Same with all the older Anglican liturgies back to 1552. Moving it up front was a Missal thing originally, and was first authorized in the US with the Green Book in 1967. I am still not sure which I prefer.
Roman Catholic practice is to use the Gloria only on Sundays (outwith Advent and Lent), Solemnities, and Feasts (with the Creed on the first two). In my experience, Anglo-Catholic churches with daily masses tend to follow that.
I serve at many of our (Anglo-Catholic) parish's Wednesday-evening Low Masses. Celebrants who don't say Mass there regularly sometimes ask me after the Kyrie whether we should say the Gloria in excelsis. I say yes if the chasuble is red or white, no if it's green or purple. A former rector would often raise an arm slightly at that point to check what color he had on.
I would tend to assume - with my liturgical "up-draggings" that if it is green, a weekday, and the modern liturgy the Gloria is out, and so is the Creed.
My experience in Canada accords with Pomona's experience, even in congos which might not be identified as Anglo-Cat.
And here also, in both the AAPB and now the APBA. Kyrie all through the year, Gloria likewise save for Advent and Lent when it is dropped and in my experience most use the Trisagion instead.
Over here daily mass is unusual for RCs or A-Cs other than in cathedrals. Sundays and holydays only is not unusual for either - low congregation and clergy numbers. I had forgotten about Sunday v non-Sunday practice for this reason I'm afraid!
Over here daily mass is unusual for RCs or A-Cs other than in cathedrals. Sundays and holydays only is not unusual for either - low congregation and clergy numbers. I had forgotten about Sunday v non-Sunday practice for this reason I'm afraid!
I'm afraid it's even rarer in the U.S. My last two CofE parishes had daily mass, but I don't think any Episcopal parish here does. Indeed, my London parish had roughly as many masses per day as my current Episcopal parish has a week! It's partly a matter of location, partly a matter of demographics (less than 2% of the US population is Episcopal), but largely I think down to the fact that the custom of daily masses has just about died out. I think most Roman Catholic parishes do have daily masses, but attendance is way down. Attendance at daily mass used to be quite common for devout Roman Catholics in the USA, even for people whom one might have thought were too busy, like Sargent Shriver or Gary Wils. It's now a very niche pursuit.
Over here daily mass is unusual for RCs or A-Cs other than in cathedrals. Sundays and holydays only is not unusual for either - low congregation and clergy numbers. I had forgotten about Sunday v non-Sunday practice for this reason I'm afraid!
I'm afraid it's even rarer in the U.S. My last two CofE parishes had daily mass, but I don't think any Episcopal parish here does. Indeed, my London parish had roughly as many masses per day as my current Episcopal parish has a week! It's partly a matter of location, partly a matter of demographics (less than 2% of the US population is Episcopal), but largely I think down to the fact that the custom of daily masses has just about died out.
Or it was never there to start with. Around here, daily Masses/Eucharists have always been A Very Rare Thing, limited to only the highest of the high Episcopal parishes. One mid-week Eucharist has long the norm in Episcopal churches in these parts.
These days, there are probably only 2 Episcopal churches in the whole state that qualify as A-C; one has daily Masses (I think), the other does not. And I know of one MOTR Episcopal church, situated next to a major university, that has daily Evening Prayer every weekday except Thursdays, when it has Holy Eucharist instead.
The little not-quite-AC parish to which I belonged in the Chicago suburbs had a daily Eucharist, but I believe that custom died with the saintly rector.
I'm now in a Low Church diocese where even the one parish that styles itself AC (it is to laugh) doesn't have a daily mass.
Over here daily mass is unusual for RCs or A-Cs other than in cathedrals. Sundays and holydays only is not unusual for either - low congregation and clergy numbers. I had forgotten about Sunday v non-Sunday practice for this reason I'm afraid!
I'm afraid it's even rarer in the U.S. My last two CofE parishes had daily mass, but I don't think any Episcopal parish here does. Indeed, my London parish had roughly as many masses per day as my current Episcopal parish has a week!
