The Prayer Book as A Rule of Life

Archbishop of Canterbury and author of the first Book of Common Prayer, Thomas Cranmer

Fr. Tony’s Letter to the Trinitarians 

The Trinitarian, February 2014

The Prayer Book as a Rule of Life

It is said that all the great religious reforms in history were, at base, efforts to take what had become specialized religious practices restricted to a holy few and make them broadly popular and public.

Title page of the 1549 BCP

 

When Thomas Cranmer wrote the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, he simplified the life of the Church to make its riches more available to all the faithful.  The four books that a priest had to use in regular services (the Missal for Holy Eucharist, the Breviary for daily prayer, the Manual for pastoral services such as baptisms and marriages, and the Processional for the Litany and occasional prayers), as well as the Pontifical service book used by Bishops for confirmations and ordinations—all were simplified, reduced, put into English and included in a single Prayer Book for use by all.   The eight daily monastic prayer services in the late Medieval Breviary were reduced to two: Morning and Evening Prayer, put into the language of the people instead of Latin. 

Cranmer intended the Prayer Book to be the basis of the religious life of the English people:  the everyday Christian was to follow simplified and reformed rules of life that previously, in burdensome and corrupt forms as he saw it, had been the exclusive purview of monks, nuns, and priests.

 

Table of Contents of 1549 BCP

 

Drawing on the spirituality of the monastic Rule of St. Benedict, the Prayer Book is Trinitarian in its approach to our shared and individual sacred journeys.  A trifecta of Daily Prayer, Holy Eucharist, and private devotions and service mirrored the three persons of the Holy Trinity.   We approach the Father in our daily Morning and Evening Prayer service.  Cranmer’s Daily Office was so structured that worshippers recited the whole Psalter each month and read aloud most of the Bible in a year.   The Word made Flesh, the Son, is made manifest in the service of Holy Communion or the Eucharist, identified in our current Prayer Book as the “principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day” (p.13). In addition to these shared acts of common prayer, we seek the ongoing inspiration and sustenance of the Holy Spirit in our private study, devotions, and service, including seeking spiritual direction and private confession and absolution when appropriate.   In the best Benedictine sense, the work and service of the individual faithful is a form of prayer. 

 

The Prayer Book can give each of our spiritual lives shape and form. Our Anglican doctrine and faith is based on a three-legged stool of Scripture, tradition, and reason, and maintains its character as a Middle Way by keeping these three in balance.   So also our spiritual life can be nourished and fostered by a balance of the three-legged stool of common Daily Prayer, weekly Eucharist, and intentional personal devotion. 

If you currently are not saying the Daily Office, you might well try the experiment of committing for a specified period to take 10 minutes every morning and use the “Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families” on page 136 of the Prayer Book.  It is a shortened and simplified form of Cranmer’s Daily Office.  Or try out Trinity’s chanted Morning Prayer service at 8 a.m. daily in the Church.  For evenings, three Sundays a month we have said Evening Prayer in the Church at 5 p.m.  Or you might want to recite it on your own, or try the Prayer Book’s Compline service (again, less than 10 minutes, p. 127), a simplified form of the old Monastic bed-time Office.  If you have quiet time at lunch, think about using the noonday prayers on page 123, also from the Monastic offices. Don’t worry about doing all of these, just about increasing your use of common prayer in your daily life in incremental steps as it feels right. 

If you have been missing Eucharist, try harder to make it on a weekly basis. In addition to Sunday Morning Eucharist services at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m.  We have healing Eucharist at noon on Thursdays, and we now have two Sundays a month where we offer 5 p.m. Eucharists in addition to the Sunday morning services.  If you are not intentional right now in a private devotion, then start thinking about what you would like to commit to in this regard.  Lent is coming up fast (Ash Wednesday is March 5), and it is a good time to make special commitments to remedy unbalances that may have developed in our spiritual life. 

The Prayer Book is rich in its spirituality and doctrine.  The “Prayers and Thanksgivings” on pp. 814-840 and the “Collects” (summing prayers that gather up the themes of various services in the Church Year) on pp. 211-261 constitute a great anthology of thoughtful prayer intentions assembled over the centuries in the Church’s common prayer.    I invite all of us to plumb its treasures more fully in this balanced rule of life given us by Archbishop Cranmer. 

Grace and Peace, 

Fr. Tony+