of the 1576 Red Book:
It also is the only liturgy I am aware of that explicitly retained the vesting prayers. I've only included some of them!:
Before vesting:
Put off from me, О Lord God, the old man with his manners and deeds, and clothe me with a new man that is made according unto God in true righteousness and holiness.
As the priest washes his hands
Grant us, O Lord God, that as the uncleanness of our hands is washed away, so also our heart and mind may through Thee be cleansed from all taint, and the increase of all holy virtues may grow in us.
As the priest dons the amice.
Preserve, О Lord God, with the grace of Thy Holy Spirit mine head, my shoulders, and my breast, that I may serve Thee the God of the living, who reignest for evermore.
As the priest dons the alb.
Make me white, O Lord God, and my heart clean, that cleansed in the blood of the Lamb I may attain everlasting joy.
As the priest dons the cincture.
Gird me, O Lord God, with the girdle of purity and extinguish in my loins the moisture of all unclean desires that the virtue of continence and chastity may abide in me.
As the priest dons the stole.
Clothe me about, O Lord God, with the garment of righteousness and immortality, that I have lost through the transgression of my first parents, and cleanse my heart and mind from the taint of all sins.
As the priest dons the chasuble.
Clothe me, О Lord God, with humility, love and peace, that entirely armed with virtues, I may withstand all vices and naughtiness, and likewise all mine enemies, spiritual and bodily.
Additionally, it is the only Lutheran liturgy of I am familiar with that put an epiclesis in a most logical spot (for Lutherans!) - at the close of the general intercessions and immediately prior to the Preface (a prayer we have often borrowed and adapted to close the Prayer of the Church at St. Paul's):
О Lord God, who willest that Thy Son's holy and most worthy Supper should be unto us a pledge and assurance of Thy mercy : awaken our heart, that we who celebrate the same His Supper may have a salutary remembrance of Thy benefits, and humbly give Thee true and bounden thanks, glory, honour, and praise for evermore. Help us Thy servants and Thy people that we may herewith remember the holy, pure, stainless, and blessed offering of thy Son, which He made upon the cross for us, and worthily celebrate the mystery of the new testament and eternal covenant. Bless and sanctify with the power of Thy Holy Spirit that which is prepared and set apart for this holy use, bread and wine, that rightly used it may be unto us the body and blood of Thy Son, the food of eternal life, which we may desire and seek with greatest longing. Through the same Thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who with Thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth in one Godhead from everlasting to everlasting. Amen.
Additionally, it is the only Lutheran liturgy I am familiar with that retained a form of the embolism:
...but deliver us from evil. Amen.
Deliver us O Lord from all evil, both past, present, and that which may come. Grant us gracious peace in our days, that beneath thy merciful protection and defence, we may be free from sins and safe from all affliction. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The peace of the Lord...
All around, it is a most intriguing liturgy and I quite agree with Evanson's evaluation of it: it is Lutheran at its core (though I freely admit that in ceremonies it skates as close to the edge as any Lutheran liturgy out there). The notion that it is Jesuit inspired is simply inconceivable to me; no Jesuit would approve of what this liturgy confessed regarding the Holy Eucharist.
26 comments:
Hmmm. Embolism. Medically, that's an object that forms in one place and then causes an occlusion (blockage) at another. All this wordiness strikes me more like a thrombus, an occlusion that forms at the site it blocks. A big liturgical blood clot.
Well, the Church of Sweden ultimately agreed with you, but given how they've turned out, I'm not sure that's such a good thing...
Is the Embolism that much newer than the Doxology, i.e. "For Thine is the Kingdom..."?
In historic Western liturgy, the "doxology" is definitely newer than the embolism. Most Lutheran rites did not have either. Just an "Amen" after "deliver us from evil."
I've always wondered whether the TLH setting saw the Doxology as a kind of Embolism, or like the conclusion of the Canon, by how it sets it apart from the text as opposed to how it's prayed in the prayer offices.
In most Lutheran offices, it was not prayed either. You can see it better in the Suffrages in TLH than in Matins or Vespers. Libera nos ad malo. Amen. That's how it tended to end for quite some time.
Do you know why it was introduced, then? A medieval accretion, or just a concession to the general Protestant atmosphere?
Another thought: if the Lord's Prayer is seen as a kind of Lutheran Canon, does it make a difference whether the congregation sings that concluding clause or whether the prayer simply concludes with an "Amen"?
Phil,
I know it is in place in the Saxon 1856 rite and so the Missouri Synod has ever had it. But in the Praetorius Mass for Christmas Morning, the Our Father receives a simple "Amen" and that is consonant with most of the 16th century ordos. I suspect the doxology arose more in the late 17th and early 18th century. I seem to remember a Bach setting of it. Am I imagining that?
Haha, well if one wants to continue with Lutheran liturgical history via the (beautiful) McCreesh reconstruction recordings, it's also absent from their Bach Epiphany mass recording, intended to be 1740 Leipzig.
Beyond that, I haven't read much regarding either the Lutheran orders or the early Eucharistic prayers, though I'm always interested to learn. The only real reason why I even know about it is from having seen it at Zion, Detroit.
Reed, The Lutheran Liturgy:
"The Common Liturgy has followed the German Lutheran orders (Mark Brandenburg, Herzogin Elizabeth, Pomerania, Hoya, Saxony), which assign the liturgical doxology (fourth century) and the Amen--"For thine is the kingdom," etc.--to the congregation as a fitting corporate conclusion to the petitions of the prayer."
FWIW, now that I'm reading it, Reed is also pretty insistent that the Lord's Prayer isn't consecratory, and cites the Eastern and Gallican Rites which had the congregation say the prayer, and the Mozarabic Rite, which had the Congregation assent with "Amen" after each petition.
