Why Now?

No one asks me why I’m becoming Orthodox – at least no one who knows me. For many years I have been quite open about the fact that if I ever left the Episcopal Church my likely destination would be Antioch. But friends do ask, "Why now?"

Recent History

It is hard not to know what is happening in the Episcopal Church these days – we’ve been making the headlines a lot. But for those who have somehow missed the story I’ll recap. In 1998, the last Lambeth Conference (a decennial gathering of all the bishops of the Anglican Communion) passed a resolution affirming traditional sexual morality by a large majority. While some bishops questioned the need for the resolution on the principle that the Church’s teaching on sex went without saying, others were distressed by the liberal drift of some of the Western provinces – particularly the Episcopal Church, USA, and the Anglican Church of Canada – and wanted to lay down a marker. Five years later, the Canadian Diocese of New Westminster began permitting same-sex unions and the American Diocese of New Hampshire elected the openly gay Gene Robinson as bishop, despite numerous warnings of dire consequences from the rest of the communion. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, responded by appointing a commission to reflect on this challenge to the unity of the Anglican Communion and to propose a way forward. The result was the Windsor Report, which placed some demands on ECUSA and the ACC. At its General Convention in 2006, ECUSA produced a last-minute, half-hearted half-response to Windsor. It was universally dismissed as inadequate. Today, more than half of the Anglican provinces are no longer in full communion with ECUSA, which has proceeded blithely on its way, in near-complete denial of its emerging pariah status.

So . . . after decades of liberal drift in the North American provinces of the communion, why have Anglican traditionalists finally reacted now? Gene Robinson is neither the first heretic nor the first sinner to be elected a bishop in the Episcopal Church. If we did not leave the church over Bp. Spong, why should we leave over Bp. Robinson? Personally, I thought this was the wrong time and the wrong issue, but the bishops of the Anglican Communion did not ask my opinion before setting in motion the process of excommunicating the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.

Is it really all about homosexuality? For some Evangelicals, I’m afraid it is. Matters of sex have a tendency to stir the passions, and arguments about sex can draw visceral reactions in a way that debates on other moral questions do not. There really are some homophobes in the churches.

But the current tide of events is driven less by homophobia than by opportunism. Conservatives of various stripes have been increasingly upset with the liberal drift of the Episcopal Church for at least four decades. In the past, however, as a shrinking minority, they were not able to do anything about it. But by 1998 the rapidly growing, conservative churches of Africa were ready to flex their muscles and make their mark on the Anglican world. Homosexuality was simply the first issue to come along since conservatives attained a preponderance in the Anglican Communion. Therefore this was where they chose to take their stand against the advance of revisionism and launch the reconquest.

Communion and Covenant

In the aftermath of the Episcopal Church’s General Convention last year, Abp. Rowan issued his reflection, "The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today," in which he proposed the creation of a formal covenant to define the commitments of Anglican churches in communion with each other. Provinces (and perhaps dioceses and even parishes) that endorsed the covenant would be constituent members of the communion with representation in official bodies. Those that did not endorse the covenant would no longer be full members of the communion.

For me, as an Anglo-Catholic, this was a hopeful moment – a plausible way forward that would preserve the Anglican Communion by excising the heretical minority in North America, along with any other factions that could not live within the consensus of the communion as defined by the covenant. But almost immediately the Archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, and others of his ilk began to downplay the importance of the communion and to break ranks with Canterbury and the other provinces and their primates.

The African Evangelicals do not lose any sleep over catholic niceties like tradition, unity, and (most important) ecclesiology. The African-sponsored break-away jurisdictions in North America have been formed by protestant means according to protestant principles. No Anglo-Catholic parish could join these groups without betraying its catholic ecclesiology.

I don't think this is an accident. The Africans are not just trying to separate from revisionist heresy; they are also maneuvering to set aside the catholic elements of Anglican ecclesiology and to exclude those of us who would insist on maintaining them. They might tolerate Anglo-Catholicism as a "worship style," but they will not accept the theology embodied in that worship – a theology on the ascendant in official Anglicanism throughout the 20th century.

Just two weeks ago, Abp. Rowan named the members of the Covenant Design Group, which will draft the covenant. But, without strong support from the provinces, the covenant is fading in relevance before its drafting has even begun.

Heresy vs. Schism

Unlike most of those departing the Episcopal Church these days, I am running not from heresy, but from schism.

I’ve never been all that worried about being in communion with heretics. The notion that it would somehow taint my orthodoxy is a bit silly. Why, rather, would my orthodoxy not compromise the purity of their heresy? If orthodoxy is stronger than heresy, that must surely be the case. If this were just a straightforward contest between orthodoxy and heresy, it would be better to stay in the church, proclaiming the truth, until the heretics give us Anglo-Catholics the boot. Unfortunately, the Episcopal/Anglican endgame is not playing out in such a straightforward way.

