Church Year
Thoughts on an Anglican Use Mass
Mar 8th
I would like to advance here a few disordered reflections about the form which an Anglican Use of the Roman Rite might take. These are nothing but my own ill-informed speculations interwoven with my own uninformed notions and prejudices, and should be taken as worth no more than such productions normally are, or perhaps, for those more charitably disposed, as written ruminations.
“The Anglican Use of the Roman Rite:” this phrase indicates that whatever form of liturgy this will be, it will take the form of a subset of the Roman Rite, and not a separate “Anglican Rite.” There has been a good deal of terminological and historical confusion in these areas. One often sees in the context of the Latin Church references to the “Ambrosian Rite,” the “Braga Rite,” the “Carthusian Rite,” the “Cistercian Rite,” the “Dominican Rite,” the “Lyonnaise Rite,” the “Mozarabic Rite,” the “Sarum Rite” and the like, but this seems to be a confusion of the past four centuries (or a little more), reflecting the dominance of the 1570 codification and reform of the “Roman Rite of Rome” as the “Tridentine Rite,” which was to replace all other variants save those that could document 200 years of history. All of these “rites,” save the Ambrosian Rite and the Mozarabic Rite, are or were, variants of the Roman Rite, and so more properly termed “uses” (as, in England, with the “Use of Sarum,” the “Use of Bangor,” the “Use of Hereford,” the “Use of Lincoln” and the “Use of York” before the 1540s); only the Carthusian and the Braga (that of the Portuguese diocese of that name) uses survive today in their integrity (the Carthusian “unreformed,” the Braga “reformed”) although occasionally one encounters celebration of the old Cistercian and Dominican Mass “rites.” The Ambrosian Rite of Milan (and neighboring areas) is either a very ancient variation of the Roman Rite, which since at least the Fourth Century has been subject to both Gallican and Eastern influences, or an originally distinct rite that has undergone waves of “romanization” from a very early date, while the Mozarabic Rite, which until recent decades, when it was revived (and “restored,” that is, “reformed”) in the Spanish monastery of San Juan de Silos and in several parishes in Toledo that were Mozarabic until the 1490s, was celebrated only in a side chapel in Toledo Cathedral, is an entirely distinct rite from the Roman.
One strong implication of “Anglican Use” is that it will have no other Eucharistic Prayers (EPs) or “Prayers of Consecration” than those found in the Roman Rite. The Mozarabic Rite aside, none of these other “uses” or “rites” — call them what you will — had any other than the Roman Canon; this was so even of the Ambrosian Rite, although for Maundy Thursday and Holy Saturday only it had versions of the Roman Canon into which substantial proper prayers for those festivals were inserted, a practice unique to Milan. (The 1970s “reform” of the Ambrosian Rite introduced two new EPs, additional to the three new EPs introduced into the Roman Rite in 1969.) I have to say that I agree with the distinguished English Anglican liturgist and historian of the Early Roman Rite, Geoffrey Grimshaw Willis (1914-1982), regarding his dislike of these banal and (as he thought) un-Roman disfigurements of the Roman Rite (see his outspoken “The New Eucharistic Prayers: Some Comments,” The Heythrop Journal, XII:1 [January 1971], pp. 5-28), and if the reports are right that in whatever reconfigured Anglican Use Mass is eventually promulgated by Rome the “contemporary English” Rite II will wholly disappear, and with it these EPs, I would judge it no loss.
And well it should disappear, along with the 1979 Psalter. An Anglican Use based on, and following the pattern of, the 1979 Episcopalian Prayer Book makes no sense on a world-wide basis. Moreover, since the lame and dreary ICEL translation of the Roman Rite liturgical books is soon to be replaced by one occupying a distinctly higher linguistic “register,” it makes little sense to use any other “contemporary English” than that in use in the Roman Rite itself. However, if one of the advantages of the Anglican Use of the Roman Rite is, from a “Benedictine” vantage, to inspire and in its distinctive way exemplify a “reform of the 1960s ‘reform‘” of the Roman Rite in the direction of resacralization and a recovery of lost ground, then it makes much more sense that it should be one distinctive and consistently traditional thing, in style as well as substance, than an attempt to be all things to all Anglicans. Those Anglicans whose liturgical sensibilities are “contemporary” may well prefer to seek out the more elevated version of the Roman Rite which I hope will soon make its appearance. This is leading us fairly clearly towards the “Missal tradition” of Anglo-Catholicism in the last century, the effort that produced the English Missal, the American Missal and the Anglican Missal. To adopt or adapt one of these — my own tastes incline me more towards the English Missal — would produce a coherent and dignified rite, and would eliminate once and for all the bizarre phenomenon of the 1970 Roman Rite Offertory in ICEL English thrust into the midst of the “Cranmerian English” Rite I.
Still, and despite what I wrote above, I have speculated at times about the possibility of alternative “Anglican-like” EPs, perhaps for weekday celebrations or for certain set days on which the length of the Roman Canon, especially if said or chanted aloud, might be an inconvenience. I am going to avoid (with one partial exception) Twentieth-Century Anglican EPs, and likewise the “mainline” 1552, 1559, 1662 English rite, and its derivatives, as inadequate for Catholic purposes — by which I mean, impossible for the Catholic Church to accept the use of which as a valid EP [1]. The leaves the 1549 English rite, and the Scottish Episcopalian tradition from 1637 onwards down through 1764 to 1929, with the American Episcopalian tradition from 1789 to 1928 as a side-branch of this.
As to the 1549 rite’s EP I have never been able to understand its attraction for some Anglo-Catholics. I accept the reading of Cranmer’s theology underlying that prayer as fundamentally Reformed (in the Swiss sense) that has been advanced by Anglican scholars such as Dom Gregory Dix (1901-1952) and Professor Edward Craddock Ratcliff (1896-1967) — the former a well-known Anglican Benedictine monk and Anglo-Papalist, the latter the holder of various academic posts in Cambridge, Oxford and London, culminating as Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and who was on the verge of entering the Orthodox Church at the time of his death — even if expressed in the most ambiguous of ways and in very “traditional,” that is, “Western-Catholic-looking” — forms. An EP of such an ambivalent, if not heretical, nature would certainly not be suitable for Catholic use. The 1549 EP is also, very clearly, an attempt at “reforming” the Roman Canon, the traditional and unique EP of the whole Western Church for centuries before the Sixteenth Century, save in the Mozarabic Rite, as well as (until the time of the post-Vatican II “reforms”) the unique EP of the Roman Church, and it seems to be that an EP conceived with the presumption of setting to right the presumed errors of the Church of Rome, the prima sedes and mater et magistra of all churches, is to act very much as Ham did towards his father, Noah, and with even less occasion to do so. Like Geoffrey Grimshaw Willis, I admire the Roman Canon for its unfathomable antiquity, as perhaps the oldest EP in continual use in Christendom, alongside that of Addai and Mari in the Semitic Christianity of the Catholic Chaldeans and the “Nestorian” Assyrians, the roots of which probably extend back into the Third Century or earlier. Of course, as a Ukrainian Catholic I cherish as well the marvelous, and typically Hellenistic, integration of form and content in those EPs such as those of St. Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom, St. James of Jerusalem (possibly the work of St. Cyril of Jerusalem), and many others (most of them preserved in Syriac versions) which form one of the great glories of Christendom, and which were possibly the gift of the Church of Antioch, on the crossroads of the Hellenistic and Semitic worlds, to the Christian world — and which had so beneficent an impact on Anglican high-churchmen in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, to whose work we must now turn.
The ill-fated Scottish Prayer Book of 1637, which occasioned the overthrow of episcopacy in Scotland in 1638 and began the process which culminated in the outbreak of civil war in England in 1642 and the temporary downfall of the monarchy there and the execution of King Charles I, rearranged the sequence of prayers around the eucharistic consecration in the 1559 English Prayer Book (the mild revisions of 1604 did not touch the Communion Service) to give a fuller, and more traditional looking, EP, although their wording was not altered. When episcopacy was restored in Scotland in 1661, the Prayer Book was not, and it was only after the reabolition of episcopacy in 1689 that, in the years immediately after 1700 the remaining Scottish Episcopalians began to adopt set liturgical forms, some of them the 1661 English Prayer Book service, others the 1637 service, and still others their own rearrangements or revisions of the 1637 service. In this they were influenced to a considerable degree by the liturgical revisions of the English Nonjurors, although the never went so far as the main body of the English Nonjurors, who in 1718 substituted for the 1661 Prayer book EP a translation of the long anaphora found in the Liturgy of St. James of Jerusalem. In 1764 a group of Scottish Episcopalian bishops produced a revised “Communion Office” whose use subsequently became general among Scottish Episcopalians. There were, however, a number of “English Chapels” in Scotland which were under the authority of the Church of England and followed the 1661 Prayer Book, and after these were transferred to the Scottish Episcopal Church from the 1840s onward a determined attempt was made to replace the 1764 Communion Office with that of the 1661 English liturgy as the normative one. The 1764 service was never abolished, but various canons enacted in 1863 and in force until 1912 effectively marginalized its use — but then the tide turned, and in 1929 the SEC adopted a Prayer Book, the EP of which was a moderate revision of that of 1764. This remains the official Prayer Book of the SEC, although since the 1970s it has effectively been replaced by a more anodyne set of “contemporary Anglican” style of services, issued in 1970 and 1982. Meanwhile, however, and as a result of the consecration of Samuel Seabury on November 14, 1784 by bishops of the SEC and of Seabury’s promise to attempt to secure the adoption of the 1764 Scottish Communion office as that of the the newly-formed Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States, in 1789 the Episcopal Church adopted a modified version of that 1764 service — “modified,” it has to be said, in a more Protestant and “Cranmerian” direction — which, as modified in 1892 and 1928 (neither of these modifications affected the wording of the EP, although that of 1928 removed the “Prayer of Humble Access” from its position between the Sanctus and the Prayer of Consecration, where, following its position in the English 1661 rite, it had been placed in 1789 to a position after that Prayer and the immediately ensuing Lord’s Prayer; in the 1637 and 1764 Scottish rites, as in the English 1549 rite that Prayer also was positioned subsequently to the EP and Lord’s Prayer) remained the official rite of the Episcopal Church until 1979.
