Actually in Common Worship the epiclesis occurs at different points in the different eucharistic prayers.
There was/is a fashion dating from the liturgically-conscious late-60s which discourages the priest from touching the elements at the words of institution, let alone elevating them. The theory being that the whole prayer effects the consccration, so the elevation should accompany the final doxology. There seems to have been a swing back to more traditional practice in recent years, even when mass is celebrated facing the people (which you could argue makes the elevations unnecessary).
I am not that familiar with CW, mainly because I live in the USA, and have done for about the last 20 years. My familiarity with the CofE Alternative Services is more from ASB days. I have run into CW a time or two, but I cannot say I have been horribly impressed by it one way or the other, though I did pick up a fairly favourable impression of the Daily Office, but though the Eucharistic rite was a bit polyester with too many flaming alternatives to navigate.
I was taught (when - confirmation classes or seminary) that the whole prayer is consecratory, so I have always tended to favour elevating just at the doxology at the end, but when in A-C parish it was always a case of when almost in Rome, do what the Romans do, and it became a habit. I have changed a lot over the years, but I cannot say I have gotten any more enthusiastic about any of the three extremes either in liturgy or theology.
I am fairly unusual among my Baptist colleagues in both leading all the Communion service myself (it is often the practice for a serving deacon to lead extempore prayers before the bread and wine are shared) and in tending to use fairly formal liturgical settings of the service. However my practice would be fairly normative in a URC and probably a Methodist setting, though the latter in particular may be more tied to a particular pattern of liturgy than I am.
Our theology is, of course, more "memorialist" than that of Catholics or many Anglicans, hence our Epiclesis has more to do with focusing our minds on the bread and wine and calling God's Spirit down upon the worshippers than with any specific act of consecration. However I do lift the bread and wine before the congregation, either at this point or slightly later when we prepare to serve: this latter however would more be an "invitation to partake" than anything else. (Or perhaps that elevation is little more than a nod to my Anglican upbringing!)
The first time I led a communion service was as a Baptist church member in a Baptist context. I followed the practice I had seen which was (after the thanksgiving prayer(s)) to take the bread and wine into my hands for the 1 Corinthians 11 words of institution. This was paralleled by what I later observed as a regular worshipper in a very MOTR Church of England setting.
I too was taught (by the late great Michael Vasey in the very early 90s) that the consecration was effected by the whole eucharistic prayer voiced by the priest, but intended to be the prayer of the whole gathering. The ‘problem’ with manual actions was their tendency to suggest a moment of consecration and to overemphasise the role of the priest.
Once I was priested I found IME that there was something that felt artificial about not touching the elements at all during the prayer, and subsequently meeting Michael Vasey had a conversation with him about it. He accepted the point, and suggested simply taking the elements in my hands at the relevant point in the words of institution. I have found that to be a good practice.
I seem to go through periods when I elevate at the Institution narrative, and periods when I do not. I am sort of between at the moment, which, as we do not use Sanctus bells, bothers no-one except me, I suspect. Liturgically I have seen pretty much seen (and very often had to do) the whole gamut from North end in choir habit to the full Ritual Notes deal in fiddleback chasuble via versus pop. in a polyester chasuble.
When I was thinking about it last night I remembered that home parish was very minimalist - as I recall it, single sign of the cross at the epiclesis, take the bread and then the cup into the hands at the Institution narrative, then elevation of both bread and cup at the 'dog's holiday.' Theol. Coll. was modern Roman in its ceremonial preferences, and my training incumbent was Ritual Notes (9th edition) - which is where I learned how to do that dinosaur. Mind you, the in-joke about my training incumbent was that he was the world's only sede-vacantist Anglo-Papalist!
My own preferences are conservative MOTR, but I am capable of going up or down the candle as needed - which is useful for getting along with small town parishes, which may well appreciate, even want, a high liturgy on Christmas and Easter, but on ordinary Sundays (if there are such things!) would prefer something straight by the book with simple ceremonial.
Elevator here ... though, er, I too go up and down the candle (think I've slaughtered my metaphors there somewhere) as appropriate in a diocesan role. I too was influenced by the Vasey school of thought, though indirectly I suspect as I've never heard of him, me being antipodean and all that. And very ALCUIN.
I cross myself at the epiclesis (and not the consecration) but that's just my personal devotion. Whether presiding or, er, passengering. The first NZ Order epiclesis is of the elements and the people, the second and third orders (each NZ Order has some some poncy ridiculous name/intention and various changes of style and content as a result) are of the people only, as far as I can see, grammatically speaking.
But I find the elevation at consecration to be a useful punctuation amidst the benevolent torrent of words. It is a dramatic emphasis not to deprive the role of all the gathered people in consecration, which is surely implicit in the rubric that there must be at least one other present when the Eucharist is celebrated, and which at that stage still awaits the "amen" of the people, but to emphasize the holiness of the rite and the sacred, mysterious nature of Christ's words, repeated throughout time and space with strange efficacy despite myriad interpretations.
At the core, though, whether you're the man or woman at the altar, or one of the ones in the pews, is do you believe that if the celebrant doesn't get the 'magic' right, says the words in the 'right' order, or waves their hands around in the wrong way or at the wrong time, then the bread and wine don't become the body and blood or only become so in some sort of half-hearted way?
Unless you have such a view, then I'd have thought how somebody else celebrates is their business. Your job is to receive thankfully. And if it's your privilege to celebrate, the details are up to you, provided you do so reverently, in accordance with the practice of your own ecclesiastical household, and in a way that edifies the faithful rather than distracts them, gets up their noses, or draws attention to you rather than the solemn event you are enabling.
