'He that instituted this holy ordinance was likewise the Author of the prayer': on the Lord's Prayer at the opening of the 1662 Holy Communion
By contrast, John Shepherd - in his 'The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion' in A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801) - demonstrates how this placing of the Lord's Prayer at the outset of the Communion Office is both fitting and deeply resonant:
We begin this office with the Lord's Prayer; which, as many of the Fathers testify, the primitive Church always used in the celebration of the Eucharist. He that instituted this holy ordinance was likewise the Author of the prayer; and the most suitable introduction to the Lord's Supper must be the prayer which the Lord himself has taught us.
The Lord's Prayer, said at the Lord's Table, for the Lord's Supper. It is entirely appropriate that we begin our approach to the Lord's Supper with the dominical prayer: what other prayer, after all, could be more appropriate than that given by Our Lord with the words "After this manner therefore pray ye"? The fact that the account of the giving of the Lord's Prayer in the Gospel according to Saint Luke is followed by the Lord's teaching on a child asking a father for food, further emphasises how fitting it is for us to begin our approach to the Lord's Table with the Lord's Prayer:
If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?
This is echoed by Shepherd's reflection on the 'daily bread' petition in the Lord's Prayer:
Jerome affirms, that Christ taught this prayer to his Apostles that it might be said at the Communion. He, and the Fathers in general, consider the petition, "Give us this day our daily bread," as referring more especially to the bread of life, the body of Christ, which they received daily at the Lord's table.
We approach the Lord's Table in order to be spiritually fed and we so begin our approach to the holy Sacrament with the prayer in which Our Lord taught us to say 'give us this day our daily bread'. This beginning then flows throughout the entire rite. We hear it again in the Prayer of Humble Access: "Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood". It is heard, too, in the words of administration: "Take and eat this ... and feed on him in thy heart by faith with thanksgiving". When the petition is repeated in the Lord's Prayer after reception of Holy Communion, we are expressing our continued dependence on this spiritual food. And with the Prayer of Thanksgiving, we end as we began: "Almighty and everliving God, we most heartily thank thee, for that thou dost vouchsafe to feed us, who have duly received these holy mysteries".
That the Lord's Prayer is the first prayer upon our lips in the Holy Communion is itself, therefore, testimony to profound sacramental truth: we are called to partake of the holy Sacrament, not look upon it; it is in "receiving thy creatures of bread and wine" that we partake of our daily bread, the One given for the life of the world.
There is a rich theology and piety in the Lord's Prayer at the beginning of the Holy Communion. Contemporary Anglican eucharistic rites are the poorer for rejecting it. It is, however, another reason to cherish Cranmerian rites and to ensure that, at least in some way, they continue to be a living part of the Anglican liturgical and sacramental life.
Comments
Post a Comment