Cranmerian daily wisdom

Words from a great sermon by Oikodoemo, addressing those about to be ordained priest,:

Read your bible: keep it close to you. Never go many hours without touching base with Scripture. Especially the psalms; pray them every day as Christians have always done, learn them off by heart. The psalms are a powerful weapon against the terror, because they are full of terror, and full of resurrection which is stronger.

What particularly strikes me about this exhortation is its solidly Cranmerian pedigree. One of Cranmer's intentions in reforming the Daily Office was to ensure that the full Psalter would be more regularly recited:

And furthermore, notwithstanding that the ancient Fathers have divided the Psalms into seven Portions, whereof every one was called a Nocturn: Now of late time a few of them have been daily said, and the rest utterly omitted (all such quotes in this post are from 'Concerning the Service of the Church').

Thus in BCP 1552's 'The Order Howe The Psalter is Appoynted to be Readde', it was stated:

The Psalter shalbe readde through once every Moneth.

It is a simple, practical ordering of the Psalter, which ensures that through repetition of the words of the Psalms they sink into heart, mind, and soul month by month. That the same Psalms are said on the same day of each month aids this process, ensuring that our praying of the Psalms is conformed to the shape and ordering of the Psalter.

Never go many hours without touching base with Scripture.

This is what Cranmer provided with the Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, which "all Priests and Deacons are to say daily ... either privately or openly", reflecting what he saw as the original intent of these Offices:

For they [i.e. "the ancient Fathers"] so ordered the matter, that all the whole Bible (or the greatest part thereof) should be read over once every year; intending thereby, that the Clergy, and especially such as were Ministers in the congregation, should (by often reading, and meditation in God's word) be stirred up to godliness themselves, and be more able to exhort others by wholesome doctrine, and to confute them that were adversaries to the truth.

Again, a simple, practical ordering was at work, to ensure that the ordered reading of Holy Scripture was not "altered, broken, and neglected, by planting in uncertain Stories, and Legends, with multitude of Responds, Verses, vain Repetitions, Commemorations, and Synodals". Mattins and Evensong provided an office of readings for morning and evening, with the weighty readings allowing Scripture to remain close - "by often reading, and meditation" - for clergy throughout the day.

What is more, this ordered pattern of reading Scripture is conformed to the Canon. It is this "continual course of the reading of the Scripture" over the year, and as year follows year, which exposes us to the fullness of the Canon, in the story of Israel's prophets, priests, and kings; in the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God; in the apostolic proclamation to the churches.

And all this - the monthly praying of the Psalter, and "that all the whole Bible (or the greatest part thereof) should be read over once every year" - is contained with a straightforward, practical Order of daily prayer:

It is also more commodious, both for the shortness thereof, and for the plainness of the Order, and for that the Rules be few and easy.

The very "plainness of the Order" secures that focus on Psalter and Scripture readings called for in the exhortation given by Oikodoemo. Cranmerian daily wisdom, in other words, continues to have a robust and solid daily relevance for those called "to preach the Word of God, and to minister the holy Sacraments in the Congregation".

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