laudable Practice

This series of short Lenten reflections on penitence in the Prayer Book concludes with a prayer from the Burial of the Dead in the Church of Ireland Book of Common Prayer 1926. Fittingly for these days of late Lent, the prayer is the collect for Easter Even, placed alongside a prayer for the bereaved after the reading from Scripture. It ensures that as we gather at the grave and confront our mortality, we hear the call to penitence. Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ ... In the Passion of the Lord, death has been swallowed up in victory. In the words of the Apostle: "For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection". In the face of death we are recalled to our baptism, the sign of our participation in the death and resurrection of Christ: living out this gift, in penitence and faith, we are conformed to the Lord's death that we might share...

... remembering always, that Baptism doth represent unto us our profession;  At the conclusion of the Prayer Book Baptism offices for infants and for adults, the priest who has administered the Sacrament is to exhort, in the former case, the godparents of the newly baptised, and in the latter case, the newly baptised. The words of the exhortation are rooted in the Apostle's words, "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?". And, after the manner of the Apostle, the declaration "that Baptism doth represent unto us our profession", calls us to recognise that the covenant of grace into which we are placed by Holy Baptism requires life-long penitence, that we may not forsake this grace: "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" which is, to follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and to be made ...

From Tillotson's sermon ' The Danger of Impenitence, Where the Gospel is Preach'd ', on the text Matthew 11:21-22: Sin will yet farther appear shameful, in that it is so great a Reproach to our Understandings and Reasons, and so foul a Blot upon our Prudence and Discretion. Omnis peccans aut ignorans est, aut incogitans , is a Saying, I think, of one of the School-men; (as one would guess by the Latin of it) Every Sinner is either an ignorant, or inconsiderate Person. Either Men do not understand what they do, when they commit Sin; or if they do know, they do not actually attend to, and consider what they know: Either they are habitually or actually ignorant of what they do: for Sin and Consideration cannot dwell together; 'tis so very unreasonable and absurd a thing, that it requires either gross Ignorance, or stupid Inadvertency, to make a Man capable of committing it. Whenever a Man sins, he must either be destitute of Reason, or must lay it aside or asleep for ...

That it may please thee to give us true repentance; to forgive us all our sins, negligences, and ignorances; and to endue us with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, to amend our lives according to thy holy Word, We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord. That the Litany draws to a close with this petition, that it is our final petition, reflects Our Lord's words: "So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants". Morning Prayer has been said. Prayer and praise has been offered. The holy Scriptures have been read. The Litany has been said, with its petitions for all sorts and conditions. And after all this, we remain "unprofitable servants", who must seek forgiveness for our sins and grace for amendment of life. That it may please thee to give us true repentance ... True repentance. Passing regret is not true repentance. In the words of Jeremy Taylor: "Repentance implies a deep sorrow, as the beginni...

Almighty and most merciful Father, We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, We have offended against thy holy laws ... The general Confession at Morning and Evening Prayer opens by invoking our "most merciful Father", placing us alongside the Prodigal - ashamed, hungry, journeying back from the far country, utterly reliant on the Father's grace in Christ: And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. 'Almighty' does not contradict this. In fact, it assures us that this love and mercy flows eternally from our "most merciful Father". In the words of Article XVII, this "is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort". We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep ... It is a phrase deeply rooted in the scriptures of the Old and New T...

In a series of letters published in 1825 , Henry Phillpotts - standing in the Old High tradition, a rector in the Diocese of Durham, soon to be appointed Dean of Chester and, in 1830, Bishop of Exeter - engaged with a Roman Catholic apologist, Charles Butler. The ninth letter addressed the matter of 'Confession and Absolution in the Church of Rome', including a 'Statement of Doctrine and Practice of the Church of England on these points'.  Phillpotts noted that Butler had mischievously and inaccurately used the two references to private confession in the Book of the Common Prayer. There was, Phillpotts declared with right and proper confidence, no comparison between Roman Catholic teaching on the Sacrament of Penance and the Prayer Book's pastoral provision in the Exhortation in the Holy Communion: You know that auricular confession is, with you, an essential part of a Sacrament, which, as you value your soul's salvation, you must perform. You also know, that, w...