The Elizabethan Settlement, the modus vivendi by which Christians of differing theologies were able to maintain their integrities within one national church, has come unraveled. The Church of England no longer makes a serious attempt to be THE Church OF England, but settles for being just one sect among many. Its tradition of "comprehensiveness" is falling by the wayside, allowing the centrifugal forces of its various factions to pull it apart. This disintegration is playing out even more quickly within the North American provinces and at the international level.

The Revisionists who have come to dominate the Episcopal Church have slowly tightened the screws on everyone who is not down with their agenda. They are trying to exclude traditionalists, conservatives, and even moderates and those who are undecided on the issues du jour from having a voice in the church. Meanwhile, the various schismatic Evangelical denominations are forming on a basis that excludes anyone who does not share their theology. In the process of trying to exclude each other, the Revisionist protestants and the Evangelical protestants are both excluding the Anglo-Catholics. The way things are breaking down, it appears there will be no place for us in the emerging post-Anglican churches of North America.

Anglo-Catholic Twilight

The Church of England recently began the process that will eventually lead to the consecration of women as bishops. In reaction, Anglo-Catholics in the UK are likely, at some point in the next five years, to flock to Rome en masse. It is rumored that a document on this subject has already crossed the Pope’s desk. I think that Benedict, unlike John Paul II, will not let the Anglo-Catholics in the Mother Country slip through his fingers.

Where does that leave Anglo-Catholics in the US? I doubt our remaining bishops in Quincy, Fort Worth, and San Joaquin will have enough clout to do much for those of us outside their own dioceses. Perhaps the more tolerant of the liberal bishops will find a creative way to let Anglo-Catholic parishes in their dioceses remain in communion with Canterbury. But the fact that Canterbury is having trouble holding onto its own Anglo-Catholics will make communion with Canterbury increasingly irrelevant to us.

Anticipating all of this, American Anglo-Catholics are already beginning to trickle away to the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Of my original demographic peer group at St. Paul’s, I am the last remaining Anglican, the rest already having departed for Antioch or Rome. We did not discuss this among ourselves – that would be difficult, given our current geographical dispersion – but it appears we all came to the same conclusion independently: there is no future for those of our ilk in Anglicanism.

Benedictine Cell

The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, "I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like everyone else, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get." The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." - Luke 18:11-13 Thursday evening was my final Benedictine Cell meeting at St. Paul's. The cell has been meeting on the second Thursday of the month, eleven months a year, for four-and-a-half years now, and I've been a member since the beginning. Following Evening Prayer and Low Mass, we eat dinner, study a section of the Rule of St. Benedict (we're up to chapter 48), engage in a group form of lectio divina, and conclude with the office of Compline, after which everyone departs silently. We take turns providing food and drinks for supper, choosing the lectio passage, and leading Compline. Last night I brought the main dish for supper. As usual, I made something in my crock pot - in this instance brown rice and chicken. As at the last meeting, I had to field many questions about my upcoming move to Eastern Orthodoxy. I had to assure everyone I would still come back to visit St. Paul's on special occasions, like Candlemas and Advent Lessons and Carols. For lectio, Janet read Luke 18:9-14, the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, which begins by providing the context: Jesus spoke this parable "to some people who prided themselves on being upright and despised everyone else." At an Anglo-Catholic shrine parish like St. Paul's, you can't swing a thurible without censing a dozen such upright people. "We thank thee, O God, that we are not like those Nonconformists, who lack the Prayerbook and decent church music. Or our fellow Anglicans of Latitudinarian churchmanship, who are lazy and indifferent in their practice of the faith." But, of course, one finds the same sort of thing in Orthodoxy. "Thanks be to God that we are not like those Romanists and Protestants, suffering the inevitable consequences of their Western heresies. Or our fellow Orthodox who use the wrong calendar." And now, by pointing out these instances of ecclesiastical pride in both the church I'm leaving and the one I'm joining, I am implicitly saying to myself, "Thank God I'm not like those immature, pride-besotted people praying next to me!" The tax collector shows us the way out of this never-ending circle of pride when he beats his breast and prays, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." Perhaps the need to counter religious pride is one reason why Orthodoxy, a tradition with much to be rightly proud of, so often commends recitation of the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner." With lectio completed, our leader produced a gift-wrapped package with a bow on it and handed it to me. I quickly looked at the card, signed by my fellow cell members, and then opened the package to find . . . a Byzantine cross. I recalled Fr. Stephen's recounting of the Orthodox folklore that the proper way to collect icons is not to go looking for them, but to wait for them to come to us, and I thanked them for the thoughtful gift. We then concluded with Compline. About two times out of three, we actually follow our rule and depart, more or less, in silence. But other times there is an unspoken consensus that the need for speech outweighs the rule of silence, and this was one of those times, as everyone wanted to say goodbye again. In my remaining two weeks at St. Paul's, I'm sure this ritual will be repeated several more times.

