/ liturgy
Old 100th sung Thursday, 28 May, in the Church of Saint Anne, Jerusalem by the Wheaton in the Holy Lands cohort. My niece Abigail Ellsworth, wearing a blue shirt and tan shorts, is sitting at the very base of the column on the right, visible in the first twenty-some seconds.
Built in the 12-century, Saint Anne’s is located over the traditional birthplace of Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary. The church’s acoustic is exquisite intentionally: it was designed for Gregorian chant. My niece thus, like all these Wheaties, is singing under the long liturgical arm of Alcuin (20 May 804), Deacon, Scholar, and Abbot of Tours, whom we commemorated at Saint Francis on May 20 in the service of Holy Eucharist. Alcuin is a great figure (greatly neglected) in the history of education. Here’s the collect for Alcuin.
Almighty God, who in a rude and barbarous age raised up your deacon Alcuin to rekindle the light of learning: Illumine our minds, we pray, that amid the uncertainties and confusions of our own time we may show forth your eternal truth, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
I wonder. A thousand years from now, if a collect were written about a figure among us, how would our age be characterized? I am reading a book my sister gave me, Miroslav Volf’s Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. In its forward, the Archbishop of Canterbury describes our age as “sour and anxious.”
Arvo Pärt’s canticle Magnificat, heard here over scenes from Levittown, PA, will be sung by the Saint Francis Choir on Sunday, March 22nd, in a 5:30 Vespers service for Lent. The liturgy will include a chanting of the Great Litany of the Book of Common Prayer. Come, and bring a friend. [Disclaimers: No, your host did not create this video. No, the baby in it is not the Saint Francis Church choirmaster, Gary Davison.]
Q: Where do the ashes come from that are used on Ash Wednesday?
A: Palms collected from the previous year’s Palm Sunday services are burned on Shrove Tuesday by a priest who prepares them for Ash Wednesday’s Services of Holy Eucharist with the Imposition of Ashes. Here’s a six-second clip of some palms being burned this year at Saint Francis. The bowls we use in services to contain the ashes came back with Father Ellsworth and the Bahar family from their visit to Kyoto, Japan.
The choir and congregation of Westminster Abbey singing Thaxted (“I Vow to Thee My Country”)
Setting: Gustav Holst. Lyric: Cecil Spring-Rice
- I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above,
- Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love;
- The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,
- That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;
- The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,
- The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
- And there’s another country, I’ve heard of long ago,
- Most dear to them that love her, most great to them that know;
- We may not count her armies, we may not see her King;
- Her fortress is a faithful heart, her pride is suffering;
- And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase,
- And her ways are ways of gentleness, and all her paths are peace.
thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth; Most heartily we beseech thee, with thy favour, to behold and bless thy servant, The President of the United States, and all others in authority; and so replenish them with the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that they may always incline to thy will, and walk in thy way: Endue them plenteously with heavenly gifts; grant them in health and prosperity long to live; and finally, after this life, to attain everlasting joy and felicity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Swimmer Joshoua Samios holds the cross after retrieving it from the water, during a traditional ceremony to bless the water in Greece’s Perama port near Athens, on Tuesday. Jan. 6, 2009. Similar ceremonies to mark Epiphany day were held across Greece on river banks, seafronts and lakes, where an Orthodox priest throws a cross into the water and swimmers race to be the first to retrieve it. AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris, via the Boston Globe, The Big Picture
Men jump into the icy waters of a lake in an attempt to grab a wooden cross on Epiphany Day in Sofia, Bulgaria on January 6, 2009. (REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov), via the Big Picture
The Great Blessing of Water in the Orthodox Church on the Feast of Epiphany
That these waters may be sanctified by the power, and effectual operation, and descent of the Holy Spirit, let us pray to the Lord.
That there may descend upon these waters the cleansing operation of the super-substantial Trinity, let us pray to the Lord.
That he will endue them with the grace of redemption, the blessing of Jordan, the might, and operation, and descent of the Holy Spirit, let us pray to the Lord.
That Satan may speedily be crushed under our feet, and that every evil counsel directed against us may be brought to naught, let us pray to the Lord.
That the Lord our God will free us from every attack and temptation of the enemy, and make us worthy of the good things which he hath promised, let us pray to the Lord.
That he will illumine us with the light of understanding and of piety, and with the descent of the Holy Spirit, let us pray to the Lord.
That the Lord our God will send down the blessing of Jordan, and sanctify these waters, let us pray to the Lord.
That this water may be unto the bestowing of sanctification; unto the remission of sins; unto the healing of soul and body; and unto every expedient service, let us pray to the Lord.
That this water may be a fountain welling forth unto life eternal, let us pray to the Lord.
That it may manifest itself effectual unto the averting of every machination of our foes, whether visible or invisible, let us pray to the Lord.
For those who shall draw of it and take of it unto the sanctification of their homes, let us pray to the Lord.
That it may be for the purification of the souls and bodies of all those who, with faith, shall draw and partake of it, let us pray to the Lord.
That he will graciously enable us to perfect sanctification by participation in these waters, through the invisible manifestation of the Holy Spirit, let us pray to the Lord.
Lest you find no room in the inn, arrive by 5:00 for the 5:30, and by 9:30 for the 10:00 o’clock.
The Martyrdom of Thomas Cranmer - Sermon at Service to Commemorate the 450th Anniversary
When it was fashionable to decry Cranmer’s liturgical rhetoric as overblown and repetitive, people often held up as typical the echoing sequences of which he and his colleagues were so fond. ‘A full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction; ‘Have mercy upon us, miserable offenders; Spare thou them which confess their faults; Restore thou them that are penitent’; ‘succour, help and comfort all that are in danger, necessity and tribulation’; direct, sanctify and govern’; and of course, ‘earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust’. The liturgical puritan may well ask why it is not possible to say something once and for all, instead of circling back over what has been said, re-treading the ground. And in the same vein, many will remember the arguments of those who complained of the Communion Order in the Book of Common Prayer that it never allowed you to move forward from penitence to confidence and thanksgiving: you were constantly being recalled to your sinful state, even after you had been repeatedly assured of God’s abundant mercies.
Whether we have quite outgrown this reaction, I’m not sure. But we have at least begun to see that liturgy is not a matter of writing in straight lines. As the late Helen Gardner of this university long ago remarked, liturgy is epic as well as drama; its movement is not inexorably towards a single, all-determining climax, but also - precisely - a circling back, a recognition of things not yet said or finished with, a story with all kinds of hidden rhythms pulling in diverse directions. And a liturgical language like Cranmer’s hovers over meanings like a bird that never quite nests for good and all - or, to sharpen the image, like a bird of prey that never stoops for a kill.
The word of God is not bound. God speaks, and the world is made; God speaks and the world is remade by the Word Incarnate. And our human speaking struggles to keep up. We need, not human words that will decisively capture what the Word of God has done and is doing, but words that will show us how much time we have to take in fathoming this reality, helping us turn and move and see, from what may be infinitesimally different perspectives, the patterns of light and shadow in a world where the Word’s light has been made manifest. It is no accident that the Gospel which most unequivocally identifies Jesus as the Word made flesh is the Gospel most characterised by this same circling, hovering, recapitulatory style, as if nothing in human language could ever be a ‘last’ word. ‘The world itself could not contain the books that should be written’ says the Fourth Evangelist, resigning himself to finishing a Gospel that is in fact never finishable in human terms.
Rowan Williams, The Archbishop of Canterbury
