Category Archives: Spirituality

On Celebrating Matthias

When I got up this morning and checked my Twitter feed it was clogged by all manner of English Anglican folks saying nice things about St Matthias. This is a Pond Difference that is worth mentioning as it gets into one of the interesting anomalies you discover as you dig into the kalendar.

The Episcopal Church celebrates St Matthias on February 24. The proper day… Now, if you’re a liturgy geek, you’ll recognize this particular feast because it falls on the old Latin bisextile day—leap day for Romans. This could be shifted to the 25th depending what year you were in. Furthermore, it is right around the same time as Ash Wednesday and, potentially, Lent 1 and often falls during Lent. As a result, there are all sorts of potential discussions about precedence rules when these things start coinciding and learnéd discussions of ancient authorities can be had.

Around Vatican II, the Roman Church decided that it was tired of these discussions and moved Matthias out of this liturgical “danger zone” and out into the late Spring where the only thing it can conflict with is Ascension Day. And Easter Sundays. And Pentecost. Great thinking, Romans! The Church of England followed suit and accommodated to the new date. (A similar thing happened to St Thomas as well.)

We didn’t. We kept the old date.

So—when we say “old date,” what precisely do we mean…?

Well, here’s a little snippet from the Sacramentary of Rodrade written in 853 that shows the feast of Matthias on February 24. (The 6th day before the kalends of March).

Now—here’s what’s weird: this particular snippet comes from the verso (back side) of the first folio. That also contains a mass for St Mark (April 25th) right under it. On the front side of the page it has masses for Emerentiana, Macharius and Companions (Jan 23rd) and St Praejectus with memorials of the Conversion of St Paul (January 25th) in a different hand. In other words, this page is a later addition into the mass book; it didn’t come with Matthias in it!

Indeed, when we take a look at where he ought to fall (and note the really different handwriting here as opposed to above), we see a great big gap between Valentine (Feb 14th—but you knew that…) and Gregory (March 12th):

Thus, we have one of our earliest and best examples of the Gregorian Sacramentary lacking the feast of St Matthias; it gets added in later. So, too, does the Conversion of Paul which takes second fiddle to St Praejectus, himself a late addition.

What’s going on here?

Remember that kalendars were originally all about the local… When we look at the very earliest Roman kalendars the majority of the names found there are from saints in the area. There are a few famous names from North Africa, but Frere sums up the evidence this way in his classic Studies in Early Roman Liturgy: I. The Kalendar:

“Apart from such outstanding cases [Holy Innocents, Timothy, Cyprian, Perpetua and Felicitas], an entry is normally made in the Roman Kalendar because there is a place which demands an anniversary.” (25)

“Indeed, we may watch the Kalendar grow, as new churches arise in the city, and claim an anniversary.” (26)

[After a discussion of the suburban cemeteries/catacombs and the uncertain addition of saints who lay 7 miles or more outside of Rome]”It is evident that topological considerations have been the determining feature of the Kalendar.

The saints of Porto (19 miles) and Ostia (15 miles) are too far off to be taken into account, though they may figure in the early records under the heading Romae. Six or seven miles is the limit, and that proves in practice to be too far. So the suburban cemeteries supply names to the Kalendar mainly from an inner ring within a radius of about four miles.” (28)

“The occurrence of such notes [place names with reference to the saints/martyrs] in the Service-books corroborates the view expressed above, that the shrines in the cemeteries have given rise to the observance of these anniversaries.

At a later stage the outlook changes. The Kalendar is regarded less as a direction where the official Mass will be said, and more as a direction given to a priest serving a church to tell him what Mass he will say there on a certain day [when]. It is not clear by what stages the official Mass at the cemetery was given up. But the main cause is clear enough, viz. the destruction of the Catacombs and cemeteries. And the effect is clear also, viz. that the Curia’s directory became the parish priest’s Kalendar.” (29, emphasis added)

Thus, if you want to be on the earliest Western kalendars, you darn well better be buried within 4 miles of the center of Rome! (St Valentine, for instance, was right out the Via Flamina and therefore in a well-situated but less prestigious spot than those like Callistus, Fabian, and other early pope-martyrs buried in the Callisti or Praetextati cemetaries right off the Via Appia.)

As Frere indicated, in time, this local Roman kalendar based on how far the pope and his entourage were able/willing to walk became the kalendar for the average parish priest in the Roman area. Then, as things spread, it became the default kalendar for wherever “Roman” books went! It was not until the 8th century in Norther Europe that bishops and others decided that it might not be a bad idea to round out the kalendar and to make sure that all of the apostles and evangelists were on it—not just those who had been martyred around Rome. Thus, it’s from this point that we start seeing certain New Testament saints making their way into the kalendars and mass-books; some faster than others.

So, too, it is in this early medieval period that we should look for an explanation as to the odd occurrence of so many of these days on or around the 24th or 25th of the various months… Staley in his Liturgical Year supposes that this was somehow in connection to the dates of Christmas and the Annunciation, but it remains a mystery to me.

Thus, Matthias does get a celebration as one of the universalizing tendencies of the Carolingian liturgical consolidation. You don’t find feasts for him early. Then, in these latter days, some of these apostles have suffered the further indignity of being switched around because the early medieval dates are now less convenient. Hence, the English doing Matthias today (May 14th) whom we’ve already honored earlier in the year (February 24th).

Basic Principles for Liturgical Worship

Here’s the next installment in the material I’m working on…

The section that will appear after this one is complementary to it and is entitled “Basic Disciplines for Liturgical Worship.” That one’s only in outline form at the moment so it may be a couple more days before it appears. But here’s this for now:

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Basic Principles for Liturgical Worship

Adoration

Modern Americans absorb the principles of commercial transactions at a young age: If you want something, you have to pay for it; if you pay for something, you’d better get it. As a result, it’s no surprise that many of us start out with a vending-machine model of God. As I child, I remember getting a sense that if I prayed for something, I should get it—if I didn’t God either didn’t like me or he wasn’t being fair… I out grew this, of course, as all do who have prayed for God to give them a pony. Nevertheless, I think many of us still have a vaguely transactional sense of worship. That if we are faithful and diligent in our attendance, God somehow owes us—as if we were building up credit to be used when we get stuck in a jam. Or, on the flip-side, attendance at worship is a bargaining chip to be held over God’s head. (“Do this thing for me and I’ll start going to church/I’ll go to church a lot more/I’ll never miss church.”)

It doesn’t work like that.

Indeed, when we stop and think about it we know that it doesn’t work like that—but that doesn’t stop us from feeling that way sometimes despite our best attempts. When we consider the principles of liturgical worship, it’s helpful to take a quick look at the various ways in which we address God. Different traditions break down the aspects of worship and prayer in different ways, but one of the most common schemes (and the one referenced in the prayer book’s catechism) identifies seven types: adoration, praise, thanksgiving, penitence, oblation, intercession, and petition.

I see adoration and praise as inter-related because of what is driving them—nothing but God. Praise is worship directed towards God for no other reason than rejoicing in the person and presence of God. It’s not bribery to get something, it’s flat-out joy in the Lord’s presence. Adoration is one step closer still: it’s relaxing in the direct presence of God.

Thanksgiving is driven by past events. This is when we give thanks for what God has already done for us (and with us, and through us) and for the wonder, majesty, and delight of God’s creation.

Oblation is prayer driven by our response to God and God’s works: at the heart of oblation is offering. Specifically, we offer ourselves to God—as well as our works—to be united with his will and works. I see this as related to Thanksgiving but the next logical step beyond it.

Penitence, intercession and petition are different from the others because they are all asking for something. In penitence, we acknowledge (and bewail) our sins and ask God for forgiveness. In intercession, we ask God for things on behalf of others, recalling individuals, groups, and ultimately all creation to God’s memory—and our own. In petition, we make requests to God based on our own needs.

The liturgical worship of the Book of Common Prayer contains all seven of these elements in different balances at different points. All forms of Christian worship have these seven aspects in different amounts. One of the strengths of liturgical worship is that the balance between these elements is stable.

Within the Eucharist and the Daily Office, the first three—adoration, praise, and thanksgiving—predominate. That’s not to say that the others don’t have a place and don’t appear, but our liturgies foreground the praise of God and rejoicing in God’s presence. The fundamental and primary purpose of liturgical worship is praise and adoration. It’s about celebrating the relationship; it’s about experiencing the vastness of who and what God is. It’s not flattery with an eye to scoring something off the Big Guy at a time to be named later. God does not need our praise; God is not subject to our manipulation.

Formation

I’m going to be paradoxical for a moment now… Having said that the primary point of worship is the praise and adoration of God, I’m going to turn that around on us. The praise and adoration of God is and must be our primary purpose in worship—but God doesn’t need it. God is not made greater for our praise of him; God is God perfectly well without us. We are the ones who need to be reminded—we’re the ones who have to have the Gospel held before our eyes lest we forget and forsake it. So, despite God being the fundamental aim of our worship, if we are to speak of “benefit” at all, we do it for our benefit.

