Praying with Understanding- Beckwith

Introduction

One of the greatest failures of the church in recent years has been the failure to teach. So much so, that lay people today are often crying out for teaching, but the clergy (whether through uncertainty, mistaken priorities or sheer overwork) are still not supplying the need. The services which are used every Sunday are an obvious subject for teaching, yet it has often been taken for granted that people know why they use them and fully understand what they mean. Much, of course, can be learned about them simply by thoughtful use of them, but certain things cannot. Then, when the church enters an era of revolution, as at present, it is possible for the revolutionaries to decry the traditional services as 'unintelligible', simply because they contain some things hard to understand, which nobody troubles to make clear.

If the Book of Common Prayer were unintelligible, its compiler Archbishop Cranmer would be the first to tell us not to use it. In his prefaces 'Concerning the Service of the Church' and 'Of Ceremonies, why some be abolished and some retained', he lays great stress on St Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 14 that all things in public worship ought to be done 'unto edifying', and explains that this is why he has substituted the English language for Latin, and has reformed obscure and misleading ceremonial. A hundred years after his work had been done, the 1662 revisers tell us in their 'Preface' that they had found certain words and phrases which had fallen out of use or changed their meaning in the meantime, and that they had therefore substituted others. Today, three hundred years later again, it is not surprising if the same situation has arisen once more; and, in any revision carried out on the modest principles of the 1662 revisers, a sprinkling of words and phrases might well need to be changed for the same reasons. But that is all. The number of such words and phrases is not great, and it would be no more necessary today, in the cause of intelligibility, to change the whole substance and style of the Prayer Book, than it was in the seventeenth century. The text, as the 1662 revisers left it, was essentially Cranmer's text, and a modern revision carried out on the same principles would again leave us with a text that was quite recognisably Cranmer's. The 'invisible mending' would hardly show. It would not be in everyday speech, and would include some harmless antiquarianisms like 'thou', 'thee' and 'thy'; but then the Prayer Book never was in everyday speech - rather, it was in a finer form of speech, which sometimes differed from everyday speech chiefly in being simpler and clearer. An unusual way of speaking is quite a different thing from an unintelligible way of speaking, though today they are so regularly supposed the same. To change words and phrases which have fallen out of use or altered their meaning would remove all trace of unintelligibility, while leaving a nobly unique text which was still unmistakably Cranmer's own.

In the meantime, such words and phrases can at least be explained. The clergy can, of course, explain them by word of mouth, and one of the aims of the present booklet is to show clergy how easily this teaching gap can be bridged. However, in parishes where this is not as yet being done, it may help to have the explanation available for laity also in brief written form.

The passages of Scripture reproduced in the Prayer Book (notably the Epistles, Gospels and Psalter) are for the most part not included in the scope of this little guide. Other translations of the Bible, and Bible commentaries, can be consulted for help on such passages. Nor does it include the parts of the Prayer Book most rarely used. In these respects the present guide is smaller in scope than the earlier Prayer Book glossaries, now out of print, by R B Girdlestone and R Tatlock, but it seemed better to keep it short and inexpensive. On the other hand, a few explanations of difficulties not purely linguistic have been given a place here.

In order to be 'edifying', as Cranmer intended, the Prayer Book needed not just to be understandable but to be worth understanding. He therefore based it on the Bible, so that it expresses the teaching of the Bible, often in the Bible's own words. As a consequence, the older translations of the Bible, such as Cranmer used, frequently throw light upon difficult words and phrases in the Prayer Book; though sometimes one needs to seek parallels in other books of our older English literature, or in liturgical sources from which Cranmer drew, or (in the case of translated items) in the Greek, Latin or other texts which he was translating or adapting. For examples, see the pages that follow.

If we are to be edified by our worship, we need to think about the words we are using, so that we can make them our own. A liturgy may be supremely edifying, as the Prayer Book is, but it will still only edify those who use it thoughtfully. Used thoughtfully, side by side with a thoughtful use of the Bible on which it is based, it will come to mean more and more. At the same time, the items which resist being understood will become more and more apparent, and it is hoped that this little work will at those points come to the worshipper's aid.

