Mattins, Evensong, and Richard Hooker's architecture of participation

Paul Anthony Dominiak's Richard Hooker: The Architecture of Participation (2020) is, quite simply, superb.  One significant feature of the work is the way in which it reveals Hooker's defence in Book V of the Prayer Book liturgy and ceremonies as flowing from and dependent upon the rich participatory vision he sets out in Books I-IV:

Book Five aims to show that the Elizabethan Prayer Book engenders 'true religion' and cultivates the Philonic virtue of 'godliness', with benefits for the here and now in political terms of order, but also preparing believers for their final union with God (p.62);

Hooker argues that the established liturgy affords 'mutuall conference and as it were commerce to be had betwene God and us', creatively crafting appropriate 'holie desires' which lead believers both to know and also to love God in sacramental union with Christ (p.127).

What has particularly struck me is that while Baptism and Eucharist are, as Dominiak points out, key to the liturgical embodiment of the participatory vision, there are also significant references in Hooker which point to a participatory understanding of Mattins and Evensong.

For example, Hooker's emphasis that "God's nature is also co-identical with the 'good'", affirming "the integral goodness of all creation", with "good" understood "in terms of participatory being" is seen particularly in his statement that "there can be no goodness desired which proceedeth not from God himself" (I.5.2).  It is, of course, difficult to read this without thinking of the Second Collect at Evening Prayer:

O God, from whom all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed.

We might suggest that it is somewhat unlikely that Hooker was not aware of his words echoing those of this collect. Likewise, there also be the case that Hooker is reflecting words from the Second Collect, for Peace, at Mattins:

O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord.

In other words, these unchanging prayers at Mattins and Evensong both give expression to the participatory vision. This is even more evident when we consider that The Grace - added to the conclusion of Morning and Evening Prayer in 1662 - is a key text in Hooker's exposition in Book V of "The union or participation which is between Christ and the Church of Christ in this present world".  This, as Dominiak notes, is Hooker's "only real definition of participation", which "root the notion in the Trinity and our share in divine life through Christ":

For this cause the Apostle wisheth to the Church of Corinth the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the holy Ghost.  Which three St Peter comprehendeth in one, the 'participation of divine nature' (V.56.7).

Regarding 2 Peter 1:4, the classic text of participatory theologies, as a summary of The Grace provides a compelling reading of this conclusion to Prayer Book daily Mattins and Evensong. We end our reading of Scripture, our praise and prayers, with a petition that they would bear fruit in a deepened participation in the divine nature.

As such, and while acknowledging that Dominiak does not suggest this, we could invoke Hooker to point to the rich theology underpinning Mattins and Evensong, and how these offices function not merely as pragmatic vehicles for prayer and praise, but as a means of sustaining us in and drawing us deeper into "The union or participation which is between Christ and the Church of Christ in this present world".