As a result, the way that we do worship has to accomplish its aim, but also be edifying to those of us who participate in it. It needs to draw our minds and hearts to God. It needs to facilitate a lively encounter with the Holy One whom we praise. It needs to give us the tools for understanding what it means to be in the midst of holy things, holy people, and the holy presences within holy places. It needs to feed our sense of the sacred so that, once we have returned to more ostensibly secular living, we may spy out the presence of the Holy woven in the warp and weft of the world around us and within us. In worship we are given the signatures, the characteristics, the tastes of God in a deliberate sense so that we are more able to recognize them when and where we least expect them.

The danger of realizing that worship is for us is if—when—edification usurps the purpose and becomes the primary focus. The point when the nave is turned into a lecture hall or when worship becomes an exercise in consciousness-raising is the point where we have lost sight of God. Edification, formation, is an important secondary purpose of worship but, whenever it moves into primacy we move into an idolatrous self-worship where we take the center rather than the Living God.

No less idolatrous, of course, is when the edification is of an aesthetic sort and worship becomes its own end where its aesthetic qualities and effortless performance edge out adoration. Worship too consumed by its own beauty and elegance is no less a worship of ourselves and the works of our own hands than more overt celebrations of the self and our own enlightened opinions. I say this not because I don’t like beautiful and elegant worship—indeed, I say it precisely because I do! Beauty and holiness are essential aspects of worship done well; care, precision, and planning make it what it can be. And yet whenever our focus is turned from God, we have substantially missed the mark because the purpose of the formation has gone awry.

The true formation found in worship consists of orienting the soul towards God and aligning us within God’s vision of reality. In worship, we are turned to God in praise and adoration, and are given to see the rest of creation as fellow worshippers hymning God with their very being. This is the edification that we need. Whenever worship moves towards ostensible edification, it loses its primary focus—God—and, in doing so, loses its power to orient us beyond ourselves in him! Thus, edification is an important secondary aspect of worship, but if ever it threatens to take primary place then its very value is undermined.

Repetition

Liturgical worship is founded on the principle of repetition. There are patterns and habits that make us who and what we are. The shape of worship shapes our character; the texts of worship pattern our priorities; the ways of relating to one another performed in the liturgy rehearse principles for engagement outside of worship as well. Worship is—literally—habit-forming. And it’s supposed to be.

Modern brain science tells us that an action has to be repeated daily for roughly 40 days for it to become a habit. My martial arts teachers tell me that the Chinese reckon daily practice for 100 days as the small accomplishment, 1,000 days as the middle accomplishment, and 10,000 days as the great accomplishment—and that no one should presume to teach a thing without the middle accomplishment at least (roughly three years of daily practice…) on the grounds that they have not yet achieved sufficient understanding.

Repetition happens in a few different ways in the prayer book system. The first is the repetition of services. Morning and Evening Prayer truly are the bedrock of the system; their daily, weekly, yearly repetition shapes us like nothing else. The Eucharist and the sacraments of the Church become the punctuation of this ongoing rhythm.

The second is the repetition of texts and actions. The same texts and the same body of texts are rehearsed over and over. Some—like the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed—are repeated multiple times a day. Some—like certain psalms and canticles—are repeated several times a week. Some—like our Eucharistic Prayers—are repeated at least once a week. The Psalter is run through monthly or in an eight-week cycle; Scripture itself—or at least a fulsome quantity thereof—is covered every year or two (more on these later). As we gather in corporate worship our rituals of greeting, responding, and reconciling with one another are patterns of relating designed to help us see Christ and find the holy in the other.

Repetition teaches in a variety of ways; it’s not just a matter of gaining information or training a skill. One of the most fruitful teachings of repetition comes through exhaustion: in martial arts training, constant repetition of an act or form wears out the muscles—no matter how strong they may be—and forces the body to learn efficiency. Our body learns something in a special way when the muscles are burdened, deaden, and ultimately desensitized by repetition; at a certain point the neuro-muscular motion breaks down and the repetition becomes an act of will—the will guiding and sustaining it as the body finds on its own a minimal efficiency that enables the motion to continue. It’s then that the deepest levels of learning occur. At this point, it’s no longer a matter of being fun or enjoyable or even “good exercise”—it’s passed purely into the realm of discipline.

What are our expectations of our spiritual practices? Do we expect them to be fun or enjoyable or a good spiritual stretch? What happens if we come to them and find them no longer fun? We speak of a discipline of prayer because the repetition of the liturgical round requires discipline. It requires commitment to the concept of repetition even when we don’t feel like we’re getting anything out of it.

Variation

But repetition on its own can get a bit boring… Even worse than being boring, repetition without allied aspects and disciplines can become rote and stagnant, allowing the mind and focus to wander and reducing the formative texts and actions to mechanical and thoughtless motions and mumblings. As a result, the liturgical round has principles of variation built into it. Variation—a break from the routine, a deliberate alteration in the pattern—not only keeps our attention and keeps us mindful, but can also break open new vistas into prayers and practices that we thought we already knew.

The seasons of the liturgical year are one of our chief vehicles of variation. As the seasons in their courses highlight different aspects of the Christian Gospel, liturgical texts are required or suppressed; the Gloria disappears in Lent, the Pascha Nostrum appears in Easter. These changes may be slight but subtly alter our experience of worship. Sometimes we don’t notice any effect on us; at other times, they may catalyze a new understanding of God, life, and everything. At the least, the changes through the seasons—whether those be textual or the ornamentation of the worship space or the kinds of music chosen (when there is music)—communicate something of the unique character of the time.

One of the most constant sources of variation is found in the Scripture texts deployed in worship. The psalms and lessons prescribed by the lectionary are just as much a part of the liturgy as the prayers. The lectionaries present Scriptural pieces—stories or prophecies or teachings that combine together to communicate the deep meaning of the season in which they are placed. The changing psalms give us something new in the otherwise stable structure of Morning and Evening Prayer. Variation is the spice of repetition that helps us keep our minds and hearts engaged.

Now—some people need more variation than others. Too, I think some times, places, and cultures tend to need more or less variation than others. Modern Westerners on the whole prefer a higher level of variation than we see in liturgies from other times and places. The prayer book is helpful here in both directions: it offers a variety of ways that variation can be introduced, but also puts controls on just how much can be altered lest the benefits of a balanced repetition be completely lost.

Continuity

One of the most beautiful images from the Book of Revelation is the image of the cosmic chorus encircling the celestial throne of God and the Lamb in Revelation 4 and 5. Revelation gives us a sense of the whole world oriented in acts of praise in a continuous outpouring in the presence of God. Holding this image in mind as an overarching structure, we gain the sense that—if you really think about it—our worship only appears to begin and end… Rather, we temporarily join our voices into the unending chorus of praise. We slip in and out of that eternal song. Whenever we pray and worship, whether we are in a crowd of thousands, or together with only a few or if we are in our room alone, our prayer and worship is never strictly an individual thing; because of this greater praise, our personal prayer and praise is always corporate because our worship contributes to the whole.

Liturgical worship helps us remember this because we are not just joined in the principle of prayer—we are also united with the whole in its practice. The liturgy gives us a tangible sense of continuity with the rest of the Christian family across both space and time. When we use the words of the Book of Common Prayer, we are sharing “common” words with all those in our church. Not only that, we are praying in union with Anglicans across the world. Not only does our prayer join us across space, but it also connects us with the Communion of Saints through time as well. We share practices with all those who have used books of common prayer across the past five hundred years. We share with the prayer of all those who came before that as we bear witness to the prayer and praise of the Western Church stretching back to the time of the apostles. Indeed—language aside—the Eucharist from the seventh century Leonine sacramentary (one of the oldest surviving liturgical books) would seem pretty familiar to anyone used to the Eucharist from our American prayer book dating from 1979.

Stability

This great continuity across time leads us to the last of the principles that we’ll discuss—stability. Despite the passage of ages and the myriad cultures it has moved through, the liturgy has provided a coherent and continuous pattern of understanding, communicating, and living the Gospel. Instead, the book as a whole has been prayed over generations and centuries.

The prayer book is an authentic expression of the historic Western liturgy that has nourished literally millions who have come before us. It is an authentic expression of the English devotional experience. The importance of this is not that it’s English, of course, but that it is a rooted, embodied, inherited tradition that has been embraced and passed on by a diverse group over a period of centuries—not just dreamed up by a few people last week. Furthermore, the prayer book is an authentic expression of historic Anglican liturgy that balances reform of Western norms with Scripture and the theological and spiritual practices of the Early Church. That’s actually quite a lot of things going for it—and it’s more things than would be going for most services either you or I would dream up.

Because of this long period of use, because of its proven ability to form Christians, the prayer book system commends itself to our use. Repetition and formation work best when we commit ourselves to a given pattern of practice. The prayer book offers us a stable set of practices capable of sustaining the spirit across decades, through highs and lows, enthusiasms and doldrums.