Table of Contents

1.Morning and Evening Prayer

Opening Sentences

‘a broken and a contrite heart’ (Psalm 51:17). ‘Contrite’ (from Latin contritus, bruised) means broken down with grief and penitence for sin. So also in the collect for Ash Wednesday we pray, ‘Create and make in us new and contrite hearts’, and in the Litany, ‘O God, merciful Father, that despisest not the sighing of a contrite heart, nor the desire of such as be sorrowful’.

Exhortation

'yet ought we most chiefly so to do...'. Not just 'when we assemble and meet together' but when we do so for the purposes stated, 'to render thanks etc.'. The meaning is not that we ought chiefly to confess our sins in public rather than in private, but that we ought chiefly to confess them at times of prayer rather than at other times, since confession is a form of prayer.

Confession

'and there is no health in us'. The reference is clearly to spiritual health, but it may have the more active sense of spiritual healing, i.e. salvation, and mean that there is no salvation in ourselves (though there is in God). Thus, in the Prayer for All Conditions of Men, among the Prayers and Thanksgivings upon Several Occasions, we ask God to make known his 'saving health (i.e. his salvation) unto all nations', and in the Prayer for the Clergy and People at these two services we ask God to send down upon us 'the healthful (i.e. saving) Spirit of thy grace'. Rather similarly, in the Bible God's forgiveness is sometimes called healing: 'The good Lord pardon every one that prepareth his heart to seek God ... And the Lord hearkened to Hezekiah, and healed the people (2 Chronicles 30:18-20).

'have mercy upon us, miserable offenders'. Here in the Confession, 'miserable' does not have either of the modern senses of sorrowful or contemptible, but means pitiable (compare Latin misereor, to pity, and the related word 'commiserate'). So also, in the opening part of the Litany, 'have mercy upon us miserable sinners' means 'us pitiable sinners'. The word is similarly used in 1 Corinthians 15:19, where St Paul says, 'If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable’ (i.e. most pitiable).

'live a godly, righteous, and sober life'. Here 'sober' means sober-minded, restrained, sensible - free from any form of irresponsibility, not simply free from drunkenness, as in modern usage. Compare Acts 26:25, where Paul says, 'I am not mad, most noble Festus; but speak forth the words of truth and soberness'.

Absolution

'Almighty God...' This absolution is not a prayer but a declaration and exhortation, as becomes clear when we reach the first main verb 'He pardoneth'. What precedes this is a description of God, not an address to him, and consequently speaks of him in the third person, 'who desireth (not desirest)... hath (not, hast) given power'. Grammatically, it is all in apposition to 'He'.

The Lord’s Prayer

'hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come ... For thine is the kingdom'. In modern English, a kingdom is the place where a king rules, but in older English it can also mean his kingly rule (which we pray may 'come') or his kingship (which we acknowledge as 'thine'). The disruptive new translation of the Lord's Prayer in Common Worship is singularly pointless, since it retains both the two traditional words 'hallowed' (acknowledged and treated as holy) and 'kingdom' unchanged.

A perplexing thing about the use of the Lord's Prayer in these two services and Holy Communion is that it occurs twice. This is probably because our Lord set it before us as a model prayer (Matthew 6:5-15; Luke 11:1-4). We therefore remind ourselves of it at the beginning of the service, and again when we resume praying after a break. In shorter services, the Lord's Prayer is used only once, and not always at the same point.

Gloria (in first set of responses, and after canticles and psalms)

'and ever shall be, world without end'. The meaning is 'age without end' (unlike the present age, which does have an end). 'World' used to have two senses, like the corresponding words in Greek and Latin, either the modern sense of the inhabited earth or universe, or else the temporal sense of 'age', as here. According to the New Testament, there are two ages: the present age, up until the return of our Lord in glory, and the age to come, which is eternal. Compare Ephesians 1:21, 'not only in this world (i.e. age), but also in that which is to come'. Similarly, in the Nicene Creed at Holy Communion, we say that God the Son was 'begotten of the Father before all worlds', i.e. before all ages, from eternity.

Venite

The title of this canticle, like other Latin titles in the Prayer Book, is the opening word (or words) of the Latin text. It implies that the item has been translated from the old Latin services.

