laudable Practice

It is Lammas Day, the first day of August. Here in Jeremy Taylor country we can see the beginnings of harvest. Bales abound in the fields, farmers are working late into the evening, the crops of mid-Summer have been gathered in. Lammas falls almost mid-way between Rogationtide and Harvest Thanksgiving. Our prayers for a good harvest were offered in the earliest days of Summer. After Summer has ended and we enter into Autumn, we will give thanks for the harvest. Now, in these last days of High Summer, we see the crops that have grown being gathered, the fields change in colour and texture.  Lammas marks the passing of the agricultural year, preparing us for Harvest Thanksgiving. And so Lammas Day also marks the passage of Summer. Soon I will again be reading the words of Wendell Berry: It is mid August. The year is changing.  The summer's young are grown and strong in flight.  Soon now it will be fall.  The frost will come. Before the month's end, berries will abound ...

From Parochial Sermons, from Trinity to Advent Sunday (1846) by Henry James Hastings (who was also the author of A Plea for the Prayer Book As It Is , 1858), an extract from the sermon for the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity, the Sunday before Advent. This powerfully combines the collect's opening petition, "Stir up", with the Gospel of the day, St. John's account of the miracle of the loaves: Let us all keep duly in mind that we are now come to the close of another ecclesiastical year. In looking back upon it, have we not reason to fear that much has been lost of spiritual good and advancement, through our own negligence and supineness and sloth and indifference - means of grace have been abused, sacraments have been neglected, sabbaths have been wasted, the word of God has been put aside, religious habits have not been cultivated, the Saviour has not been loved and trusted in. Will not these things lie heavy upon us in eternity? Let us gather up the fragments tha...

Yesterday, 1st August, was Lammas Day, commemorated as a Black Letter Day in the 1662 Calendar.  That, of course, means that 1662 provides no liturgical provision for the day.  Despite this, however, there is much in the ordinary form of Mattins and Evensong to mark the day. The opening exhortation reminds us that it is right in public prayer "to ask those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul": petition for a good harvest is, therefore, right and meet.  At Mattins, the Venite's praise for the God in whose "hands are all the corners of the earth ... and his hands prepared the dry land", roots our praise on Lammas in the truth which also affirm in the Apostles' Creed: "Maker of heaven and earth". Lammas being the first day of August, the Psalter begins again.  Psalm 1 evokes rich natural imagery, indicating the spiritual significance of harvest (after the example of the Lord's teaching, for "the kingdom ...

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned ... O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain: O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid: say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God - from the reading appointed for the Epistle on Saint John Baptist's Day , Isaiah 40:1-11. And it came to pass, that on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child ...And fear came on all that dwelt round about them; and all these sayings were noised abroad throughout all the hill-country of Judaea ... And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel: for he hath visited and redeemed his people, and hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David ... to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and ...

During long months of the pandemic, millions of us turned to nature. Our research on the mental health impacts of the pandemic showed going for walks outside was one of our top coping strategies and 45% of us reported being in green spaces had been vital for our mental health. Websites which showed footage from webcams of wildlife saw hits increase by over 2000%. Wider studies also found that during lockdowns, people not only spent more time in nature but were noticing it more. It was as if we were re-discovering at our most fragile point our fundamental human need to connect with nature. So said the UK's Mental Health Foundation , introducing the theme of this year's Mental Health Awareness Week: nature.  This builds, of course, on an increasingly well-recognised body of research, ably summarised - with compelling personal accounts of mental health - by Lucy Jones in Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild (2020) and Isabel Hardman The Natural Health Service: how nature can...

The recent TEC steps to remove the commemoration of renowned theologian William Porcher DuBose from the liturgical calendar exemplify the wisdom of a much more minimalist approach to the commemoration of saints.  The Standing Committee on Liturgy and Music has taken the unprecedented step of advising the removal of DuBose from the calendar in light of his post-Civil War defences of the intrinsic evil of slavery and the resistance of the former Confederacy to racial equality: DuBose offered unapologetic defenses of that system of racial oppression while espousing white supremacy in some of his writings, even praising the early Ku Klux Klan. DuBose reminds us that acceptance of - indeed, defence of - injustices can easily and routinely become part of ecclesial life.  Anti-Semitism, misogyny, and racism have all taken root at various times and in various places in the life of the Church.  This is one of the reasons, by the way, which might make us think about the usefulnes...