Behind Liturgical Spirituality

So—continuing the pieces that are contributing to a new work on prayer book spirituality… This piece is logically prior to the last one. I felt the need to remind people about what the heart of this whole exercise is about that then I could reference in later sections.

Two things about this piece… First, it flowed while I was writing it, but I think there are some logic jumps between certain paragraphs/topics where the dots need to be filled in for people who don’t live inside my head. Second, I feel like I’m getting one angle on the topic here but that there are other valuable angles that need to be added but I’m not sure if they belong here or elsewhere. Ah well—here goes:

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Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

My wife is, among other things, a coach with our local running club. She’ll have runners come to her and complain that they don’t feel like they’re making much progress. Her first question is “what’s your goal?” Whether it’s maintaining a certain pace for a certain number of miles, setting a new personal record for a given race, or losing a few pounds, there’s got to be a goal. Otherwise the idea of “progress” is a futile one! Whether they have one or not, her response is inevitably “show me your running log.” Well—they haven’t filled it out. Or, they have and it shows sporadic workouts scattered across a couple of weeks. Or it may show consistency but no differentiation between types of workouts. With the log in hand, she can ask how their training will help them get to their goal. Once she’s established in their minds a connection between their daily and weekly training and the accomplishment of their longer term goal, she can suggest how consistency and balancing the right kinds of workouts will help them achieve it. The training has to be tailored to the goal.

The practice and metaphor of physical training has been connected with the process of spiritual development since the ancient world. It takes the same kind of discipline and consistency to progress in the spiritual life as it does in physical fitness. Indeed, the technical term for the theory and practice of spiritual development is “ascetical theology” taken from the Greek word askesis that simply means “training.” Paul taps into the language of physical training (and running specifically!) in 1 Corinthians when he speaks to the Corinthians of his own self-disciplines: “Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified” (1 Cor 9:24-7). Paul reminds us that we have to have a goal. Not only that, we have to keep a sense that our training is directly contributing to our attainment of that goal.

There is a disconnect between the way that most people approach spirituality and how they approach a concrete project like building a doghouse or a dollhouse. When you’re working on a project like that, there are concrete tasks that you’re trying to accomplish; there’s a goal to work towards and your success can be measured by progress against that goal. We don’t tend to think of prayer and meditation in that same way; you can’t see it taking shape—the framing coming together, milestones being accomplished like getting the roof on. And yet, just because it cannot be easily measured does not mean that there aren’t steps towards progress. Martin Thornton, the Anglican spiritual writer, reminds us that there is one true test of an effective spirituality practice: does it make me a more loving person?

At the end of the day, this is what we are about. We have been created in the image and likeness of God. At the beginning of our making, before even the first cells of our bones were constructed, God framed us in his own image. A God-shaped pattern lies at the heart of our being. As Scripture and tradition have revealed again and again, God’s own character is rooted in love, justice, mercy, and fidelity. The psalms struggle to use the immensity of creation to describe the character of God: “Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, and your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the strong mountains, your justice like the great deep; you save both man and beast, O Lord” (Ps 36:5-6). These same attributes were woven into our being before the cords of our sinews were knit. Where are they now? As beings created to love and serve God and one another, how in touch are we with this fundamental pattern?

Truthfully, we fall far short of the promise of our pattern. We don’t consistently manifest the characteristics that have been built into us. This is the result of sin. Through our own choices, through the choices of others, through the choices that society makes and heaps upon us, we lose sight of who and what we are. We invest ourselves in stories at odds with God’s story, stories about riches and success and fame where what matters is getting ahead—or perhaps stories about needs and hungers and addictions where what matters is quieting the cravings…until they kick up again. We invest ourselves in patterns of life that are skewed from the pattern that God has laid down for us, patterns grounded in something other than love and faithfulness.

The point of Christian spirituality, then, is to recall us to ourselves. It is to reconcile us to the God who loves us, who created us in his own image, and who cared enough for our redemption to take frail flesh and demonstrate the patterns of love, mercy and justice in the person of Jesus Christ—patterns that led him through the cross to resurrection. In Jesus, in God’s ultimate act of self-revelation and of self-emptying for our sake, we have been called back; we can get in touch with the “us” that God originally created us to be. Therefore, the true test of a Christian spirituality is whether it helps us accomplish this goal: are we freed to love and to most fully be who God created us to be?

But we can’t stop there, either, I’m afraid… The Christian enterprise isn’t just about us—individually. While God cares deeply about the redemption of each one of us, there’s a much bigger scope in view here. God wills the redemption of all humanity, of all creation. Our spiritual work isn’t just about being the best we can be—it’s about participating in God’s monumental effort to reconcile all creation back to the patterns of love, justice, mercy, and fidelity, back to the goodness that it had once and can have again.

To put it another way, Paul reminds again and again in his letters that we have been baptized into the Body of Christ. He means this in a mystical sense—that we are connected into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—but he means it socially as well—that we are connected into the community of all the others who have been connected into Jesus as well, the Church. But being incorporated into the Body is the beginning of the process, not its end. It’s not enough to be grafted into the Body of Christ if we don’t likewise share in the Mind of Christ which is so famously laid out in the Christ-hymn of Philippians: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross…” (Phil 2:5-8). Ephesians reminds us that this is the point of the whole exercise; Christian spirituality isn’t just about you—your spiritual success is tied to everyone else around you and, indeed, that’s the point of the institutional church: “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. . . . But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love” (Eph 4:12-13; 15-16, emphasis added). We’re not on this journey alone; our own spiritual maturity is tied up with how we model and encourage that maturity in others. Any spirituality or spiritual exercise that cuts us off or makes us feel superior to those around us is not being rightly used.

Thus, the goal of Christian spirituality is to bring to whole Body to Christian maturity. We do this by cultivating that maturity in ourselves and modeling it for others and encouraging them in their own path based on the gifts for building up the Body that we’ve been given. Alright—if that’s the goal, then how do we measure our progress towards it? Well, this is a little more subjective. It’s not like running; I can’t see how I’m doing in the same way that I glance down at a running watch to check my pace.

As Thornton suggests, the most reliable guide is an honest appraisal of how we treat those around us. Are we treating the inevitable provocations of daily life with anger and resentment or with patience and compassion? (Well—at least increasing degrees of patience…) When I sit and ponder how my spiritual life is going, one of the best measures I know is to consider how my wife and kids might rate me; am I being a more thoughtful and patient husband? Am I responding to their demands on my time in appropriate ways? And not just them—how would my co-workers answer the same question?

The habits of devotion foster in us the habits of virtue. We are transformed—slowly and with a certain amount of inevitable back-sliding—gradually towards the mind of Christ. As disconnected as devotion and virtue might appear from one another, both the wisdom of the church and our own experience will confirm it. I remember once being angry at my wife over some petty household argument—which I can’t even remember now—and thinking that I couldn’t bear to pray Evening Prayer then because once I had done so, I’d have better perspective, be more centered, and that I would have to acknowledge that she was right!

I also want to offer a word of caution concerning another kind of test. Sometimes we get the sense that the point of spiritual devotions (or even church services and sacraments) is to feel uplifted or inspired. That the correct judge if it “worked” is whether we felt the Spirit moving or if we felt a spiritual high. Now, I’m a firm believer in the presence and the movement of the Spirit. I’ve discerned it in liturgical worship, in free-church worship, in the sacraments, and outside of them as well. And yet I’ve also felt emotional states that seem much like it that passed quickly or were the result of some kind of emotional manipulation. You can’t manipulate the Spirit and you can’t manipulate long-term formation. The point of a solid devotional practice is not momentary surges of emotion; long-term formation and transformation is measured in years and decades. Sometimes good and worthwhile devotional practices will inspire us—and sometimes they may feel like work for long stretches of time.

As we continue to think together about spirituality, I want you to keep this in back of your mind. We’re doing this for a reason. There’s a purpose to all of this. There is a goal. We want to connect back into the God who calls us each by name. We want to align our priorities with his priorities. We want to make our individual stories part of his greater, larger, deeper story. We want to be transformed as he is, so that we might love as he does so that, so graced, we might better understand and express his love for us and for his whole creation.

Prayer Book Thoughts

As is usual, I’ve got a number of projects going on across a variety of burners. One of them is a project for Scott Gunn and the folks at Forward Movement on the prayer book. As a result, I’m doing some writing and thinking and reworking of material that’s appeared in a variety of places. The section I’m working on right now is a preliminary part that wrestles with liturgical spirituality as it applies to liturgical practice.

This is a first draft.

I’ve both written some material here and cobbled in some previously written bits that’s moving towards a whole—but isn’t there yet. As I think through this stuff out loud, though, I welcome your thoughts, comments, and push-back.

The audience here is both laity and clergy, but with an eye more to laity—I’m trying to keep the tone and content on the lighter side. No footnotes.