<snip>
These days, there are probably only 2 Episcopal churches in the whole state that qualify as A-C; one has daily Masses (I think), the other does not. And I know of one MOTR Episcopal church, situated next to a major university, that has daily Evening Prayer every weekday except Thursdays, when it has Holy Eucharist instead.
My observation is that around here no-one seems to do anything other than a Bible Study midweek unless it is Advent or Lent, except the TEC parishes might do a MP or an EP midweek, but only in the bigger towns. I have had a fun year with a new congregation as guests of the local Lutherans. My group are MOTR probably leaning Low if they lean at all, so we don't always have Communion on a Sunday, as I have to be away sometimes, but the Lutherans were a bit baffled when I started a regular midweek Eucharist. Even their pastor more or less said he had never run into that except in seminary.
The local Episcopal Churches seem to keep the doors closed midweek, then have one to three Rite II Eucharists on a Sunday depending on the size of the church, with the odd Morning Prayer thrown in for old times' sake. I am still very much adjusting to the way they do things around here. I sort of expect HE to be celebrated once midweek, and on Holydays, but I think would be considered gross popery around here!
...I am still very much adjusting to the way they do things around here. I sort of expect HE to be celebrated once midweek, and on Holydays, but I think would be considered gross popery around here!
I probably am going to go for it, once we get through the traditional Memorial Day to Labor (sic) Day pause. The worst thing they can do is not turn up, and then I will know I guessed wrong. NBD!
I am still trying to get a handle on the congregation we have picked up over the 15 months. At the last count, we had by where they were confirmed 4 Episcopalians; 2 Catholics; 1 CofE; 3 "Anglicans - other;" a Presbyterian; 2 Methodists; a not sure; a slack handful of ELCA type Lutherans who had enough; and those are the ones I know something about. They're all conservative in their liturgical preferences, and prefer expository preaching, but I am not quite sure whether half of them would really notice if I changed out traditional language BCP liturgy for the 1941 Lutheran Hymnal, or even that of the old Evangelical and Reformed Church!
Quite an experience after 20-odd years of very definitely Anglican/Episcopal ministry.
That does sound like quite the experience, @PDR. Do you mind me asking what part of the country this is? (Totally understand if you’d rather not answer that.)
That does sound like quite the experience, @PDR. Do you mind me asking what part of the country this is? (Totally understand if you’d rather not answer that.)
I am in Virginia.
I initially came to the area to do a year at as an interim pastor at a church in Albemarle County that turned out to have a lot of problems to the point where a vestry member (after the fact) described it as being at the point where it was "taking the fun out of being dysfunctional." They ran my wife out of the church after about 9 months, and I quit at the end of my year. Evangelical injunctions about wiping the dust off one's feet were applied.
I then ended up heading a new start up, about 30 miles away, and basically ended up changing churches without moving house!
That does sound like quite the experience, @PDR. Do you mind me asking what part of the country this is? (Totally understand if you’d rather not answer that.)
I am in Virginia.
Thanks. I wondered if that's where you are—Virginia being known as historically very low church. I'm just south of you (and not Episcopalian, but I've had lots of contact with and exposure to Episcopal churches over the years) and my impression is that Virginia makes the mostly MOTR churches here look precipitously high up the candle.
I am English, so the present day Virginia Churchmanship comes across to me as being MOTR-Low rather than Low. They probably have not been what an Englishman would call Low since the 1950s.
The norm around here seems to be Rite I at 8am, then 10/10:30am is Rite II with the minister in alb and stole, or occasionally the appropriately coloured "Almy ugly" chasuble. Ceremonial seems to be pretty minimal except that most places take the Gospel book for a walk, and the only times you are allowed to go over an hour are Christmas, Ash Wednesday, and Palm Sunday. I have noticed that a few churches still have MP once a month or every other week, but their number is slowly declining, I am told.
