laudable Practice

1552 & 1559: Upon Christmas daye, and seven dayes after.  BECAUSE thou diddest geve Jesus Christ, thine onely sonne, to be borne as this daye for us, who by the operacion of the holy goste, was made very man, of the substaunce of the Virgin Mary his mother, and that without spot of synne, to make us cleane from al synne.   1662: Upon Christmas Day, and seven days after.  BECAUSE thou didst give Jesus Christ thine only Son to be born as at this time for us; who, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, was made very man of the substance of the Virgin Mary his mother; and that without spot of sin, to make us clean from all sin. Therefore with Angels, &c. While Cranmer retained the traditional Latin proper prefaces for most feasts, he did not do so for Christmas (and Whitsun).  The contrast with the traditional Latin preface for the Christmas octave is most interesting: Quia per incarnáti Verbi mystérium, nova mentis nostræ óculis lux tuæ clarit...

The church celebrates this day, the birth of our Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus, blessed for ever; and though it fall amongst the shortest days in the year, yet of all the festivals in the year, it is the longest: it is a day that consists of twelve days; a day not measured by the natural and ordinary motion of the sun, but by a supernatural and extraordinary star, which appeared to the wise men of the East, this day, and brought them to Christ, at Bethlehem, upon Twelfth Day. That day, Twelfth Day, the church now calls the Epiphany; the ancient church called this day (Christmas day) the Epiphany. Both days together, and all the days between, this day, when Christ was manifested to the Jews, in the shepherds by the angels, and Twelfth Day, when Christ was manifested to the Gentiles in those wise men of the East, make up the Epiphany, that is, the manifestation of God to man. From a sermon of John Donne, preached on Christmas Day.

... he brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he can bring thy summer out of winter, though thou have no spring; though in the ways of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintred and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and stupified till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon, to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries. From a sermon of John Donne, preached on the evening of Christmas Day, 1624. Merry Christmas. (The painting is William Dyce, 'Madonna and Child', c.1827-30.)

Words from a sermon (on the text of the Nunc Dimittis ) preached by John Donne on the evening of Christmas Day, 1626, addressing those who had received the Sacrament earlier that day.  It is interesting to note that Donne clearly here assumes that all his listeners have received Holy Communion on the feast - "it belongs to the thorough celebration of the day" - a practice unknown in the late medieval Church, with reception at Easter only being the norm. For those of us preparing to partake of the Sacrament tonight or tomorrow, Donne's words wonderfully set before us the grace of receiving the Eucharist at Christmas. ... 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. Every manifest...

From the collect for the Fourth Sunday in Advent : O Lord, raise up (we pray thee) thy power, and come among us, and with great might succour us; that whereas, through our sins and wickedness, we are sore let and hindered in running the race that is set before us, thy bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us ... It is Cranmer's adaptation of the traditional collect dating back to the Gelasian Sacramentary .  The traditional collect is retained in the Latin BCP 1560 : Excita, quæsumus Domine, potentiam tuam et veni, et magna nobis virtute succure, ut per auxilium gratiam tuæ, quod nostra peccata præpediunt, indulgentia tuæ miserationis acceleret ... Instantly noticeable is Cranmer's decision to abandon the 'Excita'/'Stir up' opening which had been characteristic of the traditional collects for all four of the Sundays in Advent.  Cranmer's reworking of the Advent collects meant that this characteristic was replaced with other distin...

... the Church recommends [this feast] to our meditation at this season, as a fit preparative to our Lord’s Nativity. For unless we believe with St. Thomas, that the same Jesus, whose birth we immediately after commemorate, is the very Christ, “our Lord and our God,” neither his birth, death, nor resurrection will avail us any thing. Richard Mant Biographical Notices of the Apostles, Evangelists, and Other Saints: With Reflexions and Collects; Adapted to the Minor Festivals of the United Church of England and Ireland (1828).

