laudable Practice

Beholding the Christ Child in the Proto-Martyr At the early Eucharist on Saint Stephen's Day, 2021 Acts 7:51-60 Yesterday we were gazing upon the Christ Child in the Manger and hearing the song of the angels. Today, Saint Stephen’s Day, our readings set before us something that seems dramatically different - the death of the first Christian martyr.  It seems all very unseasonable, unfestive.   Why can we not continue at the Manger, gazing upon the Christ Child?  Why, on the very day after Christmas Day, are we brought to an event decades later? Not to a birth, but to a death. Not to the warmth of the Manger and a Mother’s love, but to the cruelty of a mob and a bitter death. Does the Church’s decision to commemorate Saint Stephen the Martyr on 26th December not distract us from the celebration of the Lord’s Nativity? Would Saint Stephen’s Day not best be placed at some other, more appropriate time of the year? Then we could continue at the Manger, gazing upon the Chr...

Manger, Glory, Incarnation: the Grand Miracle At the Dawn Eucharist of Christmas Day, 2021 Luke 2:8-20  In the quietness of this Christmas morning, our Gospel reading, from Saint Luke’s account of the Nativity of Our Lord, presents us with stark contrasts. On the one hand there is glory, splendour, majesty.  Angels, the glory of the Lord shining, the heavenly host singing ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven’.   We hear too of the royal titles of the Christ Child, born in the city of David, Israel’s greatest king; described as ‘anointed’ - for that is what ‘Messiah’ means - like the mighty kings of old; hailed as ‘Saviour’, a title claimed by the Roman emperors, reflecting their authority and the order they upheld. On the other hand, however, there is poverty, vulnerability, humility.  The news of the birth of the Christ Child is announced to shepherds: hard-working labourers, earthy, carrying the distinct odour of their labour, far removed from the comforts and ...

From  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - a sermon for Christmas Day, words to prepare us for the joy of celebrating the Lord's Nativity: We are now met, according to the solemn purport of this day, to celebrate the benefits which are derived to us from our Redeemer's coming to open and fulfil the great treaty of salvation, for the succour and recovery of a fallen race. We are assembled now in order to take nearer views, and to encourage larger recollections, of the several circumstances which accompanied our Lord's Nativity, and which marked the first period of the happy season of redemption ... To us, then, it belongs to raise many a pious meditation on those lines of the sacred narrative, to draw many a lesson from each memorable sentence of those hallowed pages, which have the seal of the divine authority impressed upon them in such living characters, and which we...

"The more widely used form."  That is the description in   Common Worship: Time and Seasons  of the usage by which the Advent antiphons begin on the 17th December rather than the 16th, as in the Kalendar of the BCP 1662. Now, of course, the statement is factual - the 17th is "the more widely used form", normative in the Latin rite.  The 16th was the use of Sarum, an oddity in a local rite.  But there is something richer here than liturgical antiquarianism. The 16th allowed for an addition to the Advent antiphons, on the 23rd: O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be? For neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after. Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me? The thing which ye behold is a divine mystery. Here the Church's Advent prayer rejoices in the fulfilment of the yearnings expressed from  O Sapientia .  The fulfilment comes not in abstractions, but in the swollen belly of the Maiden.   There , the Church's Advent pray...

From Protestants' Ordination Defended - a response to a Roman Catholic critique of Anglican orders - by Bramhall, then Bishop of Derry, addressing the allegation that Anglican formularies had removed private confession and the priestly authority to absolve sins: Neither have the Protestants "pared away" all manner of mariner of shrift, or confession and absolution. I have shewed before in this answer five several ways [he had previously stated that the priestly authority to remit sins was found in administering Baptism, the Eucharist, prayer, preaching, and absolution], whereby the Protestants hold, that their Presbyters put away sins. Nay, they condemn not private confession, and absolution itself, as an ecclesiastical policy, to make men more wary how they offend; so as it might be left free, without tyrannical imposition. No better physic for a full stomach than a vomit. Bodily sores do sometimes compel a man to put off natural shamefacedness, and to offer his less co...