Let me know what you think, and we’ll see where it goes…

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The American 1979 Book of Common Prayer is the official worship resource for the Episcopal Church. On one hand, it stands in the tradition of the English and Scottish Books of Common Prayer that stretches back to the middle of the sixteenth century—all of which partake in the great stream of the Historic Western Liturgy that can be traced back to the Apostolic Age with notable periods of formation in the sixth and eighth centuries. On the other hand, it also participates within the recent ecumenical Liturgical Renewal Movement fostered by the Roman Catholic Second Vatican Council (1962-5) that re-energized liturgical scholarship by looking at the fourth century—the earliest period of church history for which we have solid liturgical documentation. So—it’s a book with a very old heritage that has recently been updated with the best modern thinking about what the early church was up to.

Because there are a lot of historical things that can be said about the prayer book and about the services contained in it, many folks who try to teach about the prayer book start from an historical angle. I’m not going to do that. Don’t get me wrong—the history is important if you want to know how these things developed; we will talk about some historical stuff and about how things changed over the years. But neither do we want to confuse the act of describing development with the act of enriching spirituality. The history can help you understand why some material has been put together; but that—on its own—won’t help you use that material to grow in love towards God and neighbor. As a result, I’m going to focus on the prayer book as it is now, and pull in the history as it helps us understand why we pray as we do and how we can do it better!

I want to start with three fundamental statements about the prayer book from which everything else proceeds. First, the prayer book is best understood not as the Sunday service book, or even as a collection of services, but as a complementary system of Christian formation. Second, this system with its interlocking cycles has a coherent spiritual purpose. Third, this system as enshrined in the successive Books of Common Prayer is an essential part of what it means to participate in the Anglican tradition.

The Prayer Book System

When we consider the table of contents of the Book of Common Prayer, we note that—broadly—there are three kinds of services. First, there are those that take us a life-cycle arc from birth to death that are chiefly of a pastoral nature (meaning that there’s a particular event or life-experience that is bringing the priest and the people together at that moment). Thus, there are services that take us from “Thanksgiving for the Birth of a Child,” to “Baptism” (infant baptism being typical, if not the norm), to “Confirmation,” to “Marriage,” to “Reconciliation of a Penitent” to “Burial.” Second, there are those services that order our worship on a regular repeating basis. The liturgical round is made up of three components: the liturgical calendar where we reflect upon our central mysteries through the various lenses of the seasons of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and in his continuing witness in the lives of the saints, the Daily Office where we yearly immerse ourselves in the Scriptures and Psalms, and the Holy Eucharist where we gather on Holy Days to most perfectly embody the Body of Christ and receive the graces that the sacraments afford. Third, there are the services for ordaining and consecrating the clergy of the church: deacons, priests, and bishops. (Sometimes these are conceptually grouped together and called “the ordinal.”)

Of these three kinds of services, the second (the regular repeating ones) constitute the theological, spiritual, and practical heart of the prayer book. Again, these are the Daily Offices (consisting of Morning Prayer, Noon Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline) and the Eucharist also called Holy Communion. However, they are dispersed through the book in such a way that their importance, their various elements, and their relationship are not easily identified. Grasping the content and nature of these services is the key to understanding the spiritual structure offered by the prayer book.

If the standard by which you measure the services of the church is Sunday morning, you might wonder why they are grouped together in this way. After all—that was one of the big shifts between the current prayer book and the way Sunday was done before it: Morning Prayer used to be the standard Sunday service, now the Eucharist is the standard. It appears that one displaced the other, and functionally that is the case, but when we take a big step backward and get a bigger picture historically, we realize that this is a set of false options.

Indeed, the Sunday morning “either/or” is a relatively recent occurrence historically. The first Anglican prayer books replicated the Sunday morning pattern of services that they inherited from the Western liturgical tradition: Morning Prayer followed by the Litany followed by the Eucharist. All three services were done one after the other! After the Reformation, the piece that got dropped was the consecration of the Eucharist itself: they would do Morning Prayer, the Litany, and the Holy Communion service through the readings, sermon, creed, and prayers but then would stop. (Sometimes the Eucharist was only consecrated three or four times a year!) It wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century that Episcopal clergy even had the option of doing either Morning Prayer or Holy Communion. So the “either/or” had classically been a “both/and.”

The heart of the prayer book system is given to us in the first real sentence of the first real section of the prayer book:

The Holy Eucharist, the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day and other major Feasts, and Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, as set forth in this Book, are the regular services appointed for public worship in the Church. (p. 13)

Here in this sentence are the three key items that we identified above. The establishment of “the Lord’s Day and other major Feasts” is determined by the Calendar; the Holy Eucharist and Daily Morning and Evening Prayer alternate as central public services.

Starting with the Calendar, we must begin with the recognition that most human measures for marking time are social constructs. That is, nature gives us a few points upon which we hang our hats. The motion of the sun determines two main things: day and night, and a year broken into four quarters based on our motion around the sun. The motion of the moon provides us with another measure but, as it does not match with the solar cycle, causes more complexity than it solves. Given the sparse directions given by the world around us, the majority of the methods by which we keep time say more about “us” and what we think is important than they do about the nature of time itself.

Like the natural world, the Book of Common Prayer has seasons. However, rather than pointing to agricultural potential or lack thereof, the prayer book constructs time around the person of Jesus in a set of seasons referred to as the Temporal cycle. While the Sanctoral cycle (which celebrates the saints) logically follows subsequent to the Temporal cycle, it is super-imposed upon the year as a succession of static days mostly independent of the seasons. The way that the prayer book orders time, then, is supposed to tell us something about our priorities. Time itself is provided with a Jesus-colored lens.

Now we move to contemplate the Eucharist and Office. The liturgy of the Western Church—especially liturgy that partakes of a monastic spirit—can be described as (among other things) a disciplined and bounded encounter with Scripture. That is, under the early medieval monastic ideal—lifted up as a worthy pattern in the preface to the first prayer book in 1549—the Scriptures were read yearly in the Office; then the Mass could cherry-pick small sections of text (known as “pericopes”) at its leisure, firm in the knowledge that—thanks to the constant repetition of Scripture—the congregation would immediately recognize the proper text and recall its literary context.

Thus, in the Office the Psalms, the garden from which the fruit of all the other Scriptures may be plucked (as Athanasius put it), would be repeated regularly (weekly, monthly or 8-weekly), and the bulk of Scripture read through every year or two depending on how many lessons you use at Evening Prayer. This is fundamentally catechectical—it teaches. This pattern grounds us in the stories, the laws, the histories, and the laments of the people of God that illuminate and inform our own experiences. Too, the canticles serve an important function. They aren’t just praise-bits stuck in with the “real” material, rather they are lenses and orienting devices to help us interpret the readings—especially the set traditional canticles.

The Eucharist, then, as it rolls through the seasons, offers us not only a weekly (or more frequent) experience of the grace of God but allows us to hear and experience the Good News in several major modes: expectation, joy, enlightenment, penitence, celebration—the principle Christian affections. If the Office is primarily catechetical, the Eucharist is primarily mystagogical. That is, it leads us by experiences of grace into the mystery of God and the relationship that God is calling us into with him and with the entire created order through him.

The final aspect of the Prayer Book system is that the Calendar, the Office, and the Eucharist all form us for a continual practice of personal prayer; while the prayer book gives us the words for our common prayer, these words likewise offer models for how we converse with God in our private and passing moments.

The Spirituality of the Prayer Book System

The purpose of any spiritual system is to bring the practitioner and their community into a deeper relationship with God—to create a family of mature Christians. Through their increasing awareness of who God is, how much God loves them and all of creation, they translate that love they have been shown into concrete acts of love and mercy in the world around them. There are several different strategies that different spiritual systems use to accomplish this. One of the classic ones—referred to in St Paul’s direction to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17)—is the recollection of God. The idea here is that if we can continually keep in mind the goodness of God, the constant presence of God, and an awareness of the mighty works of God on behalf of us and others, that we will more naturally and more completely act in accordance with God’s will and ways. Continual recollection is nearly impossible, but there are methods to help us in this habit.

A primary goal of liturgical spirituality is to create a disciplined recollection of God. Thus, if we specifically pause at central points of time—morning and evening; noon and night; Sundays and other Holy Days—to reorient ourselves towards God and the mighty acts of God, whether recalled to us through the Scriptures or experienced by us through direct encounters with the sacraments, then this discipline will lead us towards a habitual recollection of God.

In the liturgical round, the Book of Common Prayer gives us specific moments to stop and orient our time and ourselves around the recollection of God. As a result, one of the most important parts of the book is the Daily Office section that provides forms for prayer at morning, noon, evening and night. These prayer offices are our fundamental tool for disciplined recollection; they provide the foundation for our spiritual practice. This foundation, then, is punctuated by the Eucharist on Holy Days (at the least). And, conceptually, this is how we should view Sundays—not the day of the week on which we go to church—but as a Holy Day which recurs on a weekly basis.