I think the Episcopal Church in my town is in an odd situation, but maybe it's not so odd. The people who built it were clearly strongly aligned with the Oxford movement- gothic revival architecture, rood loft, lovely high altar, saints in stain-glass windows, and a lady chapel with a statue of Mary in it. And there's a holy water font at the entrance. But the people who inhabit it now seem largely indifferent to Anglo-Catholic stuff- the lady chapel is only used for choir practice, no weekday masses, no invocations of saints, etc. The clergy will wear surplice and stole but only wear copes and offer incense on Christmas and Easter.
My liturgical practice is about what you describe. I am mainly surplice and stole, but add the cope for special occasions. Here it is because Virginia Churchmanship is a factor (and I don't do the alb and stole route, because I have a tendency to look like a sack of potatoes tied in the middle), but then other areas of the country were quite Low Church at one time including parts of Arizona, bits of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, for example.
The mystery for me is that the church in my town (southeastern PA) is so very high in its architecture and furnishings but the liturgical practice is decidedly MOTR.
Well, that happens in a lot of places even in England. I know a conservative evangelical Anglican church with a Moore College grad assisting....in a beautiful Arts & Crafts church with a quote from Wisdom above the main entrance and a painted dome above the sanctuary. In that case I used to get annoyed about it, now I think it's more of a divine sense of humour.
Also over here many churches date to before the Reformation, and many have niches for saints and holy water just because they were built in the 1200s or whatever and everyone was RC. It doesn't have much impact on the current congregation's tastes.
On the other foot, St Clement's, Philadelphia was original a raw-boned wham of a preaching box, which has been considerably tarted up over the years. The original apse was much lower, and contained a small communion table. Rumour has it the pulpit was straight in front of that, as was common in Evangelical parishes north of the Mason-Dixon line at that time.
Well, it does sound familiar, but I can't place it either. I don't think it was part of the new liturgical texts that sprang up in the 60s and 70s (e.g. Series 3), but I may be wrong.
In any case, it's rather good, and worth using still!
It rings a bell with me too. I'm not sure where from. If it's from the CofE it may well be lurking in one of the service books as an alternative blessing, but I can't find it with a quick look. The other thought is something by Jim Cotter?
It was a Methodist church, and I was too young to have any idea what kind of books the guy read. I thought in "quotes" as a search string it would turn something up, but no. He might still be alive, but it would be a funny thing to go chasing him up over.
I own two collections of prayers from Donald Hilton, Seasons and Celebrations and The Word in the World but I'm not sure how to find if that prayer is in among the 750 plus prayers in those books, when I may well have read it somewhere else entirely. I used to follow an ecumenical Bible reading scheme and that had a lot of prayers and meditations from a range of people. Those books did not survive the attack of weed 18 months ago.
The place to start I think is the Methodist Service book before last. After that, I am a bit lost. There were a variety of books in use but it can be difficult to trace. I think probably too early for Iona. I would say look what Epworth Press was publishing at the time. Donald Hilton is very definitely URC, if it is a crossover then I think maybe SCM press would be an idea.
I've emailed his daughter, who I just web-stalked to the head-ship of a primary school in the south. This is like the 'my contemporaries are so successful' thread currently rattling around in All Saints. I'll let you know if I turn anything up - we last saw each other about 30 years ago!
Although it isn't traditional, if out of practical necessity a worshipping community must offer the Mass in the evening, what customs are followed for the Communion fast in places where usually fasting from midnight would be observed for a morning Mass? Fasting from lunchtime would seem sensible to me but I'm curious about practical experience of this.
At one point in the west it was actually prohibited to start a Mass after (IIRC) 12:30pm or maybe 1pm at a stretch. The first evening Masses for a very long time started in the 1950s and they involved a three hour rule, so if Mass started at 7pm, you had to fast from approximately 4pm.
