laudable Practice

In mortality there is a sharpness / of perception - everything made bare and elemental. Christopher Yokel, 'Life-In-Death', in Autumn Poems (2019). November.  It is the month in which intimations of mortality are particularly evident .  With the glories of Autumn past, the landscape dulls, quietens, and prepares for Winter's arrival. The trees are bare, the days shorten and grow colder.  Another year of this earthly life is passing.  It is a month when my mind turns to the fitting character of the Prayer Book's The Burial of the Dead . Yokel's words, written of Autumn's end and November days, could have also been composed to describe the Prayer Book's Burial office. In mortality there is a sharpness / of perception - everything made bare and elemental. The starkness of The Burial of the Dead is, contrary to its liturgical critics and their desire for something much less bracing, its great strength.  All else is stripped away. Death is confronted, not denied...

On this penultimate day of November, and on the cusp of Advent, we draw to a close this short series of posts meditating upon the month of the departed through the words of Jeremy Taylor. In this extract from his sermon at the 1657 funeral of Sir George Dalston, a Cumberland Royalist, Taylor turns to what are, I think, the most significant words in the Prayer Book Order of Burial : I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write, From henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord: Even so, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours. Introduced by Cranmer in BCP 1549, this remained an enduring feature of burial rites in the Prayer Book tradition. Said at the graveside immediately after the committal, it defines the quiet and gentle hope which underpins the Prayer Book's Order of Burial: the faithful departed are now at rest . No post-mortem pains await them. No urgent prayers need be offered for them. We are to carry no fears for them. They are, in Christ, at res...

From Bishop Bull's sermon ' The Middle State of Happiness or Misery ', an extract which can function as an exposition of the quiet, trusting piety of the Prayer Book Order for the Burial of the Dead, expressed in the invocation of Revelation 14:13 at the graveside, the Lord's Prayer, and the prayer following: Almighty God, with whom do live the  spirits of them that depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity ... It is this "place of full security" that Bull sets forth, to our comfort: This discourse is matter of abundant consolation to all good men, when death approacheth them. They are sure, not only of a blessed resurrection at the last day, but of a reception into a very happy place and state in the mean time. They shall be immediately after death put in the possession of paradise, and there rejoice in the certain expectation of a crown of glory, to be bes...

November opened with All Saints' Day, rejoicing with the Communion of Saints in "those unspeakable joys, which thou hast prepared for them that unfeignedly love thee". In mid-November, in these Islands, we had the sombre, emotive observance of Remembrance Sunday. Friends in the United States have just celebrated Thanksgiving, a day with deep cultural resonance, giving thanks unto God "for the fruits of the earth in their season and for the labors of those who harvest them". Next week we will be readying ourselves for Advent. For many of us this will mean the Advent Procession in the darkness of an early December evening. Christmas carol services will also be fast approaching (no matter what the online Anglican/Episcopal 'Advent Police' insist).  It is a liturgically crowded and busy time of year, with feasts and observances rich in meaning. This is precisely why I value Stir-up Sunday and do not observe the 'feast of Christ the King' on the Sunda...

In The Great Exemplar (1649), as Taylor reflects on the Lord's Passion and Death, he provides a discourse entitled 'Of Death, and the due Manner of Preparation to it'. It is appropriate reading for this month of the departed, not least for its reminder that we are always called to be prepared for our death:  And indeed, since all our life we are dying and this minute in which I now write, death divides with me, and hath got the surer part and more certain possession, it is but reasonable that we should always be doing the offices of preparation. Alongside this exhortation to holy living - the "one way of preparing to death" - Taylor also addresses the circumstances of "those days of our last visitation", what the Litany terms "the hour of death". Here he points to the three ministries "at the point of departure", appointed by the Prayer Book : prayer and spiritual counsel, absolution, and reception of the holy Sacrament. While the pr...