While this sounds all awfully churchy it’s actually not. Indeed, this liturgical structure was mediated into the prayer-book tradition by a spiritual devotion for the laity. The idea of the Daily Office was originally a regular communal practice. By the end of the 4th century, it was transitioning into a monastic practice and began to be less of a feature in lay life. By the medieval period, it was expected that the laity would be at Matins (Morning Prayer) and Vespers (Evening Prayer)—as well as Mass—on Holy Days. With the rise of lay literacy in the High Medieval period, though, came the Books of Hours. These were the central devotional books used by laypeople (men and women alike) and they contained a cycle of offices that followed the basic structure of the monastic and priestly Office books but with fewer psalms and greatly reduced seasonal variations. On the eve of and during the English Reformation, the Latin Books of Hours and the English-language prymers held an important place in the devotional lives of upper- and middle-class lay Christians who prayed these several Offices on a daily basis. The Daily Offices that appeared in our initial 1549 Book of Common Prayer—and in every book subsequent—are equally derived from these lay prymers as well as the Sarum breviaries.

The Prayer Book System and the Anglican Tradition

This pattern of prayer—the Daily Offices prayed twice a day and the Eucharist at least weekly if not more frequent—is the common heritage of the Christian Church. The Eastern Orthodox Churches have it; the Roman Catholic Church has it; the Anglican Churches have it. All of these churches understand that not everybody is going to be doing all of this praying all of the time—and that’s ok. However, in the Eastern and in the Roman Catholic traditions, the Daily Offices (the Divine Praises and Liturgy of the Hours respectively) are practically the province of clergy and monastics. Lay people, for the most part, are not aware of them or encouraged to do them. Indeed, Roman Catholic spirituality since the time of the Reformation has emphasized daily Eucharist to the point that any other kind of daily service would be considered odd! Of the churches that have retained it, the Anglican churches are the only ones that have consistently insisted by means of the prayer book that clergy and laity alike should be participating in this cycle of worship, formation, and transformation on a daily basis. I say “by means of the prayer book” advisedly… Our books insist on it, but that doesn’t mean that the people have always practiced it and that the clergy have always taught it!

However, many of the reform movements within Anglicanism have been anchored by a call back to the prayer book system. We see it with the Caroline Divines; we see it with the Oxford Movement; we see it with the Victorian English Revival. We even see it with the life-long Anglicans John and Charles Wesley—the prayer book system is part of the “method” that earned the (originally) derisive name of “Methodism!”

Can you be an Anglican without engaging, practicing, knowing, or caring about the prayer book system? Of course—millions of Anglicans do it every day! But can you be an Anglican who claims to be engaged in the art and practice of spirituality without grappling with this system? Well—as the prayer book represents one of our central threads of continuity through the ages and across the world, it’d be hard to make a case for that. This is the homeland of Anglican spirituality. Even when Anglican churches and their flocks have not been diligent in inhabiting the system, there is value in realizing that it exists, seeing it as a devotional ideal, and understanding our own efforts with the larger picture of the Church’s spiritual work.

Criteria and Virtues

Abba Anthony said, “Whoever hammers a lump of iron, first decides what he is going to make of it, a scythe, a sword, or an axe. Even so we ought to make up our minds what kind of virtue we want to forge or we labor in vain.”

I’ve been rolling around our current criteria for sanctity in my head as well as my own understanding of our theology of sanctity. Our criterion 2 “Christian Discipleship” is rather broad and vague. Indeed, that’s not necessarily surprising as discipleship comes in a variety of forms. But, what if—as a way of focusing our thoughts—we identified the specific virtues of Christ that we see manifested most fully in the given individual?

The value here is that it accomplishes a couple of things. First, it brings the basic vocabulary of the virtues back before the eyes of the church, reminding them of our ascetical theology. Second, it reiterates a sound theology of sanctity which does not praise individuals for their individuality but which understands them to be participating in the virtues of Christ.

Of course, this does raise the issue of what list of virtues to use—and there are any number to chose from whether that be the classic list of the seven (fortitude, temperance, wisdom, justice, faith, hope, love) or one of the list ennumerated in Scripture or a combination of several. Again, this leads us back to us as a church and how we understand the Christ-like virtues most needful now.

For instance, Catherine of Siena might be (wisdom, temperance) or (wisdom, reconciliation, service). [But are the last two virtues or charisms—should there be a distinction between the two; can there be a distinction? Gonna have to think about that…]

Thinking on the Laity

A few days ago, I was stomping around the house muttering things about clergy having become quite annoyed with a set of them and it got me to thinking…

When I was in seminary—fifteen years ago now (?!)—one of the concerns that I heard expressed was around who was being sent. It seem like anyone who expressed any sort of interest in religion or theology beyond Sunday School got packed off to Seminary. It was almost as if the next logical step after Disciple (this was a Methodist school) was seminary! There are a couple of implications here:

It meant that the first year of seminary had to be spent in remedial catechesis because many folks hadn’t been fully formed.
It also meant that many local churches were losing their models of what an informed and engaged lay person looks like.

Things aren’t exactly the same in the current Episcopal Church—but I don’t think they’re all that different either.

Here’s the thing: Clergy tend to be folks who didn’t/couldn’t find fulfillment in the church as laity. As a result, if they’re relying solely or even primarily on their own spiritual journey to inform others, they will inevitably direct others towards clerical expressions of engagement.

Something I saw on the Chant Cafe entitled “Clericalism among the laity” that the new pope said while still archbishop resonated deeply with this line of thinking:

“We priests tend to clericalize the laity,” Francis said. “[We] focus on things of the clergy, more specifically, the sanctuary, rather than bringing the Gospel to the world… A Church that limits herself to administering parish work experiences what someone in prison does: physical and mental atrophy.

“We infect lay people with our own disease. And some begin to believe the fundamental service God asks of them is to become greeters, lectors or extraordinary ministers of holy communion at Church. Rather, [the call is] to live and spread the faith in their families, workplaces, schools, neighborhoods and beyond.”

The reform that’s needed is “neither to clericalize nor ask to be clericalized. The layperson is a layperson. He has to live as a layperson… to be a leaven of the love of God in society itself…. [He] is to create and sow hope, to proclaim the faith, not from a pulpit but from his everyday life. And like all of us, the layperson is called to carry his daily cross—the cross of the layperson, not of the priest.” – Pope Francis

There are priests out there who know how to encourage and build up their laity to be good laity. But there are more who don’t. This is a problem, and we need to identify and name it as such.

I’ve wrestled for decades around whether I have a vocation to the priesthood. I didn’t thinks so initially, but clergy encouraged me to think about it. I was one of those people who needed some basic catechesis in seminary—not in Scripture, certainly, but in a number of other areas. I entered as a Lutheran yet it wasn’t until my second semester that I learned the Lutheran Church had confessional documents! I left the Lutheran Church shortly before I would have been ordained in it, largely due to the sense that I was moving in a different (Anglican) direction and that I would not keep my promise to teach and preach in accord with Lutheran teachings given my understanding of the sacraments and saints. In my time as an Episcopalian, I’ve considered my vocation in this church a number of times, in a number of ways. My increasing sense is that God is not calling me to be a priest—certainly not now.

The result is that I find myself in a church that has little to no idea what to do with me—certainly on the local level. There’s no need to go into details, but some clergy—particularly those used to a “Father knows best” approach—don’t appreciate someone with more formal education in theology who is not interested in putting up and shutting up…

In particular, I’m struck with a growing sense that we lay people need to own our own spirituality. You—I—cannot necessarily count on our clergy for this. Certainly good clergy can help but, ultimately, they’re not responsible for the shape of your spiritual life.

Bottom-line:

Laity need to have a sense of what classic Christian spirituality looks like for the lay condition.
Recognize that your clergy may not always have the resources to direct you.
When in doubt, look to the Office.
Clergy—aside from having a great prayer life of your own, consider how to nurture lay spirituality.
Martin Thornton’s Christian Proficiency is a great place to start.

SCLM Meeting Update

I think that the meeting went quite well yesterday.

The main topic of conversation, of course, was how to get the work done with the amount of budget that we have. We did get a fair amount of funding—enough for two face-to-face meetings—but we’re a product-oriented group rather than just being policy-oriented. That is, we produce things (our liturgical stuff) rather than just making decisions that others will then implement. A lot of what we hoped to do with meetings and consultants will either have to be done by and in the Commission or not at all. Web meetings and conference calls will be our main methods of communicating together.

That all sounds fine to me—I’m used to working that way.

There was some vigorous discussion around my proposal for HWHM. Overall, most of the people who expressed an opinion about it were positive. There were some questions about its scope and whether it was doable. I expected that and feel that concern as well—it’s a lot of work, but I think is necessary work. The chief reservations around the idea focused on concern about a two-tiered system. That is, are we setting up the Calendar as an “upper” tier and the Almanac as a “lower” tier? This seems to be the main hurdle to overcome. Sandye and I have been directed to put together a structure for the work to present at our June meeting to give people a hands-on feel of what this would really look like.

On the Electronic Publication front, it appears that Church Publishing already maintains a database of liturgical material that it uses to produce the material that it prints. That database would not provide exactly what we’re talking about for a device/platform independent means of communicating the material. However, they already have a system of tagging in place that could be adopted in an XML format. I found that quite interesting on the technical level.