In these closing days of the season, a final post on the matter of the Old High Church observance of Advent.  A series of sermons -  Sermons on the Principal Events and Truths of Redemption  - by John Henry Hobart , Episcopal Bishop of New York, was published in England in 1824.  Hobart, of course, was then the chief representative of the High Church tradition in the Protestant Episcopal Church. Volume One opens with four sermons, one for each of the Sundays of Advent.  A footnote in the first sermon, for Advent Sunday, makes reference to "the holy season devoted to the commemoration of the first and second Advent of our Lord".  In two subsequent sermons, the same phrase "holy season" appears: The second coming of the Saviour in power and great glory to judge the world, is the subject proposed by the Church to our serious meditation at this holy season (Sermon II, The Second Sunday of Advent); The Church, through the season of Advent, presents to u...

... can ye not discern the signs of the times? Matthew 16:3. The result of last week's General Election in the United Kingdom had been predicted by a Church of England bishop.  He had discerned the signs of the times.  In December 2016, Philip North - bishop of Burnley - wrote a Church Times article entitled ' Heeding the voices of the popular revolution '.  Quoting Blue Labour's Lord Glasman, North declared: to understand the self-identity and concerns of most working people in this country, we need to focus on three things: family, place, and work. And he goes on to give what could have been a description of how significant numbers of working class communities in the north of England responded to Labour in this election: deep-seated frust­ra­tion at structures and institu­tions that have abandoned them, and at a middle-class culture that misun­derstands or misrepresents their heart­felt concerns. Bishop North may have discerned the signs of the times.  ...

We went to the woods for holly On days that were five below; The river a glass slide, the skies such pale blue The world was a kind of white ... We came back from the glades with hands All red and raw, words slurred. Somewhere a muffled snowball sun; In the trees only crows and quiet - from Kenneth Steven, 'One Winter', in Evensong (2011). Today is the first of the Advent Ember Days.  As I write this, I am looking out on a cold, gloomy afternoon.  Household lights are needed throughout the day.  Sunset will be at 4pm.  This is Winter. The prayer, fasting, and abstinence of Advent Embertide ensures that we enter into Winter not grudgingly, not overwhelmed, not distracted.  "The Ember Days at the Four Seasons" (to quote the Prayer Book's 'Days of Fasting, or Abstinence') prepares us to receive each new season as the gift of the One who "appointed the moon for certain seasons" (Ps.104:19).  This is no less so with Winter.  Yes, as Do...

Part of the reason for the series of recent posts considering the pre-1833 High Church tradition observance of the Prayer Book Advent and how this was received and continued, rather than supposedly revived, by the Tractarians, is this extract from Washington Irving's essay ' Christmas ', published in 1819: Of all the old festivals, however, that of Christmas awakens the strongest and most heartfelt associations. There is a tone of solemn and sacred feeling that blends with our conviviality, and lifts the spirit to a state of hallowed and elevated enjoyment. The services of the church about this season are extremely tender and inspiring. They dwell on the beautiful story of the origin of our faith, and the pastoral scenes that accompanied its announcement. They gradually increase in fervour and pathos during the season of Advent, until they break forth in full jubilee on the morning that brought peace and good-will to men.  The reference to the "fervour and patho...

In the last post  I quoted Keble: I do not know that we can well find a more profitable subject for our meditations ... this Advent, than the four collects appointed by the Church for the four several weeks.  This is precisely the approach to Advent recommended by Henry Handley Norris of the Hackney Phalanx, in his 1815  A Manual for the Parish Priest : The four weeks set apart for considering the ADVENT of the Redeemer, he may well employ in the manner pointed out by the Church; in, preparing the minds of his flock, to make a proper use of the approaching celebration of the first coming of Christ, by turning their reflections to His second coming to judge the world. Following the order of the Collects he may begin with urging them to pray for the grace of God, and to use their own exertions, “that they may cast away the works of darkness and put upon them the armour of light,” in full assurance that their Redeemer will sit in judgment upon them ......

