Deborah Gyapong posts an
email from a correspondent SMM1 (Silent Majority Member 1) which gives much to think about concerning the lectionary for Mass and Daily Office in the Anglican tradition. It deserves a wide readership, so I re-post it here on the off-chance you don't habitually read Ms. Gyapong's blog (and if you don't why not?).
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It is interesting that the Archbishop says that the Anglican
liturgies will be “a more traditional form.” Does he mean “more
traditional” than the current Ordinary Form? He may mean no more than
that they will use so-called “traditional language” (or he may be
referring to some of the imports from the ceremonial of the
Extraordinary Form that Mgr Burnham has mentioned, like the genuflection
in the Nicene Creed). But it would be exciting if this also meant
retention of concrete traditional elements that are (a) genuinely
Anglican, and (b) predate the 1970s.
If that is going to happen, then the traditional lectionaries for
Mass and Office should get a look-in. Without disparaging the scholarly
achievement of the 1969 Ordo Lectionum Missae (likewise the RCL), or of
the various lectionaries for the Divine Office that have been designed
according to similar principles, may we not say that this is an
opportune moment to consider just how far these systems take us from
some undisputed elements of the much-discussed “Anglican Patrimony”?
I’m thinking in particular of John Keble’s collection of poems The Christian Year (1827).
I call its patrimonial status “undisputed” because if Keble’s 1833
Assize Sermon on “National Apostasy” was the birth of the Oxford
Movement, The Christian Year was its mother’s milk (and not just
for the Tractarians: it was a national phenomenon that went to over 100
editions by Keble’s death).
If you are unfamiliar with it, it is worth your time. Keble
provides a poetic reflection on every Sunday and Holyday in the Book of
Common Prayer, linked more or less closely to one of the scripture
readings appointed for the day — either from the Holy Communion (Epistle
and Gospel derived from Sarum provisions, lightly revised by Cranmer),
or from the proper Lessons for Mattins or Evensong, which in Keble’s
time were still those that had been selected by Archbishop Matthew
Parker shortly after Queen Elizabeth’s accession (a selection that Keble
explained and defended in one of the Tracts for the Times:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Tracts_for_the_Times/Tract_13).
As I read these poems week by week and year by year, I find myself
longing to be nourished directly by the liturgical framework that first
animated them. As it is, I have to do my best to forget what I hear at
church and journey in my imagination back to Eastleach Martin or Hursley
to hear Keble read the services. A great deal (if not rather too much)
has been written by way of commentary on the 3-year Mass lectionary
cycle. But nothing, I dare say, to match
The Christian Year.
Would it not be glorious if these lectionaries were to find fresh
life in the liturgies of the Personal Ordinariates, at least for
optional use? Would this not put us in immediate contact with the same
materials that formed and inspired the men who strove to discover and
expound a Catholic faith within the Church of England? My hope and
prayer for the Ordinariates is that they will give us the secure
doctrinal foundation against which we may, as Newman urged, “catalogue,
sort, distribute, select, harmonize, and complete” our “vast
inheritance” of “treasures.” I count the lectionaries as apt material
for such reappraisal.
Of course the lectionaries as found in a copy of the 1662 BCP are
not perfect. For instance, I rejoice in the twentieth-century
abandonment of Cranmer’s principle of daily Office lessons keyed to the
civil calendar, and the restoration of a lectionary based on the movable
ecclesiastical calendar. The judiciously enriched version of the 1961
one-year BCP Office lectionary published in Fr. Hunwicke’s annual Ordo would
serve admirably as the basis for the daily lessons in the Ordinariates,
not least because it retains connections with the earliest Roman Office
lectionaries (as preserved in Ordines Romani XIII and XIV of the
seventh and eighth centuries) — connections that are obscured, or
completely lost, in, for example, the two cycles offered in the modern Liturgia horarum.
The 1922/1961 BCP Office lectionaries’ departure from earlier Anglican
practice establishes a good rule of thumb, namely that revision of the
traditional Anglican sources ought to proceed in the first instance by a
process of ressourcement, not innovation.
(Here perhaps I may register my view that the Office lectionary included in the Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham seems to have been designed for the convenience of priests who will most often be praying their daily Office from the Liturgia horarum.
The effect of having the One-Year, Year-1, and Year-2 options included
at various points every day is to disrupt continuity of reading, which
is the defining characteristic of Anglican Office lectionaries. One
suspect that this lectionary is intended mainly to provide extra lessons
for Choral Evensong as an “occasional celebration.” That is doubtless
the short-term reality, but shouldn’t be the long-term goal. If it is
deemed absolutely necessary that the Ordinariate’s Office lectionary
include the one-year or two-year cycle of lessons from the Liturgia horarum – and
there is a case to be made for that, not least to allow the use of the
wonderful selections of Patristic readings that have been devised for
these cycles – it would be far better to design an independent Evensong
lectionary such that either the one-year or the two-year LH cycle
could be used in the morning, and a separate, self-contained scriptural
lectionary could be used in the evening, designed on “ancient”
principles. Furthermore, theCustomary‘s exclusion of readings
from the Gospels in the daily Office represents a major rupture from
Anglican precedent going right back to 1549, which is also continued in
theBook of Divine Worship. Use of the traditional Anglican
Eucharistic lectionary, which I am encouraging, would almost demand a
daily Gospel lesson in the Office, since the Gospels would otherwise not
be read out in full. The Customary is concerned that the Gospel
should only be read by someone at least in deacon’s orders, and
therefore restricts Gospel lessons to optional “vigils” of Sundays and
feasts. It is hard to imagine that public celebrations of the
Office will often take place without an officiant in Holy Orders. But
if we need a non-Anglican precedent for a layman reading the Gospel at
the Office, we could look to the sixth-century Rule of St. Benedict’s
requirement that the Gospel at Sunday Nocturns be read by the abbot, who
is not presumed to be in Holy Orders. But cannot the reading of the
Gospels in course at the daily Office, by laymen if necessary, be
grandfathered in regardless as a venerable part of the Anglican
liturgical heritage?)
If I were able to address the Anglicanae traditiones commission,
I would wish to urge upon them that this is precisely the moment when
we can pause to evaluate with fresh eyes what the past has bequeathed to
us, and, when appropriate, choose continuity (or restoration) as a
better course. To make Anglican “tradition” mean merely the
post-Conciliar Mass and Offices performed with old-fashioned words and
Ritualist ceremonial would be most unfortunate. The liturgies published
so far (orders for Marriages and Funerals) are very encouraging. I’m
holding my breath, though, for the official daily lectionaries for Mass
and Office. To reiterate, I would be overjoyed if the Ordinariate’s
lectionaries included, even in a revised form and for optional use, (1)
the BCP Epistles and Gospels, (2) the proper Office lessons of
1559-1662, and (3) a one-year daily Office lectionary based on early
Roman patterns, such as that in Fr. Hunwicke’s Ordo.
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