The term ‘Common Prayer’ in the Anglican tradition refers firstly to the Daily Office, as is clear from the full title of the Prayer Book –
The Book of Common Prayer
and Administration of the Sacraments
and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church
together with the Psalter, or Psalms of David
and Administration of the Sacraments
and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church
together with the Psalter, or Psalms of David
– and the preface to the first Book of Common Prayer [bcp1979 866], which entirely concerns the reform of the Office.
Nevertheless the term, when it is thought about at all, is usually, and helpfully, understood more broadly to mean the entirety of the liturgy, or public service of the Church: the shared and thus familiar means through which our prayers may be duly offered, God rightly praised, and the Good News of Christ’s, and through him our, victory over death proclaimed. The very ‘commonness’ of the liturgy is both sign and means of our community and communion with Christ and, through him, with one another.
The ideal of ‘common prayer’, I have been reminded this week, is perhaps nowhere more important and obvious, and at the same time perhaps nowhere more ignored, than at the burial of the dead, where – at precisely the time when a member of Christ’s Body enters the nearer company of the great cloud of witnesses, and when those left behind most need the love and support of the community here on earth* – the liturgy so often becomes privatized: a contradiction in terms, for if the service is merely a matter of what ‘I want’ (often with many competing ‘I’s to boot), then it is no longer public service.
Indeed, the liturgy does not belong solely to the deceased, nor even to the bereaved, but rather to the whole Church. There should never be a question of planning ‘my’ or ‘her’ service, any more than there is a question of any individual’s overriding the rubrics of or making musical requests for the Sunday Eucharist. Indeed, no member of the Church should want to or have to plan ‘his’ service, for each person should expect and be able to trust that the ministers of the parish will, each and every time, carry out the rites in the customary way: brought to life musically and ceremonially in the most beautiful, rich, and solemn way possible given the resources available to the parish as a whole, and within the considerable latitude afforded by the rites. If this is not the case, then the liturgy is robbed of its power both to bind us together and to bind up our wounded hearts.
The Prayer Book, Lectionaries, Psalter, and Hymnal provide the official and essential texts for worship in the Episcopal Church, supplemented by the Book of Occasional Services and Lesser Feasts and Fasts; these, together with the Creeds and Canons, largely constitute the ‘doctrine, discipline, and worship of Christ as this Church has received them’, to which ordained ministers take an oath to conform. But, quite apart from questions of canonical status, the ritual, doctrinal, ascetical, and devotional tradition of the Church distilled in these formularies is simply the way in which, for Episcopalians, ‘the communion of saints,...the whole family of God, the living and the dead,... [is] bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise’ [Catechism, bcp 862], in order ‘that we, rejoicing in their fellowship, may run with patience the race that is set before us; and, together with them, may receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away’ [Preface for All Saints, bcp 347]. To tamper with, or to disuse, the common prayer risks obscuring, if not breaking, those bonds.
* ‘So, while we rejoice that one we love has entered into the nearer presence of our Lord, we sorrow in sympathy with those who mourn’ [Note, bcp 507]; ‘The service should be held at a time when the congregation has opportunity to be present’ [bcp 468]; see also the Prayers at the Burial of the Dead [bcp 480] for repeated references to the communion of saints.