Wholesome medicines
The above words came to mind today when reflecting on Cranmer's collect for Saint Luke's Day:
ALMIGHTY God, who calledst Luke the Physician, whose praise is in the Gospel, to be an Evangelist, and Physician of the soul: May it please thee that, by the wholesome medicines of the doctrine delivered by him, all the diseases of our souls may be healed; through the merits of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
What particularly caught my attention while praying the collect at Mattins was the plural "medicines". It reflects, of course, the subsequent reference to "all the diseases of our souls". There is something here of the fullness of sacra doctrina. And we need this fullness.
Our "sins and wickedness", to quote the exhortation at Mattins and Evensong, are "manifold". In the confession at Holy Communion "we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness". There is a robust reality to such Augustinianism. All aspects of our lives, character, and actions are infected by "this infection of nature" (Article IX). To refer merely to "medicine" rather than the more fulsome "medicines" fails to appropriately render both our predicament - so infected are we that we need "medicines" - and the efficacy of our salvation, for it is as "medicines", bringing healing to our multiple wounds and conditions.
Now contrast the Prayer Book collect for the feast with that provided in Common Worship:
Almighty God,
you called Luke the physician,
whose praise is in the gospel,
to be an evangelist and physician of the soul:
by the grace of the Spirit
and through the wholesome medicine of the gospel,
give your Church the same love and power to heal;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God,
now and for ever.
Notice how the collect is flattened. The plural is abandoned in favour of "medicine". The reference to "doctrine" - a body of teaching handed on - is replaced with "the gospel", a term which a century of liberal theology has insisted is 'doctrine-free', a vague proclamation of 'the kingdom' (equally vague). And then the Prayer Book collect's "all the diseases of our souls", with its gritty realism, is replaced by an abstract petition: "give your Church the same love and power to heal". Heal what? The contemporary collect provides no answer. On the feast day when we celebrate the evangelist who is a "physician of the soul", this collect is rather pathetically silent as to why the soul requires such a physician.
... the Prayer Book captures so resonantly the deep texture of life and connects it well to our salvation.
This is so in those moments of deep meaning in our earthly lives, when the occasional offices gather up into Christ our experiences of birth, marriage, and deaths.
It is also the case, however, with the reality that "the deep texture of life" is gravely wounded, infected, sickly. The present cultural discontents point to an inchoate awareness of this, that the manifold disordering of our common life runs deep. In such a cultural context, bland abstractions in the liturgy, and an embarrassment regarding references to "all the diseases of our souls", do a grave disservice to the Church's witness. The robust realism of Cranmer's Augustinianism can draw our cultural discontents to encounter afresh the "wholesome medicines", touching all aspects of life and experience, bringing cleansing and healing to all our wounds.
... and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.
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