laudable Practice

Some are put away, because the great excess and multitude of them hath so increased in these latter days, that the burden of them was intolerable; whereof Saint Augustine in his time complained, that they were grown to such a number that the estate of Christian people was in worse case concerning that matter, than were the Jews. And he counselled that such yoke and burden should be taken away, as time would serve quietly to do it. But what would Saint Augustine have said, if he had seen the Ceremonies of late days used among us; whereunto the multitude used in his time was not to be compared?  Quoting Cranmer's ' On Ceremonies ' during Holy Week might be seen as somewhat provocative. Anglican liturgies during this week, after all, now tend towards a multitude of ceremonies. My purpose in this post, however, is not to be provocative, nor to critique those who value the many various ceremonies of Holy Week (palm procession, foot washing and altar stripping, veneration of the ...

Amidst many Anglican posts during Holy Week and Easter on 'X' of Chrism Eucharists, foot-washings, altars of repose, and Easter Vigils, there was another current to be detected. Small in number, perhaps, but some posts on 'X' during this highpoint of the liturgical year might be regarded as suggesting that the ordinary, modest, reserved Anglican piety of the Old High tradition can continue to have resonance and appeal. We begin with the excellent Episcopalian Reformed theologian Fleming Rutledge on Good Friday: It is a minority POV these days, but for me today, a noonday service with powerful sermon and the "old" Prayer Book service with all the readings and prayers but no communion and no "veneration of the cross" seemed perfect to me. — Fleming Rutledge (@flemingrut) March 29, 2024 Good Friday is surely a day for such a stark, unfussy liturgy, not overwhelming the senses, a liturgy which stills us in heart, mind, and soul before the myster...

At the evening Eucharist of Maundy Thursday, 28.3.24 John 13:1-2, 30 “The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him.” As Jesus and the disciples gathered for the Last Supper, the darkness was gathering. It was, already, present in that upper room - and not only in the heart of Judas. At supper, Jesus would tell a boastful Peter, so sure of the strength of his faith, that he would, instead, betray Jesus that very night.  Jesus tells the other disciples that they will scatter, leaving him alone, abandoned. The writer of the Fourth Gospel powerfully captures this sense of gathering darkness in describing Judas leaving the upper room to undertake his act of betrayal: “He immediately went out. And it was night”. In our parish Lent book, Lent with the Beloved Disciple , Michael Marshall says, “turning his back on Jesus, the light of the world, [Judas] walked into the darkness” [1]. They all walked into the darkness: Judas, Peter, the other disci...

And there is no one grace in which Christ propounded himself imitable so signally as in this of meekness and humility; for the enforcing of which he undertook the condition of a servant, and a life of poverty, and a death of disgrace; and washed the feet of his disciples, and even of Judas himself, that his action might be turned into a sermon to preach this duty, and to make it as eternal as his own story. Jeremy Taylor The Great Exemplar , 'Considerations upon the Washing of the Disciples' Feet by Jesus, and his Sermon of Humility'. (The painting is Dirck van Baburen, 'Christ Washing the Apostles' Feet', c.1616.)

Praying the Litany on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, week by week, is a practical, enriching discipline which can gather up all of life in prayer before the Triune God. It has a blessed prosaic quality, week by week ensuring that we pray for those whom we might forget or, in some cases, prefer not to pray for.  In Holy Week, while the text (thankfully) does not change, particular petitions of the Litany take on an added emphasis, compelling our attention, drawing us more deeply into the mysteries of this week and unfolding their meaning. O God the Father of heaven ... O God the Son, Redeemer of the world ... O God the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son: have mercy upon us miserable sinners. We begin, as we do each time the Litany is prayed, by invoking the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity. From the outset, then, the Litany brings us to recognise the truth that the savings events of Holy Week are the work of the Holy Trinity, for us and for our salvation. He...