Absolutely, Enoch. As long as the 'practice of [our] own ecclesiastical household' is upheld, because otherwise how Fr X or the Rev Y prefers to do things becomes a distraction.
Up to a point @Enoch, but while (to take another example) you may not like Pastor Y’s hymn/sing/chorus choices, when she goes for ‘My way’ or ‘Bat out of hell’ you may feel it’s gone beyond what can be tolerated as Christian worship.
The question with less clear cut issues is where and why you consider the line has been crossed.
@BroJames , even if they don't publish an official one, neither ‘My way’ nor ‘Bat out of hell’ are in most ecclesiastical households' recognised hymn books. So in addition to disedifying the faithful, distracting them, getting up their noses and drawing attention to oneself, they aren't 'in accordance with the practice of your own ecclesiastical household'.
I've said before on these boards that I personally don't like the turning one's back on the congregation, huddling over the altar and mumbling position. I can't hear the words properly and I find it easier to engage if I can see what's happening. I also don't like altars that are kitted out with little curtains round three sides of them so as to impose that choice on the celebrant whether he or she likes it or not. But I'm content to attend and receive at services where this is done. It doesn't make the sacred bread and wine become either less, or for that matter more, the body and blood of Christ.
A lot of the chuntering about ceremonial is really down to house style - which is churchmanship dependent - and not making a spectacle of yourself or being a pillock at the altar, or reading desk. My general rule for celebrants is 'thou shalt not be a distraction' - though there are odd congregations that could do to take that piece of advice on board. Personally speaking I seem to like everything that drives you a little crazy, but at the end of the day the actual requirements for the sacrament to be valid are pretty minimal - minister, subject, form, intention. Provided those basics are honoured ceremony does not make any real difference except as a matter of style - which is not to say that style is unimportant, but simply that it does not affect validity. A friend of mine is a traditionally minded RC who usually attends the Extraordinary Form Mass, but every now and again he has to go to the Ordinary Form instead. His comment is 'no need to get precious - it is still a valid Mass!' All of which seem sound advice to me.
I agree, but people draw the lines in different places. The minister is not truly a minister because they are not episcopally ordained within the Apostolic Succession, or because they are the wrong sex for that to be possible. The intention is defective because they intend to commemorate the death of Christ but not to offer the sacrifice of the Mass. It’s not a proper communion because it’s wafers and not real bread, or because it’s leavened not unleavened, or because the gluten has been removed, or because the wine is not fermented juice of the grape, but unfermented, or the fermented juice of something else.
While ‘minister, subject, form, intention’ may in the end be what it boils down to for everyone that is a very Catholic way of expressing it, and may not command instant universal agreement.
@BroJames I take your point. That's how there are different denominations which don't recognise each others liturgical activities. However, within one's own ecclesiastical household, this does not apply, or should not. If for an individual it does, he or she should be asking themselves either 'am I in the wrong household?' or much more probably 'am I being too precise/liturgically smug (choose adjective to fit)?'.
What none of us should be doing is thinking 'I know better than the person out in front?' or 'is this valid or not?' or if we're up the front, 'I do it right , but whatever his or her congregation may think, X down the road doesn't and so his/her Eucharists don't take'. There has been a tendency both among very Anglo-Catholic and very Evangelical clergy in the past to say things can encourage people to think that.
Those in the pews have no control over what the person celebrating does, yet alone his or her state of mind. IMHO, it's good theology and any alternative is not, that the only 'intention' that matters is an intention to celebrate the Eucharist/Holy Communion/Lord's Supper/Mass/Divine Liturgy/Breaking of Bread Service, not any particular interpretation as to its nature.
Besides, for those of us that are CofE, I take this as wrapped up in Article 26.
While ‘minister, subject, form, intention’ may in the end be what it boils down to for everyone that is a very Catholic way of expressing it, and may not command instant universal agreement.
I was trained in an Anglo-Catholic environment, so I tend to express theological concepts in a Catholic manner. To this day I don't quite know why I plumped for an Anglo-Catholic Theol. Coll. but it may have had something to do with the fact I felt like I needed my rather too MOTR norms gently shaking up.
A new question. I hope this doesn't shock Catholic shipmates.
Last Thursday, 15th August, is now in the CofE calendar as "The Blessed Virgin Mary". This is a recent innovation. It isn't in the old 1662 calendar even as an unprovided for event.
'Obviously' it's been added to accommodate Anglo-Catholics who want to celebrate the Assumption. Walsingham makes a big thing of it. However, since the Reformation neither the Assumption nor the Dormitian have been part of the more general CofE tradition. Not only is no view prescribed but it hasn't been part of popular tradition either. It may well have been a feature of late medieval piety, but if it was, it seems to have been forgotten about fairly quickly. It's also something scripture is completely silent about. The current version of RC teaching didn't become official until 1950.
Unlike other saints, there are no relics of Mary, and no tomb. Quite a few Protestant theologians over the last 450+ years seem to have thought that either after she died or just before, as Jesus loved his mother, he may well have taken her into heaven. But they don't seem to have been very bothered about the point, or even that interested.
My question is this. If you're CofE or Anglican from somewhere else, but MOTR, evangelical, or even perhaps AffCath, on the 15th August what are you celebrating/remembering? Is it in your calendar at all? If you have a role that authorises you to preach, what would you speak about? And what is there that's different about what this date is about from 25th March or the last Sunday before Christmas?
As advice, the readings aren't that helpful. The gospel of the day is the Magnificat. That's great, but we have it every evening of the year.
The CW Gospel for Our Lady in August is a bit of a mystery of the what were they thinking variety. We get Genesis 3: 9 - 15 and then either Luke 1: 41-50, or John 19. 25 -27, which is a local thang! The former is the 1950 RC Gospel I would think as it tallies with my English Missal.