The texts of these three EPs can be found here:
for those who wish to consult or compare them at this point. What I will now do is to present excerpts from these three prayers, make a few comparative remarks, and then, as one rushing in as a fool where angels fear to tread, to produce a melded version of the 1764 and 1929 EPs which may seem to some suitable, and almost ideal for use in any Anglican Use liturgy. I will thereafter, in a subsequent post, go on to consider the EP of the “Liturgy of St. Tikhon” which has been used in the 1970s in some “Western Rite” parishes of the Antiochian Orthodox Church in North America, which affords a striking example, as I see it, of how not to do this sort of thing.
St. Oswald of Worcester
Feb 28th
Today is the feast of St. Oswald of York (d. February 29, 992). Of Danish parentage, Oswald was raised by his uncle Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury, and received his education under the tutelage of the Frankish scholar, Fridegode of Canterbury. For a time, he was the dean of the house of secular canons at Winchester, but seeking a stricter rule of life, he entered the Benedictine Monastery of Fleury, where Odo himself received the monastic habit. At the request of his uncle, he returned to England. By the time Oswald arrived, Archbishop Odo had died, and he turned to his kinsman, Oskytel, then Archbishop of York, for patronage. His service to the Archbishop of York caught the attention of St. Dunstan, who procured his appointment to the See of Worcester and consecrated him bishop in 962. Oswald was an ardent supporter of St. Dunstan in his campaign to purify the Church from abuses; he was one of the leading proponents of reform along with St. Dunstan and St. Æthelwold of Winchester. Aided by King Edgar, he carried out his policy of replacing by communities the canons who held monastic possessions. Edgar gave the monasteries of St. Albans, Ely, and Benfleet to Oswald, who established monks at Westbury (983), Pershore (984), at Winchelcumbe (985), and at Worcester, and re-established Ripon. But his most famous foundation was that of Ramsey Abbey in Huntingdonshire, the church of which was dedicated in 974, and again after an accident in 991. In 972 by the joint action of St. Dunstan and Edgar, Oswald was made Archbishop of York, and journeyed to Rome to receive the pallium from John XIII. Interestingly, with the sanction of the pope, Oswald retained jurisdiction over the diocese of Worcester where he frequently resided in order to foster his monastic reforms. Though contrary to canons, the simultaneous possession of the sees Worcester and York became traditional for nearly fifty years. On Edgar’s death, Elfhere, King of Mercia, broke up many monastic houses, and some of Oswald’s foundations, but Ramsey was not disturbed due to the patronage of Ethelwin, Earl of East Anglia. Whilst Archbishop of York, Oswald collected from the ruins of Ripon the relics of the saints, some of which were conveyed to Worcester. He died in the act of washing the feet of the poor, as was his daily custom during Lent, and was buried in the Church of St. Mary at Worcester.
That Alms Might Extinguish the Flame of Our Sins
Feb 24th
Holy Church has traditionally kept a threefold discipline for the Lenten season. The first two disciplines — prayer and fasting — are doubtless familiar to most of us, but we mustn’t forget about the third. Lent is a time for almsgiving — the granting, in charity, of material favors to those in need. This material service rendered to the poor is done for Christ’s sake and is an obligation of the Christian Faith. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907) puts it this way:
The obligation of almsgiving is complementary to the right of property “which is not only lawful, but absolutely necessary” (Encycl., Rerum Novarum, tr. Baltimore, 1891, 14). Ownership admitted, rich and poor must be found in society. Property enables its possessors to meet their needs. Though labour enables the poor to win their daily bread, accidents, illness, old age, labour difficulties, plagues, war, etc. frequently interrupt their labours and impoverish them. The responsibility of succouring, those thus rendered needy belongs to those who have plenty (St. Thomas, Summa Theol., II-II, Q. xxxii, art. 5, ad 2am), For “it is one thing to have a right to possess money, and another to have a right to use money as one pleases.” How must one’s possessions be used? The Church replies: Man should not consider his external possessions as his own but as common to all, so as to share them without difficulty when others are in need. Whence the Apostle says: Command the rich of this world to give with ease. This is a duty not of justice (except in extreme cases), but of Christian charity — a duty not enforced by human law. But the laws and judgments of men must yield to the laws and judgments of Christ the true God, who in many ways urges on His followers the practice of almsgiving (Encyclical, Rerum Novarum, 14, 15; cf. De Lugo, De Jure et Justitiâ, Disp. xvi, sect. 154).
The following is Ælfric of Eynsham’s Homily for the First Sunday in Lent in which the abbot preaches the obligation of all to give of their substance to those in need.
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Men most beloved, it is known to you all that this yearly course just now brings us the pure time of the Lenten Fast, during which we should confess our heedlessness and transgressions to our ghostly confessor, and wash ourselves from sins with fasting, and watchings, and prayers, and alms-deeds, that we may boldly, with ghostly joy, honour the Easter celebration of Christ’s ascension, and with faith partake of the holy housel, for the forgiveness of our sins, and protection against devilish temptations.
Manifestly this fortyfold fast was established in the Old Testament, when the leader Moses fasted forty days and forty nights together, in order that he might receive God’s law. Again afterwards the great prophet Elijah accomplished, through God’s might, a fast as long as the other, and he was afterwards borne bodily in a heavenly car to the life above, and will come again, he and Enoch, against Antichrist, that they may confute the devil’s leasing with God’s truth. In the New Testament also the Lord, through his divine might, fasted forty days and nights, without all earthly food. Thus was our lenten fast established, but we cannot, by reason of our weakness, accomplish such a fast. Now it is allowed us, by the authority of teachers, daily at this lenten tide to nourish our bodies with abstemiousness, and soberness, and chastity. Foolishly he fasts the lenten fast, who at this pure time defiles himself with libidinousness. Unlawful it is for a. christian man to indulge in fleshly lusts at the time when he shall forgo flesh meats. Verily it is at all times befitting Christian men to perform good works and alms-deeds, and yet most of all at this general fast. He who on other days may be remiss in goodness, should at least on these days be active in good practices. To him who previously had gladly adorned himself with good works, it is fitting that he on these days more earnestly with ardent love show his goodness. No fast will be acceptable to God, unless a man abstain from sins. Be mindful of the two sentences which the Lord spake in his gospel: he said, “Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven. Give, and to you shall be given.” These two kinds of alms are to be practised by us with great diligence : that with inward heart we forgive other men, if in aught they have offended us, to the end that God may grant us forgiveness of our sins. And let us bestow some advantage of our goods on the poor and needy, for the honour of Almighty God, who has lent them to us, that he may give us more in the future.
Mercy is the medicine of sins; it redeems from eternal death, and allows us not to come to perdition. Mercy alone will be our guardian at the great doom, if in the present life we show it to other men. But to those shall be doom without mercy, who now without mercy judge others. From righteous gains one should distribute alms, as it is written, “Honour thy Lord with thy possessions, and of thy first fruits give unto the poor.” The alms that are given from rapine are as acceptable to God as if any one, having killed another man’s child, should bring to the father its head as a gift. God commanded alms to be given, and he forbade fraud and rapine. The unrighteous robs others and rejoices: then, if the needy ask alms of him, he is offended, and turns his face away, and forgets the saying of the prophet, who said, “He who turns his face from the crying poor, shall afterwards himself cry unto God, and his voice shall not be heard. Incline thine ear to the prayer of the needy, that God may afterwards hear thy voice. Deal from that which God hath given thee, and thy goods shall be multiplied. If thou neglectest to deal alms, God will take from thee thy goods, and thou shalt afterwards remain poor.”
Active Engagement
Feb 20th
Given the primary subject matter of The Anglo-Catholic, presenting the endeavors toward reestablishment of communion between faithful Anglicans and Mother Church, it is quite easy to get caught up in the theoretical, abstract, and esoteric elements of ecclesiology. These discussions are absolutely necessary and beneficial for our growth in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in broadening our understanding of the means by which our ultimate end, reunion with the Holy Father, will come to fruition. However, as we begin our Lenten journey, let us take pause and place emphasis upon our active engagement with the Catholic spirituality to which the Holy Spirit has called us. I am moved to believe that our work here is well pleasing to Almighty God, but I am persuaded even more so that He will be much more pleased if we demonstrate a genuine humility and contrition before Him. A humility and contrition that pours forth toward heaven an understanding of the grace He has shown us by calling us to such a time as this.
