Mattins, Scripture, and the Christological centre

... this means that Anglican prayer in accord with the BCP’s arrangement of Scripture arrives at an understanding that the Church has been inducted into Israel’s praise - she has been “grafted in,” as St. Paul’s metaphor has it (Rom. 11:17); she is piggybacking on those who have preceded her in tasting the Lord’s mercies.

Wesley Hill's post yesterday on Covenant is a great exploration of how the reading of Scripture at Mattins in the BCP tradition is "inescapably, and wonderfully, theological".  Hill points to how the context established by the praying of the Venite, the Psalter, and Gloria Patri embodies the Pauline "grafted in".

... the BCP is pressuring those Anglicans (and other Christians) who make use of its arrangement of Scripture to recognize that the God of the Psalter is not other than the God who has made himself known as Father, Son, and Spirit; and, vice versa, that the God who is triune is one Lord because he is not other than the God of the Psalter.

Alongside Hill's focus on Venite and Psalter, we might also consider how Mattins and Evensong shape our reading of Scripture through the use of the canticles after the readings.  The Te Deum following the Old Testament reading at Mattins quite powerfully proclaims that Yahweh of prophets, priests and kings is the Triune God whose revelation is fulfilled in the mystery of incarnation, cross, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.  The alternative canticle, the Benedicite, offers another example of Hill's theme, with the praises of Israel becoming the praises of the Church.  At Evensong, the Magnificat combines both of these elements.  In praying the Song of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we rejoice that the hope of Israel - "Abraham and his seed" - is fulfilled in the Incarnate Word.

The canticles following the New Testament reading no less dramatically draw us to behold the fullness of the mystery of the revelation in Jesus Christ.  The Benedictus at Mattins rejoices that "the dayspring from on high hath visited us", the Nunc Dimittis that we have beheld "a light to lighten the Gentiles". Both canticles, then, draw the Church to the confession of the Creed as response to attending to Scripture, witnessing to the Christological centre of the Scriptures of the Old and New Covenant.

As Hill states, the richness of this theological reading of Scripture embodied in Mattins and Evensong is a gift of the Anglican tradition:

it’s high time we - appropriately chastened and reticent Anglicans that we are - held our theological heads high and recalled with confidence that our beloved BCP takes us, every morning, right to the heart of the most vital and serious of theological issues that the Church has ever had to render a verdict on.

This, of course, was central to Cranmer's intention in revising the Daily Office:

... 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; and further, that the people (by daily hearing of holy Scripture read in the Church) might continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of his true Religion.

Cherishing Mattins and Evensong is not merely a matter of liturgical style - it is a means of renewing the Church's attention to Scripture, drawing us to behold the Christological centre of the Old and New Covenants.