Having considered in previous posts how the unchanging texts of the penitential rite and the responses in the Cranmerian Office provide a rich source of Advent self-examination and prayer, what of the canticles?  Again, the contrast with contemporary versions of the Office is stark: one unchanging invitatory at Mattins, the very limited choice of either Te Deum or Benedicite with the Benedictus at Mattins, and a usual, long-standing practice of the unchanging Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis at Evensong.   This 'lack' of 'choice', however, does not restrict the Church's praise during Advent.  Again, the very fact that we have unchanging texts in the Cranmerian Office is an invitation to wade deeper, as we already know - from daily praying throughout the year - their words and structure, rather than attempting to identify meaning in new texts.   How, then, can the unchanging texts of the canticles in the Cranmerian Office shape and enrich the Church's praise d...

From  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - a sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, setting before us the example and teaching of St John the Baptist as a pattern for Christian repentance: Let it not be thought, then, that the well chosen season of retirement, of self-examination, of prayer, and abstinence as occasion may require, or necessity permit, with every token of sincere and heartfelt sorrow for things done amiss, or things left undone, for faults and follies deplored perhaps, but yet not wholly cured, or for misdeeds and neglects which have succeeded of some other kind; let us not think that these things are no longer: useful or expedient; that there is no garb of humiliation in the Christian household. They must have smaller experience in the way that leads to that safe and honoured path; which goes forward to the realms of perfect freedom, who can make light of the pat...

Bramhall, then Archbishop of Armagh, in a sermon - 'The Right Way to Safety after Shipwreck' - before the Irish House of Commons, June 1661, recommending private confession and absolution: Confession, with its requisites, contrition and amendment of life ... do make a complete repentance: which some Fathers style a "second table after shipwreck", others a "Baptism of pains and tears" ... Thrice happy are they, which use this plank aright, to bring them through the raging billows of this sinful world to the haven of eternal bliss. Confession is as ancient as our first parents, whom God Himself did call to the performance of this duty. It was  practised among the Israelites, by Divine precept; by those  Jews that repaired to the Baptism of John; by those Ephesian converts; prescribed by St. James, "Confess one  to another, and pray one for another" ... There is no better physic for a full stomach, than a vomit; nor for a soul replete with sin, than c...

If the penitential rite in the Cranmerian Office is shot through with eschatological references, what of the unchanging versicles and responses? Unlike, for example, Advent Morning and Evening Prayer in Common Worship, there is no seasonal provision for the versicles and responses. This does not mean, however, that the unchanging versicles and responses lack a seasonal characteristic.  As with penitence, the very fact that we are praying unchanging texts can draw us to recognise how they take on an Advent character.  This is particularly so with 'O God, make speed to save us; O Lord, make haste to help us'.  Rooted in the prayer of Israel and its experience of defeat and exile, echoing the Church's cry Maranatha and the petition of the great Advent antiphons,   and reflecting the cold, dark December landscape, it encapsulates the Advent hope. It is the very essence of Advent prayer. The Kyries after the Apostles' Creed give expression to another aspect of Advent....

In the time of Advent.  Grant, we most humbly beseech Thee, O heavenly Father, that with holy Simeon and Anna, and all Thy devout servants, who waited for the consolation of Israel, we may at this time so serve Thee with fasting and prayer, that by the celebration of the advent and birth of our blessed Redeemer, we may with them be filled with true joy and consolation, through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. The prayer for Advent Embertide in Cosin's 1626  A Collection of Private Devotions  is a glorious example of both Caroline piety and how the Prayer Book provision for Advent could be complemented by additional themes. Cosin's evocative reference to "holy Simeon and Anna ... who waited for the consolation of Israel" provides something of an echo of the ancient Advent antiphons, and like them sees Israel's waiting and longing over long centuries as a type of the Church's waiting in Advent.  Evoking this powerfully imaginative image, which has long been...