We find ourselves at present in a dangerous situation of temptation. Temptations such as to exhibit pride in our abilities and understanding, temptation toward anger at those who calumniate against us, temptation to sin against hope, that is ceasing to hope in God’s ability to bring to fulfillment that which He so obviously desires, the unity of His people. As our Savior was tempted in the desert for forty days, let us unite ourselves with Him in His temptations during these solemn forty days of Lent, beseeching the mercies of God that we persevere through this our wilderness.
It is good that we reflect upon the familiar, but oft taken for granted, purpose of Lent. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1438) teaches:
The seasons and days of penance in the course of the liturgical year (Lent and each Friday in memory of the death of the Lord) are intense moments of the Church’s penitential practice. These times are particularly appropriate for spiritual exercises, penitential liturgies, pilgrimages as signs of penance, voluntary self-denial such as fasting and almsgiving, and fraternal sharing (charitable and missionary works).
As we relive the the glorious event of salvation history that was and is our Lord’s Passion, may we actively engage in uniting our own present glorious event of salvation history, the reunion of His Body, to His finished work on the Cross.
I would beg of your Christian charity that you would specifically offer at least some (if not all) of your Lenten discipline(s) for the specific intention of the expeditious establishment of the Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans. Priests, please offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass often for this intention. Laity, I implore you to assist in some additional Masses, say a novena, or pray the Penitential Office for our aspiration. Those who are already in communion with the Holy Father, please spread the word among your brethren that we are in dire need of their prayers for our cause. Additionally, may we all avail ourselves of the intercession of our most Holy Mother through the mysteries of the Rosary for the necessities of faithful Anglicans throughout the world.
Ora pro nobis, sancta Dei Genetrix. Ut digni efficiamur promissionibus Christi.
“Doc”+
Newman’s Meditations on the Stations of the Cross
Feb 19th
Meditations on the Stations of the Cross
Begin with an Act of Contrition
O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven, and the pains of hell; but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.
The First Station
Jesus Is Condemned to Death
V. Adoramus te, Christe, et benedicimus tibi.
R. Quia per sanctam Crucem tuam redemisti mundum.
LEAVING the House of Caiphas, and dragged before Pilate and Herod, mocked, beaten, and spit upon, His back torn with scourges, His head crowned with thorns, Jesus, who on the last day will judge the world, is Himself condemned by unjust judges to a death of ignominy and torture.
Jesus is condemned to death. His death-warrant is signed, and who signed it but I, when I committed my first mortal sins? My first mortal sins, when I fell away from the state of grace into which Thou didst place me by baptism; these it was that were Thy death-warrant, O Lord. The Innocent suffered for the guilty. Those sins of mine were the voices which cried out, “Let Him be crucified.” That willingness and delight of heart with which I committed them was the consent which Pilate gave to this clamorous multitude. And the hardness of heart which followed upon them, my disgust, my despair, my proud impatience, my obstinate resolve to sin on, the love of sin which took possession of me—what were these contrary and impetuous feelings but the blows and the blasphemies with which the fierce soldiers and the populace received Thee, thus carrying out the sentence which Pilate had pronounced?
Pater, Ave, &c.
V. Miserere nostri, Domine.
R. Miserere nostri.
Fidelium animæ, &c.
St. Gilbert of Sempringham
Feb 16th
St. Gilbert was born at Sempringham, on the border of the Lincolnshire fens, between Bourne and Heckington, sometime between 1083 and 1089. His father, Jocelin, a wealthy Norman knight who had come to England with William the Conqueror, held lands in Lincolnshire. His mother was a Saxon of inferior origin, and was said to have dreamed before St. Gilbert’s birth that she was holding the round moon in her lap, which was taken to be a sign that the child would rise to greatness. Jocelin prevented his son from becoming a knight himself — perhaps due to some physical deformity — and set him instead to France to study for an ecclesiastical career.
Upon completion of his studies at the University of Paris, he returned home and was presented to the livings of Sempringham and Torrington, churches in his father’s gift. Shortly thereafter, our saint entered the service of Robert Bloet, Bishop of Lincoln, becoming a clerk in the episcopal household, and starting a school for boys and girls. In 1123 Bishop Robert was succeeded by Alexander, who retained St. Gilbert in his service and, against the saint’s will, ordained him deacon and priest. The revenues of Sempringham had to suffice for his maintenance in the court of the bishop; those of Torrington he devoted to the poor. Offered the archdeaconry of Lincoln, he refused, saying that he knew no surer way to perdition. In 1131 he returned to Sempringham and, on the death of his father, became lord of the manor and lands.
In the same year 1131, he founded a new religious order, the Gilbertines, becoming its first “Master”. Gilbertine Priories were founded at Alvingham, North Ormsby, Six Hills, West Torrington and Lincoln. Others followed until there was a total of thirteen houses for women. Men were introduced into the house to help with the heavy work but were kept strictly separate from the nuns. Although Gilbert was renowned for his gentleness, he made strict rules for discipline. Due to the refusal of the monks at Cîteaux to assist him in helping a group of women living with lay brothers and sisters in 1148, he became the only Englishman to found a convent.
His life henceforth became one of extraordinary austerity, its strictness not diminishing as he grew older, though the activity and fatigue caused by the government of the order were considerable. In 1147 he travelled to Cîteaux, in Burgundy, where he met Pope Eugene III, St. Bernard, and St. Malachy, Archbishop of Armagh. The pope expressed regret at not having known of him some years previously when choosing a successor to the deposed Archbishop of York. In 1165 he was summoned before Henry II’s justices at Westminster and was charged with having sent help to the exiled St. Thomas Becket. To clear himself he was invited to take an oath that he had not done so. He refused, for, though as a matter of fact he had not sent help, an oath to that effect might make him appear an enemy to the archbishop. He was prepared for a sentence of exile, when letters came from the king in Normandy, ordering the judges to await his return. In 1170, when Gilbert was already a very old man, some of his lay-brothers revolted and spread serious calumnies against him. After some years of fierce controversy on the subject, in which Henry II took his part, Pope Alexander III freed him from suspicion, and confirmed the privileges granted to the order. Advancing age induced Gilbert to give up the government of his order. He appointed as his successor Roger, prior of Malton. Very infirm and almost blind, he now made his religious profession, for though he had founded an order and ruled it for many years he had never become a religious in the strict sense. Twelve years after his death, at the earnest request of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, he was canonized by Pope Innocent III, and his relics were solemnly translated to an honourable place in the church at Sempringham, his shrine becoming a centre of pilgrimage.
After St. Gilbert’s death in 1189 at the supposed age of 104, the Order continued to grow and at the Dissolution there were twenty-six Gilbertine houses in England.
The Feast of St. Gilbert of Sempringham is celebrated in the Catholic dioceses of East Anglia, Northampton, and Nottingham on February 16.
Prayer for the Unity of the Church in Lent
Feb 15th
Fr. Neil Wall, Convenor and Parish Priest of the first Continuing Anglican parish in Victoria, Australia (Melbourne, 1987), and member of the Community of the Transfiguration, an outreach to distressed and isolated Anglican Catholics, has written to suggest that members of the Traditional Anglican Communion, other Anglo-Catholics, and indeed all Christians pray the following prayer (especially the final part) during Lent, beseeching God for the successful implementation of the personal ordinariates and the continued fruitfulness of the ongoing dialogue between the Holy See and the Orthodox Churches.
For the past eight years — every Thursday — the Community of the Transfiguration has offered this prayer for the unity of the Church. During the TAC College of Bishops meeting in Portsmouth, England (which resulted in the solemn submission of the bishops of the TAC to the Roman Pontiff, the acceptance of the Catechism of the Catholic Church as the Communion’s doctrinal standard, and the formal request to the Holy See for admission to full communion with the Catholic Church), the Community of the Transfiguration offered it as part of a novena.
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Prayer for the Unity of the Church
Thou alone, O Lord, art worthy to receive glory, dominion, and power, and to thee alone we offer our prayers of thanksgiving and petition.
For thy Holy Catholic Church and the presence of thy Holy Spirit to guide Her into all truth,
We praise, bless, and thank thee.
For the Patriarchs and Prophets, for Blessed Mary, thy Apostles, Saints, and Martyrs, for holy men and women who have witnessed to thy love and truth through the ages,
We praise, bless, and thank thee.
For those who are working and praying for a return of all Anglicans to Apostolic Faith, Tradition, and Order,
We praise, bless, and thank thee.
For self-proclaimed prophets who, in their arrogance and self-conceit, have rejected thy revealed truth and created such deplorable divisions among us,
Father, forgive them and guide them back to thy truth.
For false shepherds who, rejecting their ordination vows, destroy their flocks by creating confusion, errors, and schisms,
Father, forgive them and guide them back to thy truth.
