A serious liturgy for a serious time

Next to the Morning and Evening service in our Prayer-Book stands the Litany, or more earnest supplication for averting God's judgments, and procuring his mercy - Archbishop Secker, quoted in Mant's Notes.

Today the UK government has stated that coronavirus "is going to spread in a significant way".  A UK supermarket chain has started to restrict sales of essential food and household items.  The Italian government has introduced a lock down in the north of country.  The virus has now spread to over 30 US states.

It is a time for a "more earnest supplication for averting God's judgements, and procuring his mercy".

It is a time when the Litany should be heard in Anglican cathedrals and parish churches.

As Sparrow notes, the Litany is rooted in the traditional Christian approach to prayer "for the averting of God's wrath in publick calamities".  It gives fulsome expression to our dependence on God's mercy, grace, and providence, for our eternal salvation, for our common life, for our deliverance in body and soul.  In a time of anxiety and fear in the face of a virus that has spread across the globe, forcibly reminding us of our frailty and mortality, of the weaknesses and injustices in the ordering of our common life, the Litany is a means of gathering up all of our needs before the God "that despisest not  the sighing of a contrite heart, nor the desire of such as be sorrowful".

The fact, however, that the Litany is to be heard in very few Anglican churches during this time, and that very few (if any) dioceses are invoking the traditional rubric that the Litany is to be prayed "at other times when it shall be commanded by the Ordinary", are disturbing reminders that we have largely lost the ancient wisdom that such general supplication is how the Church should respond to calamity.  In its absence, we are left with short prayers - such as that offered by the Church of England website - which hardly reflect the seriousness of the threat posed by the virus and the need for sustained prayer.

The significance of the Litany's inclusion within the Book of Common Prayer is that it provides a means of such sustained prayer and general supplication precisely as common prayer: not dependent on the insights of an individual cleric, or the resources of a diocese, or the wisdom of whoever is responsible for constructing a temporary liturgy in response to the crisis.  Instead, the Litany is there as common prayer - for parish and cathedral, for diocese and national church - gathering up in prayer our anxieties and fears, our needs in body and soul.  And explicitly praying that we would be delivered "from plague".

Unless, that is, one is using the contemporary versions of the Litany in Common Worship or the Anglican Church of Canada's Book of Alternative Services.  The equivalent petition in the Common Worship Litany retains prayer for deliverance from "famine and disaster" but omits the reference to plague.  The BAS Litany petitions for deliverance "From earthquake and tempest; from drought, fire, and flood" but again has no reference to plague .  There is a sense of both litanies here reflecting the 'end of history' culture, in which a widespread threat posed by a virus was regarded as having been overcome by Progress.

By contrast, the Litany in both TEC 1979 and Ireland 2004 retained the 1662 reference:

From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine, Good Lord, deliver us - TEC 1979;

From fire, storm and flood, from disease, pestilence and want, from war and murder, and from dying unprepared, 
Save us, good Lord - Ireland 2004.

By retaining 1662's reference these litanies have a resonance in the current crisis absent from the Common Worship and BAS versions, precisely because they stand - on this point - in continuity with 1662's recognition of our frailty and mortality in the face of the threat of 'common sickness'.  While most contemporary litanies fall short of 1662's expressions of penitence, and penitence is indeed called for at this time, nevertheless, we need cathedrals and parishes to be praying the Litany in any of these authorised forms.  We need a general supplication to be offered.

This is a time when we need to be renewed in our dependence upon God's mercy and grace, petitioning for deliverance, seeking blessing upon our common life, beseeching "mercy upon all men", acknowledging how the disordering of our common life requires repentance.  It is not a time for cut-and-paste liturgical resources hesitant about expressing the extent of our need for God's mercy and provision. A serious time needs a serious liturgy and that liturgy is the Litany.