We look back with puzzlement at the days when - in both Western and Eastern Churches, well into the twentieth century - relatively few people actually took Communion regularly. They went to church to gaze at the drama of God's work in redemption and to adore and give thanks.
This often represented a distorted model of the Eucharist, one that went all too comfortably with a pattern of clerical domination and privilege. Yet, to speak personally for a moment, I have found that the experience of concentrating on 'spiritual communion'; of quieting myself down to focus on the great gift of God in Jesus, absolutely present in this act, these things; of doing all this in the quiet of home, in a moment of physical stillness and silence - all this brings home to me the truth that our common life, in and out of church, depends simply on what has been done for us, and in response we can only gaze and adore and give thanks.
This, he suggests, might allow us "to recognize more gladly and wonderingly the sheer thereness of the loving act of God reconciling the world to himself". As such, it also allows us to glimpse the coherence in past practices which often face the (to slightly modify the famous phrase of Marxist historian E.P. Thompson) enormous condescension of ecclesial posterity:
We shall have learned a bit about those medieval forebears of ours were celebrating in their great Corpus Christi festivities.
This reflection, however, might also make us think more carefully about another practice by another set of forebears: our Anglican forebears, for whom Sunday Mattins was the most frequent liturgy. In psalm, canticle, and creed, in the proclamation of Scripture and then its exposition in the sermon, they "went to church to gaze at the drama of God's work in redemption and to adore and give thanks". The fact that this was done in and through the very ordinary liturgy of Mattins, rather than the spiritually more intense and demanding experience of the Eucharist, could bring "home ... the truth that our common life, in and out of church, depends simply on what has been done for us":
to render thanks for the great benefits that we have received at his hands, to set forth his most worthy praise, to hear his most holy Word, and to ask those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul.
We might also note that Mattins provided a means of 'spiritual communion', setting before us the food of Scripture. Angela Tilby has noted that Cranmer's famous collect for Advent II, with its petition that we may "inwardly digest" the Scriptures, is declaring of Holy Scripture, "I receive it as I receive the Sacrament". This also brings to mind the conclusion of the homily 'A Fruitful Exhortation to the Reading of Holy Scripture':
let us ruminate, and, as it were, chew the cud, that we may have the sweet juice, spiritual effect, marrow, honey, kernel, taste, comfort, and consolation of them.
A true feeding can occur at Mattins, as we partake of the Scriptures. Our "physical stillness and silence" as the Scriptures are being read likewise emphasizes the givenness of our salvation, an echo of our stillness and silence as we kneel to receive the Holy Sacrament.
Candles in the Dark is a superb little book, full of wisdom (as we might expect) for a time of pandemic. The context of the pandemic, not least the way in which it has challenged assumptions and practices regarding Parish Communion as the normative liturgy, should lead us to reconsider past liturgical practices, too easily and too quickly disregarded in the mid-twentieth century. For Anglicans, this should include thinking again about the value and strengths of Mattins as a main Sunday liturgy, about how it can encourage and sustain that 'spiritual communion' which Rowan Williams has movingly described, nourishing us with the food of the Scriptures, and encouraging thanksgiving and praise for the 'ordinary' gift of God's presence.
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