The very time and season of the year the time of winter, the time of Advent, teaches us how long- suffering God is; He has spared us now once more through all the four seasons of the year. Others have died and been buried around us: we have heard the Church bell go for the departure of many a friend and neighbour, and we are still here. Again we see the leaves fallen from the trees, the sun low, the darkness long; but as yet our leaves abide, our sun is not set, the long darkness of the grave has not come upon us. Words from an Advent sermon by Keble, another example of the Tractarians continuing the High Church recognition of the power of a Prayer Book Advent.  Similarly, here is Keble commencing the first of four sermons - "summing up of catechising after the 2nd lesson at the Evening Service" - on the Advent collects: I do not know that we can well find a more profitable subject for our meditations on the four Fridays of this Advent, than the four collect...

On this General Election day in the United Kingdom, words from George Berkeley's Advice to the Tories Who have Taken the Oaths (1715).  Berkeley here provides an excellent summary of why classical Anglicanism embodied (in Prayer Book, Articles, sermons, and practice) a robust view of the polity and of political duties: this is inherent to the Church's life and mission because of the significance of the polity in shaping "the common welfare".  Without a robust political theology (evident in the Prayer Book tradition, strikingly absent from most contemporary liturgies), this significant area of our common life is untouched by the Church's proclamation, thus undermining the credibility and meaningfulness of that proclamation. Two Things there are which influence Men with a Regard for Religion; a Sense of its Truth, and a Sense of its Usefulness. The first of these can affect those alone who are really Christians: The latter may have a more extensive Influence, a...

Last week I quoted words from Edward White Benson in 1848 , referring to the power of the dignified simplicity of the Advent provision in the BCP 1662.  The very sparseness gleefully abandoned by late 20th and early 21st century liturgists was regarded by Benson as the enriching and rewarding characteristic of a Prayer Book Advent. We also see something of this in an Advent sermon of John Henry Newman ( PPS 5:1 ).  The sermon begins with Newman evocatively describing December's winter weather and the passing of the year: Year after year, as it passes, brings us the same warnings again and again, and none perhaps more impressive than those with which it comes to us at this season. The very frost and cold, rain and gloom, which now befall us, forebode the last dreary days of the world, and in religious hearts raise the thought of them. The year is worn out: spring, summer, autumn, each in turn, have brought their gifts and done their utmost; but they are over, and the end...

In his masterly study Thomas Cromwell: A Life , Diarmaid MacCulloch's discussion of the dissolution of the monasteries opens an important perspective on this particular aspect of the reformation of the ecclesia Anglicana .  MacCulloch here provides an alternative to Duffy's lament for the dissolution in The Stripping of the Altars .  The very fact that, as Duffy states, the monasteries had "a central place in popular religious practice" establishes the background to MacCulloch's account.  He notes how reformers critiqued religious orders as equivalent to Anabaptist radicalism: both papist religious orders and radicals cut themselves off from the Church's mainstream life ... by their actions both extremes had 'divided, rent and torn in pieces the quiet unity and friendly accord of the holy religion', Archbishop Cranmer's chaplain Thomas Becon proclaimed ... in 1550 ... In a sermon of the same period Hugh Latimer condemned monks and Anabaptists...

Yesterday was both the Second Sunday of Advent and the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a Black Letter Day in the 1662 Kalendar.  It is a happy and meaningful coincidence of dates.  Cranmer's collect for Advent II is structured around Saint Paul's words regarding Israel's Scriptures: Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning; that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. It is a collect, then, which is grounded and rooted in Israel's hope, the hope which the Epistle's concluding quotation from the Old Covenant sets forth: And again, Esaias saith, There shall be a root of Jesse, and he that shall rise to reign over the Gentiles, in him shall the Gentiles trust. Yahweh's fulfilment of this hope begins to draw near with the conception of the Maiden who will herself "conceive and bear a son".  The Black Letter Day signals that we are moving out of early Advent, that, in the words of ...

