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O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men: Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Today’s collect, for the 4th Sunday after Easter, is one of the treasures of the Book of Common Prayer.  Whatever the origin of the word “collect,” it describes a very ancient form of liturgical prayer.  25 of the Prayer book collects date back to the 5th century, 27 to the 6th century.  They are all characterized by brevity and concentration, and each one is based on a scriptural source.

Cranmer’s translations of these Latin texts are exquisite gems of English prose and spirituality.  They do not simply convey meaning; they bring us into the presence of God.  They have an uncanny capacity to engrave themselves not only on the mind but on the heart as well.

For over 400 years the Book of Common Prayer served to hold together the very diverse elements which make up the Anglican Communion.  To an outsider, an Anglo-Catholic mass, with smells and bells, might seem altogether different from a low-church evangelical Lord’s Supper.  And yet both services followed the same Prayer Book order of Holy Communion. 

The Prayer Book served to unite not only different types of churchmanship, but also the different provinces of the world-wide Anglican Communion.  Since each province is independent, each province had its own Prayer Book.  But they all bore a family resemblance, since they were all descended from Thomas Cranmer’s 1549 Prayer Book.  A Canadian worshipping in an Anglican church in Australia would therefore feel right at home. 

With the gradual disappearance of Prayer Book services, the glue which held the Anglican Communion together has vanished, and the internal differences which have always divided Anglicans have become much more visible and troubling.  At the last two Lambeth Conferences serious disagreements emerged between liberal Western bishops and bishops of Third World countries, where Anglicanism today has its greatest numerical strength. 

When people no longer use the same form of worship, their doctrinal and ethical disagreements are much harder to bridge.  Here at the Good Shepherd we do not believe that, in matters liturgical, the new must drive out the old, by some sort of Darwinian necessity.  We therefore treasure the Book of Common Prayer as an inalienable part of our Anglican heritage. 

The purpose of worship is union with God, and signs and symbols are the building blocks of worship, where the mysterious presence of the Holy touches our hearts and mediates an experience of the sacred. 

I am happy that the change in venue of my Continuing Studies course provides the possibility of concluding the class each Tuesday evening with the service of Compline, the last of the monastic hours. 

May 2, 2010

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