Stability

This is my contribution to a conversation on loneliness and transience in the modern world begun by Fr. Stephen and continued by Trevor.



I think the natural state of man is to live in an organic community, complete with a fully integrated culture and religion. And it's all given, not chosen - that's really the key.

But the project of modernism was to undermine the patriarchal institutions that embody culture - the family, the church, and the community - in order to establish a new order based on individual freedom. All power was pushed to the extreme ends of the spectrum - to the central government at one end and the lone individual at the other end. The values of this new "culture" (to use the term loosely) - wealth, sex, power, and freedom - are diametrically opposed to the Benedictine vows of poverty, chastity, obedience and stability. Without community, there is no discipline.

The minions of Satan on Madison Avenue have joined the founding radicals in promoting the modern lifestyle of individualism and alienation because it creates new marketing opportunities. A culture of people living disciplined Benedictine lives, on the other hand, would be the bane of modern consumerism. (I said something similar in a letter to First Things a decade ago.)

Today churches find themselves in the unnatural position of having to exist without being integrated into a local culture or community. Many churches - especially Orthodox and Anglo-Catholic parishes - respond by creating a community coterminous with the church and maintaining a culture (preferably inherited, but in convert parishes more likely created) within the church.

In the same way that Benedictine monasteries preserved the remnants of ancient culture within their walls through the Dark Ages, perhaps the churches must now preserve the remnants of community until our culture recovers from the devastation of the Modern Age.

Patron Saint

This morning I attended the Royal Hours of Theophany at Holy Cross. Afterwards I spoke briefly with Fr. Gregory about two matters that need to be resolved before my admission as a catechumen – my sponsor and my patron saint. For the latter, I proposed St. Joseph of Arimathea.

In explaining my choice, I offered both a frivolous reason and a serious one. As a fan of the Arthurian legends, I often encounter passing mentions of the Holy Grail’s connection to St. Joseph and his descendants. His name is even mentioned in Monty Python and the Holy Grail!

More seriously . . . In the parable of the Prodigal Son, I have always identified more with the older brother than with the prodigal himself. I am literally an older brother, with siblings two and three years younger, but it’s more than that. Like the older brother in the parable, I am the dutiful, thrifty sort that stays at home and plods along with his life instead of going off in search of thrills, squandering his inheritance, and hitting bottom before coming to his senses. Christianity often seems like a religion designed with the younger brother in mind – Jesus came to call the sinners, not the righteous; the outcasts, not the privileged. But those who tend to think of ourselves as righteous and privileged face other sorts of difficulties, and ultimately we need God’s grace as much as our younger brothers. I take comfort in the fact that when Joseph and Nicodemus, older brothers if ever there were, came to Jesus, he did not turn them away.

Fr. Gregory directed my attention to the epitaphios, the large cloth icon of Great Friday, which depicts St. Joseph preparing Christ’s body for burial. It is inscribed with the words of the troparion, "The noble Joseph, taking down thy most pure body from the tree, did wrap it in clean linen with sweet spices, and he laid it in a new tomb." Perhaps coincidentally – or perhaps not! – the Epitaphios service (technically Matins of Holy Saturday, but normally observed the preceding evening) has always been my favorite Byzantine service, from the first time I experienced it with the Melkites.

I have informally regarded St. Joseph of Arimathea as my patron for at least a decade, and I am happy to have an opportunity to make it official. The epitaphios icon is displayed on a shelf in my bedroom, flanked by a print of Rembrandt’s Descent from the Cross and a photo of Jan de Rosen’s mural of the procession to Christ's tomb.

May St. Joseph of Arimathea pray for me and for all of the older brothers who read this.

Background

Before I begin to explain my reasons for becoming Orthodox, I suppose I should provide some background on where I am now and how I got here. Different people know different parts of the story, but few know everything, so I'll start at the beginning, moving quickly and avoiding tangents (I need to save something for future posts!).