You will not, I trust, have "forgotten Jerusalem" or allowed yourself to think little or lightly of your privileges and responsibilities as a member of the Catholic Church: nor have neglected dear old Common Prayer when alone, and particularly during this Advent month, when the Church's heart pours itself forth in a diviner eloquence than at almost any other time. When Lessons, Epistles and Gospels are all publishing alike the most awful and the most glorious of all the predictions that concern the approaching end, and the final glory of the Church as the favoured of the Lord. From a letter by Edward White Benson (then 19) to his sister, Christmas 1848. What perhaps immediately catches attention in this extract is the description of the Prayer Book provision for Advent: "when the Church's heart pours itself forth in a diviner eloquence than at almost any other time".  It is important to note that this description dates from before the intro...

Everyone is welcome to attend the popular service, with doors opening at 4pm. The service lasts for just over an hour.  Please be seated by 5pm. We cannot guarantee admission after 5pm. Seats are unreserved and are on a first come first serve basis.  So said a local website advertising "things to do in York" last weekend, referring to the Advent Procession in the Minster.  Doors opening at 4pm for a service commencing at 5:15pm; seats first come, first served; admission not guaranteed after 5pm.  Such warnings are not exactly routine for Anglican acts of worship in England. On Saturday past, the Daily Mail reported ahead of the Advent Procession in Salisbury Cathedral, held at 7pm on the eve of Advent and 5pm on Advent Sunday: Around 1,700 worshippers queue for hours to see the beautiful spectacle. The fact that the Advent Procession resonates in a culture routinely described and defined as 'secular' is worthy of some reflection.  This is a liturgy...

Below, an extract from an Advent Sunday sermon by Jeremy Taylor.  Three things are worth noting about this extract.  The first is that it is a very traditional account of how, in words used earlier in the sermon by Taylor, "Christ shall be our judge at Dooms-day".  It is difficult not to hear in this a continuation of the preaching and art which captivated the Latin Christian imagination over long centuries before the Reformation.  This sense is heightened when we consider that Taylor references Thomas Aquinas by name in the sermon , regarding our responsibilities for the sins of others in light of the Last Judgement. Secondly, note the critique of Calvinist scholasticism.  Taylor emphasises that the Last Judgement will not be upon the basis of "secret propositions ... secret decrees or obscure doctrines".  Rather, we will be judged on how we have lived "according to the Sermons of the Gospel".  This was a fundamental contention of the Holy Livin...

... while we may all hope for comfort and joy with family, the festive season can also leave us feeling stretched - a recent survey found that Britons consider this the most stressful time of the year ... From office parties and school plays to gift-giving, it can all get a bit overwhelming.  So this year, we think it's time to relax and refocus on the good things that surround us rather than feeling guilty about the things we haven't done. So says the Christmas edition of the magazine of supermarket chain Tesco.  The article continues by encouraging us to "choose the one thing that really matters and invest your time in that". Yes, it does read like a secular appeal for, well, Advent. On Unherd , an even more explicitly secular - "I'm not religious", the author assures us - appeal for Advent can be found: What an age we live in. Our culture has subverted and corrupted a festival – Advent – about patient waiting and anticipation. It’s turned i...

Midwinter spring is its own season  Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,  Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.  When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,  The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,  In windless cold that is the heart's heat ... T.S. Eliot, ' Little Gidding ' We are now in the dark days before Christmas, yet "when the short day is brightest", shot through with Advent hope, "now in the time of this mortal life".  A Prayer Book Advent is characterised by a dignified simplicity, holding before us the "frost and fire" of the Advent proclamation, a proclamation which cleanses and refines. The Sundays of Advent The lessons and services therefore for the four first Sundays in her liturgical year propose to our meditations the two-fold Advent of our Lord Jesus Christ - Bishop Horne, quoted in Mant's Notes . The Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for each Sunday draw us into that cleansing...