'Yet must not come without due and just preparations': Reading Taylor's 'The Worthy Communicant' in Lent
Taylor's work is, to say the least, difficult to place within current Anglican practice, shaped by the Parish Communion Movement, with the expectation that weekly reception will be the norm. Added to this, not only is the penitential aspect of contemporary eucharistic liturgies much inferior to that in Prayer Book tradition, any sense of an expectation of preparation to partake of the Sacrament is almost entirely absent from Anglican piety (as in most other liturgical and sacramental traditions).
This is what Michael Ramsey warned Anglicans about in his 1956 essay 'The Parish Communion', noting that that were "weaknesses which haunt the wide and rapid growth of the 'Parish Communion' in our parishes". Referring to a pastoral encounter in which a parishioner expressed unease about receiving Holy Communion, Ramsey stated:
I could not help but think that the man's words represented something which has an honourable place in Christian history. I suggest that we should read and ponder the long Exhortation in the Communion service, which brings home how the reception of Communion is dreadful as well as precious, and reminds us of the need for confession of sin and the possibility of the "benefit of absolution".
The Worthy Communicant embodies that "honourable" piety to which Ramsey referred. In the introduction to the work, Taylor speaks of the Eucharist in a manner that is almost impossible to imagine being said in our current context:
yet this great mysterious Feast, and magazine of Grace and glorious mercies, is for those only that are worthy; for such only who by their cooperation with the Grace of God, are fellow-workers with God in the laboratories of salvation.
It is this, however, that we hear as we approach the Sacrament in the Prayer Book tradition:
Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbours, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways: Draw near with faith, and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort ...
In this opening extract from The Worthy Communicant, Taylor emphasises that the self-examination and preparation assumed by the Prayer Book is not an obstacle to the faithful partaking of the holy Sacrament. It is, rather, a means to bring us to the Sacrament in faith and love. Those who prepare themselves are to communicate. This is why preparation is the one duty imposed upon us by the Scriptures as we approach the Mysteries:
In all the Scriptures of the New Testament, there are no words of particular duty relating to the blessed sacrament, and expressing the manner of our address to the mysteries, but those few words of St. Paul, "Let a man examine himself; and so let him eat." The apostle expresses one duty, and intimates another. The duty of preparation is expressed; but because this is a relative duty, and is not for itself, but for something beyond, he implies the other to be the great duty, to which this preparation does but minister. 1. A man must examine himself. 2. And a man must eat. A man must not eat of these mysteries, till he be examined; for that were dangerous, and may prove fatal: but when a man is examined, he must eat; for else that examination were to no purpose ...
The sense then is this: let a man examine and prove himself, whether he be fit to come to the holy communion, and so let him eat; not so, if, upon examination, he be found unfit: but because it is intended he should come, and yet must not come without due and just preparations, let him who comes to the holy communion, be sure that he worthily prepare himself.
As to what Taylor's exhortation means for frequent reception of Holy Communion, we understand from his controversial work Unum Necessarium. Here he noted the debate in French Catholicism between Arnauld the Jansenist and the Jesuit theologian Denis Pétau (Petavius). Arnauld had published in 1643 his De la fréquente communion, challenging the practice of frequent reception urged by Jesuits. Taylor makes explicit his support for Arnauld:
Mounsieur Arnauld of the Sorbon hath appeared publickly in reproof of a frequent and easie Communion, without the just and long preparations of Repentance, and its proper exercises and Ministery. Petavius the Jesuit hath oppos'd him ... Mounsieur Arnauld hath the clearest advantage in the pretensions of Antiquity and the Arguments of Truth.
'A frequent and easy Communion': it is difficult to think of a better description of the sacramental practice and spirituality of Parish Communion. This alone should make us welcome Taylor's The Worthy Communicant, not least in light of the counsel given by Ramsey at the outset of the Parish Communion Movement. In the aftermath of the triumph of the Parish Communion, it is good to listen to an alternative sacramental practice and piety, to consider both what of value may have been lost, and what could be restored in order to rebalance the prevailing mode of eucharistic spirituality in contemporary Anglicanism.
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