I was raised as a United Methodist in Indiana. I grew up in a county where there was no Episcopal church, let alone an Orthodox church! I participated in my UM church's very active youth group, served on the District Council on Youth Ministries, and assisted my mom with her duties as the church's custodian. When it was time for college, I attended DePauw University, a Methodist-affiliated liberal arts college in Indiana. During my four years there I attended Gobin UMC on campus nearly every Sunday, attended chapel nearly every Wednesday, and participated in an InterVarsity Bible study co-led by my roommate. After graduation I proceeded directly to graduate school at the University of Illinois, where I was active in the Wesley Foundation and became a regular at the weekly, student-led Midweek Worship service. When I moved to Virginia to start my first real job, I quickly found Wesley UMC, where I would eventually lead the young adult class on Sundays and serve as secretary of the Administrative Board. By this point I was 30 years into my life and had never really considered alternatives to the denomination I was raised in. But that was about to change.

In 1991 I was hanging out with my colleague Pat at a Russian festival sponsored by our Russian teacher's church. We ran into Pat's old friend from O'Connell High School, Mark, who was in the process of converting from Catholicism to Orthodoxy. At the time, he was attending Holy Transfiguration Melkite Greek Catholic Church. That day just happened to be Pentecost, and from the Russian festival he was headed for Kneeling Vespers with the Melkites. At Mark's invitation, Pat and I tagged along.

This was a real eye-opening experience for the Methodist boy from rural Indiana. I had never seen a sung liturgy with incense before. It got me asking a lot of questions like, "Why don't we do this?", "Should we do this?", and "What else is there besides Methodism?" I initiated an intensive campaign of research on Christian denominations, just to see what options were out there.

Several months later, my colleague Elizabeth and I were trying to figure out what Candlemas was. A few days after that, I saw an ad in The Washington Post for the annual Candlemas service at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, so I decided to attend and see what I could learn. The service lived up to its elaborate, impressive title: Blessing of Candles, Procession, Solemn Evensong, and Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. As if that were not enough, it was also the parish's Annual Service of Catholic Witness. When all the lights dimmed except those aimed behind the altar, and the back-lit priest, obscured by the thick incense, held up the monstrance, it was the spookiest thing I had ever seen in church – but in a good way!

On Wednesday evenings of Lent that year, I alternated between St. Paul's (Evening Prayer and Low Mass with hymns, followed by dinner and a guest speaker) and Holy Transfiguration (Presanctified Liturgy followed by a light fasting meal). I continued visiting both parishes whenever nothing was happening at Wesley UMC, which was just about any time except Sunday morning.

Around this time I heard of the Order of St. Luke, a high-church Methodist group, but I was never able to get information about it (this was back in the dark ages before the Internet!), so the UMC lost what might have been its one chance to hold onto me. It was also around this time that my colleague John gave me a copy of Peter Gillquist's book, Becoming Orthodox, which clarified many bits about Orthodoxy that might otherwise have remained mysterious or inaccessible.

And then I began attending the catechumenal class at St. Paul's, not yet committed to becoming Episcopalian, but just to learn more. I was still attending Wesley UMC most Sundays at 11:00, often preceded by the 9:00 Sung Mass at St. Paul's. I was pleased to find that everything I was learning at St. Paul's was consistent with what I was learning from Orthodox sources. Where (as I was later to learn) most Anglo-Catholic parishes are quasi-Roman in their teaching, ethos, and worship, St. Paul's was essentially Western Orthodox – and often self-consciously so. This meant that my choice between Anglo-Catholicism and Orthodoxy would have to be determined on other bases.

At that time my sister had been going to an Episcopal church for a few years. So if I were to become Episcopalian I would not be adding a new denominational division to my family. Also, I had not yet been exposed to the arguments against the ordination of women, so I tended to think it was a good thing, which was another point for the Episcopalians. I was also interested in exploring a possible monastic vocation, and I had learned that there were religious orders in the Episcopal Church. But, most important, as a devout Methodist I had to ask, "What would John Wesley do?" The Episcopalians taught me something the Methodists did their best to downplay: John Wesley never left the Church of England, but remained an Anglican priest until he died. So, at the time, joining St. Paul's seemed like the logical thing to do – a fulfillment, rather than a betrayal, of my Methodist upbringing.

I still wasn't sure I would go through with it until the bishop's hands were on my head, but when he dealt me a resounding slap that could be heard at the back of the nave, I and everyone else at St. Paul's knew that I had been confirmed and was now a member of the Episcopal Church.

On the Road with Jesus

Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the road?" But they were silent, for on the way they had discussed with one another who was the greatest. - Mark 9:33-34

Two weeks ago it was my turn to choose the scripture passage for lectio divina at my monthly Benedictine Cell meeting. Looking for inspiration, I checked the Byzantine lectionary and found the Gospel readings for the week were mostly from Mark 9, and I settled on vv. 30-37. After the Transfiguration, as Jesus and his disciples were walking through Galilee to Capernaum, he told them of his upcoming death and resurrection, but they did not understand and were afraid to ask what he meant. The subsequent verses, quoted above, suggest they might not have been paying close attention because their thoughts were focused elsewhere.