Interesting. I was not brought up in the RC tradition (and am not now in it), but I was raised in a town with a large RC population. I don't recall any of my friends or their families observing a pre-mass fast of any duration. Was this a post-V2 innovation?
At one point in the west it was actually prohibited to start a Mass after (IIRC) 12:30pm or maybe 1pm at a stretch. The first evening Masses for a very long time started in the 1950s and they involved a three hour rule, so if Mass started at 7pm, you had to fast from approximately 4pm.
It is also not the done thing in my (Western Orthodox) jurisdiction either, with the obvious exceptions of the Masses of Maundy Thursday and Pascha, of course.
It's just that, when the time does come that our mission is able to celebrate the Divine Liturgy, it is likely that the Saturday evening time afforded us by our generous host church is likely to be when it will be, out of necessity. I'm sure our bishop will offer guidance at the time but I'm curious to hear what others do in these circumstances.
I know, for instance, that the Antiochian church in some places has a custom of Vesperal Divine Liturgies. Does anybody know what happens in these instances as far as the fast goes?
Interesting. I was not brought up in the RC tradition (and am not now in it), but I was raised in a town with a large RC population. I don't recall any of my friends or their families observing a pre-mass fast of any duration. Was this a post-V2 innovation?
Perhaps it was because they were not planning to take communion? As I understand it, the fast was/is only necessary if one plans to take communion, and prior to V2, going to Mass but not communing was much more common that it is now.
Since V2, the fast period has been shortened to 1 hour prior communion, I think.
Yes one hour fast now. Used to be from midnight in the days before evening masses, then it was reduced to three hours. Now just one ..... means you can eat a bag of chips on the way to the Easter Vigil because it will be at least an hour before communion is reached.
Reminds me of a story an African missionary told about a lad who was seen throwing away a banana skin as he headed into church - "Better that Jesus comes home riding on a banana than having a banana ride on Jesus."
@Pangolin Guerre The modern Roman Catholic custom has essentially obliterated the Communion fast. As has been rightly pointed out by others, it is now one hour before the reception of communion, which means that, unless you're in the habit of eating a sandwich on your way to mass, you will probably keep the fast by default, without even noticing it. I expect that those who belong to communities following the traditional Roman rite would still have an ostensible fasting practice.
@Bishops Finger Fasting, prayer, and a pattern of regular self-examination and confession (though not necessarily confession prior to each communion) are part of the traditional preparation to receive the Body and Blood of the Saviour in the Holy Eucharist, as well as abstinence from sexual relations.
This is why marriages are not traditionally crowned during seasons of fasting and abstinence (such as Lent) or on Saturdays (although modern social convention has meant that the latter custom has been all but abandoned in many places), as it would be considered too great a burden to expect a newly-married couple not to consummate their marriage because of Communion the next day, and would be considered utterly wrong to ask them not to partake of the Eucharist for the first time as a married couple because they had not had the opportunity properly to prepare themselves.
Fasting and abstinence from the pleasures of life - whether in the form of food or sex - helps us to mortify our passions and give us a sense of the joys of Paradise, and a greater appreciation of the gravity and eternity of the Banquet in which we partake. It heightens our sense of our mortality and our unworthiness, as well as our appreciation of the grace of God in overcoming our unworthiness to make us worthy to partake.
The celebratory communal meal that is to be found in many Orthodox parishes after the Divine Liturgy makes the corporate celebration of our Communion as Christ's Body all the more poignant, I think.
When Pius XII introduced evening Masses in the 1950s (for churches of the Latin rite in union with Rome) the earlier rule that Communion should be the first food,including drink, of the day,was abandoned.
A rule was set of three hours fast from solids (and alcoholic drinks) and one hour from liquids. Understandably this was found to be unnecessarily complicated especially for people who didn't have clocks or watches,and so the fasting time was fixed at one hour before Communion.This would be round about 1970.