When Judges were instead of Kings, and Hophni and Phinehas were among the Priests, every man did what was right in his own eyes, but few did what was pleasing in the eyes of the Lord ...  And so Jeremy Taylor begins the Preface of his A Collection of Offices . Published in 1657, when any notion of a restoration of the monarch and episcopacy was not seriously entertained, Taylor was providing liturgical texts to be used in the place of the prohibited Book of Common Prayer: But because things are otherwise in this affair then we had hop'd, and that in very many Churches in stead of the Common Prayer which they use not, every man uses what he pleases, and all men doe not choose well, and where there are so many choosers there is nothing regular ... how much better the Curates of souls may help themselves with these or the like offices, then with their own extempore. In addition to divine service, Curates of souls, of course, also administered the occasional offices. This being so, A ...

Remembrancetide. It falls in mid-November, with the leaves fallen and the trees bare, the days shorter, another year reaching its end. A fitting season to remember.  Far from the garish, loud days of Summer, these November days encourage a sombre quietness as we recollect loss, death, grief, sacrifice. The last days of Autumn, as the dark days before Christmas draw near, encourage the modesty and restraint of our remembrance. We do not gather to celebrate victory or give expression to patriotic fervour.  The symbol of Remembrancetide is not the national flag but a little poppy - a memory of Flanders fields - pinned to our lapels. The parson, standing close to the local war memorial, is in surplice, hood, bands, tippet: fitting ecclesiastical attire, echoing the modesty and restraint which hold and still us before the sombre quiet of Remembrance.  A crowd gathers, each with the little poppy in their lapels. Quiet nods of greeting. Little, if any, talking. There is an inher...

Jeremy Taylor's Holy Dying is a text for November days, the month of the departed. The final section of the work is "A peroration concerning the contingencies, and treatings of our departed friends after death, in order to their buriall, &c.". Addressing our duties to the departed, it sets forth what we might term a Prayer Book piety with regards to mourning. This is immediately seen in the exhortation against ostentatious ceremonies for the departed - which would, of course, be the very opposite of the sparse, reserved nature of the Prayer Book Burial of the Dead : When we have received the last breath of our friend and closed his eyes, and composed his body for the grave, then seasonable is the counsell of the son of Sirach: Weep bitterly and make great moan, and use lamentation as he is worthy, and that a day or two, lest thou be evil spoken of; and then comfort thy self for thy heavinesse. But take no grief to heart; for there is no turning again, thou shalt not ...

November is the month of the departed. The month begins with All Saints' Day, particularly commemorating those "blessed Saints" whom we have known, and then moves into the solemn national and communal recollections of Remembrancetide. The last of the falling leaves, the darkness of the last days of Autumn, and the approach of the year's end evoke a sense of our mortality. It is a month made for walks in old churchyards and mulling over the Burial service. Each week during this month on laudable Practice , there will be a post meditating on the month of the departed through words from Jeremy Taylor, We being with Taylor's 1650 sermon at the funeral of Frances Vaughan, Countess of Carbery, in which he describes how we share with the faithful departed in the Communion of Saints: But then we should do well also to remember, that in this world we are something besides flesh and bloud; that we may not without violent necessities run into new relations, but preserve the...

The closing days of November. We are on the cusp of Advent. Autumn's end is visible, the bare trees of the churchyard telling us that Winter is arriving. We are expecting frost. Today the sun will set a few minutes after 4pm. The month began in Lutheran Scandinavia on All Saints' Day, and in Catholic central and eastern Europe on All Souls' Day, with candles lit at the graves of loved ones. There is no such custom amongst Anglicans in these Islands. As the festive season approaches, however, churchyards will see Christmas wreaths being placed on many a grave. Visiting my father's grave on the days leading to Christmas each year, I am always touched by the number of wreaths placed on graves in the cemetery.  The words of the carol always come to mind:  For lo! the days are hastening on By prophet bards foretold, When with the ever circling years Comes round the age of gold; When Peace shall over all the earth Its ancient splendors fling, And the whole world give back the...