On the Fridays of Lent, laudable Practice will be posting readings from perhaps one of the more controversial of Jeremy Taylor's Golden Grove sermons, ' The Invalidity of a Late, or Deathbed Repentance '. The accusation that Taylor was here exalting works over faith, and so undoing the Reformation, is significantly flawed. It implies that the Reformation did not take repentance seriously. By contrast, Luther famously proclaimed otherwise in the first of his 95 Theses : When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, "Repent", he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance. Likewise, Calvin: But lacking any semblance of reason is the madness of those who, that they may begin from repentance, prescribe to their new converts certain days during which they must practice penance, and when these at length are over, admit them into communion of the grace of the gospel. I am speaking of very many of the Anabaptists, especially those who marvelously exult in b...

Today begins a Lenten series of short reflections on penitential material in the Book of Common Prayer 1662/1926. We begin with the opening words of the Exhortation at Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer: Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us in sundry places to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness; and that we should not dissemble nor cloke them before the face of Almighty God our heavenly Father; but confess them with an humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart; to the end that we may obtain forgiveness of the same, by his infinite goodness and mercy. It is a gentle invitation. "Dearly beloved brethren" - not the Baptist's "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?". No, the Exhortation invites us to repentance gently, graciously, after the manner of Our Lord, in fulfillment of the Prophet's words: A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench. The same gentle invit...

The rubric introducing the general Confession at the Holy Communion states that both the minister and the communicants are to be "kneeling humbly upon their knees". As John Shepherd notes - in his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801) - this is one of only three places in the 1662 rite in which the priest is directed to kneel, emphasising the solemn and corporate nature of the general Confession:  During the whole time of the Priest's officiating at the Communion he is directed to kneel only thrice, at this Confession, at the Collect before the prayer for Consecration, and at the act of receiving. In every other part of the office he is to stand. This was the practice of the ancient Church, and the attitude was probably borrowed from the service of the temple, where the legal sacrifices were offered by the Priest standing. Between the legal and evangelical sacrifice there is the same correspondence that exists between the sha...

Then shall this general Confession be made, in the name of all those that are minded to receive the holy Communion, by one of the Ministers: both he and all the people kneeling humbly upon their knees and saying - BCP 1662 Holy Communion, rubric before the General Confession. In his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801), John Shepherd notes the significance of the above rubric produced by the 1662 revision: Till the Restoration the Rubric here stood thus: "Then shall this general confession be made in the name of all those that are minded to receive the Holy Communion, either by one of them, or else by one of the ministers, or by the priest himself, all kneeling humbly on their knees." Does it not hence appear that the confession was made by one only in the name of all? At the Savoy Conference, the Presbyterians requested, that it might be made by the minister only, but at the revision that followed, the Rubric was changed into i...

Dearly beloved in the Lord, ye that mind to come to the holy Communion of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ ... The now unfortunately rarely used Exhortation "At the time of the Celebration of the Communion" is a rich text which calls us both to meaningful self-examination as we approach the holy Sacrament and to receive with thanksgiving. In his A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Book of Common Prayer, Volume II (1801), Shepherd roots this Exhortation in the practice of the ancient Eastern churches: Chrysostom informs us, that in the Greek Church, when the communicants were conveniently placed, "the Priest standing in a conspicuous station, and stretching forth his hand, and lifting up his voice in the midst of profound silence, invited some (that is, those that were worthy), and forbad others (the unworthy) to approach." By showing how the Exhortation follows patristic practice and the liturgies of the East, Shepherd reminds us how much of the rhe...

At Lenten Compline, 6.3.24 John 18:12-27 It was fitting that it happened in the cold and darkness of night. Our Lord was betrayed, handed over into the hands of those who sought His death. Most of the disciples had fled, abandoning him. Peter and the beloved disciple follow Jesus to the residence of the high priest. The beloved disciple, known to the circle of the high priest, enters in. He negotiates Peter’s entry. That beloved disciple then goes to observe the proceedings of the trial of Jesus.  Peter is left in the dark and the cold - and the dark and cold enfold him, not only physically, but spiritually. For on this night, Peter, a leader of the apostolic band, the one who had earlier that evening boasted of his fidelity to Jesus, even unto death, denies his Lord. Peter enters into the cold darkness of faithlessness, of failure. John’s Gospel sets before us Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus in stark detail. No attempt is made to explain away Peter’s denial. No. Peter failed. An...