From  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - a sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent.  Here is another example of pre-1833 High Church reverence for the season of Advent (reminding us that the liturgical and catechetical significance of the calendar was not a product of the Movement of 1833), in addition to echoing an ancient pattern in Christian preaching by drawing similarities between the Lord's first and second Advent. The present season of the year, when we are invited to look forward to the days which are appointed for commemorating the first advent of our Lord, incline us very naturally to turn back the view to those times, of which the Evangelist, in the text [Luke 2:25], makes mention, as the scene of that portion of his narrative. We are led, then, to regard the seasons when good men stood in expectation of their Redeemer's coming to fulfil all that the Prophets h...

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition.  A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics".  Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics.  What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition.  Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

Mindful of the traditional Advent themes of the Four Last Things, it was appropriate that Timothy Stanley's recent interview with Rowan Williams addressed the matter of our deathbed.  In the course of the interview Stanley said, "I would want the Last Rites when I’m dying, and if the hospital sent for the local Anglican cleric, I might not get it, because not every Anglican does it". And, Stanley quite rightly protests, "on my death bed, I would want to know what I’m going to get".   Stanley's critique is not entirely unfair.  There are Anglican clergy - let's call them the neo-Puritans - who think that extemporary prayer and a Bible reading of their choice will suffice at the deathbed. That, however, is weak, pale stuff.  And certainly not the Real Thing. For that we turn to the Book of Common Prayer : Here shall the sick person be moved to make a special confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter. After which co...

From  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - a sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent, evoking Israel's waiting over the generations of the Old Covenant as a type of the Church's Advent hope: With many, in all times, the special hope of promised blessings treasured in the heart, became a solid ground of consolation amidst the trials and the sorrows of their earthly pilgrimage: it enlightened all the patriarchal ages: it was the theme of expectation in their families, soothing the toils of their simple occupations and laborious lives: its doctrines were further opened by the Prophets, with whom the teaching of the Spirit had a larger scope; and they who, in any age or country, were careful to seek God and to keep his ways; they who shall taste the mercy of the Lord as sincere and righteous persons in their measure and proportion, shall find that such was the source of every n...

... though we have rebelled against him: neither have we obeyed the voice of the Lord our God - Sentences, Daniel 9:9-10. But, unlike us, the Daughter of Sion has heard and kept the word of God. As Augustine says, "Mary, too, is blessed, because she heard the word of God and kept it. She kept truth safe in her mind even better than she kept flesh safe in her womb. Christ is truth, Christ is flesh; Christ as truth was in Mary's mind, Christ as flesh in Mary's womb". And there is no health in u s - General Confession. We rightly hesitate to say this of the Blessed Virgin: a respectful reserve and reticence is called for.  Hooker declares regarding her sanctity and the presence of sin, "we say with St. Augustine, for the honour’s sake which we owe to our Lord and Saviour Christ, we are not willing, in this cause, to move any question of his mother". ... that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure, and holy - Absolution. We pray that we may be pure and h...

One of the most routine critiques of the Cranmerian Office (I am using this term to describe the 1662 daily office and the family of 1662-like variants of the daily office) is that it lacks seasonal content.  At one level, of course, the critique is accurate: there are no antiphons, no seasonal canticles, no responsories to reflect the liturgical seasons. That said, the scripture readings and the collects do provide a meaningful seasonal focus.  To give an obvious but significant example, most lectionaries associated with the Cranmerian Office follow the ancient pattern of reading Isaiah during Advent.  Rooting our seasonal observance in reading Scripture with the Church is, surely, the single most meaningful way of ensuring that our praying of the Daily Office both reflects and shapes the seasons. Alongside this there is another way in which the Cranmerian Office has seasonal content.  That is, in identifying those consistent (and often unchanging) aspects of the of...

