laudable Practice

In contemporary liturgical calendars and lectionaries, yesterday celebrated the Baptism of our Lord.  In the Eucharistic lectionary of the Prayer Book tradition, the gospel for yesterday - the First Sunday after the Epiphany - was not an account of the Lord's Baptism.  In fact, this account does not appear in any of the gospel readings in the traditional one year lectionary for the Eucharist. Is this not a considerable (to say the least) oversight? After all, it is not as if the Prayer Book tradition does not recognise the salvific significance of our Lord's Baptism.  The Litany states: By the mystery of thy holy Incarnation; by thy holy Nativity and Circumcision; by thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation, Good Lord, deliver us.   Why, then, its omission from the Gospel readings? To some extent, the office lectionaries within the Prayer Book tradition address this issue.  The Church of England's 1922 Alternative Table of Lessons, Ireland 1926, and C...

Related to yesterday's post , do read the latest offering from The Hipster Conservative on ' The Idea of an Anglican Society ', addressing the place of the Market in human society.  Attention is drawn to the Book of Homilies urging the "keeping and hallowing [of] Sunday".  The Homily points to the commercial reasons given for not doing so: if they have any business to do, though there be no extreme need, they must not spare for the Sunday ; they must ride and journey on the Sunday ; they must drive and carry on the Sunday ; they must row and ferry on the Sunday they must buy and sell on the Sunday ; they must keep markets and fairs on the Sunday : finally, they use all days alike ; workdays and holy days are all one. The post sees here a forerunner of the ' blue laws ' in the United States:   While largely a remnant of a by-gone era, there do remain some blue laws in the United States. The objection to them is a common one in our liberal w...

On this commemoration of his martyrdom, let us celebrate William Laud as a patron of Red Tory and Blue Labour , of those who drink from the well of Wendell Berry's agrarianism, those who are crunchy cons or Christian socialists. There are three characteristics of Laud's policies which we might identify as having Red Tory or Blue Labour characteristics. Firstly, Laud robustly defended the parish and Common Prayer.  Kevin Sharpe states: For Laud the unity of the church rested not on narrowly defined dogma but on the community and uniformity of worship.  Attendance at the parish church and participation in a common prayer service conducted according to the canons and Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England were for him the hallmarks of membership of the Church of England . Here is the Church of Somewhere , a communitarian vision of gathering up the relationships of family, neighbourhood, and realm in the life of Common Prayer.  In the Book of Common Prayer...

Since the late 20th century it's become common to invert the traditional relationship between fasting and feasting in the Christmas season. The ancient custom was to fast in Advent in preparation for the feast, and then to celebrate for at least twelve days after Christmas (and to some degree, all through January). Now we do it the other way around; for many people the feast is followed by a penitential fast, in the form of 'Dry January' or New Year's resolutions about eating less and going to the gym - Clerk of Oxford . In the Prayer Book tradition we much of the traditional understanding of January outlined by Clerk of Oxord .  The month contains significant echoes of the festive season, sustaining us through the depths of winter. So what are the characteristics of a Prayer Book January? Days after the Epiphany In the BCP 1662, the collect, epistle and gospel of the Epiphany are used until the subsequent Sunday.  A rubric in Ireland 1926 explicitly d...

In his 1626 Christmas Day sermon , John Donne referred to the ancient practice of describing the Lord's Nativity as His 'Epiphany': And as even his birth is his death, so every action and passage that manifests Christ to us, is his birth, for Epiphany is manifestation ; and therefore, though the church do now call Twelfth-day Epiphany, because upon that day Christ was manifested to the Gentiles in those wise men who came then to worship him, yet the ancient church called this day (the day of Christ's birth) the Epiphany, because this day Christ was manifested to the world, by being born this day. He then applied the term to the receiving of the holy Sacrament on Christmas Day: ... so also this day, in which we commemorate and celebrate the general Epiphany, the manifestation of Christ to the whole world in his birth, all we, we, who besides our interest in the universal Epiphany and manifestation implied in the very day, have this day received the body ...

Across all the parishes of Christendom ... the plebs sancta dei - the holy common people of God . The words are from Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy .  No, it certainly is not a favourite text of mine.  The words, however, came to mind after reading this tweet on the feast of the Epiphany: We Three Kings Of Orient Are: NOT IN THE BIBLE. they weren’t kings, they were more like wizards. We don’t know how many there were and they were “from the East” Could be China. Could be Jersey. #Epiphany — Nadia Bolz-Weber (@Sarcasticluther) January 6, 2019 Here we have a progressive, 'woke', apparently edgy take which simply dismisses the Epiphany prayers and piety of ordinary Christians - plebs sancta dei - over centuries. And yet, the Epiphany prayers and piety of the plebs sancta dei reveal a deep wisdom and a profound engagement with Scripture.  To call the Magi 'kings' was to recognise in the Epiphany a fulfilment of Isaiah's vision: And the Gentil...

There seems little doubt about it when looking at the Church of England's Common Worship: Daily Prayer .  The Baptism of Christ is the focus of the Epiphany 'season'.  Whereas the feast of the Epiphany itself has to make do with the antiphons of the season, the Baptism of Christ is provided with proper antiphons for the eve and the day. We might think that there is an embarrassment concerning the West's traditional celebration of the Epiphany.  This is also detected in how, for example, Common Worship replaces the Prayer Book tradition's Sundays 'after the Epiphany' with Sundays 'of Epiphany'.  (Thankfully this is not the case in either TEC 1979 or Ireland 2004.)  The significance of the change is obvious.  Epiphany is a season - not the Epiphany, the feast celebrating the visit of the Magi to the Christ Child. The idea of an Epiphany 'season' has not been without critics.  In their Alcuin Liturgy Guide on Advent to Candlemas , Benja...