My question is this. If you're CofE or Anglican from somewhere else, but MOTR, evangelical, or even perhaps AffCath, on the 15th August what are you celebrating/remembering? Is it in your calendar at all? If you have a role that authorises you to preach, what would you speak about? And what is there that's different about what this date is about from 25th March or the last Sunday before Christmas?
The 1979 USA BCP has Aug. 15 as St. Mary the Virgin, a major feast, and also one of those with a provision for a 1st Evensong on the eve, as the Daily Office Lectionary gives two sets of psalms and lessons for Evening Prayer of the feast. Sort of an embedded eve for those who want to elevate the feast, and a simple choice of options for those who don't. This is done for St. Michael and All Angels as well.
One fine sermon I read pointed to a passage from Galatians 4 as a key to understanding Mary's role aright: "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children."
The Assumption/Falling Asleep of the BVM is one of the catholic bits I do not have a problem with, but would not define it as dogma. However, let me be quite clear that I believe that the BVM died and was assumed into heaven without having to wait for the general resurrection like the rest of us. As such I would have availed myself of swapping my annual commemoration of Our Lady from 8th September to 15th August as soon as CW allowed had I still been living in Blighty.
The BCP seemed to expect that the Annunciation would be celebrated as the major feast of Our Lady. That is odd because it is really a feast of Our Lord (in which Mary plays a major role of course). The evangelicals in General Synod succeeded at first in resisting the pressure to reinstate 15 August, and the ASB compromised with her Nativity on 8 September. It was only in 2000 with Common Worship that the C of E came into line with the majority of Christendom (TEC and other Anglicans as well as the RCs and Orthodox) and her major feast was celebrated on 15 August. Though I think many churches use the excuse of summer holidays to ignore it or keep a very lack-lustre festival.
I do think it is important that we are in line with the wider church in this. Specific doctrinal details are irrelevant, but as the cockney said, 'if our Lidy ain't in 'eaven, where the 'ell is she?'
Well, officially it was a celebration of Mary and her relationship with our Lord. As far as anything I can recall from the service being specifically about the assumption, the connection seems to have been that because Mary's physical body had born Christ, it was not allowed to corrupt in the grave but on her death taken immediately up into heaven. Unofficially it was a good excuse to have a splendid sung mass and a barbecue mainly for ourselves in the middle of the quiet holiday season.
Annunciation can be a bit problematic given that it drops in Holy Week from time to time, and the newer Tables of Occurance and Concurance boot it to April some time. Sarum would at least allow it to be anticipated if it fell in the first four days of H.W.. The 1879 table made provision to keep say Tuesday in Holy Week and commemorate the Annunciation if they fell together. Also, the Easter Octave was open, so you would only have to transfer to Easter-Wednesday in those days if it dropped in the Triduum. As case of, IMHO,
They can improve things as much as they like; but they won't make them any better! Tom Sharp "Porterhouse Blue."
My question is this. If you're CofE or Anglican from somewhere else, but MOTR, evangelical, or even perhaps AffCath, on the 15th August what are you celebrating/remembering? Is it in your calendar at all? If you have a role that authorises you to preach, what would you speak about? And what is there that's different about what this date is about from 25th March or the last Sunday before Christmas?
As advice, the readings aren't that helpful. The gospel of the day is the Magnificat. That's great, but we have it every evening of the year.
And that's what our sermon was on. Just as we remember other saints on their day, 15 august is Mary's and there's a lot to remember her for. But there's nothing scriptural to say that either she was assumed into heaven in any sense, nor that she simply fell asleep. This from a good, solid, highish, but basically MOTR priest.
I remember a discussion I had some years ago with a Presbyterian minister from the continuing church. He simply denied that Mary was assumed, and questioned how anyone could think so. My response was that if Elijah could be assumed by a fiery chariot rathe than suffer death, would not Christ wish to save the Theotokos from death.
Though I think many churches use the excuse of summer holidays to ignore it or keep a very lack-lustre festival.
In my Anglican teenage days, having returned to the C of E from the CPWI, I would travel to another parish for mass for the Assumption and other things that didn't feature in the liturgical life of my family parish, (which didn't even really bother with Holy Week, so expecting the Assumption to be celebrated would have been a delusion). This was at the time of the introduction of Common Worship, although it had been part of the tradition of this particular parish for as long as anybody could remember.
In one year, I remember the priest joking that he thought that placing the primary feast of the Mother of God in the middle of August was a Protestant plot to ensure that services would be poorly attended.
It didn't prevent a solemn mass being offered each year with at least 30 people present.
I heard a sermon where the explanation that what Mary got we will all get.
That was essentially the crux of my homily at Vespers last night (we transferred). Our path of theosis, and the goal of the Christian life, is life in the presence of God, experienced as oneness with his energies. The Dormition and Assumption of the Mother of God are an example of the promise that God grants to each of us who strive to conform our lives to Him. She is God's "one I prepared earlier". I alluded to the Transfiguration, recently celebrated, in which we see in the brilliance of Christ, the human nature fully deified, which is a possibility for each of us, and how it is possible for each and every one of us to attain to the same.
I also made mention of the various accounts of the Dormition and Assumption which survive. While the dating of the texts as we have them is generally about the 5th-6th centuries, this doesn't negate the fact that, despite being from various parts of the world, they essentially tell the same story (with variations on minor details), which shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody, as it suggests a common received tradition.
Particularly beautiful, I find, is the version in which the holy Apostle Thomas arrives characteristically late, and refuses to believe that the Mother of God has died until he sees her body for himself, causing the tomb to be opened and revealed to be empty. The collect for the day makes mention of this.