I've no idea how old Pangolin Guerre is but one would have to have been born no later than the early 60s to have had personal experience of the rules established by Pius XII.
I remember spending a summer with some French seminarians in the early 1960s.They told me that if you put your bread and butter into the coffee at breakfast it all counted as a drink and allowed you to go to Communion one hour later.
I remember spending a summer with some French seminarians in the early 1960s.They told me that if you put your bread and butter into the coffee at breakfast it all counted as a drink and allowed you to go to Communion one hour later.
Oh, my goodness!
This is so French! (I say this with amusement and affection.)
When I was a Roman Catholic, I took the one-hour fast to mean one hour before the start of Mass at which I would receive the Sacrament. The Mass starting time seemed much more reliable than the unknown moment at which I would receive.
But I know the rule was one hour before receiving. Tough to estimate that, is all.
As a wag of the Roman persuasion once said to me - "One hour before Communion? Now that would be Paul VI's 40 minutes for Low Mass, 15 minutes for a Sung Mass, and at High Mass you are OK if you finish your toast before the beginning of the Asperges!"
Did the abstaining from sex part of the pre communion exist at all in the RCC in the past millennium? ...
There's a great scene in Sigrid Undset's trilogy "Kristin Lavransdatter," set in 14th century Norway, when a group of children are playing at baptism, using a piglet as the infant. Suddenly the boy playing the priest shrieks, "This child was conceived during Lent!" and calls off the ceremony. Shame and confusion ensue.
Comments
PDR
I serve at many of our (Anglo-Catholic) parish's Wednesday-evening Low Masses. Celebrants who don't say Mass there regularly sometimes ask me after the Kyrie whether we should say the Gloria in excelsis. I say yes if the chasuble is red or white, no if it's green or purple. A former rector would often raise an arm slightly at that point to check what color he had on.
And here also, in both the AAPB and now the APBA. Kyrie all through the year, Gloria likewise save for Advent and Lent when it is dropped and in my experience most use the Trisagion instead.
I'm afraid it's even rarer in the U.S. My last two CofE parishes had daily mass, but I don't think any Episcopal parish here does. Indeed, my London parish had roughly as many masses per day as my current Episcopal parish has a week! It's partly a matter of location, partly a matter of demographics (less than 2% of the US population is Episcopal), but largely I think down to the fact that the custom of daily masses has just about died out. I think most Roman Catholic parishes do have daily masses, but attendance is way down. Attendance at daily mass used to be quite common for devout Roman Catholics in the USA, even for people whom one might have thought were too busy, like Sargent Shriver or Gary Wils. It's now a very niche pursuit.
These days, there are probably only 2 Episcopal churches in the whole state that qualify as A-C; one has daily Masses (I think), the other does not. And I know of one MOTR Episcopal church, situated next to a major university, that has daily Evening Prayer every weekday except Thursdays, when it has Holy Eucharist instead.
I'm now in a Low Church diocese where even the one parish that styles itself AC (it is to laugh) doesn't have a daily mass.
I am still trying to get a handle on the congregation we have picked up over the 15 months. At the last count, we had by where they were confirmed 4 Episcopalians; 2 Catholics; 1 CofE; 3 "Anglicans - other;" a Presbyterian; 2 Methodists; a not sure; a slack handful of ELCA type Lutherans who had enough; and those are the ones I know something about. They're all conservative in their liturgical preferences, and prefer expository preaching, but I am not quite sure whether half of them would really notice if I changed out traditional language BCP liturgy for the 1941 Lutheran Hymnal, or even that of the old Evangelical and Reformed Church!
Quite an experience after 20-odd years of very definitely Anglican/Episcopal ministry.
I am in Virginia.
I initially came to the area to do a year at as an interim pastor at a church in Albemarle County that turned out to have a lot of problems to the point where a vestry member (after the fact) described it as being at the point where it was "taking the fun out of being dysfunctional." They ran my wife out of the church after about 9 months, and I quit at the end of my year. Evangelical injunctions about wiping the dust off one's feet were applied.
