'Significant and comprehensive': on the versicles and responses after the second Lord's Prayer at Matins and Evensong

Continuing with extracts from John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), we consider the versicles and responses after the second Lord's Prayer at Matins and Evensong. Shepherd begins by identifying the source of these versicles and responses:

From the recital of the Lord's Prayer we proceed to the interlocutory petitions, all of which except two are taken out of the psalms.

These versicles, in other words, root the Church's daily prayer in the Psalter. In doing so, they also illuminate other characteristics of the Church's prayer, for - as Shepherd notes - they provide a summary of the Sunday and daily collects:

Whether it be entirely the effect of design, or something must be attributed to accident, these versicles are an epitome of the collects that regularly follow. The duty of the congregation is to join in the one, and to listen with attention to the other.

Shepherd then proceeds to demonstrate how the versicles and responses, taken from the Psalter and the scriptures of Israel, cohere with the subsequent collects:

The two first, from Ps.LXXXV.7, containing general petitions for mercy and salvation, answer to the Sunday and weekly collects. Mercy and preservation from evil, temporal, or eternal, both of which are included in the term salvation, are most commonly the subjects of these Collects. The two next, taken

from Ps.xx, answer to the prayers for the King's Majesty and the Royal Family. The two following from Ps.cxxxII.9, appear to have been part of the Jewish Liturgy, and were used by Solomon at the dedication of the temple. These with the two succeeding versicles, from Ps.xxvi.9, answer to the Collect for the clergy and people. The two next, taken probably from 1 Chron. XXII.9, and Ps. CVIII.12, answer to the daily morning and evening collects for peace; and the two last from Ps.LI, to the daily collects for grace.

In other words, these versicles and responses are, day by day at Matins and Evensong, a school for prayer, guiding us in how we might pray for the Church and the world. As Shepherd notes:

These sentences are so significant and comprehensive, that it would not be an easy task to make a more judicious selection.

What is more, in being derived from the Psalter and Israel's scriptures, these petitions are also a daily reminder that, in and through Christ, we Gentiles "wert grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree"; that we "are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God".

We might also consider how the singing of these versicles and responses at Choral Matins and Choral Evensong provides an opportunity to contemplatively enter into these prayers, to indwell them in heart and mind, reflecting on how this school of prayer might find expression in our own requests and petitions.

One final note: it is precisely the unchanging nature of these versicles and responses that allows them to be a school of prayer for us, shaping us day by day, inviting us into deeper contemplation. This is a gift to be cherished, in stark contrast to the fashion in much contemporary Anglican daily office provision of providing varying texts, or omitting such versicles and responses entirely.

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

'Whether the Lutheran Churches have right Ordinations and perfect succession of Bishops': Jeremy Taylor, 'Episcopacy Asserted', and Lutheran orders

Amidst the bitter controversies over episcopacy in the Three Kingdoms during the early 1640s, controversies which had become war in Scotland in 1637 and then in England in 1642, Jeremy Taylor wrote his Laudian defence of episcopal order, The Sacred Order and Offices of Episcopacy Asserted and Maintained . He proposed in this work that the non-episcopal Reformed churches could have had episcopally-ordered clergy: Those good people might have had order from the bishops of England or the Lutheran churches, if at least they thought our churches catholic and Christian. Leaving aside the reality that, for example, French Protestants would have been placed in an invidious political position if they had done as Taylor proposed, it is the reference to "the Lutheran churches" which is significant. To begin with, a large portion of the Lutheran churches - those in the German lands - were governed by a system of superintendency. It is almost inconceivable that Taylor was not aware of th...

laudable Practice

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