A Prayer Book Lent

To be sure, it feels wintry enough still: but often in the very early spring it feels like that. Two thousand years are only a day or two by this scale. A man really ought to say, ‘The Resurrection happened two thousand years ago’ in the same spirit in which he says, ‘I saw a crocus yesterday.’ Because we know what is coming behind the crocus. The spring comes slowly down this way; but the great thing is that the corner has been turned. There is, of course, this difference, that in the natural spring the crocus cannot choose whether it will respond or not. We can. We have the power either of withstanding the spring, and sinking back into the cosmic winter, or of going on into those 'high mid-summer pomps' in which our Leader, the Son of Man, already dwells, and to which He is calling us. It remains with us to follow or not, to die in this winter, or to go on into that spring and that summer - from C.S. Lewis, 'The Grand Miracle'.

'Lencten'.  It is the Old English word for the lengthening of days, the season of Spring.  And it is the origin of the word 'Lent'.  So intertwined was the Church's time of fasting and penitence with the natural world's season of growth and renewal, that this time of discipline and abstinence was named after the season: Lent, the Church's Springtime.

What are the characteristics of Lent in the Prayer Book tradition?

Fasting

Days of Fasting, or Abstinence

I. The Forty Days of Lent - Ireland BCP 1926.

The various expressions of the Prayer Book tradition (1662, Ireland 1926, PECUSA 1928, Scotland 1929, Canada 1962) explicitly set before us the call to fast during the forty days of Lent.  It is instructive to compare with some contemporary Anglican calendars.  The CofI BCP 2004, for example, is clearly embarrassed by the idea of fasting, instead using the rather vague "Days of Discipline and Self-Denial" to describe Lent.  Similarly, the collect for the First Sunday in Lent in Common Worship and the CofI BCP 2004, after referring to the Lord fasting for forty days, merely petitions "Give us grace to discipline ourselves".  The traditional collect, by contrast, is quite clear that we are to fast in imitation of the Lord:

O Lord, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights: Give us grace to use such abstinence ...

In an age when many of us will see the commitment of our Muslim neighbours during Ramadan, when the abstinence of 'Dry January' and 'Meat Free Mondays' is widely promoted, it is a profound failure on the part of contemporary Anglicanism to be embarrassed about the Lenten fast.  Fasting is, as Quodcumque declares, 'serious Christianity'.  It is the Church's failure to teach, promote, and share such practices which aids secularization, removing from us the ordinary means of living out the Christian Faith.

The Lenten fast has two aspects.  The first, as seen in the collect for the First Sunday in Lent, it unites us with the Lord's forty day fast in the wilderness - confronting temptation, teaching us that we do not live by bread alone, opening us to a greater dependence on God's gracious provision.  The second is that it orients us, body and soul, towards Easter Day.  That the fast is forty days - the length of time from Ash Wednesday to Easter, minus Sundays - is a very physical expression of the centrality of Easter Day.

On the First Day of Lent

The provision of a penitential service for the First Day of Lent has been a consistent feature of the Prayer Book tradition (see 1662, Ireland 1926, PECUSA 1928, Scotland 1929, Canada 1962).  The distinctive character of the first day of the season is set out in the 1662 Commination:

BRETHREN, in the primitive Church there was a godly discipline, that, at the beginning of Lent, such persons as stood convicted of notorious sin were put to open penance, and punished in this world, that their souls might be saved in the day of the Lord; and that others, admonished by their example, might be the more afraid to offend ... 

Similarly, Ireland 1926:

BRETHREN, there hath been, from ancient times, a godly custom in the Church, that, at the beginning of Lent, Christian people should be admonished, in an especial manner, of the great indignation of God against sin, and be moved thereby to earnest and true repentance, lest any be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin ...

And Canada 1962:

BRETHREN, in the primitive Church it was the custom to observe with great devotion the days of our Lord’s Passion and Resurrection, and to prepare for the same by a season of penitence and fasting ... I therefore invite you, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial, and by reading and meditation upon God’s holy Word.

While PECUSA 1928 and Scotland 1929 lost the power of such an introduction, nevertheless throughout the Prayer Book tradition the penitential services for the First Day of Lent shares two key characteristics.  The first is the solemn recitation of the great penitential psalm, Psalm 51, kneeling. It is a profound act of penitence.  The second is the prayer Turn thou us, O good Lord, said by minister and people, including this account of penitence:

Who turn to thee in weeping, fasting, and praying.

As Procter and Frere note, the use of Psalm 51 and the quite beautiful collect O Lord, we beseech thee, are from the Sarum rite for the day, while the prayer O most mighty God is based in the Sarum prayer for blessing the ashes, with Turn thou us, O good Lord echoing the anthems sung in the Sarum rite during the imposition.  In other words, the penitential services of the Prayer Book tradition are deeply rooted in the traditional penitence and penance of Lent.

What is absent, of course, from the Prayer Book tradition penitential services is the imposition of ashes.  This absence, however, ensures the centrality of reciting Psalm 51 kneeling, a defining and most powerful act of penitence on the First Day of Lent.  If the ceremony of the imposition of ashes is added to the liturgy, it should be understood as a sign of having participated in this central act of penitence rather than displacing or overshadowing it.  (Liam Beadle's paper for the 2017 Prayer Book Society conference, 'No Imposition: The Commination and Lent', provides an excellent overview of the Commination service.)

The Prayer Book tradition's penitential services - even the somewhat minimalist versions in PECUSA 1928 and Scotland 1929 - offer a distinctive means of marking the First Day of Lent, providing moving acts of corporate penitence, and clearly setting before us the penitential character of the season.

The Lenten Collect

This collect is to be read every day in Lent after the Collect appointed for the Day.

Cranmer's Ash Wednesday collect is one of the glories - and joys - of a Prayer Book Lent.  Joy?  Yes, joy.  It embodies Herbert's great insight: Welcome dear feast of Lent.  Day by day in Lent we pray words that call us to embrace the Church's Springtime:

Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent ...

Here we come to recognise that the hard work of penitence and fasting is no joyless exercise in self-punishment but, rather, a means to bring us to a fuller experience of joy, renewal, and restoration:

Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness.

Our Lenten penitence and fasting is husbandry, a tilling of body and soul that we might more fully be open to the grace, life, and light of Cross and Resurrection.

This is the joy of Lent.  It is, to use words from Wendell Berry, "the forgiving season".

The kindly faithful light returns.
Morning returns and the forgiving season.
The pastures turns green, again. Blossom
and leafbud gentle the harsh woods - from 'II', Sabbaths 2003, in Given: Poems (2005).

(The painting is Eric Ravilious, 'Shepherd's Cottage, Firle', 1934.)