Why Advent needs the strange figure of John At the early Eucharist on the Second Sunday of Advent - 5.12.21 Luke 3:1-6 (Year C) It is not just a list of the great and good, a bit of historical background, that we hear Luke recording at the beginning of today’s Gospel reading.  No, this list would have produced awe, reverence, fear across the ancient world.  The Emperor Tiberius; Pontius Pilate the Roman governor; Herod, Philip, Lysanias, governing on behalf of the Romans; Annas and Caiaphas, the high priestly family in Jerusalem, permitted to rule by the Romans. Here was a dominant combination of political, military, economic, and religious power: claiming the right, by divine sanction, to determine the life and the fate of millions.  Surely it was to these names that one would look to know heavenly meaning and divine purpose: to their overwhelming power, their exalted claims, their laws and proclamations. Luke, abruptly, suddenly, definitively, says ‘no’ to this. Why? Be...

Last week an excellent liturgist and theologian in the Roman Catholic tradition tweeted this: I never understand why folks insist that the Eucharist is meant for eating and not for adoring. Not because it's not meant for eating. It is. That's communion. But why can't the two go together? It's my grand gripe about much sacramental theology today. What immediately caught my attention was the question: "why can't the two go together?" A classically Anglican response would be to say 'Yes, communion and adoration must go together and cannot be separated'. A key text from Augustine appears in the writings of Andrewes, Sparrow, and Taylor on the subject.  In his homily on Psalm 98 , Augustine said: He ... gave that very flesh to us to eat for our salvation; and no one eats that flesh, unless he has first worshipped. For Sparrow , the expression of such adoration of Christ as we partake of Him in the holy Sacrament is that we kneel to receive: It is to ...

On laudable Practice we have been journeying with the early and mid-19th century Anglican parson Richard Warner since July of this year.  Our journey now concludes with words from his final sermon in   The Sermon on the mount; in five discourses  (1840), five sermons preached "on several successive Sunday afternoons".  What has struck me about Warner is how his sermons capture both the pastoral wisdom of Anglicanism and the reasonable (i.e. non-Weird) nature of its experience of the Christian life. It is this which encourages and enables a living out of Christian faith amidst our ordinary, natural duties and responsibilities - surely a pastoral, evangelistic, and catechetical imperative for the contemporary Church in a context in which religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is routinely condemned as 'A Bad Thing'.  In this final extract, Warner addresses the Lord's exhortation " Take therefore no thought for the morrow": The divine discour...

From A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - a sermon for Advent Sunday, indicating how meaningful observance of the Advent season and belief in the Lord's final advent can find expression in the ordinariness of "a moderate pursuit, a prudent husbandry, and cautious use of present things" characteristic of Anglican piety. Let such be our reflections in the days of Advent. Above all, let the remembrance of our blessed Lord's first coming and the prospect of his final visitation, be witnessed by us in the frame and disposition of our lives, and in the tenor of our conduct: let it be testified by a moderate pursuit, a prudent husbandry, and cautious use of present things; by a willingness to leave them in the prospect of a better hope; by a great contempt for every vicious course of life, by fortitude and resignation under all the trials and vicissitudes which this wor...

On this St Andrew's Day - and as an alternative to the Columba Declaration - laudable Practice proposes a High Church appreciation of the historic vocation, identity, and witness of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Apostolic order Maintaining the episcopal succession in Scotland, Scottish Episcopalianism bore witness to this mark of catholicity and apostolicity being a fundamental commitment of Anglicanism: "to the intent that these Orders may be continued, and reverently used and esteemed". In his  A Guide to the Church (1804), Charles Daubeny (Archdeacon of Salisbury, 1804-27) pointed to the Scottish Episcopalians as one of the national expressions of the Church Catholic, marked by "bishops coming in succession from the time of the Apostles to the present day": Every Christian society, possessing the characteristic marks of the church of Christ, I consider to be a separate branch of the catholic or universal visible church upon earth. The church of England, t...