As you can imagine, the main debate here was around copyright and cost. The first discussion was around what exactly the General Convention resolutions were asking: does “freely available” mean that they should be” easily accessible” (for purchase) or does it mean that they should be provided electronically “without cost”? Several people who had been on the liturgical/prayer book committee at GC indicated that they had intended it to mean “without cost.” My sense is that this is the will of the Commission—to figure out a way to provide these materials for free on the internet. But what would that do to Church Publishing and the Church Pension Group? I noted that, particularly with prayer/spiritual materials, a digital and a physical copy are not mutually exclusive; people will often buy and use in hardback what they already have electronically. We shouldn’t paint it as a zero-sum game. Nancy from Church Publishing agreed and said that they did have some material showing that to be the case as well. The main deliverable here for our next meeting, then, is for the Church Publishing folks to take a look at what it would do to their costs and how feasible free electronic dissemination is based on their current business model.

So—I’d say that some progress is being made. However, nothing has been made official at this point; no final decisions have been made. It’s progress, but still tentative progress that may yet be overturned.

SCLM Meeting Today

The Episcopal Church’s Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (SCLM) is meeting this afternoon. This is our first meeting since the budget numbers have come back and, with those in hand, we’ll be able to set our plan of work for the various sub-committees of the SCLM for this present triennium.

In figuring out what that scope of work will look like, I’ve submitted two documents for the two committees that I’m involved with. Here are the highlights on those two…

Further Thoughts Towards an Episcopal Almanac

At the last meeting, I raised again the possibility of an almanac that would supplement the sanctoral calendar. My sense is that some of the commemorations currently being placed on the Church’s calendar don’t represent true sanctoral occasions but that there are those in the Church who still see them as worthy of note. An almanac could be a proper repository for these or for people that the Church would like to remember but for whom the title of “saint” either doesn’t quite fit or where we’re still exploring their sanctity. The sense was that they wanted to hear more in terms of details.

This piece presents some a proposal containing details.

First, I identify six “centers of energy” that I see in the Church around HWHM (with the caveat that my labels are admittedly broad and imprecise and that they are not meant to represent everyone who may identify with a certain label):

A Liberal Protestant energy: This movement sees inclusivity as a core commitment of TEC. The definition of “saint” is a broad one. It tends be more vocal about a reluctance to judge the holiness of another. This energy would likely see a reduction of HWHM—particularly if it adversely impacted the diversity represented in the Calendar—as an attempt to “roll back the clock” to a calendar of old white male bishops. [I see this at the Episcopal Café and Facebook]
A Broad Church middle energy: This movement seems concerned with the number of commemorations, a loss of ferial days, and is not sure about the sanctity of some of the additions. On the other hand, there is also a reluctance to judge the holiness of others. In general, this group expresses puzzlement around TEC’s theology of sanctity. [I see this at the Episcopal Café, Facebook, on my blog, and specifically on Crusty Old Dean’s (Tom Ferguson of Bexley Hall) post on Lent Madness]
An Anglo-Catholic energy: This movement may or may not have an issue with the number of commemorations, but has a narrower definition of saint: inclusion in the Calendar is seen as the church’s official declaration on the eschatological status of the commemorated. There are concerns whether all of the commemorations in HWHM meet this standard. Too, there is a concern that the collects do not appropriately express a robust theology of sanctity. [I see this at on my blog, on Facebook, and summarizes most of the feedback I have received personally]
A conservative protestant energy: This movement sees HWHM as a yet another example of the political liberalism of TEC leadership and regards most of the new commemorations as politically motivated. [As seen particularly in the comments section on Lent Madness regarding Frances Perkins]
An agency energy: This movement comes from the fact that we explicitly asked specific agencies and groups within the church to put forward candidates. Having done so, there seems to be an obligation to accept them. Furthermore, the work has been done to create the biographies and the propers; to not use them now would be a waste of that time and effort.
A legislative energy: This movement is around the establishment of official, published criteria. There is concern that the committee created criteria, then disregarded them in the addition of new commemorations raising an integrity issue.

These are the main tensions that we need to negotiate if we want to create a successful product that will be used across the Church.

Then I turn to the current shape of HWHM and show that it contains an odd alternation between temporal and sanctoral material. It’s a book made up of small sections pieced together and doesn’t have a coherent structure. My proposal is to gather the current material into three sections:

a “Holy Women, Holy Men” section that contains the propers for the sanctoral Days of Optional Observance and recommendations on the local identification and observance of saints containing the Commons of Saints.
a “Temporal Cycle” section that contains the ferial propers in temporal sequence as adapted from the Canadian BAS followed by the alternative six-week thematic lectionary.
a “Various Occasions” section that contains the votive propers followed by an integrated Almanac.

Thus, the resource would put the three principal options for non-Holy Days (a lesser feast, a temporal ferial day, or a votive) on more or less equal footing. The third section would contain the almanac and the people and commemorations there would be presented as specific representatives or examples of certain votives.

My plan for work in light of this is admittedly ambitious. I’m suggesting that we put *all* of the Lesser Feasts back on the table, create a wiki, and—once we have nailed down our operative criteria at our June meeting—we document our evidence for each criterion for each commemoration. Those who fulfill the criteria are candidates for inclusion in a re-formed Calendar; those who don’t meet all the criteria and who are yet deemed significant to our Church and its history will be placed in the Almanac along with other worthy people, movements, and occasions.

Too, I recommend that each section will be prefaced by some basic information regarding what the section is about and how the material in it can and should be used. Specifically, this will address the question about how the Lesser Feasts interact with the Daily Office.

We’ll see how this goes. Some of the folks I’ve discussed it with see it as a workable solution given the various difficulties that have to be negotiated. We’ll see what the others think…

Electronic Publications

As I reviewed the relevant General Convention resolutions around the issue of Electronic Publications, I was quite surprised to find this one:

Resolution 2009-A102 (Authorize Use of the Enriching our Worship Series) represents a major change in policy with regard to the digital realm. After first enumerating the complete set of materials within the EOW series (Enriching Our Worship 1: The Daily Office, Great Litany and Eucharist; Enriching Our Worship 2: Ministry with the Sick and Dying and Burial of a Child; Enriching Our Worship 3: Burial Rites for Adults together with a Rite for the Burial of a Child; and Enriching Our Worship 4: The Renewal of Ministry and the Welcoming of a New Rector or other Pastor) a resolving clause states: “That these liturgical texts be freely available in electronic format on the internet” (emphasis added). It should also be noted that the original text of the resolution did not contain this resolve clause; it was added by the committee in the House of Bishops and concurred in the House of Deputies. According to this resolution, therefore, one of our tasks must be to ensure that these four resources are freely available for download and use.

So—GC has already resolved that this action should be taken. It hasn’t been. Now, I’m not going to say that EOW is my favorite set of resources out there, but I am curious to find out why this resolution wasn’t implemented.

We had a couple of resolutions referred to us as a Commission; referrals are non-binding in that they are there for us to review and then to decide what we believe the best course of action to be. Here’s my take on these two:

Resolution 2013-D060 (Planning for Making Liturgical Resources Freely Available on Any Device or Platform) was concurred for referral. Unlike the previous resolutions, it is not binding, but has been given to us for our study and to formulate policy with regard to whether and how it may be put into place. It directs the SCLM:

to begin planning in the next triennium for the structuring of all liturgical and musical resources as format- and platform-independent content, so that it may be made freely available to any device or medium, and to return to the 78th General Convention with a proposal and budget to begin the work.

This resolution goes a step beyond the policy laid down in 2009-A102. It does affirm the free availability mandated in the prior resolution, and furthermore introduces the principle of format- and platform-independent material. The key point here is that, following this policy, a PDF is no longer sufficient as it does not meet the format-independent requirement.

Also concurred for referral was 2013-D079 (Provide Electronic Availability of Liturgical Resources). While similar in spirit to 2013-D060, it is less specific. It too directs that all liturgical resources approved by General Convention be made “electronically available and easily accessible, both online for downloads and in electronic media such as CD-ROM, DVD, and their successor technologies.” It does not use the word “freely.” While it does so less clearly than 2013-D060, this resolution also functionally requires platform-independent solutions in its mention of successor technologies. The main difference is the urgency and accountability; it directs a timeframe (by the end of calendar year 2013) and a mechanism for oversight (reports to Executive Council by DFMS staff).

I’m in favor of these. I think that they’re very much heading in the right direction.

Electronic frontiers do not—for the most part—open up new mission fields. Instead, I think they give us a new angle onto the existing mission field. Social media and mobile computing give us a means to put worship, devotional, and formational tools at our congregations’ finger-tips quicker and easier than ever in the past. Too, in this resourcing, we can also make it easy for them to communicate via social media that they are using these things and that they are a part of their spiritual life. That, in turn, will raise awareness of their spiritual practice amongst their social networks and possibly lead to helpful and healthy conversations about what modern faith looks like and what faith practices foster it.