This reminds me of too much on-line religious discussion. We are supposedly all following Jesus, but we waste our time and efforts in arguments that often boil down to questions of who is the greatest.

This is not, of course, to invalidate all argument! Sometimes disagreements must be clarified, and sometimes errors must be corrected. But arguments in the service of our own egos typically edify no one, least of all we who offer them. "If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all."


At the Benedictine Cell meeting, before I read the passage from Mark to begin the group lectio, my friends spontaneously interrupted the order of the meeting to begin peppering me with questions about my upcoming move from Anglicanism to Orthodoxy. It reminded me that even the friends who have accompanied me on the road with Jesus for several years have questions about this step I am preparing to take - and those who know me less well probably have even more questions. By the conclusion of lectio, I had resolved to start this blog and committed myself to doing so. But I also resolved not to let it become just another forum for arguing about who is the greatest.

I do not intend for this blog to be just an apologia for my becoming Orthodox, but that subject will probably dominate my first several entries. As I exhaust that topic, the subject matter of my posts will broaden to encompass more of my wide-ranging interests. I anticipate that a majority of my posts will remain broadly within the realm of religion and spirituality, but I might also stray into the areas of culture, history, science, and music, among other things.

If there is a single theme that runs through all of my thought, it is the Incarnation - specifically the perfect union of the two natures, divine and human, in the person of Jesus Christ, as defined by the Council of Chalcedon. This is my touchstone, and I hope it will always be implicit (when it is not explicit) in what I post here.

It is appropriate that this initial post will appear in the midst of Christmas season, as we celebrate Christ's nativity, and on the eve of the new year, a time for new beginnings.

The Second Council of Orange

The Second Council of Orange was in 529. Researching it now, I find descriptions of it as rejecting Pelagius and affirming Augustine. Is that what you had said last night? Do the Orthodox churches affirm Pelagius? I'm interested in what you were saying.

I think Pelagius was something of a strawman. The Pelagians were roughly the same people as the Nestorians, who had been rejected by the Council of Ephesus in 431. (The details of the heresies of Nestorianism and Pelagianism, as defined by the councils, cover different subjects, but the same people always seem to have held both sets of heretical beliefs, and they are sometimes held to be logically connected.)

The main target of the Second Council of Orange was in reality John Cassian, who held a position approximately half-way between those of Pelagius and Augustine. The article on Cassian in The Catholic Encyclopedia puts it this way: "St. Augustine regarded man in his natural state as dead, Pelagius as quite sound, Cassian as sick."

The three figures were roughly contemporary. Cassian wrote the official response of Rome to Nestorius, and he found in Nestorius a revival of Pelagianism, so he condemned the former along with the latter. Augustine wrote seven treatises against the Pelagians and three against the "Semipelagians" (a term that came to be used centuries later to describe the teaching of Cassian). Cassian, meanwhile, in his Conferences, tried to stake out the middle path between the extremes of Augustine and Pelagius.

Cassian was a monk in southern Gaul (near Marseilles). He had traveled extensively in the East and learned from the desert fathers. He came back home to Gaul, founded monasteries, and lived as a monk. His Conferences and Institutes, which summarize what he learned from Eastern monks, are required reading for Benedictines to this day – they are mentioned in the Rule of St. Benedict, though Benedict refrained from naming the author in an effort to avoid controversy.

The Second Council of Orange made small criticisms of Augustine's most extreme teachings on predestination, but it largely affirmed his teaching against that of Cassian, as well as that of Pelagius. Cassian's teaching was, essentially, just a summary of the theology of the Eastern church. While I have not read much of Cassian, I know the Eastern Church's teaching regarding synergy, or cooperation with grace, is sometimes described as Pelagian or Semipelagian by some Catholics and most Calvinists.

I think it could be argued that Orange was where the West first made an explicit, formal departure from the patristic consensus, implicitly elevating Augustine above all of the other fathers. Much of the East/West split can be traced to the Western Church's choices over the next few centuries to follow Augustine on exactly those points where he is most at odds with the other fathers.

Another dimension of this is the place of monasticism in the Church. Cassian was a monk who wrote for monks. Monasticism has always held a central role in the East – in fact, all Eastern bishops are under monastic vows. In the West, monasticism has never been quite as well integrated with the secular side of the Church, and it has never held as central a place in leading the Church – except in England, where a majority of the cathedrals were monastic foundations.