According to most contemporary Anglican calendars, it would have not been permitted to have celebrated Saint Mark's Day yesterday.  When a saint's day falls on a Sunday, the contemporary liturgist has little hesitation in telling us that the Sunday should take precedence.  When that Sunday is in Eastertide ... well, then there is no choice.  In the words of the Church of Ireland BCP 2004: Festivals falling on a Sunday of Eastertide are observed on the Monday following or at the discretion of the minister on another suitable weekday in the same week. This obviously is required when Easter Day or its octave day, the First Sunday after Easter, fall on 25th April.  When it comes to the Third Sunday after Easter, however, we might begin to wonder.  Why should the feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist not be celebrated on such a Sunday in Eastertide? The very fact that Mark the Evangelist wrote his gospel, after all, is because of the Resurrection.  It is the Resurr...

From Cosin's A Collection of Private Devotions (1627), a description of the origins and purpose of Septuagesimatide illustrating the pastoral wisdom of having a time which prepares us for the fasting and discipline of Lent: Septuagesima (so called from the number of seventy) is a solemn beginning of a new office and a new time, wherein our Holy Mother the Church hath taught us, by calling to mind the time of the Jews' captivity from their country, the better to remember and bewail our own captivity from ours, even that heavenly paradise which God at first created for us. For which purpose the lessons of the Church Service (saith St. Bernard) are this day altered in their course, and the story of Genesis (where both our first happiness and our first miseries are described) is always begun to be read in Septuagesima. It is a time, therefore, that suddenly calls us back from our Christmas feasting and joy, to our Lenten fasting and sorrow; from thinking how Christ came into the w...

Sermons from the Caroline, Restoration, and Revolution eras suggest a lively Epiphany piety within the Church of England, with the significance of the feast as the culmination of Christmas recognised and traditional Epiphany themes echoed.   In a ' Sermon concerning the Epiphany ', preached in Christ Church, Oxford, in 1639, Richard Gardyner (deprived during the Interregnum) encouraged his listeners to adore with the Magi: But let us, who acknowledge Christ our Liege Prince, and Sovereign, like good subjects humbly seek, & come to this God Incarnate, falling down at the Manger, and at the lap of the Virgin, where this blessed Child lieth ... and there behold him given to us, borne for us, sucking, growing, dying, rising again, ascending above the heavens that he may at length bring us thither, where we shall see him face to face, which we beseech him to grant us for his mercies, and merits sake.  In doing so, he notes that he is in disagreement with Calvin's understan...

In his sermon preached on the Eve of the Epiphany, 1653 , to the exiled Court in Paris, John Cosin invoked an Epiphany sermon by "father Latimer" critiquing aspects of medieval cult of the Three Kings. Alongside this, however, Cosin's sermon offered a rather traditional Epiphany piety.    Preaching on the Second Sunday after Christmas - a day for which the BCP appointed no Collect, Epistle, or Gospel - he took his text from the Gospel appointed for the Epiphany, explaining the significance of the feast as the culmination of Christmas: There came wise men .... and said, For we have seen, His star in the east. This text will be part of the Gospel which is appointed to be read in the Church to-morrow, and to-morrow will be the last day of the twelve which are appointed to wait upon the feast of Christ's blessed Nativity. The last day of the feast, and, as St. John said of another, the last and the greatest day of the feast to us; for by this last day we cone to have but ...

The proximity of the feast of Saint Thomas the Apostle to Christmas, while disapproved of and abandoned by most recent liturgical revisions, offers a profound preparation for our celebration of the Lord's Nativity.  It invites us to behold the mystery of the Incarnation and how this mystery is set forth in the Church's Christological confession.  And it does so in harmony with the feast of Saint John the Evangelist, following Christmas just as Saint Thomas' Day precedes Christmas. The Church's Christological confession has been fundamentally shaped by the Johannine witness.  As the Gospel reading for Saint John the Evangelist's Day declares: This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true (John 21:24). What is this testimony?  The Gospel of the feast of Saint Thomas draws us to its heart: Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrus...