During Vespers, we had the procession of the Mother of God to her tomb, and the veneration of the Dormition icon by the people. It was really very beautiful.
I'm not hugely Marian, I guess, though I am a fair way up the candle. However I was asked to preach and preside at a St Mary's this year (translated to yesterday) so I drew (loosely) on Central American and Asian feminist theologies to draw Mary as a focus and impetus of justice and "womanspirit rising" ...
... My response was that if Elijah could be assumed by a fiery chariot rather than suffer death, would not Christ wish to save the Theotokos from death.
That makes sense to me.
@Cyprian do you know if any of those accounts are on the web in English? Do you happen to have any links to them?
Incidentally. what does CPWI stand for? I don't think I've met that one.
I'm not hugely Marian, I guess, though I am a fair way up the candle. However I was asked to preach and preside at a St Mary's this year (translated to yesterday) so I drew (loosely) on Central American and Asian feminist theologies to draw Mary as a focus and impetus of justice and "womanspirit rising" ...
... I managed to get away alive
Very brave of you to do that. You're far too far south for that theme.
I once led worship at my local Church of Scotland on the fourth Sunday in Advent, and naturally preached on the example given to us by Mary, and finished by encouraging the congregation to join with all nations in calling her blessed. I was very careful, as you might imagine, to remain thoroughly Biblical.
@Cyprian do you know if any of those accounts are on the web in English? Do you happen to have any links to them?
Years (easily over a decade) ago, as part of a discussion of the Dormition-Assumption on the old SOF, I linked to someone's personal academic website where a number of these texts were to be found but I can't find it now, and it likely no longer exists. Jengie's link contains a link to some of them but I'm having difficulty finding the others online now.
I remember one account simply saying that angel song was heard at the tomb until the third day, then stopped, at which point all believed that her body had been translated. Then there's the version in which St Thomas arrived late and asked to see her body for himself, for the tomb to be revealed to be empty. Yet another version includes at least some of the apostles personally witnessing her bodily assumption, into heaven, during which she gave her sash to St Thomas. It's these minor details that vary but the core of the narrative, I recall, is the same across the different accounts. I'll see if I can find them.
Also worth a glance is the SVS publication On the Dormition of Mary.
I once led worship at my local Church of Scotland on the fourth Sunday in Advent, and naturally preached on the example given to us by Mary, and finished by encouraging the congregation to join with all nations in calling her blessed. I was very careful, as you might imagine, to remain thoroughly Biblical.
A great theme of the Gospels is summarised in Jesus's statement in Gethsemane "Your will not mine be done". You could well include that in your sermon and link it back to Mary's reply to Gabriel "Let it be done to me according to what you have said". A very similar comment to that of the Son but said at the Annunciation not in the midst of the Passion. And totally Biblical.
I once led worship at my local Church of Scotland on the fourth Sunday in Advent, and naturally preached on the example given to us by Mary, and finished by encouraging the congregation to join with all nations in calling her blessed. I was very careful, as you might imagine, to remain thoroughly Biblical.
This is where so many people get Reformed wrong, you can preach on almost any topic provided that you make clear and strong Biblical connections. Those connections must stand up to scrutiny as you are preaching to Biblically literate congregations. I can remember once being on Iona around the time CH4 came out and we had used one of Kathy Galloway's hymns from it at morning prayer. That afternoon in the bookshop I heard someone say "how does she get away with such feminist theology without causing a stir", I simply pointed out that she was strictly Biblical and expected those singing to be equally adroit at negotiating the Bible.
As for Marian preaching, provided you do not ask for devotion to Mary you are hardly being radical. Mary as the exemplar of faith is a fairly common sermon theme in Reformed circles in my experience.
As for Marian preaching, provided you do not ask for devotion to Mary you are hardly being radical. Mary as the exemplar of faith is a fairly common sermon theme in Reformed circles in my experience.
I was still accused by one elder of "sailing close to the wind". West coast Presbyterianism is still its own animal where sectarianism is concerned. I'm glad to hear that is not the case more broadly.
As for Marian preaching, provided you do not ask for devotion to Mary you are hardly being radical. Mary as the exemplar of faith is a fairly common sermon theme in Reformed circles in my experience.
No, but when faced with a naveful of gloomy masons and their wives, all whose idea of radical is suggesting the Man might butter his own toast, then a ripple or two doth flow from Mary's being.
Incidentally. what does CPWI stand for? I don't think I've met that one.
I'm sorry. I missed this second part of your post. PDR is right. The CPWI is indeed the Church in the Province of the West Indies, a fruit of the labours of Oxford Movement missionaries, and whose clergy are almost all exclusively trained at Codrington College - a foundation of the Mirfield brothers.
I watched a video from one of their dioceses from a few years ago from the occasion of the enthronement of the bishop in the cathedral, which concluded with Benediction - to give you a flavour of that Anglican province.
It's a province where the term "Anglo-Catholic" is largely unknown because there's no need to distinguish this form of Anglicanism from others, which simply don't exist. This was the context of my childhood formation, so you can imagine what a shock the C of E was to my poor teenage brain.
As for Marian preaching, provided you do not ask for devotion to Mary you are hardly being radical. Mary as the exemplar of faith is a fairly common sermon theme in Reformed circles in my experience.
No, but when faced with a naveful of gloomy masons and their wives, all whose idea of radical is suggesting the Man might butter his own toast, then a ripple or two doth flow from Mary's being.
Honestly, within the URC you are more likely to get a sermon on the evils of masonry than on Marion worship.
