Table fellowship or true feeding? The sacramental poverty of contemporary Anglican Eucharistic rites
In most contemporary rites, the first time we hear that we are to receive in the Sacrament the gift of the Lord's Body and Blood is in the Eucharistic Prayer. So, from TEC 1979, Prayer A:
to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son, the holy food and drink of new and unending life in him.
And Common Worship, Prayer A:
grant that by the power of your Holy Spirit these gifts of bread and wine may be to us his body and his blood.
Before this, no mention is made of our partaking of the Lord's Body and Blood. What about after Holy Communion has been received? Here TEC 1979 has the distinct advantage of retaining part of the classical Prayer Book post-Communion Prayer of Thanksgiving:
we thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; and for assuring us in these holy mysteries that we are living members of the Body of your Son, and heirs of your eternal kingdom.
The corporate post-Communion in Common Worship fails to echo the Prayer Book's richness, opting for an impoverished statement deprived of any expression of the significance of our participation:
we thank you for feeding us with the body and blood of your Son Jesus Christ.
And even then the Common Worship rubric says that this prayer "may" be used. Post-communion prayers are offered for each Sunday in Canada's BAS, Common Worship, and Ireland 2004. Taking the post-communion prayers for this September (Trinity XIII-Trinity XVI in Common Worship and Ireland 2004, Proper 23-26 in BAS), there is not a single reference in any of these prayers to partaking of the Lord's Body and Blood in the Sacrament which has been received.
It is very difficult indeed to see how this 'table fellowship' emphasis can be regarded as 'higher' than 1662. 1662, of course, requires the Prayer of Humble Access. When permitted in contemporary rites it is optional and rarely used. It includes a very robust affirmation of our partaking of the Lord's Body and Blood:
Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood.
The Prayer of Consecration petitions that we who receive this bread and wine "may be partakers of his most blessed Body and Blood". The use of "most blessed" is usually abandoned in contemporary Eucharistic Prayers. In Ireland 2004, Prayer 1, for example, the petition is the rather more utilitarian "partakers of the body and blood of your Son". In 1662 "most blessed" emphasises the gift of which we are about to partake: its significance, its grace, indeed, its divinity. The absence of the phrase in contemporary rites further impoverishes our understanding of sacramental feeding.
The 1662 post-communion prayers similarly offer much richer accounts of our participation. This is obviously true of the second, the Prayer of Thanksgiving, as it unfolds the hope of our participation in Christ, renewed in the Sacrament:
who have duly received these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ; and dost assure us thereby of thy favour and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs through hope of thy everlasting kingdom, by the merits of the most precious death and passion of thy dear Son.
It is also true, however, of the Prayer of Oblation. Even though it does not explicitly refer to the Lord's Body and Blood, it does set before us a more compelling account of the gift of Holy Communion than is found in the post-communions of most contemporary rites:
humbly beseeching thee, that all we, who are partakers of this holy Communion, may be fulfilled with thy grace and heavenly benediction.
Fulfilled. Grace. Heavenly benediction. Such references to the abundance of the inward and spiritual grace bestowed in the Sacrament contrast sharply with the minimalism of "we thank you for feeding us with the body and blood of your Son Jesus Christ".
This minimalism is also often reflected in the words of administration in contemporary rites. The usual 'The Body/Blood of Christ' or 'The Body/Blood of Christ keep you in eternal life' fail to make explicit the sacramental reality: we feed on the Crucified Lord in the Sacrament. The minimalism of the contemporary words comes close to abstraction, whereas the 1662 words definitively root our sacramental feeding in the Lord's Passion:
The Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life: Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee, and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving.
The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life: Drink this in remembrance that Christ's Blood was shed for thee, and be thankful.
The classical Prayer Book Holy Communion texts, then, convey a significantly greater emphasis on our sacramental feeding on the Lord's Body and Blood than is found in contemporary rites. The absence of any reference to partaking of the Lord's Body and Blood before the Eucharistic Prayer, and the minimalist references which follow it, all too easily contribute to a sense of the Eucharist as mere 'table fellowship' rather than the "Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ's death" in which "the Body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten". This minimalism also reflects a weakness of the Parish Communion movement. As Ramsey highlighted in his famous essay, the movement had "'fellowship' as one of its keywords", but this itself was "very ambiguous":
The word "fellowship" ... means bringing [people] into participation in our Lord, in his broken body. It is by participation in him that we have our deepest togetherness with one another.
Contemporary rites echo this ambiguity by a failure to robustly and consistently proclaim that our fellowship is entirely dependent on our participation in the Lord's Body and Blood, of which the bread and wine in the Supper are the efficacious signs. 1662 (and related rites) leave us in no doubt about this, through a constant reiteration of the inward and spiritual grace given in the Sacrament.
Any judgement that contemporary rites have a 'higher' Eucharistic theology than 1662 (and related rites) is dependent upon valuing the shape of the Eucharistic rite over and above its content. And even this is highly suspect, relying on an ahistorical, idealized notion of what a Eucharistic Prayer should be, overlooking the deeply Augustinian (and, indeed, Thomist) characteristics of 1662. In this process, supposedly based on a 'high' understanding of the Sacrament, the very purpose of the Eucharist is lost:
he there corporally eateth the very bread, and drinketh the very wine; so spiritually he may feed of the very flesh and blood of Jesu Christ his Saviour and Redeemer (Cranmer, A Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ, V.XVIII);
Hearing the words of Cranmer and Hooker, we might then say that contemporary Anglicanism needs to recover a thoroughly Reformed understanding of the Eucharist in order to be more thoroughly Catholic. It is such a Reformed Catholicism, with its rich sacramental theology of a true feeding in the Supper, that is given liturgical expression in 1662 - an alternative to the thin gruel of 'table fellowship'.
I think 1979 BCP might also have a leg up on other contemporary rites as in prayer A it asks that we might be sanctified that we might "Faithfully receive this holy Sacrament..."
ReplyDeleteYes, a very fair point, 'faithfully' and 'holy' both being significant words, too often missing in other contemporary rites.
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