We need to free our liturgies and our hymnals so that they can be easily and effectively leveraged to create useful devotional tools and helpful worship aids. Period. Full stop.

As long as there is a monopoly on these materials, ours hands will be digitally tied.

On the other hand, these two referred resolutions, while having the right idea, are pretty short on awareness about the multitude of issues facing such a move. I see four main policy issues that will have to be sorted through before material can be put online:

“freely…”: I support freely available electronic materials on the internet. As a member of a small congregation and keeping in mind 2013-A076 on the dissemination of resources to small congregations, I know that free access to all of our liturgical books would be a financial bonus to cash-strapped parishes. However, we would be remiss if we did not note that Church Publishing is in the business of selling liturgical materials including the electronic Rite Series software. As the Church pension system is tied to Church Publishing, we should consider the impact free liturgical materials might have on the broader system.
“All liturgical materials”: One of the issues tied to expenses is that some of our resources—notably the Hymnal 1982—make use of materials already under copyright and someone must pay licensing fees for them. Given the incorporation of copyrighted materials in some of our liturgical books, are we legally able to make all of our resources freely available for download? If not, what will our policy with regard to these materials?
“…available”: Another facet of copyright is that the materials produced by the Church are under copyright. As a result, their re-use is restricted if not prohibited. The only exception of which I am aware is the Book of Common Prayer which has been placed in the public domain. While 2013-D060 does not mention copyright, it cannot be effectively implemented with copyright protection in place as currently configured. Creative Commons licenses offer a more nuanced approach to copyright protections. Rather than doing way with copyright, these licenses represent a way to retain intellectual property rights and protections but to voluntarily waive certain aspects of those rights to enable greater digital development particularly around the creation of derivative works. We should explore how these might help us in making our materials more available.
“platform-independent”/”successor technologies”: In order to present electronic material in a stable, flexible and—above all—useful format, we need to move beyond PDFs. A PDF document is superior to a book in two ways: it cannot be directly altered and it is far more portable. However, it remains locked into a linear paradigm. Hyperlinks and bookmarks mitigate this shortcoming to a minor extent, but do not solve it. Following 2006-A049, we need to decide upon an open standard format that offers more dynamic possibilities than a PDF. While PDFs are fine in the short-term and ought to be part of our long-term distribution strategy, they need to remain a facet of it and not be its totality.

I’m recommending that we figure out what the barriers are to implementing a freely-available EOW and get that material up as soon as possible in PDF form. I’d also like to honor the intention of the other two resolutions as fully as possible. This means getting as many of our authorized books as possible online as free PDFs before the end of 2013.

Too, we need to work towards platform independence. My goal here is too look at the encoding options, pick one, and to draft a resolution for GC2016 requesting funding and approval for the construction of a Standard Electronic Edition of the Book of Common Prayer.

So—a lot of interesting discussion will be taking place today. I’ll keep you updated on how things unfold…

Sanctoral Criteria: On Objectivity and Subjectivity

I sat down with Holy Women, Holy Men yesterday in the presence of my handy spreadsheet from whence colorful graphs issue. I added several new columns to it and grouped them all under the heading of “HWHM Criteria”. After consulting HWHM pp. 742-6, I labeled 6 columns:

Historicity
Discipleship
Significance
Memorability
Local Observance
Perspective

These are the labels in the criteria, after all. I omitted “Range of Inclusion”, “Levels of Commemoration”, and “Combined Commemorations” as I see these as directives concerning the shape of the kalendar as a whole and not directly applicable in assessing a particular commemoration.

Looking at these, I thought I’d try and tackle the easiest first. Which are the easy ones and which the hard? Well, in my book the two simplest are the first and last. “Historicity” isn’t without its gray areas, but it’s a lot more black and white than the others. Similarly, “Perspective” includes an objective value: “fifty years have elapsed since that person’s death.”

“Local Observance” is also a fairly objective measure though by no means a simple one. The central clause in this one is the following: “…significant commemoration . . . already exists at the local and regional levels.” Then, two and a half pages (744-6) are substantially devoted to outlining the process of what local/regional commemoration looks like, then how these are moved to the national/churchwide level. As a result, there ought to be a significant paper trail that will objectively demonstrate “local observance” in a satisfactory fashion. Thus objective, but needing a certain amount of leg-work to hunt all of this stuff down…

“Christian Discipleship” is complicated. The heart of this criterion is “the completion in death of a particular Christian’s living out of the promises of baptism” from which we can draw two objective measures: 1) were they baptized? 2) did they die in the communion of the Church? The wording of this criterion strongly suggests to me a set of sub-criteria: “the promises of baptism” short-handed as holding the Apostles’ Creed and exemplifying the 5 promises of the Baptismal Covenant.If we were to introduce these as supplemental guides to the fulfilling of this criterion do we take a minimalist or maximalist approach? Do we look for historical evidence of fulfillment of all six sub-criteria, or does a significant failing of one or more of the sub-criteria indicate a negative judgement on the larger criterion? (I’m told there was great resistance to adding Martin Luther to Lesser Feasts and Fasts back in the 80’s/90’s due to his anti-Semitism; perhaps that debate can shed some light here…)

“Significance” heads into some interesting territory. Perhaps the best summary of it is captured in the binary nature of the final line: “In their varied ways, those commemorated have revealed Christ’s presence in, and Lordship over, all of history; and continue to inspire us as we carry forward God’s mission in the world.” I see at least two things here. First, the commemorated must have achieved a notable revelation of Christ. But, second, it must be the kind of achievement that inspires us. Consider the implications of the second one… I can use an objective checkbox for “achieving a notable revelation of Christ”, but that’s incomplete without an assessment of what inspires us. Our church and its needs are now a necessary aspect of the decision-making process.

The turn towards us only accelerates as we consider “Memorability.” This is not Memorability simpliciter; we’re not asking if these people should be remembered by history students, correct-thinking members of progressive circles, or the general public. Rather, we’re after those who “deserve to be remembered by the Episcopal Church today.” A few key things here… “Deserve to be” which is different from “are” sticks out. Also, “the Episcopal Church today.” This criterion is less about the historical person being investigated, and is much more about who we are as a church and what we need to remember—or be reminded of. That is, I can’t chalk this one up based on historical research on a person’s life. Instead, we have to take stock of who we are and how that person connects with and/or challenges our self-understanding.

Indeed, this is the place where memorability begins to help us see the failure of the “Range of Inclusion” criterion. As I said before, the Range is properly applied to the kalendar as a whole and not to individual candidates thereof and the problem is that it is too narrow in scope to be fully useful. It identifies a variety of diversities needed in the kalendar: race, gender, ecclesial affiliation, ordination status, but misses the really big one—charisms. That is, the kalendar needs to have an effective balance of the charisms and virtues that are needed for the church as a whole to reflect itself as a reflection of Christ. Attention to ordination status only begins to take notice of this.

What are the charisms that define the Church and are necessary, even essential, to the Church? How do the saints individually and collectively coherently display the dispersed virtues of Christ?

I see I’m starting to wander a bit from my topic…

There are some objective measures that can be tallied to determine whether a candidate should or shouldn’t enter the kalendar. There are more subjective measures. But there are additional necessary inputs regarding who the church is, and what the church needs to represent itself to itself. And, again, the kalendar cannot simply be a collection of worthy individuals but must be a coherent collection that reflects an authentic Christology.

I’ll let you know how the spreadsheet goes…

Considering Ferial Days

Ok, so I’ve been mulling the issues with Holy Women, Holy Men (HWHM) around in my head for a while, trying to look at it from as many different angles as possible. One of the frequent criticisms of the work that I’ve encountered is that it seems to be trying to fill every available day. My own short-hand for this is “no feria left behind.”

A feria is a technical liturgical term whose basic English meaning is a regular weekday; Hughes helpfully and accurately describes it as “a day which is neither a Sunday nor a feast.”

One more time, here’s the chart of observances—take a good look:

Now—how many fewer ferias are there now (2013) than what we had in 2003 when HWHM was officially authorized?

Are you calculating?

The answer—wait for it…is: none.

Indeed. There are precisely no fewer ferial days now than there were then. Yes, the observance count has jumped up dramatically, but none of these days, none of these liturgical events are required or enforced by the church. Zip. Nada.

If you turn with me to the front of your prayer book, you’ll note that the Calendar section identifies the days that are to be publicly observed with Eucharistic celebrations (with propers provided for in that book).

Principal Feasts: these are the big 7 feasts which take precedence over everything else.
Sundays: There are 52 of these—although we’ve already accounted for three of them in the previous section.
Holy Days: This is where things can and have changed. When the Calendar was originally proposed in 1964 there were 25 of them; in 1980 this number jumped to 32.
Days of Special Devotion: As I’ve suggested before, this is more accurately an ascetical category than a liturgical one. No days are added here.
Days of Optional Observance: These are days that “may be observed with the Collects, Psalms, and Lessons duly authorized by this Church.” But you don’t have to. They are entirely optional.