For those in the Church who have betrayed thee by the mental, physical, or sexual abuse of those in their care,
Father, forgive them and guide them back to thy truth.
We pray for all whose faith has suffered and who feel bitter, isolated, betrayed, confused, or angry;
Father, bless, comfort, and strengthen them.
We pray for all faithful clergy, religious, and laity who suffer ridicule, slander, or persecution as they teach and defend the Faith delivered once and for all time. We pray especially for the Pope, the Ecumenical Patriarch, the bishops of the Orthodox and Eastern Churches, the Anglican Continuum, the Primate and bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion, Forward in Faith, the Polish National Catholic and Nordic Catholic Churches;
Father, bless, comfort, and strengthen them.
Eternal and Unchanging Lord, thou hast taught us through thy Son that a house divided amongst itself must fall. Keep us, we pray, in the household of Apostolic Faith and free us from the sins, errors, and divisions of this age. Let us never do anything to widen those divisions, and give us grace to work and pray in love for the peace and unity of thy Church, so that there may be One Church, with One Faith, under One Shepherd, even Jesus Christ Our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.
Burying the Alleluia
Feb 13th
For those who follow the traditional calendar with the “Gesima” Sundays, you would have done this on the day before Septuagesima. But for those of us who follow the revised Latin Rite calendar, on Shrove Tuesday all the children will place their decoratively written Alleluias in a small coffin near the entrance of the church. We’ll sing the “Alleluia dulce carmen” at the end of Mass, as we process to the Lady Chapel, where the coffin will remain until the great Easter Vigil.
There are many local traditions surrounding the “Burying of the Alleluia,” but the purpose is always the same: to mark the cessation of singing or saying the Alleluia during the penitential season, so that it can break out as a new song at Easter. As the 13th century bishop, William Duranti, wrote, “We desist from saying Alleluia, the song chanted by angels, because we have been excluded from the company of the angels on account of Adam’s sin. In the Babylon of our earthly life we sit by the streams, weeping as we remember Sion. For as the children of Israel in an alien land hung their harps upon the willows, so we too must forget the Alleluia song in the season of sadness, of penance, and bitterness of heart.”
The students in our parish school get ready for this every year, and take it very seriously. In fact, a few years ago just after Lent had begun, one of our very young students asked if he could see me because he had to tell me something “very, very important.” When he came to me, he wanted to tell me what one of the other boys had done earlier that day. It sounded serious, so I encouraged him to tell me about it. In a half-whispered voice the offence was reported: “He said the ‘A’ word!”
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Percy Dearmer on the Lenten Array
Feb 12th
As a follow-up to Fr. Chadwick’s recent post on the Lenten Array, here are a couple of extracts from Percy Dearmer’s The Parson’s Handbook.
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From The Parson’s Handbook (Sixth Edition), pp. 511-514:
Lent.—The Lenten array should be hung up on Shrove Tuesday evening for Ash Wednesday[1]. English tradition does not allow of the use of crape, &c., for Passiontide, everything having been already veiled for Ash Wednesday.
The veils are hung up before the crosses, pictures (such as are not removed), and such images as are not of an architectural character[2]. Where there is a triptych, or other reredos with leaves, it is closed. If the reredos has no leaves, it should be covered by a white veil. The veils should be of white linen, brown holland, or of silk (not of crape). But nothing whiter than the toned white of homespun linen should be used; the white linen of which surplices are made (especially when the mellowness is spoiled by washerwomen’s blue) does not have a good effect. The beauty and significance of the Lenten white will be at once appreciated if this is remembered; for the walls of the church being distempered in a toned white (as they should be) the veiling of pictures, reredos, &c., causes them to be lost in the general background till Easter comes again. For the same reason the leaves of a triptych should be painted the same white on the outside[3].
The frontals and dorsals give excellent opportunities for appliqué or painted work in red on rough white linen[4], but these, of course, must be most carefully designed. Sometimes blue linen (the common true indigo blue, not the hideous ‘violet’ falsely so called) may be used for covering images[5]; but there is a danger of the blue interfering with the effect of the general white, especially if the white is decorated with a little red[6]. Generally the great Rood was veiled in linen[7], and the Lenten veil which hung in front of the sanctuary (a relic of the primitive custom of hiding the altar within curtains during the Holy Mysteries) was often made in strips of various colours; though this too was often white like all the rest[8]. The vestments should be like the frontal[9]. Apparels should be worn in Lent[10] and Holy Week[11], as during the rest of the year.
A special processional cross was usually reserved for Lent. It was generally of wood, painted red, and it was without the image of our Lord[12].
[1] The Consuetudinary (p. 138) says before Mattins on the Monday following, when Lent was reckoned to begin; but before the end of the fifteenth century Ash Wednesday came to be the usual day ; and this is certainly more in accordance with the Prayer Book, which orders the Lenten memorial to begin on Ash Wednesday, ‘the first day of Lent.’ See the story about Edward IV, 1471 (qu. C. Atchley, in Essays on Ceremonial, pp. 152,153), ‘according to the rules that, in all the churches of England, be observed, all images to be hid from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day in the morning.’
[2] On Lady Day in Lent at Salisbury the image of the Blessed Virgin above the high altar was unveiled (Cust., p. 139).
[3] However rich be the colour and gilding of ornaments, their beauty will be wasted unless the walls at least of the sanctuary are distempered in white. See p. 76.
[4] See the instances collected by Mr. St. John Hope in S.P.E.S. Trans., ii. p. 233. The following examples of frontals and dorsals are typical:—’White linen cloths powdered with great red crosses . . . with covers of the same suit for covering all the images in the church in time of Lent.’ ’A front, white damask with red roses for Lent.’ ’Cloths of white with crucifix for Lent.’ ’An altar cloth of white for Lent, with crosses of red, with two curtains of white linen.’ ’Linen with crosses red and blue.’ ’Two altar cloths for Lenten time of linen cloth; with crosses of purple in every cloth, and a crown of thorns hanging upon the head of every cross.’ ’With the tokens of the Passion for time of Lent.’ ’With our Lady of Pity and two angels, and another with the sepulchre and two angels for the high altar in Lent.’ ’White satin with pageants of the Passion.’ ’While, spotted with red.’ ’Linen altar cloths with red roses for Lent.’ An instance is given of the fourth year of Edw. VI (1550), when the Lent vestments and hangings were of white bustian and linen with red crosses, and ‘a Lent cloth of linen for the high altar painted with drops’ occurs in the second year of Elizabeth. See also pp. 539-40 in the Appendix.
[5] There are some instances of blue with crosses of another colour, and sometimes both white and blue were used (‘one white and two blue cloths to cover and alter the images in Lenten season’). Blue is assumed in The Beehive of the Romishe Churche (1579), f. 185. ’The whole Lent through, they do cause their images to look through a blue cloth’; but this was a Dutch book, translated a generation after the change in England. Blue was also used at Exeter. Crosses were by no means the only ornament. ‘ Sometimes these cloths were stained or embroidered with devices bearing reference to the subject they were intended to veil.’—Micklethwaite, Ornaments, p. 52.
[6] The reason for this is apparent when Passiontide comes, and the frontals are changed to red.
[7] Many instances of coloured ‘cross-cloths’ are really banners used on the processional cross. Most of the genuine Rood-cloths mentioned in the inventories are stated to be of ‘linen’, or of ‘white with a red cross’. Sometimes a covering for the beam is also mentioned.
[8] Most commonly white and blue ‘paned’, when not of white or blue only. Sometimes red and white, green and red, &c.
[9] Including copes and tunicles: e. g. ‘One whole suit of vestments of white bustian for Sundays in time of Lent, with red roses embroidered.’ ’A white chasuble with a red cross.’ ’White bustian, with orphreys of red velvet.’ ’Deacon and subdeacon (i.e. dalmatic and tunicle) of white bustian for Lent.’ ‘A cope of white with roses for Lent season.’—Hope, as above.
[10] e.g. ‘For Lenten, three albes, three amices with the parours,’ ‘albe and paramits for Lent,’ ‘a vestment with the albe and apparel of white bustian for Lent.’—Hope, ibid. The apparels are best made of the same red as the orphreys of the chasuble. On Passion Sunday they might be changed, and generally black serge is a very good material for the apparels worn with red Passiontide vestments.
[11] Cf. p. 525, n. 7.
[12] ‘Omnibus dominicis quadragesime, excepta prima dominica, deferatur una crux ante processionem lignea sine ymagine crucifixi.’ —Cust., p. 219.
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From pp. 125-126:
A few words must now be said about the Lenten colours. The use of plain white linen marked with red or black crosses, &c., has already been alluded to. This use was akin to that of the Lent veils for pictures, images, crosses, which in England were generally white. Those rules which prescribed black, violet, &c., were at the utmost fulfilled only by the use of coloured vestments and altar frontal on the Sundays, and even on Sundays the white was used by some churches.