At the Parish Eucharist, Palm Sunday 2024 Mark 15:5 “But Jesus made no further reply, so that Pilate was amazed.” That was a long Gospel reading. Last Sunday’s Gospel reading for the feast of Saint Patrick had a mere 143 words. Today’s Gospel reading has 883 words, six times as long, a full chapter from Saint Mark’s Gospel [1]. And so Holy Week begins.  It is a week traditionally marked by much longer readings from the Scriptures.  We also have additional ceremonies that take place in our services in Holy Week. Today, as we have seen, we have had the blessing of palms. On Maundy Thursday evening, with our parish church darkened, the altar is solemnly stripped ahead of Good Friday. Each day is marked by services and special readings from the Scriptures. There are many deeply evocative hymns for Holy Week, which we are singing today and will be singing throughout this week. Across the Christian traditions, our services also tend to be longer. For example, the Good Friday liturgy...

And Buried. That he might suffer every thing of humane nature, he was by the care of his friends and disciples, by the leave of Pilate, taken from the Cross, and embalmed (as the manner of the Jews was to bury) and wrapped in linen, and buried in a new grave, hewn out of a Rock; and this was the last and lowest step of his humiliation. He descended into Hell. That is, He went down into the lower parts of the earth, or (as himself called it) into the heart of the earth; by which phrase the Scripture understands the state of separation, or of souls severed from their bodies: by this his descending to the land of darkness, where all things are forgotten, he sanctified the state of death and separation, that none of his servants might ever after fear the jaws of Death and Hell; whither he went, not to suffer torment (because he finished all that upon the Cross) but to triumph over the gates of hell, to verify his death, and the event of his sufferings, and to break the iron bars of those l...

Jesus was led out of the gates of Jerusalem, that he might become the sacrifice for persons without the pale, even for all the world. And the daughters of Jerusalem followed him with pious tears till they came to Calvary; a place difficult in the ascent, eminent and apt for the publication of shame, a bill of death and dead bones, polluted and impure; and there beheld him stripped naked who clothes the fields with flowers, and all the world with robes, and the whole globe with the canopy of heaven; and so dressed, that now every circumstance was a triumph. By his disgrace he trampled upon our pride; by his poverty and nakedness he triumphed over our covetousness and love of riches; and by his pains chastised the delicacies of our flesh, and broke in pieces the fetters of concupiscence. For as soon as Adam was clothed, he quitted Paradise; and Jesus was made naked, that he might bring us in again ... And now behold the priest and the sacrifice of all the world laid upon the altar of the...

The blessed sacrament is of great efficacy for the remission of sins; not that it hath any formal efficacy, or any inherent virtue to procure pardon, but that it is the ministry of the death of Christ, and the application of his blood, which blood was shed for the remission of sins, and is the great means of impetration, and, as the schools use to speak, is the meritorious cause of it. For there are but two ways of applying the death of Christ, an internal grace, and an external ministry. Faith is the inward applicatory; and if there be any outward at all, it must be the sacraments; and both of them are of remarkable virtue in this particular; for by baptism we are baptized into the death of Christ, and the Lord's Supper is an appointed enunciation and declaration of Christ's death, and it is a sacramental participation of it. Now to partake of it sacramentally, is by a sacrament to receive it; that is, so to apply it to us, as that can be applied; it brings it to our spirit; i...

He entered into the world with all the circumstances of poverty.  He had a star to illustrate his birth; but a stable for his bedchamber, and a manger for his cradle. The angels sang hymns when he was born: but he was cold and cried, uneasy and unprovided. He lived long in the trade of a carpenter; he, by whom God  made the world, had, in his first years, the business of a mean and ignoble trade. He did good wherever he went; and almost wherever he went was abused. He deserved heaven for his obedience, but found a cross in his way thither: and if ever any man had reason to expect fair usages from God, and to be dandled in the lap of ease, softness, and a prosperous fortune, he it was only that could deserve that, or any thing that can be good. But, after he had chosen to live a life of virtue, of poverty, and labour, he entered into a state of death; whose shame and trouble were great enough to pay for the sins of the whole world.   And I shall choose to express this...

