"All the whole Realm": The Prayer Book during a time of national mourning and a King's accession
O Lord, save the King.
For the last time in my life, I prayed the petition 'O Lord, save the Queen' at Evensong on 8th September. Before Mattins on 9th September, following the example of Anglican clergy in these Islands over centuries at the beginning of a new reign, I carefully wrote into this petition 'the King', and changed the name of the Sovereign in the state prayers.
I was very aware that any Anglican and Episcopalian in the United Kingdom, and praying the daily offices according to the Book of Common Prayer, was doing the same thing. The new reign was beginning with our prayer for the King across "all the whole realm", a prayer that would be offered each day, morning and evening.
O Lord, save the King. The word has multiple meanings. Save the King in this time of grief, upholding and sustaining him. Save the King amidst the challenges of a new reign. Save the King from a disordered realm and from foolish, unwise counsellors. Save the King, bestowing blessing upon him and his reign that we may be peaceably, quietly, justly, wisely governed. Save the King eternally, that Your grace and mercies may bring him, at the last, to your everlasting kingdom.
The multiple meanings of the word are all rooted in God's being and action. As the King said in his address to the Accession Council, "And in carrying out the heavy task that has been laid upon me, and to which I now dedicate what remains to me of my life, I pray for the guidance and help of almighty God".
And especially thy servant Charles our King.
Roger Scruton described the Prayer for the Church Militant as "the clearest and most moving of all Anglican invocations". At Early Communion on Sunday 11th September I was particularly thankful for the richness of its intercession for the King and the realm. The petition that God would "save and defend ... thy servant Charles our King" gathers up the prayer offered daily at Mattins and Evensong, making it part of the Church's solemn offering at the Holy Table. Then there is the petition for the realm, that "all ... put in authority under" the King would uphold the peaceable and just order which it is the vocation of Christian monarchy to embody and hold before us.
What makes the Prayer for the Church Militant particularly powerful is the contrast with the intercessions in contemporary Eucharistic rites, especially when it comes to prayer for those who govern. These are almost always insipid and vague. The beginning of a new reign reminds us that we need more the substantive prayers for the King and the King's government found in the Prayer for the Church Militant.
That with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom.
The quiet, gentle confidence of the commemoration of the faithful departed in the Prayer for the Church Militant beautifully encapsulates why the faithful departed do not require our urgent, pressing intercessions. Her late Majesty the Queen, "departed this life in thy faith and fear", now partakes "of thy heavenly kingdom".
Thus our prayerful commendation of her is in these quiet, gentle words of the Prayer Book. Not urgent. Not fearful. Not demanding. Rather, "in sure and certain hope", that the late Queen now gazes upon the fullness of the vision glorious, in the celestial city.
As the Archbishop of Armagh said in his sermon at the Service of Reflection, attended by the King, in Belfast Cathedral on 13th September, using words from Pilgrim's Progress, when Pilgrim passed through death: "So he passed over, and the trumpets sounded for her on the other side". (The Archbishop's use of 'her' at this point was quite beautiful.)
And with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious Name.
It was these words which captured my heart and soul at Early Communion on 11th September. The late Queen is now one of "the company of heaven". With angels and archangels. With apostles, martyrs, and prophets. With Edward the Confessor and Gloriana. The words from Jeremy Taylor, which I had posted on this blog to mark the Queen's death, were very much on my mind:
we no more envy to Hungary the great name of St. Elizabeth, to Scotland the glorious memory of St. Margaret, to France the triumph of the piety of St. Genevieve, nor St. Katharine to Italy, since in your royal person we have so great an example of our own, one of the family of saints.
This was echoed in the daily office. Rather than using Te Deum at Mattins, throughout the period of national mourning I turned to Benedicite. There too there is a deeply evocative expression of the Communion of Saints: "O ye Spirits and Souls of the Righteous, bless ye the Lord". Day by day, then, a solemn joy was known during the time of national mourning, for the late Queen now rests with the spirits and souls of the righteous, in the fulfilment of her earthly journey, knowing as she is known.
Endue him plenteously with heavenly gifts.
As Sebastian Milbank said during the days of national mourning, with massive crowds gathering in Edinburgh and London to pay their respects to the late Queen; with solemn liturgies offered in cathedrals, and televised live in a secular culture; with the ancient acclamation 'God save the King' shouted by 21st century crowds, the monarchy was marking "the return to the sacred":
Whether those now mourning the Queen would articulate it in these terms, they share a powerful intuition that this was a life marked by destiny, anointed to a higher purpose, robed in all the terrible and absurd glory of ages gone by.