This use of white linen for Lent was practically universal in the sixteenth century and earlier: it was in fact the one colour use to which there was hardly any exception. Plain white stuff, fustian, linen, or canvas, with crosses, roses, or other devices of red or purple, was used to cover pictures and ornaments, as well as for vestments, for frontals, riddels, and other hangings. The parson who tries it will find that it is as popular and as readily understood now as it was then.
In churches which are well arranged and decorated this Lenten white looks extremely well, if care is exercised in the choice of a good toned white (such as brown holland is), and of the devices painted on or applied to the hangings. Churches where linen chasubles are used can keep their vestments for Lent when silk and coloured ones are introduced. In other churches it will be better to get vestments and hangings of brown holland or similar material throughout. The use of the Lenten white has the great advantage of distinguishing Lent from Advent (a season to which it has little resemblance), and from the season between Septuagesima and Ash Wednesday.
Lenten Array
Feb 12th
Lenten Array is the characteristic veiling of the altars and statues of churches following the English Use, which follows medieval north European precedent. The purple you see in many churches is a Roman Catholic custom which was only followed universally from the nineteenth century. Lenten Array negates colour to a large extent, marking the penitential character of Lent. It is highly effective.
The material is usually unbleached linen, but I found an off-white cotton that looks almost identical to linen, but much cheaper. The red is crimson as used in Passiontide, rather than the scarlet used for Martyrs and Sundays outside Eastertide, Advent and Lent. Unlike the Roman Rite, in the English Use, the statues and icons are veiled not only in Passiontide but also throughout Lent. The altar cross should also be veiled if the figure of Christ shows a triumphant character. The veil bears a black cross. I veil the altar crosses for Passiontide.
The photo opposite is my own chapel, appointed in “Wareham Guild” style.
Why is English Lenten Array different from the Roman violet (with violet veils in Passiontide)? I refer the reader to look at this lovely article in the New Liturgical Movement.
I also found this explanation (see Full Homely Divinity – Lenten Customs):
“In [the Sarum] tradition “according to the rules that in all the churches of England be observed, all images [are] to be hid from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day in the morning.” This is called the Lenten Array and it includes a curtain which hides the reredos, a frontal which covers the altar, and veils which cover other statues and pictures in the church. The colour was Lenten white which was natural linen material, sometimes referred to as ash colour. According to An Introduction to English Liturgical Colours, “The explanation of this use of white, which is closely akin to ashen, is ‘in this time of Lent, which is a time of mourning, all things that make to the adornment of the church are either laid aside or else covered, to put us in remembrance that we ought now to lament and mourn for our souls dead in sin, and continually to watch, fast, pray, give alms….,’ wherefore ‘the clothes that are hanged up this time of Lent in the church have painted on them nothing else but the pains, torments, passion, bloodshedding, and death of Christ, that now we should only have our minds fixed on the passion of Christ, by whom only we were redeemed.” This practice made a startling transformation of the church for the whole of the Lenten season so that Easter literally burst forth like the Lord from the tomb when the church was returned to normal state.”
Remember to Keep Such a Fast as God Has Chosen
Feb 12th
With the season of Lent fast approaching, I commend to the readership of The Anglo-Catholic this excellent pastoral letter of Thomas Ken, at the time, Bishop of Bath and Wells, and later, the most eminent of the English Nonjurors. Ken prescribes for his clergy a Lenten discipline that might serve as a model for our own.
- daily recitation of Psalm 51, Miserere mei, Deus, and the Commination / A Penitential Office
- lectio divina based on the Lamentations of Jeremiah
- daily recitation of Mattins and Evensong
- praying of The Litany each morning
To this, Bishop Ken would recommend that clergy meditate on their ordination vows and the prayers of that office and to pray to God for the grace to conscientiously perform the promises made therein. And Ken reminds us all that it is not enough to attend to our own souls — we must be prepared to relieve our brethren through almsgiving.
To our Anglican readership, I would humbly propose that we make this Lenten season a time of solemn preparation for that moment — now perhaps not far distant — when we shall, at long last, reassume our place in the the full communion of the Catholic Church while maintaining the precious gift of those liturgical, spiritual, and pastoral traditions that have nourished us in our Exile.
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A Pastoral Letter from the Bishop of Bath and Wells to his Clergy, concerning their Behaviour during Lent.
All Glory be to God.
Reverend Brother,
THE time of Lent now approaching, which has been anciently and very Christianly set apart, for penitential humiliation of Soul and Body, for Fasting and Weeping and Praying, all which you know are very frequently inculcated in Holy Scripture, as the most effectual means we can use, to avert those Judgments our sins have deserv’d; I thought it most agreeable to that Character which, unworthy as I am, I sustain, to call you and all my Brethren of the Clergy to mourning; to mourning for your own sins, and to mourning for the sins of the Nation.
In making such an address to you as this, I follow the example of St. Cyprian, that blessed Bishop and Martyr, who from his retirement wrote an excellent Epistle to his Clergy, most worthy of your serious perusal, exhorting them, by publick Prayers and Tears to appease the Anger of God, which they then actually felt, and which we may justly fear.
Remember that to keep such a Fast as God has chosen, it is not enough for you to afflict your own soul, but you must also according to your ability, deal your bread to the Hungry: and the rather, because we have not onely Usual objects of Charity to relieve, but many poor Protestant Strangers are now fled hither for Sanctuary, whom as Brethren, as members of Christ, we should take in and Cherish.
That you may perform the office of publick Intercessour the more assiduously, I beg of you to say daily in your Closet, or in your Family, or rather in both, all this time of Abstinence, the 51st Psalm, and the other Prayers which follow it in the Commination. I could wish also that you would frequently read and meditate on the Lamentations of Jeremy, which Holy Gregory Nazianzen was wont to doe, and the reading of which melted him into the like Lamentations, as affected the Prophet himself when he Pen’d them.
But your greatest Zeal must be spent for the Public Prayers, in the constant devout use of which, the Publick Safety both of Church and State is highly concern’d: be sure then to offer up to God every day the Morning and Evening Prayer; offer it up in your Family at least, or rather as far as your circumstances may possibly permit, offer it up in the Church, especially if you live in a great Town, and say over the Litany every Morning during the whole Lent. This I might enjoyn you to doe, on your Canonical Obedience, but for Love’s sake I rather beseech you, and I cannot recommend to you a more devout and comprehensive Form, of penitent and publick Intercession than that, or more proper for the Season.
Be not discourag’d if but few come to the Solemn Assemblies, but go to the House of Prayer, where God is well known for a sure Refuge: Go, though you go alone, or but with one besides your self; and there as you are God’s Remembrancer, keep not silence, and give Him no rest, till He establish, till He make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
The first sacred Council of Nice, for which the Christian world has always had a great and just veneration, ordains a Provincial Synod to be held before Lent, that all Dissensions being taken away a pure oblation might be offer’d up to God, namely of Prayers and Fasting and Alms, and Tears, which might produce a comfortable Communion at the following Easter: and that in this Diocese, we may in some degree imitate so Primitive a practice, I exhort you to endeavour all you can, to reconcile differences, to reduce those that go astray, to promote universal Charity towards all that dissent from you, and to put on as the Elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another and forgiving one another, even as Christ forgave you.
I passionately beseech you to reade over daily your Ordination Vows, to examine yourself how you observe them; and in the Prayers that are in that Office, fervently to importune God for the assistance of His good Spirit, that you may conscientiously perform them. Teach publickly, and from house to house, and warn every one night and day with Tears; warn them to repent, to fast and to pray, and to give Alms, and to bring forth fruits meet for repentance, warn them to continue stedfast in that faith once delivered to the Saints, in which they were baptiz’d, to keep the word of God’s Patience, that God may keep them in the hour of Temptation; warn them against the sins and errours of the age; warn them to deprecate publick judgments, and to mourn for publick provocations.
No one can reade God’s holy Word but he will see, that the greatest Saints have been the greatest Mourners: David wept whole Rivers; Jeremy wept sore, and his Eyes ran down in secret places day and night like a Fountain; Daniel mourned three full weeks, and did eat no pleasant bread, and sought God by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth and ashes; St. Paul was humbled and bewailed and wept for the sins of others; and our Lord himself when He beheld the City wept over it. Learn then of these great Saints, learn of our most compassionate Saviour, to weep for the publick, and weeping to pray, that we may know in this our day, the things that belong to our peace, lest they be hid from our eyes.
To mourn for National Guilt, in which all share, is a duty incumbent upon all, but especially on Priests, who are particularly commanded to weep and to say, Spare Thy people, O Lord, and give not Thine Heritage to reproach, that God may repent of the evil, and become jealous for His Land, and pity His people.
Be assur’d that none are more tenderly regarded by God than such Mourners as these; there is a mark set by Him on all that sigh and cry for the abominations of the Land, the destroying Angel is forbid to hurt any of them, they are all God’s peculiar care, and shall all have either present deliverance, or such supports and consolations, as shall abundantly endear their Calamity.
Now the God of all Grace, who hath called you unto His eternal Glory by Christ Jesus, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you in the true Catholic and Apostolick Faith profess’d in the Church of England, and enable you to adorn that Apostolick Faith with an Apostolick Example and Zeal, and give all our whole Church that timely repentance, those broken and contrite hearts, that both Priests and People may all plentifully sow in Tears, and in God’s good time may all plentifully reap in Joy.