For after that Christ had done all this by the direct actions of his Priestly Office, of sacrificing himself for us, he hath also done very many things for us which are also the fruits of his first love and prosecutions of our redemption.  I will not instance in the strange arts of mercy that our Lord uses to bring us to live holy lives;  things are so ordered, and so great a value set upon our souls since they are the images of God, and redeemed by the Blood of the holy Lamb, that the salvation of our souls is reckoned as a part of Christ's reward, a part of the glorification of his humanity. Every sinner that repents causes joy to Christ, and the joy is so great that it runs over and wets the fair brows and beauteous locks of Cherubims and Seraphims, and all the Angels have a part of that banquet; Then it is that our blessed Lord feels the fruits of his holy death, the acceptation of his holy sacrifice, the graciousness of his person, the return of his prayers. For all that ...

For as for me, I am not worthy to be called thy servant, much less am I worthy to be thy son, for I am the vilest of sinners and the worst of men, a lover of the things of the world, and a despiser of the things of God, greedy of sin, and impatient of reproof, desirous to seem holy, and negligent of being so, transported with interest, fool'd with presumption and false principles, disturb'd with anger, with a peevish and unmortified spirit, and disordered by a whole body of sin and death. Lord pardon all my sins for my sweetest Saviour's sake; thou who didst die for me, Holy Jesus, save me and deliver me, reserve not my sins to be punished in the day of wrath and eternal vengeance; but wash away my sins, and blot them out of thy remembrance, and purify my soul with the waters of repentance and the blood of the cross, that for what is past thy wrath may not come out against me, and for the time to come I may never provoke thee to anger or to jealousy. O just and dear God be ...

And now begins that great triumph in which the holy Jesus was pleased to exalt his office, and to abase his person. He rode, like a poor man, upon an ass, a beast of burden, and the lowest value; and yet it was not his own; and in that equipage he received the acclamations due to a mighty Prince, to the Son of the eternal King: telling us, that the smallness of fortune, and the rudeness of exterior habiliments, and a rough wall, are sometimes the outsides of a great glory; and that, when God means to glorify or do honour to a person, he need no help from secular advantages. He bides great riches in renunciation of the world, and makes great honour breathe forth from the clouds of humility, and victory to arise from yielding and the modesty of departing from our interest, and peace to be the reward of him that suffers all the hostilities of men and devils: for Jesus, in this great humility of his, gives a great probation that he was the Messias, and the King of Sion; because no othe...

Many thanks to the North American Anglican for publishing my essay ' Do we need the Easter Vigil? The liturgical and theological coherence of an Old High Easter Eve '.  The essay emerged, firstly, from my own experiences of the Vigil in smaller congregations and, secondly, from serving in parishes which do not observe the Vigil.   To be clear, this essay is not for those who observe the Vigil and who do it well.  It is for those of us who do not observe it, assuring us that the liturgical and theological coherence of a traditional Prayer Book Easter Eve has much to commend it. Below, the section of the essay which considers Ante-Communion on Easter Even. Alongside Mattins and Evensong, there is also the Ante-Communion of Easter Eve. Ante-Communion on this day has a particular resonance, gathering the Church before the Tomb, “the grave, and gate of death,” in the knowledge of the Resurrection. It orients us towards and assists in preparing us for the celebration of t...

From  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - an extract from a sermon for Good Friday.  Here Pott appears to make reference to the custom of not celebrating the holy Sacrament on Good Friday, regarding this as a means of emphasising the commemoration of the Lord's sacrifice, for "our humble sacrifices of praise" (a reference to the Prayer of Oblation) are "not in addition to the one great sacrifice". And thus we offer eucharistic praise and thanksgivings -  "our bounden and perpetual duty" (again, echoing the Prayer Book Holy Communion) -  on Easter Day,  amidst "the joy and triumph of our Redeemer's resurrection": In a word, the whole history of our Redeemer's passion, this day recited in our ears, sets forth, at how great a price that violation of the sacred law and righteous government of God, and that fatal injury done to the n...

