But it was when I told them how the service itself had been created, how Cranmer had skilfully taken the two monastic offices of vespers and compline, and grafted them together into this new variety of liturgy; how he had pruned away the repetitions, let the light of translation in on the readings, and allowed the whole to flourish and bear fruit for future generations, that I suddenly felt a link with our earlier Apple Day festivities.
Here, too, was a sturdy old English variety, adorned with early fruit (for we sang Tallis as our introit) and late beauty (our anthem was by Elgar); and here were our students, sampling in chapel, as they had done in hall, something they might otherwise never have known.
In the parallels with Apple Day, there is much here that is suggestive of the resonance of Choral Evensong.
Firstly, the gift of the Real. Apple Day is a celebration of the natural, in stark contrast to our diets often being dominated by the artificial. The natural - the Real - nourishes, sustains, and satisfies in a manner which the artificial cannot. Similarly with Choral Evensong. In a cultural context defined by Andrew Sullivan as "the era of mass distraction", in which the virtual, the insubstantial, and the immediate conspire to deprive our souls of experiences of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, Choral Evensong is an invitation into the Real - through the physical, the poetic, and the musical, through stillness and attentiveness.
Secondly, tradition and craft. Apple Day is a celebration of a tradition. Inherited wisdom, the incorporation of new insights, an understanding of the good, are evident in this tradition. It is indeed, in the words of MacIntyre, "an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition". So it is with Choral Evensong, in its attentiveness to Scripture - the various voices within the Canon and the history of Christian reading of the Canon. And Prayer Book Evensong itself, of course, embodies a particular tradition, what Eamon Duffy has described as "the greatest liturgical achievement of the Reformation".
And it is also a craft. From Cranmer's skills as liturgist and wordsmith, to the music which accompanies and beautifies Evensong, to the stone, wood, and stained glass which provides the physical context, Evensong is a product and celebration of craft.
Tradition and craft both have a renewed resonance and attraction in a culture increasingly emptied of both, abandoning us in a naked public realm, impoverished by the absence of tradition to bestow wisdom and craft to enrich and ennoble.
Thirdly, place and particularity. To celebrate Apple Day is to inherently and necessarily celebrate - and taste - the gift of place. So it is with liturgy: in language, art, physical surroundings, heritage. Liturgy that is not rooted in place and particularity is disincarnate, a failure to gather up 'all things in heaven and earth' into Christ. Choral Evensong witnesses to how a particular place - the place of the ecclesia Anglicana - became the context for a compelling and attractive embodiment of the Christian Faith and the Church catholic.
One does not need to be in that physical or cultural landscape to experience this power and attraction, in the same way that I do not need to be a 14th century French peasant to experience the power and attraction of Chartres. But to participate in Choral Evensong's embodiment of a particular expression of the Faith, rooted in place and culture, is to experience the richness and goodness of that expression.
a way of understanding our relation to culture and society ... as flowing from and to him, who is the Alpha and Omega of all things.
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