From the Palace in Wells,
Febr. 17. 1687.
Your affectionate
Friend and Brother,
Tho. Bath and Wells.
Cædmon of Whitby
Feb 11th
February 11 is the feast day of Cædmon of Whitby, the earliest English poet whose name is known. An Anglo-Saxon herdsman attached to the double monastery of Streonæshalch (Whitby Abbey) during the abbacy of St. Hilda (657–680), he was originally ignorant of “the art of song” but according to Bede learned to compose one night in the course of a dream.
Cædmon’s story is related by the Venerable Bede, who lived in the nearby monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow in the following generation. The following extract is from Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Book IV, Chapter xxiv (with Cædmon’s Hymn given in Bede’s Latin, the Northumbrian aelda recension, and modern English).
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There was in this abbess’s monastery a certain brother, particularly remarkable for the grace of God, who was wont to make pious and religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of Scripture, he soon after put the same into poetical expressions of much sweetness and humility, in English, which was his native language. By his verses the minds of many were often excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven. Others after him attempted, in the English nation, to compose religious poems, but none could ever compare with him, for he did not learn the art of poetry from men, but from God; for which reason he never could compose any trivial or vain poem, but only those which relate to religion suited his religious tongue; for having lived in a secular habit till he was well advanced in years, he had never learned anything of versifying; for which reason being sometimes at entertainments, when it was agreed for the sake of mirth that all present should sing in their turns, when he saw the instrument come towards him, he rose up from table and returned home.
Having done so at a certain time, and gone out of the house where the entertainment was, to the stable, where he had to take care of the horses that night, he there composed himself to rest at the proper time; a person appeared to him in his sleep, and saluting him by his name, said, “Caedmon, sing some song to me.” He answered, “I cannot sing; for that was the reason why I left the entertainment, and retired to this place because I could not sing.” The other who talked to him, replied, “However, you shall sing.” “What shall I sing?” rejoined he. “Sing the beginning of created beings,” said the other. Hereupon he presently began to sing verses to the praise of God, which he had never heard, the purport whereof was thus :
| Nunc laudare debemus auctorem regni caelestis, potentiam creatoris, et consilium illius facta Patris gloriae: quomodo ille, cum sit aeternus Deus, omnium miraculorum auctor exstitit; qui primo filiis hominum caelum pro culmine tecti dehinc terram custos humani generis omnipotens creavit. |
nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard metudæs maecti end his modgidanc uerc uuldurfadur swe he uundra gihwaes eci dryctin or astelidæ he aerist scop aelda barnum heben til hrofe haleg scepen. tha middungeard moncynnæs uard eci dryctin æfter tiadæ firum foldu frea allmectig |
Now [we] must honour the guardian of heaven, the might of the architect, and his purpose, the work of the father of glory — as he, the eternal lord, established the beginning of wonders. He, the holy creator, first created heaven as a roof for the children of men. Then the guardian of mankind the eternal lord, the lord almighty afterwards appointed the middle earth, the lands, for men. |
This is the sense, but not the words in order as he sang them in his sleep; for verses, though never so well composed, cannot be literally translated out of one language into another, without losing much of their beauty and loftiness. Awaking from his sleep, he remembered all that he had sung in his dream, and soon added much more to the same effect in verse worthy of the Deity.
In the morning he came to the steward, his superior, and having acquainted him with the gift he had received, was conducted to the abbess, by whom he was ordered, in the presence of many learned men, to tell his dream, and repeat the verses, that they might all give their judgment what it was, and whence his verse proceeded. They all concluded, that heavenly grace had been conferred on him by our Lord. They expounded to him a passage in holy writ, either historical, or doctrinal, ordering him, if he could, to put the same into verse. Having undertaken it, he went away, and returning the next morning, gave it to them composed in most excellent verse; whereupon the abbess, embracing the grace of God in the man, instructed him to quit the secular habit, and take upon him the monastic life; which being accordingly done, she associated him to the rest of the brethren in her monastery, and ordered that he should be taught the whole series of sacred history. Thus Caedmon–keeping in mind all he heard, and as it were chewing the cud, converted the same into most harmonious verse; and sweetly repeating the same, made his masters in their turn his hearers. He sang the creation of the world, the origin of man, and all the history of Genesis : and made many verses on the departure of the children of Israel out of Egypt, and their entering into the land of promise, with many other histories from holy writ; the incarnation, passion, resurrection of our Lord, and his ascension into heaven; the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the preaching of the apostles ; also the terror of future judgment, the horror of the pains of hell, and the delights of heaven; besides many more about the Divine benefits and judgments, by which he endeavoured to turn away all men from the love of vice, and to excite in them the love of, and application to, good actions; for he was a very religious man, humbly submissive to regular discipline, but full of zeal against those who behaved themselves otherwise; for which reason he ended his life happily.
For when the time of his departure drew near, he laboured for the space of fourteen days under a bodily infirmity which seemed to prepare the way, yet so moderate that he could talk and walk the whole time. In his neighbourhood was the house to which those that were sick, and like shortly to die, were carried. He desired the person that attended him, in the evening, as the night came on in which he was to depart this life, to make ready a place there for him to take his rest. This person, wondering why he should desire it, because there was as yet no sign of his dying soon, did what he had ordered. He accordingly went there, and conversing pleasantly in a joyful manner with the rest that were in the house before, when it was past midnight, he asked them, whether they had the Eucharist there? They answered, “What need of the Eucharist? for you are not likely to die, since you talk so merrily with us, as if you were in perfect health.” ” However,” said he, “bring me the Eucharist.” Having received the same into his hand, he asked, whether they were all in charity with him, and without any enmity or rancour? They answered, that they were all in perfect charity, and free from anger; and in their turn asked him, whether he was in the same mind towards them? He answered, “I am in charity, my children, with all the servants of God.” Then strengthening himself with the heavenly viaticum, he prepared for the entrance into another life, and asked, how near the time was when the brothers were to be awakened to sing the nocturnal praises of our Lord? They answered, “It is not far off.” Then he said, “Well, let us wait that hour; ” and signing himself with the sign of the cross, he laid his head on the pillow, and falling into a slumber, ended his life so in silence.
Thus it came to pass, that as he had served God with a simple and pure mind, and undisturbed devotion, so he now departed to his presence, leaving the world by a quiet death; and that tongue, which had composed so many holy words in praise of the Creator, uttered its last words whilst he was in the act of signing himself with the cross, and recommending himself into his hands, and by what has been here said, he seems to have had foreknowledge of his death.
The Martyrdom of St. Agatha
Feb 5th
An excerpt of The Life of St. Agatha from The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints, compiled by Jacobus de Voragine, Archbishop of Genoa, 1275, first edition published 1470, Englished by William Caxton, first edition 1483.
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On the morning Quintianus made her to be brought tofore him in judgment, and said to her: Agatha, how art thou advised for thy health? She answered: Christ is mine health. Quintianus said: Reny Christ thy God, by which thou mayest escape thy torments. S. Agatha answered: Nay, but reny thou thine idols which be of stones and of wood, and adore thy maker, that made heaven and earth, and if thou do not thou shalt be tormented in the perpetual fire in hell. Then in great ire Quintianus did her to be drawn and stretched on a tree and tormented, and said to her: Refuse thy vain opinion that thou hast, and thou shalt be eased of thy pain; and she answered: I have as great dilection in these pains as he that saw come to him that thing which he most coveteth to see, or as he that had found great treasure. And like as the wheat may not be put in the garner unto the time that the chaff be beaten off, in like wise my soul may not enter into the realm of heaven, but if thou wilt torment my body by thy ministers. Then Quintianus did her to be tormented in her breasts and paps, and commanded that her breasts and mammels should be drawn and cut off. When the ministers had accomplished his commandment, then said S. Agatha: Over felon and cruel tyrant, hast thou no shame to cut off that in a woman which thou didst suck in thy mother, and whereof thou wert nourished? But I have my paps whole in my soul, of which I nourish all my wits, the which I have ordained to serve our Lord Jesu Christ, sith the beginning of my youth.
The Purification of St. Mary the Virgin
Feb 2nd
The Gospel. St. Luke ii. 22.
AND when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord; (as it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord;) and to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons. And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the holy Ghost was upon him. And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law, then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light te lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken to him. And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age, and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity; and she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord. and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem. And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth. And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.
Defining a Liturgical Patrimony: Cistercian Lessons for Anglican Ordinariates
Jan 22nd
Brother Stephen of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank blogs at Sub Tuum and has authored this piece on potential liturgical developments in the Anglican personal ordinariates. It is reproduced here with his kind permission.
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The discussion of what sort of liturgy will and should be used in the new Anglican ordinariates is emerging in earnest in various fora. This morning I was struck by the parallels between the evolution of the Cistercian Rite over the last 500 years and the liturgical situation among Anglo-Catholics interested in the ordinariates. I think the Cistercian experience may hold both salutary caution and a constructive example for those who are looking for a liturgical way forward in the new world of Anglicanorum Coetibus. This is an off-the-cuff thought piece that I offer for what it’s worth.
