laudable Practice

It is Lammas Day, the first day of August. Here in Jeremy Taylor country we can see the beginnings of harvest. Bales abound in the fields, farmers are working late into the evening, the crops of mid-Summer have been gathered in. Lammas falls almost mid-way between Rogationtide and Harvest Thanksgiving. Our prayers for a good harvest were offered in the earliest days of Summer. After Summer has ended and we enter into Autumn, we will give thanks for the harvest. Now, in these last days of High Summer, we see the crops that have grown being gathered, the fields change in colour and texture.  Lammas marks the passing of the agricultural year, preparing us for Harvest Thanksgiving. And so Lammas Day also marks the passage of Summer. Soon I will again be reading the words of Wendell Berry: It is mid August. The year is changing.  The summer's young are grown and strong in flight.  Soon now it will be fall.  The frost will come. Before the month's end, berries will abound ...

Yesterday, 1st August, was Lammas Day, commemorated as a Black Letter Day in the 1662 Calendar.  That, of course, means that 1662 provides no liturgical provision for the day.  Despite this, however, there is much in the ordinary form of Mattins and Evensong to mark the day. The opening exhortation reminds us that it is right in public prayer "to ask those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul": petition for a good harvest is, therefore, right and meet.  At Mattins, the Venite's praise for the God in whose "hands are all the corners of the earth ... and his hands prepared the dry land", roots our praise on Lammas in the truth which also affirm in the Apostles' Creed: "Maker of heaven and earth". Lammas being the first day of August, the Psalter begins again.  Psalm 1 evokes rich natural imagery, indicating the spiritual significance of harvest (after the example of the Lord's teaching, for "the kingdom ...