I do not know of any group within the URC that are pro-Masonry, the mildest we go is to treat it as a dirty secret that really should not be shared in public. In liberal churches, the worry is that it goes against openness in the flow of power and in conservative churches, it is a worry over idolatry.
My local parish church (C of E) has an 8 am Eucharist with liturgy according to Common Worship in Traditional Language. I've not come across this before and it might be sufficiently obscure to identify the church! Does anyone know what the intention was in writing and authorising this service, and why the parish might use it instead of just going with BCP?
My local parish church (C of E) has an 8 am Eucharist with liturgy according to Common Worship in Traditional Language. I've not come across this before and it might be sufficiently obscure to identify the church! Does anyone know what the intention was in writing and authorising this service, and why the parish might use it instead of just going with BCP?
Apologies - I see this has been pretty much covered in the 'vouchsafe to feed us' thread (thanks, Angloid). I'll leave it here in case anyone wants to add anything.
Are you on/ near the south coast? I know of one parish there where that happens - the incumbent at the time that Common Worship came in wanted to change to it but met some resistance so the compromise was CW in trad language. Left to their own devices the congregation would happily revert to 1662 and have done with it.
My friend is organist there and they have a battle with Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us because the NEH has changed the words of verse 2, so half the church sings about ...self-denying, death defying and being on the way to Calvary, while the other half is ... lone and dreary, faint and weary slogging through the desert.
My local parish church (C of E) has an 8 am Eucharist with liturgy according to Common Worship in Traditional Language. I've not come across this before and it might be sufficiently obscure to identify the church! Does anyone know what the intention was in writing and authorising this service, and why the parish might use it instead of just going with BCP?
Apologies - I see this has been pretty much covered in the 'vouchsafe to feed us' thread (thanks, Angloid). I'll leave it here in case anyone wants to add anything.
These days the major problem around here has been that 8am services have generally disappeared except in the larger town parishes, and the 'urbs. It used to be pretty common 20-25 years ago for the 8am HC to be Rite B, and the mid-morning ASB Rite A. As I preferred the former to the latter this ticked me off enormously as
1. I prefer traditional language services because the range of music is better, but in the 8:00am slot one inevitably had no music.
2. It was close enough to the "Interim Rite/Series One" to be comfortably familiar
@TheOrganist I imagine that's exactly what happened, and this was the theory of the person I asked this morning, but it seems to be very much embedded now. @PDR we have no music at 8. I like the service because the congregation are enthusiastic in their responses and friendly to strangers, and I find the language soothing.
Comments from you and Angloid on the other thread about the leanings towards Anglo-Catholicism are probably right. I suspect that what happened was that at some point a vicar who couldn't live with the theology of the 1662 clashed with a congregation wedded to the language. The church now is a very odd mixture of every Anglican tradition going, which is why I don't attend the mid-morning service very often. It makes my head hurt!
@TheOrganist I imagine that's exactly what happened, and this was the theory of the person I asked this morning, but it seems to be very much embedded now. @PDR we have no music at 8. I like the service because the congregation are enthusiastic in their responses and friendly to strangers, and I find the language soothing.
Comments from you and Angloid on the other thread about the leanings towards Anglo-Catholicism are probably right. I suspect that what happened was that at some point a vicar who couldn't live with the theology of the 1662 clashed with a congregation wedded to the language. The church now is a very odd mixture of every Anglican tradition going, which is why I don't attend the mid-morning service very often. It makes my head hurt!
Quite a few parishes have had tensions between conservative MOTR laity and Catholic leaning clergy with the latter usually pushing liturgical change that the former either does not want, or is unconvinced about. My usual hidey-hole when I was student was a Series 2 parish, then the new rector came along and reminded us it was no longer authorized and gave us a choice of BCP or ASB:A. Of course, we split with the result that the new Rector could therefore slip Rite A past us. On the whole, he played the situation quite well, and it was about the only thing he did in his 7 years that annoyed us, but in the process we lost our sung main service as no-one seemed to be prepared to find an acceptable setting of the new service.
@TheOrganist I imagine that's exactly what happened, and this was the theory of the person I asked this morning, but it seems to be very much embedded now. @PDR we have no music at 8. I like the service because the congregation are enthusiastic in their responses and friendly to strangers, and I find the language soothing.
Comments from you and Angloid on the other thread about the leanings towards Anglo-Catholicism are probably right. I suspect that what happened was that at some point a vicar who couldn't live with the theology of the 1662 clashed with a congregation wedded to the language. The church now is a very odd mixture of every Anglican tradition going, which is why I don't attend the mid-morning service very often. It makes my head hurt!
Quite a few parishes have had tensions between conservative MOTR laity and Catholic leaning clergy with the latter usually pushing liturgical change that the former either does not want, or is unconvinced about. My usual hidey-hole when I was student was a Series 2 parish, then the new rector came along and reminded us it was no longer authorized and gave us a choice of BCP or ASB:A. Of course, we split with the result that the new Rector could therefore slip Rite A past us. On the whole, he played the situation quite well, and it was about the only thing he did in his 7 years that annoyed us, but in the process we lost our sung main service as no-one seemed to be prepared to find an acceptable setting of the new service.
Perhaps they couldn't find an acceptable setting because there aren't any?
When Series 2 came in various people tried - some with more success than others - to write music to fit, both for congregational singing and for bodies like cathedral choirs. However, the subsequent constant tweaking* and clerical insistence on only have the (latest) words as in the booklet meant that most composers with talent gave it up as a bad job. The result is that the church is left with a couple of OK-but-uninspired settings which a reasonable choir can stomach, a couple more congregation only settings, and a large number of banal, tedious and lack-lustre settings that bore an 8 year old after a few weeks.