Amongst the general principles highlighted by the 2019 report by the Faith and Order Commission of the Church of England, God's Unfailing Word: Theological and Practical Perspectives on Christian-Jewish Relations , is a recognition of the "gift" of the relationship between Christianity and Judaism: The Christian–Jewish relationship is a gift of God to the Church, which is to be received with care, respect and gratitude, so that we may learn more fully about God’s purposes for us and all the world. This gift has, however, often shamefully been obscured or denied in the Church's life and witness, as recognised by a further general principle: Christians have been guilty of promoting and fostering negative stereotypes of Jewish people that have contributed to grave suffering and injustice. They therefore have a duty to be alert to the continuation of such stereotyping and to resist it. In light of these principles,  God's Unfailing Word rightly questions the status o...

From  A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year , Volume I (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - an extract from a sermon for the Sixth Sunday in Lent, Palm Sunday.  Yet again, the sermon is significant testimony to the observance of the liturgical calendar in pre-1833 Anglicanism, and the presence of a lively liturgical spirituality. ... let us learn to make that use of the sacred narrative, which the present season more especially demands. Let us be careful to improve the opportunities for prayer, and to cultivate, as we shall be able, these hours, which are so particularly set apart for forming good resolutions, and for repairing that which may have been neglected. Let us not refuse the call to self-examination, to vigilance, to religious exercises of those kinds more especially, which are best fitted to that portion of our lives, when we are invited to consider the particulars of those sufferings which were undertaken for ou...

About to pass from this world to the Father, our Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ, since the time of his Passion was at hand, instituted the great and wonderful Sacrament of his Body and Blood, bestowing his Body as food and his Blood as drink. ... we nevertheless think suitable and worthy that, at least once a year ... a more solemn and honourable memory of this Sacrament be held. This is so because on Holy Thursday, the day on which the Lord himself instituted this Sacrament, the universal Church, occupied with the reconciliation of penitents, blessing the chrism, fulfilling the Commandments about the washing of the feet and many other such things, is not sufficiently free to celebrate so great a Sacrament. Urban IV's 1264 bull Transiturus , instituting the feast of Corpus Christi, opens with a recognition that the Sacrament of the Eucharist was instituted on Maundy Thursday, on the eve of the Lord's Passion.  Why, then, propose a feast significantly removed from Maundy Thursday...

From a 1670  Good Friday sermon  by Matthew Hole, at the cathedral church of Saint Peter, Exeter.  Hole provides an example of the piety which could surround Good Friday in Restoration Anglicanism: He wore a Crown of Thorns, only that we might wear a Crown of Gold; and those drops of blood which his enemies drew from him, are turn'd into so many pearls to bestud and adorn ours; that scarlet Robe which the Jews put on him, dy'd as it were in his own blood, serves to hide our shame, and to cover for us a multitude of sins; that bitter Cup, which he drunk off to the very dregs, is our Nectar, and a glorious Potion of immortality; the Vinegar and Gall, which made him to faint, is become our most reviving Cordial; his Cross, the cursed instrument of his death, is to us a Tree of life, which bears no other fruit than that of knowledge and eternal happiness; his agonies are our triumphs, and his bloody sweat the most Sovereign Balsam to cure our wounds; the Spear that pierc'd ou...

From a 1677 Good Friday sermon by Isaac Barrow (described by Spellman as Latitudinarian divine), indicative of how the Cross,  the mystery of the atonement, and our need of redemption was proclaimed in Restoration Anglicanism.  We might also note Barrow contrasting the Lord's Passion with the classical virtues of the Stoics, culturally influential in Restoration England.   Thus did our Blessed Saviour endure the cross, despising the shame; despising the shame, that is not simply disregarding it, or (with a Stoical haughtiness, with a Cynical immodesty, with a stupid carelessness) slighting it as no evil; but not eschewing it, or not rating it for so great an evil, that to decline it he would neglect the prosecution of his great and glorious designs. There is innate to man an aversation and abhorrency from disgraceful abuse, no less strong, then are the like antipathies to pain; whence cruel mockings and scourgings are coupled as ingredients of the sore persecutions...