The History and Development of the Angelus

A few years ago, St. Paul's Parish introduced the Angelus preceding the offices of Morning and Evening Prayer. To help introduce the devotion to parishioners, I gave a short talk at a meeting of the parish ward of the Society of Mary. I later adapted that talk into the following article, which appeared in the June 2005 issue of the parish newsletter, The Epistle.

When the faithful gather in the Angel Chapel each weekday at 6:45 AM to begin the daily cycle of prayers at St. Paul's, the first words we hear are these: "The Angel of the Lord announced unto Mary: And she conceived by the Holy Ghost." These are the opening versicle and response of the Angelus, a popular devotion commemorating the Incarnation. This devotion developed into its current form over a period of several centuries.

In monasteries of the 10th century, the office of Compline was followed by three prayers, said kneeling by the monks. Each of the three prayers came to be accompanied by three tolls of a bell. By the 14th century, devout laymen would kneel in imitation of the monks and recite three Hail Marys when they heard the three triple tolls of the bell. The devotion was thought particularly appropriate to the hour of sunset, which was believed to be the time of day when the angel greeted Mary, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women" (Luke 1:28). In time, the recitation of the three Hail Marys each evening became a familiar custom.

The monks also recited the three prayers, accompanied by the bell, in the morning after the office of Prime. Within another century, people were saying the three Hail Marys in the morning as well as the evening. The three triple tolls came to be known in some places as "the peace bell," and citizens were exhorted to pray the Hail Mary for the intention of the preservation of peace whenever they heard the bell.

The third daily Angelus, at midday, was a later development. In some medieval cities, the bell was rung at noon on Fridays to commemorate the Passion of Christ. By the 16th century, the noon bell was rung daily, and the three familiar Hail Marys had come to precede the Passion prayer. It was also around this time that the modern Angelus versicles came to be associated with the devotion. The concluding prayer, however, apparently varied between the different times of day, commemorating the Resurrection in the morning, the Passion at midday, and the Incarnation in the evening. It was not until the 18th century that the Collect of the Annunciation became fixed as the regular concluding prayer.

Today, many churches still ring the Angelus bells two or three times each day, and good Catholics, upon hearing them, stop what they are doing for a few seconds, quietly joining in this brief devotion with Christians from across the centuries.

The History and Development of the Rosary

I originally wrote this piece as a short lecture to accompany an instructed Rosary. It was published in the December 2003 issue of The Tilma, the monthly newsletter of the Ward of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the chapter of the Society of Mary in the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas. I later reprinted it in the Eastertide 2006 issue of AVE, the thrice-yearly newsletter of the Society of Mary, American Region, which I edit.

The oldest name for the devotion we know as the Rosary is "Our Lady's Psalter," a reference to its development from the custom of recitation of the psalms. It is customary for monks to recite the 150 psalms weekly. The early desert fathers are said to have recited the entire Psalter daily. In various times and places, private recitation of the psalms, or a third part of the psalms – that is, 50 – was enjoined on Christians. When a monk died, for instance, the priests of the community would say a Requiem Mass for their departed brother, but the monks who were not priests would recite 50 psalms in lieu of the Requiem Mass. Devout, educated laymen would also recite 50 psalms as a daily devotion. But this form of prayer was possible only for those who could read Latin and who could afford a personal copy of the Psalter. A form of daily prayer was also required for those who were poor or illiterate. Those who could not read the Psalms would instead recite 50 Paternosters, or repetitions of the Lord's Prayer.

Throughout history and across all religions, wherever prayers are repeated many times, counting devices have come into use to assist those who prayed. A sculpture from ancient Nineveh appears to show two winged women in an attitude of prayer, holding rosaries. Muslims use bead-strings to count the 99 names of God. One early Christian monk would gather 300 stones every morning and discard one with each prayer until he had discarded them all and fulfilled his daily obligation. Eastern monks use knotted cords to count 100 repetitions of the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner." The famous Lady Godiva, upon her death in the 11th century, bequeathed to a monastery "the circlet of precious stones which she had threaded on a cord in order that by fingering them one after another she might count her prayers exactly."

So it is not unexpected that strings of 50 beads came into popular use to count Paternosters. The devotion was sufficiently popular to support craft guilds of paternosterers all over 13th century Europe to manufacture these strings of prayerbeads.

Around the 12th century, the angel's salutation to Mary came into popular use as a devotion to be repeated 50 or 150 times: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." (The concluding petition, "Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death," was not appended to the Hail Mary until sometime later.) The Hail Marys were sometimes said in groups of 10, with bows and prostrations.

