Halfway through a year of Daily Office

On Sexagesima, the Gospel (1 year lectionary) and sermon at our church were drawn from the parable of the sower (Luke 8: 4-16):

WHEN much people were gathered together, and were come to him out of every city, he spake by a parable: A sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way-side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold.

And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. And his disciples asked him, saying, What might this parable be? And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.

Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. Those by the way-side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.

Since returning to the church 25 years ago, thorns have been my biggest spiritual challenge. I no longer chase after money, but still retain a competitive ambition for worldly success that means following through on what I know is right often plays second fiddle to career goals (sometimes third after my family). So this is a work in progress.

At our new church, I am making progress on this attitude a few minutes every day, in part through adoption of the Daily Office.

Starting the Daily Office

After six months of searching, last summer we switched churches to a large, established Continuing Anglican church. (Up until the last minute we expected to switch to my father's church, but because they don’t have their own building, the schedule of services didn't work for our family.)

The choice paid almost immediate dividends. On our second visit to what would become our new church, we went to the adult ed class, led by one of the senior couples in the parish. The topic was marriage, but the wife (Karen) talked aobut how she advised couples with difficulties to pray the Daily Office. I'd heard clergy talk about the Daily Office, but hearing it from a lay person made it seem more real (and approachable).

I started saying morning prayer the next day, and have managed to consistently say it 6-7 days a week for the past 7 months. The days I miss, usually I have an appointment or call first thing in the morning, and then get dragged into the cares of the world. Sticking to the discipline does help push back on such cares (as discussed below). It also has helped me to more fully understand morning pryaer (see next posting).

(It was only later in an adult ed class did I realize that Daily Office also includes Evening Prayer. So I'm only halfway there, and addressing that gradually is my 2016 resolution.)

Pastoral Imperative of Spiritual Balance

Since November, I've been in an advanced pastoral ministry class with our rector. The book for our first four sessions was Pastoral Theology: A Reorientation (1958) by Martin Thornton, an English priest who lived from 1915-1986. I cannot praise this book enough, as it (along with the class) has changed my life.

A major theme throughout the book is the need for spiritual balance: as we found out in the final chapters of the book, especially chapters 17-20. Imbalance towards our triune God is an inherent trend of human nature:

In dealing with the three Persons of the Trinity separately and in seeming isolating, we are only accepting the fact of human frailty, which pastoral theology is bound to do. … Because of finity … we are inclined to lay emphasis on one single Person of the Holy Trinity and divorce him form the other Persons; this we gladly agree should not be, but it is so, and pastoral theology must face facts. [193]

Everyone is tempted by his or her personality type toward imbalance:

The basic religious tendency associated with the idea of the first person of the Trinity is one of transcendence, majesty, or awe. If in a particular soul, the single word “God” immediately suggests the notion of the Father as omnipotent Creator and supreme Being, then that’s soul’s … approach to God will be generally objective, its religion may well contain a considerable intellectual element, it might achieve adoration or it might sink to a legalistic moralism.

If God is immediately apprehended as the Incarnate Son, a sense of communion, rapport, and finally love will be to the forefront of the soul’s experience. Such a soul is likely to be widely sacramental, probably imaginative and meditative rather than intellectual, and possess of instinctive understanding of sin and redemption. …

The Holy Ghost is immanent in the world and within the soul and he is spontaneously known as the Paraclete: he is the Comforter spiritually experienced, he is God indwelling, and gives feeling to religious experience. [194]

By this simplest possible summary, the first Person of the Trinity inspires the objective approach, the second Person inspires the mediatorial and redemptive, and the third Person the subjective element in the religious experience. And by the necessary balancing of the traditional expressions — Office, Mass, and private prayer — we have an ascetical framework of greater practical value than simplicity might suggest. [196]

The way to achieve spiritual balance is to practice a balanced rule of life. Thorton associates each of the Persons of the Trinity with a particular personality trait and element of a spiritual discipline:

The Rule of the Anglican Church can be summarized as consisting of (1) the Office, which is the corporate worship of the Body of Christ to the Father … This is a twofold Office “daily throughout the year”. (2) The Mass is the living embrace of Christ in joy, attained by the synthesis of his complete succor offered and his absolute demand accepted. And it is stipulated on some seventy-five days of the year (The Red Letter days) when a special collect, epistle, and gospel are supplied (3) Private prayer concerns the sanctification of the individual soul by the indwelling spirit, to the glory of God. [205-206]

In other words, an Anglo-Catholic is not someone who just goes to mass, but follows the (Benedictine-inspired) Cranmer roadmap of mass and daily office, combined with personal prayer.

Praying the Daily Office

I struggled at first to master the Daily Office. In the 28 prayer book, finding the daily collect and lesson is trivial because it's printed there. In the 1982 (or ACNA) with the three year lectionary, it requires considerable juggling unless (as is now the case) they put the lessons in the bulletin. But that complexity is magnified sixfold or tenfold when trying to do the readings every morning (and evening).

Fortunately, the Intenret makes it easy and gives almost no excuse. For morning prayer, I tried various websites:

• The widest range of liturgies is at The Trinity Mission -- which supports Rite I, Rite II, 1928, 1662 and several others. However, they use their own lectionary, which makes it difficult to fall back to paper in an emergency, or follow the same readings as your fellow parishioners.
• My Rite II ACNA mentor swears by The Mission of St. Clare (which even has an app), but it’s a Rite II site with partial Rite I support (i.e. if you pray Rite I at times you end up with Rite II prayers)
• I stumbled across CommonPrayer.org, which is a straight up 1928 BCP site, and then found when taking my class that almost everyone in my class uses it (including the rector). It is what I have used daily for more than six months now.
• One of my classmates (the same Karen) mentioned Cradle of Prayer, which allows us Californians to recite our Daily Office while cruising down the freeway at 65 mph.

Some weeks it’s a challenge to do all seven days. I prefer to do it at home — either kneeling the entire time, kneeling as marked or (on mornings I’m not feeling so hot) not kneeling at all. I also do it in a hotel or (occasionally) at work. About once a week, I do it on the train to work (or even on a plane when traveling), either using my phone or pre-loading the CommonPrayer readings into my laptop. Finally, when there’s no practical alternative, I take the Cradle of Prayer loophole — which counts in a legalistic sense but lacks the same spiritual connection as reciting all the prayers myself (more later).

The once and future undivided church

One Church, One Faith, One Lord "Restoring the Conciliar Church and Her Mission" July 13-July 17, 2015 Fort Worth, Texas A conciliar gathering of Catholic Anglicans rooted in the past. Ready for the future.

With the International Catholic Congress of Anglicans nearing its completion, I have to say that Forward and Faith and other organizers were wildly successful in addressing their designated theme.

It’s really hard to summarize more than five hours of keynotes on this topic, citing Christian thinkers from the patristic fathers through the Reformation to the 1920s Anglo-Catholic congresses to today. However, these ideas to me seem essential in being able to articulate Anglican (or Anglo-Catholic) distinctives in contrasting one’s local Anglo-Catholic parish to the other Protestant alternatives.

Fortunately, AnglicanTV recorded these keynotes. These include:

• Monday: Abp. Valentino Mokiwa on Frank Weston and his successes both in leading the earlier congresses and spreading the faith to Africa (which is now spreading it back to Europe and the US)
• Tuesday: Prof. Edith Humphrey on “The Nature of the Church: Apostolic, Conciliar and Concrete”



Bp. Michael Nazir-Ali

• Wednesday: Bp. Michael Nazir-Ali on “The necessity of Unity in Truth for the Church’s Mission,” 
• Thursday: Bp. Keith Ackerman on “The Anglo Catholic Congresses and Restoring the Anglican Mind,” a paper by Rev. Arthur Middleton, retired canon of Durham Cathedral
• Thursday: Alice Linsley, a former ECUSA priest who now argues against women’s ordination
• Update: Friday’s sermon by REC Bp. Ray Sutton also addressed this topic.

The focus of all the speakers was on the original undivided church, from the Apostolic church of the 1st century (as recounted in Acts and the Pauline letters) to the Great Schism of 1054. In the name of conciliarity, I heard a lot more about the seven ecumenical councils of 325-787 — subscribed by FiF, and the Eastern churches — a superset of the four subscribed by some Protestants (including the REC) and a subset of the 21 endorsed by Rome.

Nazir-Ali and Linsley argued that the ECUSA and CoE theological innovations of the past 50 years (notably women’s ordination) have both broken from the original faith of the undivided church, and also impairs the possibility of Anglican reconciliation with either Rome or the East.

Prof. Edith Humphrey

Edith Humphrey

The most through argument came from former Anglican (now Orthodox) seminar professor Edith Humphrey, who presented a historical research paper (posted at Virtue Online). She began by quoting the 1902 observation of Alfred Loisy:

Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom, and what arrived was the Church.

She then laid out a three-fold definition of the one true undivided church:

1. Apostolic, by reviewing the evidence of the three-fold ministry in first two centuries of the faith, as recounted by Acts and early church leader such as the 2nd century bishops Papias and Irenaeus.
2. Conciliar, the mutual accountability of the bishops to each other (rather that total independence or control by one supreme pontiff) — as Acts 10-11 and the seven ecumenical councils.
3. Concrete, the tangible connection of the faithful through baptism, communion and fellowship.

Finally, she quoted the optimistic view of C.S. Lewis in his essay “On the Reading of Old Books”:

We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed also, at the divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an immensely formidable unity. I know, for I saw it; and well our enemies know it.

The True Faith

Linsley quoted from an eclectic mix of Christian thought on the need to repair the divided church. One quote was from Wednesday morning’s hymn — “The Church’s One Foundation” — the 19th century classic by S.J. Stone:

Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed,
Yet saints their watch are keeping;
Their cry goes up, "How long?"
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song.

From Basil the Great in On the Holy Spirit:

Every man is a theologian; it does not matter that his soul is covered with more blemishes than can be counted. The result is that these innovators find an abundance of men to join their factions. So ambitious, self-elected men divide the government of the churches among themselves, and reject the authority of the Holy Spirit. The ordinances of the Gospel have been thrown into confusion everywhere for lack of discipline; the jostling for high positions is incredible, as every ambitious man tries to thrust himself into high office. The result of this lust for power is that wild anarchy prevails among the people; the exhortations of those in authority are rendered utterly void and unprofitable, since every man in his arrogant delusion thinks that it is more his business to give orders to others than to obey anyone himself.

From CS Lewis in God in the Dock:

We are to defend Christianity itself—the faith preached by the Apostles, attested by the Martyrs, enbodied in the Creeds, expounded by the Fathers. This must be clearly distinguished from the whole of what any one of us may think about God and man. Each of us has his individual emphasis: each holds, in addition to the faith, many opinions which seem to him to be consistent with it and true and important. And so perhaps they are. But as apologists it is not our business to defend them. We are defending Christianity; not “my religion.”

She argued the importance of rallying the church and its moral leadership: “We are bombarded by lies daily. The Church is the single institution to identify and speak against them.”

Finally, she quoted from GK Chesterton in The Ball and Chain:

Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always sane; and all fashions are mild insanities. … The Church always seems to be behind the times, when it is really beyond the times; it is waiting till the last fad shall have seen its last summer. It keeps the key of a permanent virtue.

Making Ourselves Obsolete

Perhaps the most fundamental (and even unsettling) argument came when Nazir-Ali argued that Anglicanism is only a temporary religion awaiting the restoration of the undivided church: “Anglicanism stands ready to disappear for the sake of unity of Christ’s Church.”

This reminded me of the 1930s hymn by a devout member of the Church of Christ:

This world is not my home, I'm just a-passing through
My treasures are layed up somewhere beyond the blue;
The angels beacon me through heavens open door,
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.

— Albert E. Brumley (1905-1977) 

Alas, in reality I will probably pass through to the other side before reunification of the Christian churches wipes out denominationalism. Perhaps that means there will be continuing interest in a blog about Anglican liturgy.

Photos by J. West at the 2015 International Catholic Congress of Anglicans