The bland, impoverished, technocratic references to the monarch in contemporary liturgies were, therefore, exposed as thin gruel, utterly incapable of reflecting the sacral aspects of monarchy which a secular culture - unlike contemporary liturgies - recognised.
There was a need for a prayer which embodied the sacral vocation of the monarch. There was, in other words, a need for 'A Prayer for the King's Majesty'. Its petition "endue him plenteously with heavenly gifts" echoes the prayer offered by the bishop before the laying on of hands at Confirmation:
Strengthen them, we beseech thee, O Lord, with the Holy Ghost the Comforter, and daily increase in them thy manifold gifts of grace; the spirit of wisdom and understanding; the spirit of counsel and ghostly strength; the spirit of knowledge and true godliness; and fill them, O Lord, with the spirit of thy holy fear.
This points to the foundation of the sacral, iconic quality of the monarchy: the vocation of Christian monarchy rooted in the Sacrament of Baptism and the Rite of Confirmation, in the reconciling grace of God in Christ, as a sign of how the realm should be rightly, justly, and peaceably ordered. It is this which the late Queen embodied; it is this which moved the "powerful intuition" among those who stood for 10 hours to pay their respects to her as she lay in state; and it is this, however inchoately, which moved the shouts of 'God save the King'. These days of national mourning revealed the need for 'A Prayer for the King's Majesty', showing its sacral understanding of monarchy as having a popular resonance far in excess of the banal references to the monarch in contemporary liturgies.
Send down upon our Bishops and Clergy*, and all People committed to their charge, the healthful Spirit of thy grace.
(*The Church of Ireland BCP 1926 slightly alters the 1662 form, with 'Curates' becoming 'Clergy'.)
The televised services of reflection in St. Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh, Belfast Cathedral, and Llandaff Cathedral, with the funeral of the late Queen in Westminster Abbey and her committal in St. George's, Windsor, placed the churches of this realm at the heart of the public square in a dramatic manner. A secular society was reminded of the indubitably Christian character of our monarchy and how our national story is inextricably bound up with the churches and the Christian tradition. No less significantly, with a society mourning the death of a beloved Queen and conscious of the historic weight of this event, there was also a reminder that no other institution or spiritual tradition comes at all close to the ability of the churches and the Christian tradition to provide a meaningful focus in such a time.
'A Prayer for the Clergy and People' at Mattins and Evensong was therefore appropriate - even necessary - during these days. Praying for the churches of this realm, that "the healthful Spirit" would enable a gracious, meaningful, hopeful witness, embracing both the cathedrals and royal peculiars mentioned above, but also the numerous ordinary parish churches throughout the realm and their services of remembrance, ministering to local communities in a time of national mourning, and clergy performing the historic duty of preaching at a monarch's death and the outset of a new reign. And praying too for those engaged in the ministry of music "In Quires and Places where they sing", mindful of the particular role of choral music in marking such a time and touching hearts and souls.
The Bidding Prayer in the 1604 Canons also came to mind:
Ye shall pray for Christ’s holy Catholick Church; that is, for the whole Congregation of Christian People dispersed throughout the whole World, and especially for the Churches of England, Scotland and Ireland.
The fact that the late Queen died in Scotland, ministered to by the Church of Scotland, that she lay in state in St. Giles' Cathedral, and that the King was received in Belfast's Church of Ireland Cathedral and the Cathedral of the Church in Wales in Llandaff, pointed to the historic national churches of this realm. Disestablishment in Ireland and Wales has not altered the fact that a history of establishment continues to profoundly shape how these churches minister to the community, how they relate to civic life, and how they have a particular responsibility to foster generous ecumenical relationships. Praying for these historic national churches was particularly appropriate as they lived out this vocation in the context of a time of national mourning.
(Regarding Scotland, how might 'A Prayer for the Clergy and People' be regarded as applying to a context in which the national church is presbyterian and Episcopalianism is a minority tradition? The prayer can be understood to embrace the Church of Scotland with its presbyterian polity for, as the Church of England - Church of Scotland Columba Declaration, echoing wider Anglican-Reformed dialogue, acknowledged, "personal, collegial and communal oversight (episkope) is embodied and exercised in our churches in a variety of forms". It also obviously embraces the Scottish Episcopal Church, which maintains the episcopal polity which shaped Scotland's national church for most of the 17th century, never mind previous centuries.)
A time of national mourning and the beginning of a new reign is a time for serious liturgy, rooted in and giving expression to a deep theology of the commonwealth. In other words, a time for the Book of Common Prayer.
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