

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

But it is an engine that has largely gone untuned.

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

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

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

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

And it will not appear.

The experience of the liturgy is not enough.

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

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

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

What the liturgy needs from us are three things:

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

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

Christopher and Fr. Chris on the “Office Ideal”

Christopher has been doing some good thinking recently on the Daily Office (and also here) and it’s place in our daily life. His conclusion is that Cranmer’s twice-daily Office should be seen as an ideal. Fr. Chris agrees and sees additional offices as a calling for some but not necessarily the ideal for all.

I quite agree with them both. I always fight a more-is-better tendency when it comes to the liturgy in general and the Office in particular. But, in the interests of both predictablity and sustainability sometimes we—ok, I—need to remember and relapse into what Christopher calls “Benedictine simplicity done elegantly”.

Gospel Antiphons Coordinated with the RCL

I realized it’s been quite a while since I posted anything liturgical…

To amend that, I’ll point you to something I may have mentioned before (or not). Over at Fr. Bosco Peter’s site at ChristChurch in New Zealand, he’s got a PDF of Gospel Antiphons [i.e., antiphons used before and after the Gospel canticles in Morning and Evening Prayer] put together by one of his comrades, Fr(?). Tom Kostrzewa, OblSB CAM. It’s designed to go along with the current Roman Liturgy of the Hours which means it’s in synch with the Rman version of the RCL. They number the propers slightly differently than we do, but it shouldn’t be hard to follow.

I’ve been using it during Easter and have enjoyed having them. Yes, it’s more book-flipping, but it’s easy enough to cut and paste them to a trifold to stick in your prayerbook of choice. You can do a season at a time that way and it’s easier than book-flipping.

Call for Papers: Daily Office Propaganda

Ok—you asked for it…

One of the purposes of this site is to advocate for liturgically grounded Christian spirituality. Being in the Anglican tradition—particularly the strand that appreciates our catholic and Benedictine roots—that means celebrating the balance of the Mass and the Office. Had I been born in an early time, I imagine I might have been an advocate for the Parish Communion movement that pushed for more common celebration of the Eucharist. I wasn’t, though. With the ‘79 American BCP restoring the Eucharist as the normative Sunday liturgy, things (in the States at least) have swung the other way and many current Episcopalians—espeically those not native to the tradition—are unfamiliar with the Daily Office, what it is, and why it matters if we and our parishes do it.

In that vein, I’m inviting submissions of propaganda for the promotion of the Daily Office. I’m thinking of something basic—one page, front & back—that can be handed out, put in a tract rack, discussed, used for a Sunday School/Adult Ed class, etc.

As these come in, I’ll note them here and post them on the Promoting the Daily Office page on the side-bar to maintain a repository of possibilities for printing, replication, and use in YOUR parish.

And while I’ve thrown around the word “Anglican” a couple of times, let’s not forget that the Office belongs to the whole Church and all of the Western Christian traditions have it in their ancestry. Yes, even you Lutherans… Submissions are welcome from all!

What I Did Yesterday…

Since I’m supposed to keep my foot elevated and not drive, I didn’t make it to church yesterday. M was going to take both girls to church with her (which I really hate to make her do—as she’s suggested , perhaps I should try taking them into the office with me one of these days…) but since Lil’ H has pink eye she stayed home with Daddy. The, M went out with a best friend from middle shool who dropped into town for such much needed r&r. Once I put the girls down I had some spare time on my hands.

In between the other stuff, I wrapped up a little project: it’s a web page (currently only locally hosted) that uses PHP and a SQLite database to calculate the temporal cycle’s liturgical date in both a long and a short form (i.e., L4Mon/Monday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent), gives both Proper numbers and Sundays after Trinity for the post-Pentecost period, assigns a relative rank for both the morning and the evening, and determines the daily office lectionary year for every day for the next ten years…

Next up: cross-referencing it with the sanctoral cycle and weighing temporal vs. sanctoral ranks to determine sanctoral celebrations/commemorations/etc.

Once it’s working properly, it’s just a matter of switching between database tables to move between assessing modern and early medieval kalendars.

New Stuff at the OJN Liturgy Page

I have been alerted through a broken link notice (thanks, bls!) that there is new material that the Order of Julian of Norwich’s Liturgical Publications page. There are three new items: a new set of collects, a 2008 kalendar, and—perhaps most exciting—the order’s hymnal from Advent through Lent. I’d posted Advent bits but did not have the time to get to the rest. Thankfully, they have…

New Episcopal Cafe Post

Here’s another one up at the Cafe. It’s more practically oriented than most of mine…

Clint Eastwood as an Anglo-Catholic Liturgist

“I know what yer thinkin’, punk…

“The evening of the 20th by all rights oughtta be the First Vespers of St. Thomas the Apostle, a second class universal double feast. But yer thinkin’ maybe–just maybe–the Second Vespers of a second class feria in Sapentia-tide just might take it…and you can get away with usin’ the ‘O’ antiphon with the Magnificat instead of the one appointed for St. Thomas…

“Ya gotta ask yerself a question: do I feel lucky? Well, do ya–punk?”

(The answer, of course, is that the antiphon for the Magnificat is that appointed for St Thomas [Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; * blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed] However, the “O” antiphons appear on the 20th and 21st as commemorations—after the collect of the day, with their versicle & response [if you're using them] and followed by the collect of the Third Sunday of Advent.)

Advent Goodness from the OJN

Two items for Advent:

• I’ve scanned the hymns used by the Order of Julian of Norwich during the season of Advent and compiled them into a single document (Advent_Hymns). Father John-Julian appointed hymns for First and Second Vespers of the four Sundays of the season and in doing so incorporated the traditional Lauds and Matins hymns as well. For the sake of completness, I also added the Marian Antiphon for Advent (Alma Redemptoris) at the end of the file. The translations are not under copyright (but see the fair use terms on the side-bar) since they were prepared specifically for the Order into contemporary (Rite II) English. The sole exception is the final hymn; it was composed by Fr. John-Julian himself. The hymns contained here in order of appearance by original language incipit are:
  • Vos ante Christi tempora (Paris Breviary, XVIII cent.)
  • Conditor alme siderum [aka Creator alme siderum] (Ascr. St. Ambrose, VII cent.)
  • Verbum supernum prodiens (Unknown, V cent.)
  • In noctis umbra desides (C. Coffin, Paris Breviary, XVIII cent.)
  • Vox clara ecce intonat [aka En clara vox] (Unknown, V cent.)
  • Instantis Adventum Dei (C. Coffin, Paris Breviary, XVIII cent.)
  • Jordanis oras praevia (C. Coffin, Hymni Sacri, XVIII cent.)
  • They knew you not (John-Julian, OJN, 1997)
• Fr. John-Julian has also sent the kalendar and ordo for the 2007-2008 liturgical year (ordo-2007-8.pdf).

The traditional (i.e., Anglo-Saxon/Sarum/Tridentine) Office hymn distributions are:

• Vespers: Conditor alme siderum (Creator alme siderum)
  
• Matins: Verbum supernum prodiens
• Lauds: Vox clara ecce intonat (En clara vox redarguit)

Links go to the Latin and English parallel texts at the wondrous hymn page at Thesaurus Precum Latinarum.