Making the Holy Eucharist the normative worship service in Episcopal churches has created a challenge of retaining the Eucharist’s profound sense of holiness, said the Rev. Dr. Patrick Malloy, professor of liturgics at the General Theological Seminary in New York.
“We are closer now to what Cranmer had intended; in 1979 it seems that what Cranmer wanted to have happen actually happened,” Malloy said March 12 as part of Virginia Theological Seminary’s series, “The Prayer Book at 30.”
Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556), the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury who wrote and compiled the first two editions of The Book of Common Prayer, wanted laity — not just priests — to participate in the Holy Eucharist regularly, as was done in Jesus’ time.
“The 1979 prayer book has gotten us back to our Reformation roots and to our ancient roots,” Malloy said.
Returning to early Christian roots is beneficial and can help parishioners know that they, as well as priests, can draw near to the holy, Malloy said. He cautioned, however, that with more frequent celebration of the Eucharist some reverence and humility, the “balanced Eucharistic piety” that should attend the sacred, may have been lost.
“I cannot read your souls, so I don’t know if the fact that the Eucharist is now the normative Sunday pattern has changed people,” Malloy said. “Cranmer did not take Communion lightly. Today, I fear that sometimes … many of us do approach the sacrament very lightly.”
Malloy emphasized that Cranmer wanted a profound sense of God’s mercy to draw people to church; the Eucharist was the pinnacle of holiness, the embodiment of God’s great mercy to those who were undeserving and unworthy sinners, and were invited to the Lord’s table only through his gift of grace. In the 1979 prayer book, he said, that sense of God’s great mercy and the unworthiness of his people is embodied in the Eucharistic prayer of humble access, which begins, “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table.”
“The prayer of humble access, from what I can see, has fallen on hard times,” Malloy said.
Malloy said he wished the 1979 prayer book used a word other than celebrant for the priest who leads the Holy Eucharist, because it can be interpreted to distance members of the congregation, who are also celebrants. Using celebrant is a “huge mistake,” he said; using presider (for one who leads) would have been better.
While Eucharistic-centered worship can give parishioners a sense of being one with Christ and one with each other — thus building up and strengthening the body of Christ —Malloy cautioned that it would be a shame to diminish other liturgical services, such as those of the Daily Office.
“We have made the Eucharist so normative on Sundays that we must be careful not to lose the rest of our liturgical Christian heritage,” he said. “We kept alive a liturgy that in many parts of the world was utterly lost. … I am shocked that when seminarians come to seminary, they do not know how to say the Daily Office. That is a great loss in our church. I don’t think that’s what Cranmer meant.”
Asked by TLC how congregations can maintain a sense of reverence and balanced Eucharistic piety, Malloy suggested that when congregations gather at other times for meetings and dinners, they not routinely celebrate the Eucharist.
“Every time a group gets together you don’t have to have Mass,” he said. If the group wants to have a service, he said, it can use Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayer, Evening Prayer or Compline.
Moving from Morning Prayer to Eucharistic-centered worship was the most visible of several results of the 1979 prayer book, said the Rev. Dr. Geoffrey M. Price, interim rector at Abingdon Church in White Marsh, Va., who spoke after Malloy. Eucharistic-centered worship has blurred the differences between “high church” and “low church,” and has made services more ecumenical, Price said,
Price agreed with Malloy that today parishioners can feel much more a part of a sacramental life as they participate in the Eucharist as a shared experience. He cited lay Eucharistic ministers as evidence of more participation by the laity.
“Today’s service is like an orchestra in which we all have a role to play,” he said, and this model of worship has bridged the “rigid gulf” that once separated the laity and the clergy. He also said that the 1979 prayer book contains enriching Eucharistic prayers, as well as enriching readings from the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Still, the prayer book requires occasional revision. “Over time liturgy tends to lose meaning; it’s like a ship that needs righting,” Price said.
He added that liturgies need to accommodate changing ways of life. In the past, he noted, people worshiped in small churches with graveyards bedside them, so a funeral and committal occurred together. Today, a memorial service and committal often occur at different times.
Price said he wonders what effect the digital revolution will have on liturgy: “Will there be leather-bound Kindles with the liturgy? Will prayer book revisions be an Internet download?”
Peggy Eastman
4 Comments
Excellent article! Dr. Malloy's message resonates with me. Just this year, I have had it where, except for high holy days, we are only celebrating the Eucharist on Sundays. On other days, I am encouraging us to use the Daily Office. Reading this article made me feel like I am on the right track. Thank you!
I find this a helpful reflection piece. I want to make a few personal reflective comments and they are based on different questions. The BCP 1979 is one. The second is the recovery of "ancient practice" with normative Holy Communion as the main Sunday Service.
1. The 1979 BCP has made a huge impact upon the people of God in Church life. It has brought contemporary language and greater participation of the people. Some of us would give more and that success has depended upon the bishop's sense of rubrical flexibility. However the piety of the people suffers if they are taught that confession is optional as the 1979 BCP teaches. Indeed the prayer of humble access has sadly become an embarrassment to not a few.
2. I find that the rite II consecration prayers are "atonement lite." Far fewer people attend a rite I service whose first consecration prayer is to my mind the most doctrinally correct and consonant with the Cranmer heritage. Indeed, sadly, I encounter many priests who never celebrate a rite I service. The result is a doctrinally inadequate congregation. The liturgy is meant also to teach what we believe and I am not convinced that the rite II prayers of consecration are either adequate. They do not teach a robust Anglican doctrine of the atonement.
3. The writer correctly admits the demise of other services such as the offices. In our Cathedral here in Lima, Peru, we had 58 people attend sung evensong last Sunday. That is nearly as many as attended our "main" service of Holy Communion in the morning. In my personal opinion not only have we lost part of our heritage, but, more importantly, we have tended more to focus upon ourselves, upon "our" needs than is wise. I am convinced of the need to have significant church services that can attract the non-Christian, the unbaptized, AND allow them full participation. Unless one subscribes to the current practice of "Open Communion," which I do not and is besides canonically impermissible, we offer too often ONLY a service in which outsiders are not permitted fully to participate. This makes our liturgical offerings all too often seeker unfriendly.
None of this is meant on my art to diminish the importance of Holy Communion. In my last two parishes as rector we celebrated daily. It is however meant to question how we might best use our Sunday services so as to serve not only the spiritual needs of the faithful, but also as a means of reaching out to those outside our churches.
One last personal whim. I still say Holy Communion as I do not like using "foreign" words. Nor do I want to focus simply on "thanksgiving" (important as it surely is,) to the exclusion of a proper penitent piety so necessary to fully enjoying said communion.
Great story. Very insightful comments from Dr. Malloy. I find that many of my parishioners have never seen or done the Daily Office. There are many beautiful prayers (and theology) that are lost with our singular focus on the Eucharist.
The Rev. Alex Large
The Prayer Book does give permission to "translate" the language of Rite II prayers to Rite I and we have one example of that in the Anglican Service Book. About 3 years ago I, using the permission given in the BCP, "translated" the Rite I Eucharistic Prayers for use in Rite II. In the period of 1 year, the parish would have heard Eucharistic Prayers A and B [Contemporary] and Rite I Eucharistic Prayers [both forms] contemporized.