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To Sarum or Not to Sarum: Is That the Question?
If you were to attend Mass at a Cistercian Abbey you would be likely to find servers in albs, the chalice being mixed at the credence, and, in a place or two, a hanging pyx over the altar. Does this represent some fondness for Sarum? No, it is simply what is or was done in the Cistercian Rite, which has its roots in the Rite of Lyon. Much of what one often thinks of as distinctly Sarum was actually quite common to many of the other European rites and uses.
On the Continent, many customs shared with the Sarum Use either died on their own as fashions changed or were finally wiped away by the influence of the Tridentine reforms and 19th Century ultramontanism through the work of men like Dom Gueranger. It seems likely that Sarum and the other English uses would have suffered the same fate. Bit by bit, we Cistercians lost communion under both species, the great pall, and a number of other pieces of hardware and their attendant customs over the centuries.
One also has to look at the broader cultural factors in these changes. As Cistercians became more prosperous—and a quick rundown of the holdings of the English abbeys alone tells that story nicely—it was hard to fight a certain amount of embellishment and modernization. Stained glass, sculptural ornamentation, silk vestments, and organs, all made their impact on Cistercian simplicity as they became ubiquitous in the wider Church. What similar developments would have taken place in England that remained unreformed? It’s hard to imagine that the Baroque—always an anathema to a certain type of Anglo-Catholic—would not have had an even stronger influence in a still Roman Catholic England than it did on a Reformed one as seen in the works of Wren. The Ambrosian Rite certainly looks as comfortable in the Baroque as it must have in the Romanesque.
Simply “going back” to a Sarum Use lifted from 500 years in the mothballs and translated into traditional English is as fraught with perils and potential eccentricities as more recent attempts to create modern liturgies with uncertain roots in the past. Both the Roman and Anglican liturgies have continued to evolve since the 16th Century. Issues of interrupted organic development, whether the development was broken in the distant or recent past, require careful consideration.
Unity in Diversity: Defining a Patrimony
The evolution of the Cistercian Rite after both the Council of Trent and the reforms that followed Vatican II may hold some useful insights for those attempting to define the liturgical boundaries of the Anglican Patrimony and to create liturgical documents that allow for a legitimate and workable diversity within the proposed Anglican ordinariates.
In the Cistercian case, one might well compare Trent to the trauma of the Reformation since, even though we were allowed to keep our own rite, Roman influence steadily crept into our books and uses under the influence of the new standardized product being used by so much of the rest of the Church.
Following Trent, there were those houses that adopted the new Roman Books and those who held tenaciously to the old Cistercian books. The liturgical battle raged for nearly a century and, in the end, a compromise was reached maintaining much of the old and incorporating a good bit of the new. This “1662 Prayer Book” of the Cistercian Order lasted for more than three centuries, but the tension between sensitivity to the wider Church and fidelity to the Cistercian patrimony remained unresolved and was exacerbated by international politics and political factions within the Order. The older uses obtained in some congregations’ and houses while others became increasingly Romanized, particularly in adopting a more elaborate aesthetic in their churches, vestments, and sacred objects. With time, the Order known for its transitional Gothic, woolen vestments, and simple chant gave admittance to the Rococo, cloth-of-gold, and the sounds of the occasional orchestra, yet even in these houses recognizable Cistercian practices survived side-by-side with innovation.
Following Vatican II, there were those within the Order who favored a wholesale adoption of the new Roman Rite, those who saw this as an opportunity to restore the ancient Cistercian Rite free of Roman influence, those who wanted to make no changes in present practice, and those who hoped for some middle course. These groupings probably sound familiar to Anglo-Catholics. The situation was further complicated by the fact that the Order of Cistercians (“Common Cistercians” like my own house) and the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (the Trappists) share a joint Liturgical Commission.
The draft Missal of 1969 attempted to bridge these various parties. It restored several practices from the pre-Tridentine Cistercian liturgy, made some concessions to modern use, and preserved a number of distinctly Cistercian texts and practices. In the end, and partially as a consequence of the years of liturgical reform that preceded it, a single new Missal agreeable to all could not be created and, in 1971, the two orders adopted a brief statement of points allowing for liturgical unity in diversity—something else familiar to Anglo-Catholics.
The 1971 statement allowed for the possibility of the use of the new Roman Missal (note the grammar) provided that the Cistercian Calendar, distinct Cistercian texts, and a minimum of distinctly Cistercian customs were maintained. Nearly 40 years on this has means that across the two orders you will find a range of practice from houses with an ultra-modern Roman ceremonial and contemporary English texts to places like Spring Bank where it’s mostly Latin with much bowing and prostrating and on to Mariawald, which has returned to the pre-Vatican II books.
The Calendar became another place for diversity. In the 2010 Ordo for January 22, there are six options for how the day is to be kept depending on the congregation and house, ranging from a feria to a solemnity with six different saints who might be feted, depending on whether you’re in Vienna or rural Wisconsin. For better or worse, this arrangement can hold its own with the bedlam of Anglican calendars currently in use from the various Prayer Books and Missals.
Is this ideal? No. Does it uphold the early Cistercian belief in common texts and similar customs? No. Did it allow the two orders to stay together and protect the minority of houses who wished to keep a more traditional rite? Yes. And, perhaps most importantly for its ramifications for Anglo-Catholics, it forced the two orders to define the minimum threshold of the Cistercian Patrimony.
In the end, here’s the minimum of what the Order’s patrimony was understood to include (more or less):
- The Cistercian calendar with its distinctive saints and rankings of feasts.
- The Cistercian collects, epistles, and gospels where they differed from the Roman ones.
- Cistercian chant tones and melodies and distinctive pieces of music in the graduale and breviary.
- These distinct liturgical practices:
a. A profound bow instead of the genuflection prescribed in the Roman rite;
b. The custom of making a large sign of the cross at the Gospel;
c. The practice of carrying out certain rites in silence such as kissing the Gospel book and the washing of hands;
d. The ancient practice of preparing the wine and water in the chalice before bringing them to the altar.
Did this please everyone? No. There are those who would like to see even these practices go and those who believe that these are not enough of a guaranteed minimum, but it has proven a workable compromise. I suspect any final distillation of the liturgical portion of the Anglican Patrimony will have similar elements and tensions.
A Pragmatic Approach
My years as an Anglo-Catholic lead me to believe that liturgical life in the ordinariates will require a similarly pragmatic solution. If Anglicanorum Coetibus had been issued 15 years ago, I would have fought valiantly for Percy Dearmer and the Prayer Book. If it had come five years ago, I would have sided with the English Missal and Fortescue. I was undeniably an Anglo-Catholic at both periods.
My master’s thesis was a study of the social politics of the 19th Century Anglo-Catholic customaries as a nascent Anglo-Catholicism fought an inconclusive but highly polemical intramural battle over what it meant liturgically to be an Anglo-Catholic. A decisive outcome enforcing liturgical uniformity that is agreeable to both a large majority of Anglo-Catholics and to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seems equally unlikely today and, as then, would probably waste precious energy that could be better used putting congregations on a solid footing.
A most-Anglican, tolerant pragmatism guiding a conversation about the principles defining the minimum parameters of the Anglican Patrimony may well prove the way forward rather than beginning with concrete proposals of texts. Perhaps such an approach would at last allow the cotta to lie down with the surplice and the cappa and chimere to be friends.
20 C + M + B 10
Jan 4th
It is a custom of Holy Church for the priest to bless chalk on the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6th, this coming Wednesday) and for the faithful to inscribe the numerals of the year and the initials of the Three Wise Men over the doors to their houses. It is also traditional for the houses of the faithful to be blessed on this day.
Last year, I created a service sheet with the rite of blessing of chalk, the house blessing, and relevant instructions. The blessings are translated into English from the Rituale Romanum and conformed to the Book of Common Prayer. I offer it here to anyone who might be interested in reviving or spreading this pious custom of the season.
Veni Creator Spiritus
Jan 1st
A plenary indulgence is granted to the faithful who recite the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus on the first day of the year.
The ‘Veni, Creator Spiritus’ is the only one of many metrical hymns of the early and mediaeval Church which was brought over into the offices of the English Church. It consists in the original of six four-line stanzas (without the doxology) of what we call long metre; and its composition has been ascribed to St. Ambrose of Milan (died 397), to Pope Gregory the Great (604), to the Emperor Charles the Great (Charlemagne, 814), and to Rhabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz (856). Julian in his Dictionary of Hymnology says that “the hymn is clearly not the work of St. Ambrose nor of Charles the Great, nor is there sufficient evidence to allow us to ascribe it to Gregory or to Rhabanus Maurus;” so that this, “which has taken deeper hold of the Western Church than any other mediaeval hymn, the ‘Te Deum alone excepted,” must remain anonymous. The first form of the common metre version or paraphrase in sixteen stanzas, including the doxology, was prepared by Cranmer (as it is thought) for the Ordinal of 1550; it has some good phrases, but is diffuse and in places un-rhythmical and lacks the tone of the original. It was modified into its present form for the revision of 1662, at which time also the brief version in long metre, even more condensed than the Latin itself, was inserted as an alternative. This latter was the work of Dr. John Cosin, Bishop of Durham, who took a prominent part in preparing the new edition of the Prayer Book and from whose pen came the Collects written for that Book. Strangely enough, neither version retains the word ‘Creator,’ which is so striking a title of the Holy Spirit.