By my count, then, since 1980 there are (7+49+32=) 88 Sundays and feasts authorized by the prayer book in each year. Accordingly, there are 277 ferial days in a common year; 278 in a leap year.

What can we do liturgically on these days? This is the crux of the issue as I see it. So much of the discussion around HWHM seems to assume its use. It’s as if we have forgotten that we have options. But we do have options! And it’s worth thinking through what they are…

Option 1: We can choose to observe a Day of Optional Observance. So, using the trial resource HWHM or LFF 2006 which (as far as I can tell) is still the official non-trial document. (Isn’t it strange that you can’t buy it from Church Publishing, though? And that the cheapest edition of LFF currently on Amazon is $258[!?!]). This seems to be the default option in the heads of most people. To let it remain that way, though, is to miss the freedoms that the Calendar gives us.

Option 2: We can choose to observe the feria. The simplest way to do this is noted in the prayer book on p. 158: “The Proper appointed for the Sunday is also used at celebrations of the Eucharist on the weekdays following, unless otherwise ordered for Holy Days and Various Occasions. . . . Directions concerning the Common of Saints and services for Various Occasions are on pages 199, 199 [i.e., Rite I], 246 and 251 [i.e., Rite II].” For the Daily Offices, this means simply using the Collect from the previous Sunday (with a couple of exceptions around days like Epiphany, Ash Wednesday, Ascension, etc. as noted in the Collects). For the Eucharist this also means what it says—the Sunday Propers are repeated.

Prayer Book Studies XII (1958) gave a fair amount of thought to the Lenten season. Between the 6th and the 8th centuries the Roman Church had given special attention to these days and gradually assigned propers to all of them. Noting this, but further noting that most Episcopal Church parishes didn’t need nearly that many propers, this work offers proper readings (“Epistles” and Gospels [scare quotes required as these were all OT or Prophecies following ancient precedent]) but not collects for the old Station days—Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent. In the first authorized version of Lesser Feasts and Fasts (1964), both the readings and collects for these days were printed. (And here we actually have the eponymous “fasts” of the title. Ember Days for Advent, Summer and Autumn were also provided though I don’t consider them ferial in the technical sense as they would receive prayer book collects with the advent of the ’79 book and be listed amongst the “Days of Optional Observance”.) The rubric at the head of these weekday propers states that the priest may use these or the appropriate Sunday propers at his discretion on any day within that week.

With the advent of PBS19 and the move towards a three-year Sunday Mass lectionary with a psalm and three readings, this all changed. The note in the front of the Revised LFF (1973) makes reference to “Optional Collects and daily schedules of Psalms and Lessons for the weekdays of Lent.” Two weeks of optional collects are given. The general rubrics begin by saying that while this sequence is provided, the priest may use the proper of the preceding Sunday or the proper as appointed for a Lesser Feast or Ember Day. So—now there are readings provided for all ferial days in Lent, but no other season.

A full-on set of collects and lessons for every day in Lent appears in the next revision, LFF 3rd Ed. (1980). Lenten ferias get privileged, now: “In keeping with ancient tradition, the observance of Lenten weekdays ordinarily takes precedence over Lesser Feasts occuring during this season” (LFF3, 20). Easter ferial material appears now as well. Twenty collects are provided as are ferial Eucharistic readings for every day in the Easter Season. The notes in this proper keep the flexibility of using any weekday reading on any other day in that week that stood at the head of the Lenten materials. However, the discussion of the Easter proper states the following:

Since the triumphs of the saints are a continuation and manifestation of the Paschal victory of Christ, the celebration of saints’ days is particularly appropriate during this season. On such days, therefore, the Collect, Lessons, Psalm, and Preface are ordinarily those of the saint. Where there is a daily celebration, however, the weekday Lessons and Psalm may be substituted. (LFF3, 56)

(Mark those words and the context in which they’re given…) With only 20 collects given for the Great Fifty Days, though, quite a number of Days of Optional Observance are in view if one doesn’t use the Sunday collect. So, with LFF3 ferial Eucharistic readings and collects are given for Lent and Easter.

At this point, I have a sizable gap in my LFF collection. Looking at the legislative documents, though, General Convention passed 1991-C025 referring to the SLC the daily Eucharistic lectionary of the Church of England and the Anglican Church of Canada. (I believe Forward in Faith had a hand in this—can anyone confirm or deny?) GC authorized in 1994 the daily (ferial) Eucharistic lectionary for the seasons of Advent and Christmas but gave no new collects. The SLC didn’t like the idea of a continuous reading scheme for Post-Epiphany/Pentecost and chose to explore their options, coming back with a six-week series. In 1997-A073 it looks like an amended six-week cycle was adopted in addition to the CoE/ACC scheme thus giving provisions for all ferial Eucharistic services.

Jumping to HWHM, the question on my mind is whether permission is given for a ferial celebration on any ferial day. In the directions (Concerning the Proper) before the Advent/Christmas section, I see these words:

On days of optional observance on the Calendar, the Collect, Lessons, Psalm and Preface are ordinarily those of the saint. Where there is a daily celebration, however, the weekday Lessons and Psalm may be substituted. (HWHM, 24)

And these are precisely the words that stood in the Easter section following an explanation of why the celebration of saints was especially suitable in that season. Days of Optional Observance seem to be granted a preference given the use of “ordinarily.” (This seems odd given the traditional privileging of Advent ferias particularly upon reaching Sapientiatide…) At the back of HWHM, both the 6-week scheme and the 2-year CoE/ACC scheme for Ordinary seasons are given, but no mention is made of them giving way to Days of Optional Observance.

To summarize, ferial days can be celebrated either in the Daily Office or in weekday Eucharists by using the propers of the previous Sunday (or Principal Feast). This permission is granted in the BCP and is not revoked. Alternatively, ferial Eucharistic propers for the whole year are provided in LFF/HWHM (albeit in a rather disjointed fashion) with collects that could be used in the Office for Lent and Easter. While the rubrics recommend priority going to Days of Optional Observance in Advent/Christmas and an expressed preference for them in Easter, this is not mandated.

Option 3: We can choose to observe a Votive. Votives were common in medieval missals; one edition of the Sarum had 29; others had more. PBS19 reprints the SLC’s report to the General Convention of 1967 on votives which broadly identify two types: intercessory and doctrinal. That is, there are those that focus upon particular intentions, and there are those that focus upon specific doctrines. The prayer book offers 25 votives (see pp. 199-210; 251-261; 927-931) in addition to the 14 commons of the 6 identified kinds of saints. These votives are granted with only the following permissive rubric: “For optional use, when desired, subject to the rules set forth in the Calendar of the Church Year.” (BCP, 199; 251) HWHM itself adds a combination of 12 commons and votives (including 2 for the BVM) bringing the total authorized votives and commons to 51.

When are these votives used? Well, the first seven in the prayer book loosely follow the typical weekly votive cycle with the exception of Saturday’s which was usually given to the BVM. Otherwise little direction is given. The rubric at their head, though, makes clear that they can be used on any day that is not claimed by a Sunday or Feast…

Of the major complaints I have heard around HWHM, there are three that stand out in particular.

It doesn’t leave enough ferial days. Frankly, I’ve not been convinced that this is a major problem. After all, I’m a medievalist. I’m used to martyrologies that pile multiple people onto every single day of the year and kalendars that choose amongst the options of whom to celebrate. All of these figures are optional. The absence of ferias is only an issue if you choose to celebrate everyone who comes along, and that is not required.
The criteria given were not used with regard to the people chosen. This is more of an issue. And it ties into…
Not all the people chosen pass a litmus test for “sanctity.” In a sense this is a narrowing of the 2nd issue in that it is a focus upon the criteria around leading a sufficiently holy life. What counts and what doesn’t? I have a certain sympathy with this one. There are folks in HWHM who I don’t feel belong due to a lack of sanctity. But sanctity is not an easy thing to quantify…

What if…

What if—we made the options more clear?

What if we held a book clearly entitled “Optional Observances”? What if “Holy Women, Holy Men” was the title of a subsection of it rather than the whole? And if the ferial material was not scattered throughout it in disjointed fashion but presented as a coherent option equal to HWHM?

What if we promoted the votives more and gave them a focus?

There are people in HWHM whom I have a hard time honoring eucharistically as saints. However, I think many of them could be illustrations at votive masses for, say, “Artists & Writers” (HWHM, 728) or “Care of God’s Creation” (HWHM, 731), or “Social Justice” (BCP, 209/260). What if an almanac section—apart from the HWHM section—were to collect them and unite them with particularly appropriate votive occasions? The individuals in question would be remembered and commemorated, and the Church would only have to demonstrate “importance” or “significance” rather than the higher bar of “sanctity.” Perhaps this would give us the mechanism for remembering those figures of the past concerning whom we can’t render a full decision now but whom we do not wish to forget, or those who come close to the sanctoral criteria but fail on just a few.

What do you think?

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Sanctoral Criteria: On Objectivity and Subjectivity

Considering Ferial Days