That Anglican guides should avoid, and if possible forbid, spiritual "tension" is worth a heading to itself.  This evil is very prevalent, yet completely inconsistent with almost everything for which English spirituality stands.  Empirical guidance, not dogmatic direction; affectiveness curbed by doctrine; recollection, continuous and gentle, not set periods of stiff devotion; domesticity not militarism; optimism not rigour; all leads naturally into a balance, a sanity into what Julian called "full and homely" and what Taylor meant by "an amiable captivity of the Spirit" - Martin Thornton English Spirituality (1963).  If we desired a summary of the differences between Stir-up Sunday and the feast of Christ the King, it might be suggested that it is offered here by Thornton.  Stir-up Sunday is a gentle, yearly recollection of the approach of Advent.  It is marked by domesticity: the familiar words, the cultural resonances, the echoes in the landscape of t...

A few prosaic days ... So says Emily Dickinson in her poem ' November '.  With the rich glories of Autumn and the festivities of All Hallows past, the season begins to slowly turns towards Winter.  Here in the British Isles and in Canada, we do not have Thanksgiving to look forward to at month's end.  As the days get shorter, the weather more wintry, these weeks seem to peter out. Only Remembrance Sunday " pierces with its bleak remembrance", to use the words of Malcolm Guite . A few prosaic days ... The traditional Prayer Book collects reflect the prosaic quality of this time of year.  The collect of Trinity XXI petitions for "a quiet mind"; Trinity XXII, that we might be "devoutly given to serve thee in all good works"; Trinity XXIII, that we "may obtain effectually" that which we ask for in prayer.  It is all rather commonplace and ordinary.   It contrasts sharply with many contemporary liturgies creating 'pre-Advent' time,...

In respect of, and with relation to that blessed state, according to the doctrine, and practice of our church, we do pray for the dead; for the militant church upon earth, and the triumphant church in heaven, and the whole Catholic church in heaven, and earth; we do pray that God will be pleased to hasten that kingdom, that we with all others departed in the true faith of his holy name, may have this perfect consummation, both of body and soul, in his everlasting glory, Amen. In his Sermon XII (preached in 1621), John Donne asserted that the Reformed ecclesia Anglicana prayed for the faithful departed.   He did so by quoting the prayer at the graveside from the Burial of the Dead in BCP 1559 : beseching the that it may please the of thy gracious goodnes, shortelye to accomplishe the numbre of thyne electe, and to haste thy kyngedome, that we with thys oure brother, and all other departed in the true fayth of thy holy name, may have our perfect consummacion and blisse, both i...

From Donne's Sermon XLV , preached upon All Saints' Day.  Donne here exemplifies the quiet joy with which Anglicanism celebrates the parish church participating in the Communion of Saints. So that it is truly a festival, grounded upon that Article of the Creed, The Communion of Saints, and unites in our devout contemplation, The Head of the Church, God himself, and those two noble constitutive parts thereof, The Triumphant, and the Militant. And, accordingly, hath the Church applied this part of Scripture, to be read for the Epistle of this day, to shew, that All-Saints day hath relation to all Saints, both living and dead; for those servants of God, which are here in this text, sealed in their foreheads, are such (without all question) as receive that Seal here, here in the militant Church. And therefore, as these words, so this festival, in their intendiment, that applied these words to this festival, is also of Saints upon Earth ... The servants of God being sealed in their ...

Autumn is not the season of decay or death, but one of wealth and renewal - nature writer Louise Baker in Autumn: An anthology for changing seasons (2016). All Saints' Day is the third high festival of Autumn (after Michaelmas and Harvest Thanksgiving).  It is then right and proper that it is surrounded by customs which reflect this.  The pumpkins, apples, and nuts of the season are a rich and joyous bounty which should be enjoyed on All Hallows' Eve.  This itself is an anticipation of the feast day.  As Donne famously declared:  in Paradise, the fruits were ripe the first minute, in Heaven it is always autumn, His mercies are ever in their maturity.  The rich bounty of Autumn shared on All Hallows' Eve is a foretaste of what the collect of the feast describes as "those unspeakable joys" which are set before us, the promise declared in the Gospel of the day: "for great is your reward in heaven". The other aspect of All Hallows' Eve, of course, is...