We do not presume

This recently caught my eye on Twitter:
As did this response from theologian Ben Myers:
Immediately, instinctively, emotionally, I identified with the first Tweet.  It brought to mind 'Early Communion' on Sundays in my formative years - celebrated according to the Church of Ireland's BCP 1926 (1662 with a few minor changes) - the Prayer of Humble Access shaping and forming my eucharistic devotion as year followed year.

This is the gift of key, unchanging texts in the liturgy - Collect for Purity, Prayer for Church Militant, Prayer of Humble Access, Prayer of Consecration.  Sunday by Sunday, year by year, they shape and form our prayer.  They become habit: part of the ordinary rhythm of grace in our lives.

The significance of this gift can be seen even in contemporary liturgical revision.  For example, the Church of Ireland's BCP 2004 Eucharist Order II - a contemporary language rite - allows the Collect for Purity to be replaced by "another suitable opening prayer".  It is very rare indeed for this to be the case.  The Collect for Purity is almost invariably the opening corporate prayer at Order II.  As for the Prayer of Humble Access, it is given an even more precarious position by the respective Order II rubric, which only allow its use after the Prayers of the People if the Penitential rite is moved from the opening of the Eucharist to this point - something which is incredibly rare indeed.  And yet, in many parishes, the Prayer of Humble Access, contra the rubric, is said at this point.  In both cases, habit - that gift of the ordinary rhythm of grace - is, thankfully, much stronger than these rubrics. In both cases, these traditional texts continue to shape and enrich the experience of prayer.

More, however, can be said of the Prayer of Humble Access.  Part of its emotional power is the way in which it embodies a profoundly evangelical experience - it draws us into the experience of Gospel encounters.  The Prodigal Son ("I am not worthy to be called your son" Luke 15:19); the Syrophoenician Woman ("under the table" Mark 7:28); St Peter ("he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, '... I am a sinful man'" Luke 5:8); the Publican ("would not even look up to heaven ..." Luke 18:13).  In other words, as we prepare to encounter the Crucified and Risen Lord in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Prayer of Humble Access draws us in heart and soul to approach this encounter with those set before us in the Gospels as exemples of how such grace is to be received.

Related to this, the 1662 position of the Prayer - after the Sanctus, before the Consecration - also inevitably brings to mind Isaiah's experience in the Temple.  While this comparison is disapproved of by most liturgists - the same liturgists, of course, who tend to dislike the Prayer of Humble Access anyway - it is difficult not to discern the echo of the Prophet's response to the angelic sanctus:

Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.

'Mine eyes have seen' said the Prophet.  With the angelic host and the company of heaven, we glimpse heaven and earth full of glory.  So, yes, "we are not worthy" is the appropriate response.  What is more, we are also about to perceive the Lord of glory manifested in the mystery of the Cross, "in a perpetual memory of that his precious death".  Cranmer said of the Sacraments:

these elements of water, bread, and wine, joined to God's word, do after a sacramental manner put Christ into our eyes, mouths, hands, and all our senses.

The Prayer of Humble Access prepares us to see - to see The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee.  To this we are oriented by the Prayer's central petition:

Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood.

This has a particular significance in giving liturgical expression to the teaching of Article 28 - that the Eucharist "is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another; but rather is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ's death" and that in this Sacrament "The Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten".  Here in the Prayer of Humble Access there is a deeply patristic, richly catholic affirmation of the truth and reality of the gift given in this Sacrament.

We all then confess with one mouth, that on receiving the sacrament in faith, according to the ordinance of the Lord, we are truly made partakers of the proper substance of the body and blood of Jesus Christ - Calvin, Short Treatise on the Supper of Our Lord, 60.

Removing the Prayer of Humble Access from the liturgy often results in a Eucharistic rite without any equally meaningful, prayerful affirmation of the truth and reality of the gift of the Lord's Body and Blood in the Sacrament.

It is worth noting here the conservative evangelical Church Society's An English Prayer Book cannot stomach the central petition Prayer of Humble Access, replacing it with impoverished, desiccated wording:

Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat this bread and drink this wine ...

What, then, of Myers' critique?
On this basis, much more than the Prayer of Humble Access would have to be removed from the 1662 and related rites.  For example, after receiving Holy Communion in 1662, or, in PECUSA BCP 1928, following the Prayer of Consecration and before reception of Communion, the Prayer of Oblation proclaims:

And although we be unworthy, through our manifold sins, to offer unto thee any sacrifice, yet we beseech thee to accept this our bounden duty and service; not weighing our merits, but pardoning our offences.

Out it goes.  So too, in fact, the Lord's Prayer - whether before or after reception of Communion. Forgive us our trespasses, after all, is redundant because we confessed our sins 40 minutes previously.

No, of course this will not do.  Rather:

So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants.

Baptised, confirmed, hearing the Word, absolved, lifting up our hearts, perceiving heaven and earth full of glory, preparing to share in the Holy Eucharist - even then, we, the Church, are unprofitable servants.  It is all dependent on grace alone.  We do not presume.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts