Monks' Corner for June
Diocesan Press Service. March 31, 1975 [75121]
( Monks' Corner is a monthly spiritual column prepared exclusively for the diocesan publications -- please do not print this material in any other publications. )
(You may also use articles previously released: DPS #74206, #74240, #74269, # 74301, # 74334, # 74346, # 75005, # 75028, and # 75101. )
Common Prayer
Article No. 1 (Suggested for June issues)
by the Rev. Bonnell Spencer, O.H.C.
In a much publicized article, William Buckley makes this statement concerning Mass in the Roman Catholic Church: "I am practicing Yoga so at church on Sundays I can develop the power to tune out everything I hear, while attempting, athwart the general calisthenics, to commune with my Maker." Thus with his usual facile cleverness he demonstrates his misconception of the nature and purpose of the Eucharist.
This ignorance is not entirely Mr. Buckley's fault. No doubt as a child he was taught that the proper way to attend Mass, which was then being muttered unintelligibly in Latin, was to concentrate on reciting the rosary, looking up only to adore the elevated Host, and abstaining except on rare occasions from receiving Communion.
Episcopalians do not recite the rosary at the Eucharist, but many have been trained to engage in equally private prayer during the celebration in order to prepare to receive Christ in Communion. Such persons often prefer the early service when there are few other persons present, and when there is no sermon and no choir to distract them from their efforts privately 'to commune with their Maker.'
But the Order for Holy Communion is to be found in the Book of Common Prayer. Common prayer is public worship. It is a corporate activity in which all present should be engaged. Private devotions are an important and necessary part of the prayer life. But at the Eucharist they should be subordinated to its main purpose of praising God together. Participants in the Lord's Supper should not be glumly absorbed in their own affairs, but should join in and contribute to the fellowship of the Christian Family Meal.
The activity of eucharistic worship may be summarized under three heads. The first is comprehension. The original Prayer Book of 1549 was issued so that the service could be celebrated in a language the people could understand. Today the sixteenth century English, beautiful as it may be, is difficult to comprehend and tends to float soothingly over the heads of the congregation. Hence all the liturgical Churches are now providing rites in modern English that speak more significantly to us and to our world.
In addition to the meaning of the service itself, there is the proclamation of the Gospel in the Ministry of the Word with which the Eucharist begins. This should include not only the reading of the lessons, but also their exposition and application in the sermon. We are to hear, understand, and heed the message. We come to public worship not just to express our needs, our penitence, our desires, that is to talk to God. He also wants to talk to us, to express his will for us through the teaching of his Body the Church.
Second, there is oblation of the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. We offer this not because God wants us to flatter or humor him, but because God wants us to love, since we who are created in the image of his love can find our fulfillment and joy only through the response of love.
In the Eucharist that response is given liturgical expression, first, by the oblation of ourselves via the bread and wine at the Offertory. We place our lives, our possessions, our society, our universe on the altar in gratitude for creation and redemption. Christ takes our offering and consecrates it, uniting it with his own perfect offering, making it an acceptable sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to the Father. Our conscious and deliberate participation in the corporate activity of the Eucharist, aware of and cooperating with Christ through the assembled People of God, is the way we lose ourselves in the Godward work of worship.
Finally, there is Communion. Here Christ comes to us, renews himself in us, so that he can go forth in us and we in him, to carry on his ministry of reconciliation through us in the world in which we live. In this, to be sure, we know the joy of his presence and the power of his grace. But Communion is more than receiving. It is committing ourselves anew to our baptismal vocation to be the ambassadors and agents of God's love to all whom we meet.
If we think of worship as simply a form of private prayer, if we avoid the self-giving and self-forgetting aspect of joining in the work of corporate worship, we miss the most fundamental element of our life in Christ.
Article No. 2 (Suggested for June issues)
GLORY IN MARRIAGE
by the Rev. Lincoln Taylor, O.H.C.
In a day sensitive to feminine identity, St. Paul's words (Eph. 5:23): "the man is the head of the woman, " are used as a ' sentence ' to be nailed at the head of a verbal cross for the Apostle. The popular ear discovers a pleasant ring in the accompanying derision.
Much of this letter of Paul's develops the theme of the ' glory of Christ in the Church, ' and included in the general context is the assertion that one of the privileged ways of proclaiming the glory of our Lord is in the syllables and sentences of the union of a man and a woman.
Here are several of the ideas:
Just as a husband, summoned by his desire for beauty, labors that his wife shall be "all glorious, with no stain or wrinkle, or anything of the sort, but holy and without blemish, " so does our Lord Christ labor for the beauty of holiness of the Church.
The energy and industry with which a husband provides for and cares for his wife, is a vivid display of the manner in which Christ labors for His Church.
Supremely perhaps, the sacrifice by which a man may in fact lay down his very life for his wife, proclaims afresh the love with which our Lord sacrificed Himself on the Cross for his Church.
If, then, there is a primacy involved in being "the head of the wife, " it would seem to be the privilege of self-giving love. St. Paul's idea is certainly not intended to be divorced from our Master's words about the one desiring to be first, or ruler in fact becoming the servant of all. Plus XI said: "If the husband is the head, the wife is the heart," but even this needs to be seen in the deeper context which St. Paul was laboring to express. Ultimately all these strivings after primacy or equality (an exactitude on which love frowns) are swallowed up in the deeper sacrament or mystery that husband and wife become one flesh. St. Leo's words are quoted in the Rule of the Order of the Holy Cross: "the body of the baptised is the flesh of the crucified. " This too is displayed in the Apostle's words: "Men are to love their wives as they love their own bodies," and these words in the context of the whole theme, assert a spiritual/physical union of such glory that the glory of Christ is unmistakably proclaimed.