"Hence the Creed": Cranmer's Augustinian wisdom at Mattins and Evensong

Then shall be sung or said the Apostles' Creed.

This rubric at Mattins and Evensong in the Prayer Book tradition introduces the text which moves the liturgy from attending to Scripture to prayer: from the Apostles' Creed we move to the Lord's Prayer. In his Enchiridion of Faith, Hope, and Love, Augustine's comments on the relationship between these two texts provides an account of how we might perceive their relationship in Mattins and Evensong:

For you have the Creed and the Lord's Prayer. What can be briefer to hear or to read? What easier to commit to memory? When, as the result of sin the human race was groaning under a heavy load of misery, and was in urgent need of the divine compassion, one of the prophets, anticipating the time of God's grace, declared: "And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered". Hence the Lord's Prayer. But the apostle, when, for the purpose of commending this very grace, he had quoted this prophetic testimony, immediately added: "How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?" Hence the Creed. In these two you have those three graces exemplified: faith believes, hope and love pray. But without faith the two last cannot exist, and therefore we may say that faith also prays. Whence it is written: "How shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed?" (7).

Note the significance Augustine attaches to both texts, how they give voice to the mystery of our redemption. Note, too, that they are thus "to commit [them] to memory". Here is Cranmer's wisdom in incorporating the Creed and corporate praying of the Lord's Prayer into the daily office. It also highlights the danger in omitting the Creed, as has been the case with many contemporary Anglican revisions. The twice daily praying of these 'brief' texts commits them to our memory, these texts which embody and enact the Gospel of Jesus Christ, nurturing us in the graces of faith, hope, and love.

What is more, the Creed at Mattins and Evensong - following the readings from Scripture, and preceding prayer - enables the Church to respond as it should to the proclamation of Scripture, and therefore provides the basis for the Church's prayer, in union with our Mediator and Advocate, He who is Son of the Father, in the communion of the Holy Spirit.

The Creed gives substance and meaning to the Church's prayer, to what is meant by 'Our Father', why God's name is hallowed, the shape of the Kingdom, how we know the forgiveness of trespasses, and by what means we are delivered from evil. The Creed, in other words, is the ground of our prayer: Trinity, Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, Spirit, hope. In this ground prayer is conceived, nurtured, and grows.

If we then wanted to summarise the significance of these two fundamental texts at Mattins and Evensong, we could turn to a third common text, with which Cranmer concludes these Offices:

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.

As Augustine says in the Enchiridion:

For when there is a question as to whether a man is good, one does not ask what he believes, or what he hopes, but what he loves. For the man who loves aright no doubt believes and hopes aright (117).

The Grace is a petition for the outworking of Creed and Lord's Prayer, a prayer for the fruit of participation in the mystery of redemption which Creed and Lord's Prayer embody and enact.

There is a deep Augustinian wisdom in Cranmer's placing of Creed and Lord's Prayer at Mattins and Evensong, a wisdom also evident in the Offices ending with the Grace. This pattern of texts, repeated twice "daily throughout the year", shapes us in heart and soul after the mystery and gift of grace.

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