* So the Kyrie invocations have gone from once each priest then people, back to three-fold for everyone, then three-fold alternately priest-people, then back to two-fold. Is it any wonder people give up?
Well, in the absence of a choir, Our Place has used Murray's A New People's Mass as the default setting for some years now. It's simple enough, we know it quite well, and new peeps seem to be able to pick it up easily.
On the odd occasion when we have no organist, and rely on the Parish Laptop, we use the Kyries and Sanctus from Malcolm Archer's Missa Simplex (the recording is much better!).
We also sometimes use metrical versions of the Gloria , just for a change.
My local church uses the Addington Mass (I think it's called) for their Parish Communion - nicely singable, though they do have a small choir to help lead.
They might not have been up to @TheOrganist's exacting standards, but we actually had two settings people had written for the ASB Communion Service, one slightly avant garde and the other in what I'd describe as more a folk mass style. Unfortunately, when Common Worship came in, neither fitted the words any more, the composers had moved on and besides, Common Worship involves more variants and permutations than the ASB. So they both went out of use and have never been replaced.
Comments
There was/is a fashion dating from the liturgically-conscious late-60s which discourages the priest from touching the elements at the words of institution, let alone elevating them. The theory being that the whole prayer effects the consccration, so the elevation should accompany the final doxology. There seems to have been a swing back to more traditional practice in recent years, even when mass is celebrated facing the people (which you could argue makes the elevations unnecessary).
I was taught (when - confirmation classes or seminary) that the whole prayer is consecratory, so I have always tended to favour elevating just at the doxology at the end, but when in A-C parish it was always a case of when almost in Rome, do what the Romans do, and it became a habit. I have changed a lot over the years, but I cannot say I have gotten any more enthusiastic about any of the three extremes either in liturgy or theology.
Our theology is, of course, more "memorialist" than that of Catholics or many Anglicans, hence our Epiclesis has more to do with focusing our minds on the bread and wine and calling God's Spirit down upon the worshippers than with any specific act of consecration. However I do lift the bread and wine before the congregation, either at this point or slightly later when we prepare to serve: this latter however would more be an "invitation to partake" than anything else. (Or perhaps that elevation is little more than a nod to my Anglican upbringing!)
I too was taught (by the late great Michael Vasey in the very early 90s) that the consecration was effected by the whole eucharistic prayer voiced by the priest, but intended to be the prayer of the whole gathering. The ‘problem’ with manual actions was their tendency to suggest a moment of consecration and to overemphasise the role of the priest.
Once I was priested I found IME that there was something that felt artificial about not touching the elements at all during the prayer, and subsequently meeting Michael Vasey had a conversation with him about it. He accepted the point, and suggested simply taking the elements in my hands at the relevant point in the words of institution. I have found that to be a good practice.
When I was thinking about it last night I remembered that home parish was very minimalist - as I recall it, single sign of the cross at the epiclesis, take the bread and then the cup into the hands at the Institution narrative, then elevation of both bread and cup at the 'dog's holiday.' Theol. Coll. was modern Roman in its ceremonial preferences, and my training incumbent was Ritual Notes (9th edition) - which is where I learned how to do that dinosaur. Mind you, the in-joke about my training incumbent was that he was the world's only sede-vacantist Anglo-Papalist!
My own preferences are conservative MOTR, but I am capable of going up or down the candle as needed - which is useful for getting along with small town parishes, which may well appreciate, even want, a high liturgy on Christmas and Easter, but on ordinary Sundays (if there are such things!) would prefer something straight by the book with simple ceremonial.
I cross myself at the epiclesis (and not the consecration) but that's just my personal devotion. Whether presiding or, er, passengering. The first NZ Order epiclesis is of the elements and the people, the second and third orders (each NZ Order has some some poncy ridiculous name/intention and various changes of style and content as a result) are of the people only, as far as I can see, grammatically speaking.
But I find the elevation at consecration to be a useful punctuation amidst the benevolent torrent of words. It is a dramatic emphasis not to deprive the role of all the gathered people in consecration, which is surely implicit in the rubric that there must be at least one other present when the Eucharist is celebrated, and which at that stage still awaits the "amen" of the people, but to emphasize the holiness of the rite and the sacred, mysterious nature of Christ's words, repeated throughout time and space with strange efficacy despite myriad interpretations.
Or something.
At the core, though, whether you're the man or woman at the altar, or one of the ones in the pews, is do you believe that if the celebrant doesn't get the 'magic' right, says the words in the 'right' order, or waves their hands around in the wrong way or at the wrong time, then the bread and wine don't become the body and blood or only become so in some sort of half-hearted way?
Unless you have such a view, then I'd have thought how somebody else celebrates is their business. Your job is to receive thankfully. And if it's your privilege to celebrate, the details are up to you, provided you do so reverently, in accordance with the practice of your own ecclesiastical household, and in a way that edifies the faithful rather than distracts them, gets up their noses, or draws attention to you rather than the solemn event you are enabling.
Or have I got that completely wrong?
The question with less clear cut issues is where and why you consider the line has been crossed.
I've said before on these boards that I personally don't like the turning one's back on the congregation, huddling over the altar and mumbling position. I can't hear the words properly and I find it easier to engage if I can see what's happening. I also don't like altars that are kitted out with little curtains round three sides of them so as to impose that choice on the celebrant whether he or she likes it or not. But I'm content to attend and receive at services where this is done. It doesn't make the sacred bread and wine become either less, or for that matter more, the body and blood of Christ.
While ‘minister, subject, form, intention’ may in the end be what it boils down to for everyone that is a very Catholic way of expressing it, and may not command instant universal agreement.
What none of us should be doing is thinking 'I know better than the person out in front?' or 'is this valid or not?' or if we're up the front, 'I do it right , but whatever his or her congregation may think, X down the road doesn't and so his/her Eucharists don't take'. There has been a tendency both among very Anglo-Catholic and very Evangelical clergy in the past to say things can encourage people to think that.
Those in the pews have no control over what the person celebrating does, yet alone his or her state of mind. IMHO, it's good theology and any alternative is not, that the only 'intention' that matters is an intention to celebrate the Eucharist/Holy Communion/Lord's Supper/Mass/Divine Liturgy/Breaking of Bread Service, not any particular interpretation as to its nature.
Besides, for those of us that are CofE, I take this as wrapped up in Article 26.
I was trained in an Anglo-Catholic environment, so I tend to express theological concepts in a Catholic manner. To this day I don't quite know why I plumped for an Anglo-Catholic Theol. Coll. but it may have had something to do with the fact I felt like I needed my rather too MOTR norms gently shaking up.
Last Thursday, 15th August, is now in the CofE calendar as "The Blessed Virgin Mary". This is a recent innovation. It isn't in the old 1662 calendar even as an unprovided for event.
'Obviously' it's been added to accommodate Anglo-Catholics who want to celebrate the Assumption. Walsingham makes a big thing of it. However, since the Reformation neither the Assumption nor the Dormitian have been part of the more general CofE tradition. Not only is no view prescribed but it hasn't been part of popular tradition either. It may well have been a feature of late medieval piety, but if it was, it seems to have been forgotten about fairly quickly. It's also something scripture is completely silent about. The current version of RC teaching didn't become official until 1950.
Unlike other saints, there are no relics of Mary, and no tomb. Quite a few Protestant theologians over the last 450+ years seem to have thought that either after she died or just before, as Jesus loved his mother, he may well have taken her into heaven. But they don't seem to have been very bothered about the point, or even that interested.
My question is this. If you're CofE or Anglican from somewhere else, but MOTR, evangelical, or even perhaps AffCath, on the 15th August what are you celebrating/remembering? Is it in your calendar at all? If you have a role that authorises you to preach, what would you speak about? And what is there that's different about what this date is about from 25th March or the last Sunday before Christmas?
As advice, the readings aren't that helpful. The gospel of the day is the Magnificat. That's great, but we have it every evening of the year.
The 1979 USA BCP has Aug. 15 as St. Mary the Virgin, a major feast, and also one of those with a provision for a 1st Evensong on the eve, as the Daily Office Lectionary gives two sets of psalms and lessons for Evening Prayer of the feast. Sort of an embedded eve for those who want to elevate the feast, and a simple choice of options for those who don't. This is done for St. Michael and All Angels as well.
One fine sermon I read pointed to a passage from Galatians 4 as a key to understanding Mary's role aright: "But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children."
I do think it is important that we are in line with the wider church in this. Specific doctrinal details are irrelevant, but as the cockney said, 'if our Lidy ain't in 'eaven, where the 'ell is she?'
They can improve things as much as they like; but they won't make them any better! Tom Sharp "Porterhouse Blue."
And that's what our sermon was on. Just as we remember other saints on their day, 15 august is Mary's and there's a lot to remember her for. But there's nothing scriptural to say that either she was assumed into heaven in any sense, nor that she simply fell asleep. This from a good, solid, highish, but basically MOTR priest.
I remember a discussion I had some years ago with a Presbyterian minister from the continuing church. He simply denied that Mary was assumed, and questioned how anyone could think so. My response was that if Elijah could be assumed by a fiery chariot rathe than suffer death, would not Christ wish to save the Theotokos from death.
In my Anglican teenage days, having returned to the C of E from the CPWI, I would travel to another parish for mass for the Assumption and other things that didn't feature in the liturgical life of my family parish, (which didn't even really bother with Holy Week, so expecting the Assumption to be celebrated would have been a delusion). This was at the time of the introduction of Common Worship, although it had been part of the tradition of this particular parish for as long as anybody could remember.
In one year, I remember the priest joking that he thought that placing the primary feast of the Mother of God in the middle of August was a Protestant plot to ensure that services would be poorly attended.
It didn't prevent a solemn mass being offered each year with at least 30 people present.
That was essentially the crux of my homily at Vespers last night (we transferred). Our path of theosis, and the goal of the Christian life, is life in the presence of God, experienced as oneness with his energies. The Dormition and Assumption of the Mother of God are an example of the promise that God grants to each of us who strive to conform our lives to Him. She is God's "one I prepared earlier". I alluded to the Transfiguration, recently celebrated, in which we see in the brilliance of Christ, the human nature fully deified, which is a possibility for each of us, and how it is possible for each and every one of us to attain to the same.
I also made mention of the various accounts of the Dormition and Assumption which survive. While the dating of the texts as we have them is generally about the 5th-6th centuries, this doesn't negate the fact that, despite being from various parts of the world, they essentially tell the same story (with variations on minor details), which shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody, as it suggests a common received tradition.
Particularly beautiful, I find, is the version in which the holy Apostle Thomas arrives characteristically late, and refuses to believe that the Mother of God has died until he sees her body for himself, causing the tomb to be opened and revealed to be empty. The collect for the day makes mention of this.
During Vespers, we had the procession of the Mother of God to her tomb, and the veneration of the Dormition icon by the people. It was really very beautiful.
... I managed to get away alive
@Cyprian do you know if any of those accounts are on the web in English? Do you happen to have any links to them?
Incidentally. what does CPWI stand for? I don't think I've met that one.
Very brave of you to do that. You're far too far south for that theme.