'As in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness, when your fathers tempted me'. In modern English, 'tempt' simply means entice to evil (the work of the devil), but in older English it could also have the neutral sense of put to the test. In this sense God can 'tempt' man (as when he ‘tempted' Abraham in Genesis 22:1, to see if he loved God above all else), but man must not 'tempt' God (as our Lord said to Satan in Matthew 4:7, quoting Deuteronomy 6:16, 'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God'). The difference is that man is not trustworthy, so needs to be put to the test, but God is perfectly trustworthy, so ought simply to be trusted. In the Venite, the psalmist is referring to the occasion, in Exodus 17:1-7, when the Israelites in the wilderness were without water, and put God to the test by demanding that he should immediately prove by miracles that he was really with them. The passage quoted by our Lord from Deuteronomy 6:16 refers to the same occasion.

Te Deum

Most of the Prayer Book canticles come from the Bible (or, in the case of the Benedicite, from the Apocrypha), but the Te Deum was inherited from the liturgy of the early church. The same applies to the Gloria in Excelsis (at Holy Communion), the Burial anthem 'Man that is born of woman...' and the metrical hymn 'Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire' (at Ordination).

'Lord God of Sabaoth' means 'Lord God of hosts' (as we say at Holy Communion).Here the Hebrew word for 'hosts' is retained in this Old Testament phrase, as is also done in Romans 9:29 and James 5:4. God's hosts, or armies, consist primarily of his angels in heaven.

'Thine honourable, true and only Son'. 'Honourable' (translating Latin venerandus) is used in the original and general sense 'worthy of honour', not in the more specialized senses which have now become customary.

'Thou art the King of glory: O Christ'. Glory is not, of course, the realm over which Christ rules as king! The phrase 'King of glory' is drawn from Psalm 24:7-10, and is a Hebrew idiom for 'glorious King'. Compare the 'God of glory' in Psalm 29:3, the 'crown of glory' in Isaiah 28:5 etc. The same title is given to God in the collect for the Sunday after Ascension Day.

'Thou didst not abhor the virgin's womb' - a vivid way of saying that God the Son did not shrink from taking human nature. It may be a deliberate contradiction of contemporary assertions by fourth-century Arians that God would abhor a virgin's womb (and therefore did not take human nature).

Benedictus

To understand the Benedictus fully, one must remember that it is the Song of Zacharias at the birth of his son John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ (Luke 1:57-79). 'And thou, child' is addressed to his son, who is to 'go before the face of the Lord'; while the 'day-spring (or dawn) from on high' is the Lord Jesus himself, whose way John will prepare.

Magnificat

The Magnificat is intelligible in itself, but it enriches one's understanding to recall that it is the Song of the Blessed Virgin Mary, when she was saluted by her cousin Elizabeth as the mother of the Lord (Luke 1:39-55). Unique as her privilege was, only the first four verses of her song dwell upon it. She then goes on to speak of God's mercy to all who fear him, and of her own privilege as the fulfilment of God's promises to the whole race of Abraham.

'Holpen' is the old form of 'helped'. In the past participle the 'e' vowel changed into 'o', as with 'forget, forgotten'.

Nunc Dimittis

Similarly, one needs to remember that this is the Song of Simeon, on seeing the child Jesus (Luke 2:25-35). It had been revealed to him that he would see the Christ (the promised King and Saviour) before he died, and, having seen Jesus, he is ready to 'depart' (or die). We too, when we have recognised Jesus as our Saviour and King, have fulfilled life's main purpose.

The Apostles’ Creed

The creed is 'commonly called' this (Article 8), not because the apostles wrote it, but because it is an early formulation of their teaching. It is the old baptismal creed of the Roman church, recorded by Hippolytus (c.215 AD), and in the Prayer Book Baptism services is still used for its ancient purpose.

'conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary', and similarly in the Nicene Creed at Holy Communion, 'was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary'. In the Latin and Greek originals of the creeds, the prepositions are de (from, because of) ... ex (from); ek (from) ... kai (and from). Today we can still say things like 'he died by (because of) poisoning' and 'he came of (from) the Stuart family'; but 'by' is now so frequently used of the agent of an action, and 'of' in the possessive sense, that it tends to surprise and confuse us when either is used differently, as here.

