ACK!!! It doesn't get much more silly than that, folks. THIS is what time was created for! THIS is how the time itself is redeemed! Think of these words at the tail end of the Preface: "evermore praising You and saying: Holy, holy, holy!"
Yes, EVERMORE. As in all time, all space, all of life itself. It was made and given to us that we might fill it with the praise of God in and through the gift of Jesus Christ. That we might join with angels and with archangels and with all the company of heaven. That we might praise "evermore and evermore."
And who on earth are we that we should be called to such a high and holy calling? Talk about grace! We poor sons of Adams and daughters of Eve, with mouths filled so often with griping, complaining, excuses, lies and you name it. We wretched ones. WE are summoned and called into a new way of living, of being. With our sins forgiven, robed in the very righteousness of Him who became a Child of Mary to make us all children of God, whose sacrifice has made us companions of the holy angels, we are given the unspeakable privilege of joining in their unending hymn! And it's all acceptable to His Father through the Son and in the Spirit.
"That we might BE to the praise of His glory" is how St. Paul put it in Ephesians 1. The beauty of our liturgy is how it states this so simply, so concisely, and then summons us to enter into this joyous gift. Evermore. Take that word into your heart, into your mind. Repent of the rush and savor the wonder. YOU are called to praise.
well now you've gone and done it Father William...after reading your blog post (and savoring it so)I'm desiring the Mass and all that is in Our Lord's Gottesdienst...but, I've got to wait until Sunday :(
ReplyDeletePax
frJ
Ah, Fr. Jay. I wish you could be with us tomorrow. Winkel is at Trinity Lutheran in Worden, where Fr. Heath Curtis will deliver the gifts, and I will afflict them my lack of organ playing skills yet once again. But it will be overflowing joy nonetheless, for the praises of God will sound and the gift of the Body and Blood of the Savior will grant us a share in the life that has no end as all our sins are forgiven and destroyed.
ReplyDeleteSaving time? What time? We are in heaven with the Saints and Angels. There is no time...
ReplyDeleteOr from another perspective: if the service is "running long" then I preached too long.
Thanks for the post!
Why, in the Preface, do we end it with the word "saying" and then singing the Sanctus? It wasn't that way in the older hymnals
ReplyDeleteCOJOMAY, actually it was "saying" in The Lutheran Hymnal and thus in The Common Service. This is based on the traditional Latin form which also ends: dicentes (saying). BUT in the Church's use "saying" is not heard as opposite of "singing." It's just a word for "uttering out loud" and one does that in song as in speech.
ReplyDeleteI'm feeling contentious and irritable today; I'm coming off all my meds. I do not like the current Rx insurance plans, so late this month my doctor and I will discuss how I can be treated with only the cheapest generics and OTC meds and then I will bow out of the Rx insurance schemes. I'm a tad jittery too and I get brain waves of electrical surges about avery 10 minutes. Not particularly botherson.
ReplyDeleteThe germain: We left the Missouri Synod when all they had was TLH and when page 5 and page 15 were always done in toto every Sunday, just switching the non-communion page 5 and the communion page 15. I never attended an LC-MS church that did not have TLH in the pews and that did not do the whole liturgy as the monkies saw it (monkey see, monkey do). Then it was true, any LC-MS church or former Synodical Conference church anywhere in the English Speaking World said one or both of the two liturgies every Sunday. (You must overlook a 4 year period in the mid 1970s when I attended an "experimental" LCMS church in North Florida. The liturgy was in the church buletin, and it was significantly different every Sunday. We never used anything, at all, from any Lutheran hymnal.)
But the Queen's (Elizabeth I) English was deemed unacceptable in the 1980s, around the time the LC-MS began to yolk themselves unequaly with the ALC. We were long gone by that time, we were in the WELS since the late sixties and were still using the Synodical Conference hymnal, TLH. We totally missed the introduction and learning of the new liturgies in the Green Hymnal, which I feel is strongly influenced by the other gods (ALC)that the LC-MS was in fellowship with then.
Then, like a Roman Emperor trying to find a middle way for these garralous Christians, the Maroon hymnal was offerd up, and it seems to be working at making a maroon hymnal with all the liturgies of the Blue Book and the Green Book in it. It's just an amalgem of the two former hymnals, but with current English usage applied to the old Blue Hymnal (syn conf).
One must say, what's not to like about everything? Too much of a good thing is wonderful as Ms. West used to tell us. I would suppose that only your newest and youngest members don't understand the patchwork that is the Maroon Book. It is a patch work because some very good stuff got in there along with the very bad stuff from the Green book that almost tore the synod apart.
Boy are you lucky, the other 2/3s of my rant have dissappeared because this site has a limit on how long replies can be. I really wish you could have seen it, cause now my addled brain thinks it was germain to your conversation.
ReplyDeletePS I hate your software (414 lloratB
ReplyDeleteSorry, this mood is either not myself, or it is myself unmedicatd. But it does seem that I more will to express my anger at the green book liturgies.
ReplyDeleteI just took my OTC sleeping aid that keeps me wide awake and chatty all night long and very tired in the mornings. However, tomorrow morning just before 10:00 we have to be at the oral surgeon to have an ulcer removed (Mama) from her tongue. This is the 3rd time we have done this.
ReplyDeleteDid you know that at Concordia Austin, that our student newsletter was titled, "Der Winkelblatt." Than's when I learned the meaning of Winkel.
After reading your comments on your Winkel meeting, I realized that my lost comments made a descant on your comments.
Germans like things ordered and in order, with all authority figures all lined up by rank. So you read these territorial and city church orders, but you must keep in mind the milue of Prince and Superintendant (usually the dean of a local university religion faculty. If someone like me who is temperarily (I hope) off my rockers, starts demanding special exceptions to the rules as agreed upon and signed off on by the Duke and the Superindendent. The sin you get back, unless you have your own personal political power, the sin you get back will be demotion and a placement in outter Lueneburger Heide with is musty, damp, and smelly parsonage. For the average German clergy or layman to start making demands for his own way, was an offence against authority (Prince and Superintendent). The idea of freedom wouldn't even come into the issue.
But for us, for you and me and Pastor Curtis, the ideal is demanded, the purfect ballance between Christian freedom and Christian love (walking together). Why can't we have a good Lutheran Prince & Overseer take the heat on this, which in these cases the heat would be transferred onto the one/s identified as causing trouble in Mompelgard.
"It would be fun to watch it all unfold, wouldn't it." she wrote with no little sense of shadenfreude.