COME holy ghost eternall God procedinge from above,
Both from the father and the sonne, the God of peace and love:
Vysyte oure myndes, and into us, thy heavenly grace inspyre;
That in all trueth and godlynesse, we maye have true desyre.
Thou art the very comforter, in al woe and distresse:
The heavenly gyfte of God moste highe, whych no tongue can expresse.
The fountayne and the lively springe, of joye celestiall:
The fyre so brighte, the love so clere, and Unction spirituall.
Thou in thy gyftes arte manifolde, whereby Christes Churche doeth stande:
In faythfull heartes wrytinge thy lawe, the fynger of Goddes hande.
According to thy promes made, thou gevest speache of grace;
That throughe thy helpe, the prayse of God, may sounde in every place.
O holy ghoste, into oure wittes, sende downe thyne heavenly lyght;
Kyndle our heartes wyth fervent love, to serve God daye and nyght.
Strength and stablishe all oure weakenes, so feble and so frayle:
That neyther fleshe, the worlde, nor devyl, agaynste us do prevayle.
Put backe oure enemie farre from us, and graunte us to obtayne:
Peace in our heartes with God and man, withoute grudge or disdayne.
And graunt O Lorde that thou beyng, oure leader and oure guyde;
We may eschewe the snares of synne, and from thee never slyde.
To us such plentie of thy grace, good Lord graunt we thee praye:
That thou mayest bee oure comforter, at the laste dreadfull daye.
Of all stryfe and dissencion, O Lorde, dissolve the bandes:
And make the knottes of peace and love, throughoute all Christien landes.
Graunte us O Lorde, throughe thee to knowe the father most of myght;
That of hys deare beloved sonne we may attayne the syght.
And that wyth perfect fayth also, we may acknowledge thee;
The Spirite of them both alwaye, one God in persones three.
Laude and prayse be to the father, and to the sonne equall:
And to the holy spyryte also, one God coeternall.
And praye we that the onely sonne, vouchesafe hys spyryte to sende;
To all that do professe hys name, unto the worldes ende. Amen.
– Book of Common Prayer (1549)
Te Deum Laudamus
Dec 31st
Te Deum, also sometimes called the Ambrosian Hymn because of its association with St. Ambrose, is a traditional hymn of joy and thanksgiving. First attributed to SS. Ambrose, Augustine, or Hilary, it is now accredited to Nicetas, Bishop of Remesiana (4th century). In the Modern Roman Liturgy, it is used at the conclusion of the Office of the Readings for the Liturgy of the Hours on Sundays outside Lent, daily during the Octaves of Christmas and Easter, and on Solemnities and Feast Days. The petitions at the end were added at a later time and are optional. In the Order of Morning Prayer/Mattins in the Prayer-book, it is said daily (or at least on Sundays) except in Lent. A partial indulgence is granted to the faithful who recite it in thanksgiving and a plenary indulgence is granted if the hymn is recited publicly on the last day of the year.
We praise the, O God, we knowlage thee to be the Lorde.
All the earth doeth wurship thee, the father everlastyng.
To thee al Angels cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therin.
To thee Cherubin, and Seraphin continually doe crye.
Holy, holy, holy, Lorde God of Sabaoth.
Heaven and earth are replenyshed with the majestie of thy glory,
The gloryous company of the Apostles, praise thee.
The goodly felowshyp of the Prophetes, praise thee.
The noble armie of Martyrs, praise thee.
The holy churche throughout all the worlde doeth knowlage thee.
The father of an infinite majestie.
Thy honourable, true, and onely sonne.
The holy gost also beeying the coumforter.
Thou art the kyng of glory, O Christe.
Thou art the everlastyng sonne of the father.
Whan thou tookest upon thee to delyver manne, thou dyddest not abhorre the virgins wombe.
Whan thou haddest overcomed the sharpenesse of death, thou diddest open the kyngdome of heaven to all belevers.
Thou sittest on the ryght hande of God, in the glory of the father.
We beleve that thou shalt come to be our judge.
We therfore praye thee, helpe thy servauntes, whom thou haste redemed with thy precious bloud.
Make them to be noumbred with thy sainctes, in glory everlastyng.
O Lorde, save thy people: and blesse thyne heritage.
Governe them, and lift them up for ever.
Day by day we magnifie thee.
And we wurship thy name ever world without ende.
Vouchsafe, O Lorde, to kepe us this daye without synne.
O Lorde, have mercy upon us : have mercy upon us.
O Lorde, let thy mercy lighten upon us : as our trust is in thee.
O Lorde, in thee have I trusted : let me never be confounded.
– Book of Common Prayer (1549)
The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Dec 24th
The Twenty-Fifth Day of December
In the 5199th year of the creation of the world,
from the time when God in the beginning created the heaven and the earth;
the 2957th year after the flood;
the 2015th year from the birth of Abraham;
the 1510th year from Moses, and the going forth of the people of Israel from Egypt;
the 1032nd year from the anointing of David King;
in the 65th week according to the prophecy of Daniel;
in the 194th Olympiad;
the 752nd year from the foundation of the City of Rome;
the 42nd year of the rule of Octavian Augustus, all the earth being at peace, Jesus Christ, the Eternal God, and the Son of the Eternal Father, desirous to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming, being conceived by the Holy Spirit, nine months after his conception was born in Bethlehem of Juda, made Man of the Virgin Mary.
THE NATIVITY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST ACCORDING TO THE FLESH.
O Virgo virginum
Dec 23rd
December 23: The Expectation of the Blessed Virgin Mary – Eighth Antiphon (according to the Sarum Use / Book of Common Prayer)
O Virgo virginum, quomodo fiet istud? quia nec primam similem visa es, nec habere sequentem. Filiae Jerusalem, quid me admiramini? Divinum est mysterium hoc quod cernitis.
O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be? for neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after: Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me? The thing which ye behold is a divine mystery.
This feast, which is now kept not only throughout the whole of Spain but in many other parts of the Catholic world, owes its origin to the bishops of the tenth Council of Toledo, in 656. These prelates thought that there was an incongruity in the ancient practice of celebrating the feast of the Annunciation on the twenty-fifth of March, inasmuch as this joyful solemnity frequently occurs at the time when the Church is intent upon the Passion of our Lord, so that it is sometimes obliged to be transferred into Easter time, with which it is out of harmony for another reason; they therefore decreed that, henceforth, in the Church of Spain there should be kept, eight days before Christmas, a solemn feast with an octave, in honour of the Annunciation, and as a preparation for the great solemnity of our Lord’s Nativity. In course of time, however, the Church of Spain saw the necessity of returning to the practice of the Church of Rome, and of those of the whole world, which solemnize the twenty-fifth of March as the day of our Lady’s Annunciation and the Incarnation of the Son of God. But such had been, for ages, the devotion of the people for the feast of the eighteenth of December, that it was considered requisite to maintain some vestige of it. They discontinued, therefore, to celebrate the Annunciation on this day; but the faithful were requested to consider, with devotion, what must have been the sentiments of the holy Mother of God during the days immediately preceding her giving Him birth. A new feast was instituted, under the name of the Expectation of the blessed Virgin’s delivery.
This feast, which sometimes goes under the name of Our Lady of O, or the feast of O, on account of the great antiphons which are sung during these days, and, in a special manner, of that which begins O Virgo virginum (which is still used in the Vespers of the Expectation, together with the O Adonaï, the antiphon of the Advent Office), is kept with great devotion in Spain. A High Mass is sung at a very early hour each morning during the octave, at which all who are with child, whether rich or poor, consider it a duty to assist, that they may thus honour our Lady’s Maternity, and beg her blessing upon themselves. It is not to be wondered at that the Holy See has approved of this pious practice being introduced into almost every other country. We find that the Church of Milan, long before Rome conceded this feast to the various dioceses of Christendom, celebrated the Office of our Lady’s Annunciation on the sixth and last Sunday of Advent, and called the whole week following the Hebdomada de Exceptato (for thus the popular expression had corrupted the word Expectato). But these details belong strictly to the archaeology of liturgy, and enter not into the plan of our present work; let us, then, return to the feast of our Lady’s Expectation, which the Church has established and sanctioned as a new means of exciting the attention of the faithful during these last days of Advent.
Most just indeed it is, O holy Mother of God, that we should unite in that ardent desire thou hadst to see him, who had been concealed for nine months in thy chaste womb; to know the features of this Son of the heavenly Father, who is also thine; to come to that blissful hour of his birth, which will give glory to God in the highest, and, on earth, peace to men of good-will. Yes, dear Mother, the time is fast approaching, though not fast enough to satisfy thy desires and ours. Make us redouble our attention to the great mystery; complete our preparation by thy powerful prayers for us, that when the solemn hour has come, our Jesus may find no obstacle to his entrance into our hearts.