'he descended into hell’. 'Hell' is here used in the general sense of the place of the dead, whether they be in happiness or woe; it does not mean simply the place of the impenitent dead, as the word normally does. Compare Acts 2:27, 31, where Peter quotes Psalm 16:10, 'Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell (Greek Hades), neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to se corruption', and comments, 'David seeing this before spoke of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption'.

'to judge the quick and the dead', and similarly in the Nicene Creed at Holy Communion and in the collect for Advent Sunday, 'to judge both the quick and the dead'. The 'quick' are the living (like the sensitive living flesh, or 'quick', round our fingernails). Compare Acts 10:42 and 2 Timothy 4:1, where it is likewise stated that Christ will be 'the judge of quick and dead' or will 'judge the quick and the dead'.

'the holy Catholick Church', and similarly in the Nicene Creed at Holy Communion, 'one Catholick and Apostolick Church', and in the Prayer for All Conditions of Men (Prayers and Thanksgivings upon Several Occasions), 'the good estate of the Catholick Church'. Clearly we are not just praying for the Roman Catholic Church, and 'catholic' really means universal (Greek katholikos). When we pray in the Litany for 'thy holy Church universal', the meaning is the same.

'the communion of saints'. In the New Testament epistles, all Christians are addressed as 'saints' or holy people (2 Corinthians 1:1; Philippians 1:1; Colossians 1:2 etc), since all who are sanctified by the blood of Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit share in a holy calling. Similarly in the creed here, the reference is to the mutual fellowship of all God's holy people (not simply of the most 'saintly' among them), and of those of his people who are living, as well as of those who are dead.

Responses (3^rd Set)

'because there is none other that fighteth for us, but only thou, O God'. God is often said in the Old Testament to 'fight for' his people Israel, and sometimes without them fighting for themselves (Exodus 14:14; 2 Chronicles 20:17). His people is now the Christian church, so 'us' means us Christians, not us Englishmen, and it is only as a Christian nation, contending in a just cause, that we can rightly apply this prayer to ourselves in a national sense. The Collect for Peace which follows indicates that, even when we do, spiritual enemies and the peace of the church should be in our minds as well.

The Second Collect at Evening Prayer

'being defended from the fear of our enemies may pass our time in rest and quietness'. 'Fear' may be used here in the old sense of 'fearful power', since we need to be 'defended' from it. This would vary the sense of the underlying Latin collect, which Cranmer is in any case paraphrasing, but would bring it into agreement with the corresponding collect at Morning Prayer, also 'for Peace', where once again we are not simply praying for peace of mind.

The Third Collect at Evening Prayer

The third collects at Morning and Evening Prayer correspond, just as the second collects do, Cranmer having selected them from different Latin services for this purpose. The third evening collect has sometimes been thought to exaggerate the physical dangers of darkness. In this age of muggings and rapes, we have begun to realise that the physical dangers are not so small, but the corresponding collect at Morning Prayer (the 'Collect for Grace') in fact balances things by praying for protection from the dangers of the day as well, and by showing that spiritual dangers are quite as much in view as physical.

Prayer for the Monarch

'in health and wealth long to live'. For 'health' see under 'Confession' (p.4): it includes spiritual health. 'Wealth' here means welfare (health, in the modern sense of riches, is hardly something that the monarch is likely to lack!). Compare the Litany, 'in all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth', and 1 Corinthians 10:24, 'Let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth'.

The State Prayers, here and at Holy Communion, were designed for an absolute monarchy, and invite some adaptation today, to suit a constitutional monarchy. This is one of the few points at which changes in conditions, not just changes in language, have affected the provisions of the Prayer Book. See also under Churching (p. 38).

Prayer for Clergy and People

'bishops and curates' and so also in the Prayer for the Church Militant at Holy Communion. Why not incumbents? Because 'curate' is used in the original sense of one who has a cure (care) of souls. He is the one to whom the deacon makes his reports, i.e. the incumbent (see the charge at the Ordering of Deacons). The modern usage, which already existed in the seventeenth century but was not nearly so common as now, is an abbreviation of 'assistant curate'.

For another passage in this prayer, see p. 4.