I remember the first time I received Holy Communion in an Anglican Church. It was after a long season of participation in non-denominational churches, for which communion was infrequent, instrumental to the point of a sermon, and individualized as a private devotional response to the pious atmosphere of the day. This was different from my childhood experience of Sunday mornings in a traditional and conservative Methodist church, at which communion was a regular movement of the liturgy. As I went searching in early adulthood for those Wesleyan roots, I entered a beautiful a-frame church near my college and knew that I had come home.
During my years of altar service while preparing to receive Holy Orders, one of the roles I fulfilled most often was that of thurifer, the one who carries the thurible in which the incense is burned. I remember getting acquainted with the rituals of lighting the coals, the smell of fresh grains of frankincense, and the intricate metal-work of the chains holding the bowl of the thurible, which would instantly kink up if you even looked at them the wrong way. The thurifer remains near the thurible throughout the service, and so by the end they have been thoroughly coated by its smoke. It is a scent unlike anything else, and it lingers for hours. Long after the service, on a Sunday afternoon, the church still smells of that deep and sweet and spicy smell. When I would arrive home after church, my family or friends would instantly know what I had been doing, and where I had been. I still smelled like church.
One of the most frequent refrains in the New Testament are the words: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” On the surface, this may sound to us like an unnecessary and obvious command. What else do ears do but hear, after all? We take for granted that our ears hear, but take a moment and listen. Now listen for the sounds that you had previously filtered out, perhaps the sound of an air conditioner or fan, the sound of people or birds outside, the sound of the refrigerator condenser or dishwasher. Did those sounds begin to exist when you heard them, or did you begin to attend to them with your ears? If you had not done so, would your life have been different?
What did we see? Holy Week knows some of the most visually-engaging and emblematic moments of the Church year. One of the iconic sights of Holy Week comes with the Easter Vigil: the lighting and procession of the Paschal candle. It is right to begin our mystagogy with this sight. As the Psalmist writes, “In Your light will we see light.” It is by this light that we begin to see everything else.
There is a resurgence in attraction to liturgy. This is, in part, a reaction against the subjectivity of contemporary worship. The latest new thing in worship can diminish in attraction over the years. It can come to feel like the latest attempt to manipulate the emotions—like most communication in the marketing and consumer culture.
This will be the first of several posts on the topic of liturgy. The word liturgy means literally “the work of the people.” It was used in ancient Greece to refer to offerings made for the public good. However, in the church the word liturgy refers to acts of corporate worship that form us into the Body of Christ.
This year we said goodbye to a brother priest in our diocese. After he reposed in the Lord, his widow sent a box to the cathedral containing some of his belongings—vestments, a chalice and paten, and some books. Among these items, I unpacked a prayer rope that had clearly been in use for many years. Its outer threads revealed the effects of friction as the knots were passed through the fingers with each Jesus Prayer. His prayer rope had become threadbare through love and prayerful use. Far from reducing its value, though, these marks of use made it all the more special: it had known a prayerful priest over many years.
One of the gifts of good liturgy is that we do not have to question it every time we approach it. Good liturgy is elegant, challenging, and familiar; it draws us out of ourselves without fear of harm. From time to time, however, it is good to ask why we do what we do in order that we might remember that there are reasons for what we do, that we are able to articulate those reasons, and so that the faithful might have greater confidence in the soundness of the liturgy and thus more willing to submit themselves to it.
As a priest, one is called to bless all kinds of things, food, houses, rosaries, statues, etc., there’s even a blessing for spacecrafts in “A Manual for Priests of the American Church”! And while you’ll find a blessing for livestock and cattle, what you won’t find is a blessing for pets. The tradition of blessing the animals that sustain us and work for us is ancient but the notion that we should bless our pets is a rather recent development. Should we be making such a big deal about our pets? Should we be blessing them? The way I figure it, if we bless our homes and the stuff that fills them, we might as well bless the living things that we share the homes with.
Thus far, we have defined tradition by its literal sense of ‘giving over’ and spoken of the ways that tradition is practiced in both sacred and secular senses. We also spoke of the specter of traditionalism and the way it parasitically feeds on sacred tradition to ensnare those who are seeking a reintegration with the Church before and after, the Church above and among. Traditionalism is a counterfeit of tradition that aims at secular power, using the gifts of the past as artifactual weapons…
We began by defining tradition in its broadest sense as “giving over” and discussed some of the ways Christians understand what it means to pass down the practice of the Faith through the generations. We also explored how Anglican Catholics have a unique sense of obligation to the past and to those giants of the Faith on whose shoulders we now stand. A high view of tradition is an expression of gratitude for what has been preserved through great trials, recognizing that many have suffered to remain faithful to the Lord as they encountered Him in the Church’s prayer, and for whom they endured unimaginable persecution. They understood that the Faith was a gift, one to be received and then given in turn within a view of the Church that was bigger than themselves but of which they were a vital part. It is to that volta between reception and gift in tradition that I would like to turn our attention in this essay.
There is a sweet sense of reunion that attends me when I look at the first, blank page of a new piece of writing. There, I am confronted with the fact that I never immediately know what I should write. It is a lonely feeling that, I think, ought always to attend the attempt to do something novel, and particularly by myself in an empty room. And yet, that lonely space has become the occasion for remembrance, in this moment a kind of invitation of past voices to speak again and come to my aid. If it’s a lesson-plan I am writing, certain master teachers come to mind. If it’s a sermon, then there are certain pastors. If—heaven help us—I am attempting a poem, then the much annotated stars of my Norton anthology start to emerge. Sometimes, it is a friend; sometimes, it is an ancient author I have never met but through their words. I try to ask as politely as possible: will you help me find my words with some of your own?
Love obliges us to know our beloved. For Christians who worship God in the manner He gave us in the institution of Holy Communion, love obliges us to seek our Beloved in the sacramental place in which He has promised to meet us. To seek Him in this way will reveal, over time, the heart of our Eucharistic liturgy.