I then ended up heading a new start up, about 30 miles away, and basically ended up changing churches without moving house!
Sorry you've had such a time.
The norm around here seems to be Rite I at 8am, then 10/10:30am is Rite II with the minister in alb and stole, or occasionally the appropriately coloured "Almy ugly" chasuble. Ceremonial seems to be pretty minimal except that most places take the Gospel book for a walk, and the only times you are allowed to go over an hour are Christmas, Ash Wednesday, and Palm Sunday. I have noticed that a few churches still have MP once a month or every other week, but their number is slowly declining, I am told.
I wonder if anyone is familiar with it and can point me at the rest of it. I've done a bit of Googling to no avail.
Thanks
Mark
In any case, it's rather good, and worth using still!
Sorry we can't be more helpful at the moment, but (as Mr Micawber might say) something may well turn up!
It is also not the done thing in my (Western Orthodox) jurisdiction either, with the obvious exceptions of the Masses of Maundy Thursday and Pascha, of course.
It's just that, when the time does come that our mission is able to celebrate the Divine Liturgy, it is likely that the Saturday evening time afforded us by our generous host church is likely to be when it will be, out of necessity. I'm sure our bishop will offer guidance at the time but I'm curious to hear what others do in these circumstances.
I know, for instance, that the Antiochian church in some places has a custom of Vesperal Divine Liturgies. Does anybody know what happens in these instances as far as the fast goes?
Since V2, the fast period has been shortened to 1 hour prior communion, I think.
AIUI, what @Nick Tamen says may logically explain the lack of a pre-Mass fast!
Reminds me of a story an African missionary told about a lad who was seen throwing away a banana skin as he headed into church - "Better that Jesus comes home riding on a banana than having a banana ride on Jesus."
@Bishops Finger Fasting, prayer, and a pattern of regular self-examination and confession (though not necessarily confession prior to each communion) are part of the traditional preparation to receive the Body and Blood of the Saviour in the Holy Eucharist, as well as abstinence from sexual relations.
This is why marriages are not traditionally crowned during seasons of fasting and abstinence (such as Lent) or on Saturdays (although modern social convention has meant that the latter custom has been all but abandoned in many places), as it would be considered too great a burden to expect a newly-married couple not to consummate their marriage because of Communion the next day, and would be considered utterly wrong to ask them not to partake of the Eucharist for the first time as a married couple because they had not had the opportunity properly to prepare themselves.
Fasting and abstinence from the pleasures of life - whether in the form of food or sex - helps us to mortify our passions and give us a sense of the joys of Paradise, and a greater appreciation of the gravity and eternity of the Banquet in which we partake. It heightens our sense of our mortality and our unworthiness, as well as our appreciation of the grace of God in overcoming our unworthiness to make us worthy to partake.
The celebratory communal meal that is to be found in many Orthodox parishes after the Divine Liturgy makes the corporate celebration of our Communion as Christ's Body all the more poignant, I think.
A rule was set of three hours fast from solids (and alcoholic drinks) and one hour from liquids. Understandably this was found to be unnecessarily complicated especially for people who didn't have clocks or watches,and so the fasting time was fixed at one hour before Communion.This would be round about 1970.
I've no idea how old Pangolin Guerre is but one would have to have been born no later than the early 60s to have had personal experience of the rules established by Pius XII.
I remember spending a summer with some French seminarians in the early 1960s.They told me that if you put your bread and butter into the coffee at breakfast it all counted as a drink and allowed you to go to Communion one hour later.
Oh, my goodness!
This is so French! (I say this with amusement and affection.)
But I know the rule was one hour before receiving. Tough to estimate that, is all.
In Orthodoxy, how long before communion must one abstain from sex?
Not to my knowledge.
A curious thing - to hold back from celebrating one sacrament in order to be worthy to celebrate another one.