Yes, but Chemnitz and numerous other reformers constantly pointed to St. Gregory the Great's words about consecrating the host of oblation only with the Our Father (assuming other than the Words of Institution) and in most Lutheran Church orders the people do NOT pray that prayer - they only amen it.
I'm definitely in over my head here (or at least beyond what I've read thus far), but there is that interesting debate that Dr. Stephenson pointed out between Tom Hardt and Jurgen Diestelmann in his recent Logia book review, as to when Luther regarded the Real Presence as beginning--it all hinging on Luther's use of the phrase "oratio dominica" in the Wolferinus letter, which could either mean "Lord's Words" (Hardt) or "Lord's Prayer" (Diestelmann).
But, being unable to read German, I can only watch from a distance.
Well, FWIW, having been adopted into an Irish RC background, the word there was that the "for thine ..." etc was appended to the Our Father by the English knowing that the native Irish would never say it being a usage of the Church of England and its affiliates, so it served to tell one from the other.
US Lutherans added it since we borrowed so much from Anglican rites as a source of English liturgy after coming here. The Our Father of the Little Catechism in German doesn't have it.
Modern Scripture texts do not include it as part of the NT text.
The novus ordo snuck it in after a wordy melisma on "deliver us".
A moment I will never forget. Toward the end of 11 September, a spontaneous Our Father broke out among the police and firefighters toward the end of the day as I was watching on CNN. After "but deliver us from evil" not one damn voice added a "for thine ...", just Amen.
IOW, the words of Christ alone are just fine, whether for consecration or the Our Father, the Christian Kaddish.
The Church of Sweden can go hang.
On Anglican usage:
The Book of Common Prayer (1662) has the doxology at the end of the Our Father at Holy Communion, but not in Morning or Evening Prayer.
Cranmer was famously influenced by his study of ancient liturgies on the one hand, and Lutheran (Wuerttemberg?) liturgy on the other hand. In his first Prayer Book (1549), there was no doxology even in the Communion Service.
I'm not sure that we should go too far into any kind of regulatory principles of worship when it comes to doxologies and such like. For example, if we are going to ban doxologies from the words of the Lord, we are going to have to get rid of the Gloria Patri at the end of all psalmody as well (which no one's RC friends-and-relations will back, however they conclude the Pater Noster). Indeed, most doxologies will have to go, won't they? Can't remember Jesus using many—and I don't think we use any of His in our liturgy.
The doxology of the Our Father is in the Didache. (Not quite the same words but close enough.) I had always thought it was added by the Protestants but apparently it had liturgical use long before there were Protestants. It is even said in the Orthodox Church...well, the priest says it after the faithful recite the Our Father. However when an Orthodox Christian recites the Lord's Prayer apart from the Liturgy he does not also recite the doxology. Neither do Catholics. What an interesting observation about the 9-11 prayer! I think New York has a heavy Catholic population.
Now what I would like to know is what kind of doxology is said in the Romanian Church. Each Sunday we recite the Lord's Prayer in multiple languages...English, Greek, Russian, Eritrean, Romanian...but I can't help but think the Romanian adds an extra line...with some reference to the Mother of God.
While we are on the subject of the Lord's Prayer, when I learned it as a child we said "deliver us from the evil one."...today everyone says "deliver us from evil". I prefer "evil one" because it reminds us there is a true evil one and not just an idea of evil. Anyone know how that evolution in language came about?
The Greek, of course, may be translated either way, though I certainly think that Evil One is the more likely rendering. Luther heads that way in the Larger Catechism, but not the Smaller. I wasn't aware of any English speaking tradition that used "Evil One" in the liturgy.
Pastor Weedon,
Is it possible to get a copy of the "red book" Swedish order in English? I don't read Swedish.
Bethany Kilcrease
Bethany,
You can enjoy as much of it as is provided in English here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=T09CAAAAIAAJ&dq=yelverton+mass+in+sweden&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=-46D-PqiIU&sig=I8m19b6PhWeq6p9YOIlOKldekJM&hl=en&ei=vt8LS5DvC9TjnQet45ihCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Just look for John III liturgy chapter. The whole book is a great read, by the bye.
There's a snippet here as well. More than a snippet, if you are willing to part with money. Never forget the Finns!
Also in this:
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?an=yelverton&bi=0&bx=off&ds=30&sortby=2&tn=mass+in+sweden&x=52&y=12
*The Mass in Sweden: Its Development from the Latin Rite, 1531 to 1917* by Erik Esskildsen Yelverton (1920)
The Mass in Sweden : Its Development from the Latin Rite from 1531 To 1917 by Eric Esskildsen Yelverton is available in both paperback ($25 list) and hardcover ($40 list) editions from Amazon and Barnes & Noble among other places, a reprint earlier this year by Kessinger Publishing in Montana. Pre-orders for a new hardcover edition being published by the Henry Bradshaw Society in the UK next March, at a list price of $95, are being accepted.
Pastor Weedon,
Wonderful - it's from a British turn-of-the-century publisher! I'm presenting a paper at the biennial Boston College conference on the history of religion in March on the topic of Victorian-Edwardian perceptions of and uses of Luther and Lutheranism in the context of the Anglican church crisis between it's high and low branches. This is an interesting source and may be relevant to my work. I will follow it up accordingly. Many thanks for the helpful tip.
Bethany Kilcrease
Someone with the gift of translation should do Lutherans in the USA a major favor and translate Diestelmann's "Actio Sacramentalis". It looks as if Diestelmann has done lots of research concerning the tricky question of the action of the Sacrament from Luther and Melanchthon's day up to the Formula of Concord.
Fr. Juhl,
Agreed. And someone should also translate Sasse's 1979 Corpus Christi.
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