All of these streams came together in the preaching of the Dominican friar, Alan de Rupe (aka Alain de La Roche), in the 1470s. It was he who first promoted devotion to Our Lady's Psalter – the recitation of 150 Hail Marys. (It was also apparently he who first attributed the origin of the Rosary to St. Dominic, two centuries earlier.) Subsequently, Rosary confraternities associated with the Dominican Order began to spring up all over Europe to encourage and support the praying of Our Lady's Psalter. It was under their influence that the Rosary came to be standardized in its now-familiar form of 15 decades, each associated with a mystery from the life of Christ and his mother.

As regards the origin of the name, the Latin word rosarius means a garland or bouquet of roses. An early legend that traveled all over Europe connected this name with a story of Our Lady, who was seen to take rosebuds from the lips of a young monk when he was reciting Hail Marys and to weave them into a garland which she placed upon her head. Other names for the Rosary, corona and chaplet, also refer to Mary's crown of roses from this story.

The old English name for the Rosary, found in Chaucer and elsewhere was a "pair of beads." The word bead originally meant a prayer, and it is cognate with our word bid, meaning to beg, entreat, or pray. The more familiar meaning of bead referring to ornamental stones that are threaded together comes from the use of such beads to count prayers.

Fr. Kevin J. Scallon, an Irish Vincentian priest, wrote the following:

The greatness of the Rosary lies in its power to help us walk in the footsteps of Jesus. It draws us into those eternal moments in the life of Christ. In each mystery we gaze, as through a window, to contemplate with Mary the life and mysteries of her son. As at all her great shrines, Mary is never concerned to draw her children to herself but to her son. We recite the Hail Marys and gaze on Jesus who allows us to be with him at each moment from the Annunciation to the Crowning of his mother as Queen. . . . As we finger the beads and recite the Hail Marys, the words of Scripture pass before our mind and we drink from "the spring of living water welling up to eternal life" and "our hearts burn within us."

Thoughts on the Daily Office

This article originally appeared in the November 2003 issue of The Epistle, the monthly newsletter of my St. Paul's, K Street. It was gleaned from more extensive notes for a lecture I gave on the subject some years earlier.

As Anglicans, we inherit a strong Benedictine influence from the medieval English church. When we observe silence in church before Mass, or when we bow at the Gloria patri, we demonstrate the persistence of the Benedictine ethos among 21st-century Anglo-Catholics. But the chief example of our Benedictine inheritance is the ongoing importance of the Daily Office. While it is not practical for those with families or full-time jobs to break for prayer seven or eight times a day, as monks do, the Prayerbook tradition has accommodated the necessities of life in the world by providing a two-fold pattern of morning and evening offices. The latest editions of Anglican Prayerbooks, including our own, have taken a step back towards the monastic tradition by providing additional offices for Noonday and Compline, along with flexible provisions for their use in parishes and homes. A brief look at the origins of the Daily Office might provide useful insights for our lives of common prayer as Anglo-Catholics.

Etymologies

Work. The various names for this daily round of services – Liturgy of the Hours, Daily Office, Divine Office, Opus Dei – all involve work. Liturgy, from the Greek leitourgia, means the work of the people, or a public work. Office means service or duty, and it is cognate with opus, which also means work.

The office is our work in two senses. First, it is work in the sense of a job – it is our job as the Church to serve God daily with our worship and prayers. Second, it is work in the sense of a work of art – a thing of beauty that we create or perform for God and offer to him.

Benedictine monastic life was built around the twin focuses of prayer and work – ora et labora. The desert fathers, in earlier times, had not divided these focuses: A hermit would recite the psalms while weaving baskets to support himself, approaching St. Paul's ideal of "prayer without ceasing." But when monks gathered in communities, the more strenuous demands of agricultural subsistence forced them to divide the day into set periods of work and prayer.

Hours. The offices are all associated with particular times of the day, and their names reflect this. The primary offices, often observed by the laity as well as the clergy and monks, were the morning and evening offices, Matins and Vespers, associated with the rising and setting of the sun. The name Matins comes from Matuta, goddess of the dawn. The name Vespers comes from the Latin for evening, and it is cognate with west, where the sun sets. These offices are sometimes described as successors to the twice-daily offering of incense at the temple: our prayers rise to God as a sweet-smelling offering.

The night office was originally called Vigils. In the earliest times, it was probably observed only on Saturday night/Sunday morning, as an anticipation of the Eucharist that would be celebrated at sunrise. For monks, it became part of the daily round of offices. The monks would rise at midnight to greet the new day with prayer and then return to their beds. (Sleeping through the night uninterrupted was thought to be decadent, and therefore improper for monks.) Vigils was divided into two parts (three on Sundays and feasts) called Nocturns. Each of the two Nocturns consisted of six psalms and a tripartite reading from the Scriptures or the Fathers. The number of psalms at Vigils was said to be set once and for all when an angel visiting the oratory for the office departed after the twelfth psalm: It was decided thereupon that twelve psalms were sufficient for monks as well as for angels.