Years (easily over a decade) ago, as part of a discussion of the Dormition-Assumption on the old SOF, I linked to someone's personal academic website where a number of these texts were to be found but I can't find it now, and it likely no longer exists. Jengie's link contains a link to some of them but I'm having difficulty finding the others online now.
I remember one account simply saying that angel song was heard at the tomb until the third day, then stopped, at which point all believed that her body had been translated. Then there's the version in which St Thomas arrived late and asked to see her body for himself, for the tomb to be revealed to be empty. Yet another version includes at least some of the apostles personally witnessing her bodily assumption, into heaven, during which she gave her sash to St Thomas. It's these minor details that vary but the core of the narrative, I recall, is the same across the different accounts. I'll see if I can find them.
Also worth a glance is the SVS publication On the Dormition of Mary.
A great theme of the Gospels is summarised in Jesus's statement in Gethsemane "Your will not mine be done". You could well include that in your sermon and link it back to Mary's reply to Gabriel "Let it be done to me according to what you have said". A very similar comment to that of the Son but said at the Annunciation not in the midst of the Passion. And totally Biblical.
This is where so many people get Reformed wrong, you can preach on almost any topic provided that you make clear and strong Biblical connections. Those connections must stand up to scrutiny as you are preaching to Biblically literate congregations. I can remember once being on Iona around the time CH4 came out and we had used one of Kathy Galloway's hymns from it at morning prayer. That afternoon in the bookshop I heard someone say "how does she get away with such feminist theology without causing a stir", I simply pointed out that she was strictly Biblical and expected those singing to be equally adroit at negotiating the Bible.
As for Marian preaching, provided you do not ask for devotion to Mary you are hardly being radical. Mary as the exemplar of faith is a fairly common sermon theme in Reformed circles in my experience.
I'm sorry. I missed this second part of your post. PDR is right. The CPWI is indeed the Church in the Province of the West Indies, a fruit of the labours of Oxford Movement missionaries, and whose clergy are almost all exclusively trained at Codrington College - a foundation of the Mirfield brothers.
I watched a video from one of their dioceses from a few years ago from the occasion of the enthronement of the bishop in the cathedral, which concluded with Benediction - to give you a flavour of that Anglican province.
It's a province where the term "Anglo-Catholic" is largely unknown because there's no need to distinguish this form of Anglicanism from others, which simply don't exist. This was the context of my childhood formation, so you can imagine what a shock the C of E was to my poor teenage brain.
Honestly, within the URC you are more likely to get a sermon on the evils of masonry than on Marion worship.
I do not know of any group within the URC that are pro-Masonry, the mildest we go is to treat it as a dirty secret that really should not be shared in public. In liberal churches, the worry is that it goes against openness in the flow of power and in conservative churches, it is a worry over idolatry.
Apologies - I see this has been pretty much covered in the 'vouchsafe to feed us' thread (thanks, Angloid). I'll leave it here in case anyone wants to add anything.
My friend is organist there and they have a battle with Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us because the NEH has changed the words of verse 2, so half the church sings about ...self-denying, death defying and being on the way to Calvary, while the other half is ... lone and dreary, faint and weary slogging through the desert.
These days the major problem around here has been that 8am services have generally disappeared except in the larger town parishes, and the 'urbs. It used to be pretty common 20-25 years ago for the 8am HC to be Rite B, and the mid-morning ASB Rite A. As I preferred the former to the latter this ticked me off enormously as
1. I prefer traditional language services because the range of music is better, but in the 8:00am slot one inevitably had no music.
2. It was close enough to the "Interim Rite/Series One" to be comfortably familiar
@PDR we have no music at 8. I like the service because the congregation are enthusiastic in their responses and friendly to strangers, and I find the language soothing.
Comments from you and Angloid on the other thread about the leanings towards Anglo-Catholicism are probably right. I suspect that what happened was that at some point a vicar who couldn't live with the theology of the 1662 clashed with a congregation wedded to the language. The church now is a very odd mixture of every Anglican tradition going, which is why I don't attend the mid-morning service very often. It makes my head hurt!
Quite a few parishes have had tensions between conservative MOTR laity and Catholic leaning clergy with the latter usually pushing liturgical change that the former either does not want, or is unconvinced about. My usual hidey-hole when I was student was a Series 2 parish, then the new rector came along and reminded us it was no longer authorized and gave us a choice of BCP or ASB:A. Of course, we split with the result that the new Rector could therefore slip Rite A past us. On the whole, he played the situation quite well, and it was about the only thing he did in his 7 years that annoyed us, but in the process we lost our sung main service as no-one seemed to be prepared to find an acceptable setting of the new service.
Perhaps they couldn't find an acceptable setting because there aren't any?
When Series 2 came in various people tried - some with more success than others - to write music to fit, both for congregational singing and for bodies like cathedral choirs. However, the subsequent constant tweaking* and clerical insistence on only have the (latest) words as in the booklet meant that most composers with talent gave it up as a bad job. The result is that the church is left with a couple of OK-but-uninspired settings which a reasonable choir can stomach, a couple more congregation only settings, and a large number of banal, tedious and lack-lustre settings that bore an 8 year old after a few weeks.
* So the Kyrie invocations have gone from once each priest then people, back to three-fold for everyone, then three-fold alternately priest-people, then back to two-fold. Is it any wonder people give up?
On the odd occasion when we have no organist, and rely on the Parish Laptop, we use the Kyries and Sanctus from Malcolm Archer's Missa Simplex (the recording is much better!).
We also sometimes use metrical versions of the Gloria , just for a change.
My local church uses the Addington Mass (I think it's called) for their Parish Communion - nicely singable, though they do have a small choir to help lead.