St. Benedict scheduled the night office a bit later – 2 or 3 AM – so that his monks could rise for Vigils with their night's rest completed. (He thought it was decadent for monks to return to bed after rising.) In many places, Vigils came to be observed so late that it immediately preceded the morning office. Vigils was therefore renamed Matins, and the morning office was renamed Lauds, after the laudate psalms, 148-150, which are recited daily at the morning office. (This switch in the application of the name Matins from the morning office to the night office confuses nearly every non-expert who tries to write about the offices. Otherwise authoritative sources often bungle or bluff their definitions of Matins.)

The three short daytime offices were called simply by the hours when they were observed – Terce, Sext, and None – the third, sixth, and ninth of the twelve daylight hours. These hours were associated in the Gospels with Jesus' crucifixion and in Acts with events in the lives of the apostles.

This made six offices. Psalm 119 refers to prayer seven times a day, so there was a scriptural warrant for one more office. They settled for two additional offices, making a total of eight. The new offices, Prime and Compline, were, in their origins, private prayers of the monks, said in the dormitory rather than the oratory. Prime (the first daylight hour) was said to be invented by an abbot who wanted to keep his monks busy so that they could not return to bed after Lauds. (Early abbots seem to have put sleep deprivation right up there with fasting as a spiritual discipline.) Compline (the "completion" of the day) was the monks' bedtime prayer. Prime and Compline can be seen as parallel in much the same way that Lauds and Vespers are parallel. In the early 20th century, Prime was suppressed, and few in the West do it anymore, though it remains in the East.

By the time of the Reformation, the canons at secular cathedrals would often perform multiple offices in a single sitting. Matins, Lauds, and Prime would be sung together in the morning; Terce, Sext, and None during the day; and Vespers and Compline in the evening. In assembling the first Book of Common Prayer, Archbishop Cranmer carried this another step. He conflated the first three offices into Mattins and the last two into Evensong. The names of these office were later changed to Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, but the older names persist in some places, especially in reference to choral services.

Approaches

Time. In the Eucharist, we step out of earthly time, into the timelessness of eternity. By contrast, the Liturgy of the Hours is rooted solidly in time. It is a way of sanctifying time, dedicating to God the time he has given us in this world, and channeling his grace into the world.

Psalms. The traditional heart of the office is recitation of the psalter. Benedictines traditionally recite all 150 psalms weekly. Some modern orders recite them bi-weekly, and Anglicans traditionally recite them monthly. At St. Paul's, we follow the schedule of psalms in the Daily Office Lectionary, which provides for the recitation of the entire psalter over a period of seven weeks.

The psalms can be difficult for modern readers. One tremendously helpful resource is a small book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible. One of Bonhoeffer's useful suggestions is to recall the traditional connection of the psalms to David.

Another helpful approach is to imagine Christ reciting the psalms with us – to understand them through the his eyes, interpreted in his light, remembering that we are members of his Body. This brings new or added meaning to psalms that otherwise might seem obscure or objectionable. It is particularly helpful when the psalmist proclaims his innocence or his guilt: We are not innocent, but we partake of Christ's innocence, and he bears our guilt. When the psalmist calls for vengeance against an enemy, we must be careful to understand this not as our personal enemy, but as the enemy of God – it might even be ourselves – and to remember that any vengeance or punishment has already been borne by Christ.

The psalms honestly express the entire range of human emotions. The expression of some of these emotions – anger, hatred, exultation in violence – is out of favor, and the psalms that express them are also out of favor in some places. But the psalms can be helpful precisely because they give voice to our emotions. When these emotions are suppressed, reciting the psalms can actually help us to bring them to the surface, where we can acknowledge them and begin to deal with them.

Dialogue. St. Isidore, a seventh-century Bishop of Seville, wrote, "When we pray, we talk to God. And when we read [the Scriptures], God talks to us." In the Daily Office, we hear God's word to us as the Scriptures are read, and we respond to God in prayer. In this way, the Church maintains a perpetual dialogue between heaven and earth.

At any given time, the prayers are always being offered somewhere in the world. When we participate, we pray not as lone individuals, but as members of the Church, praying with the Church, for the Church and for the world.

There was once a Byzantine monastery whose denizens were nicknamed "the sleepless monks." These monks were divided into three shifts, and one shift remained in choir, singing the offices, at all times. This is a big burden for a single monastery, but it is not too big a burden for the whole Church to share.