Valuing our renaissance spiritual roots

I was thankful for a longer night's sleep as I was on duty celebrating the morning's College Eucharist, with the liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer 1662. It's a while since I used it, but it's resonant with rich memories stretching back right into childhood, attending eight o'clock Communion with my mother in Holy Trinity Church Ystrad Mynach. I learned to celebrate it when I was Team Rector of Halesowen, nearly twenty years after my ministry began and used in in Geneva too. I wanted to speak to students present about the abiding value of this ancient and traditional expression of liturgical worship, but there wasn't time for an impromptu homily, so I spent most of the morning after breakfast writing a BCP eulogy to email to them. 

We think of the 1662 Prayer Book as a key English cultural and religious document, but it's more than that, having been translated into so many languages, half a dozen in its first century and half of life alone. Reflected in the BCP is the influence of several European reformers, yet it keeps faith with the worship framework of both Eastern and Latin Roman churches. It's interesting to discover how other British post reformation churches adapted the BCP Communion rite for their own use, and how its influences are traceable in the worship of some European protestant churches as well. So I think of it not only as a key European renaissance text, but also as an ecumenical text. The variability of its use in practice gives it the feel of almost being a work still in progress, despite its nature as piece of our past. Though we don't use it that much nowadays, so much of the variety of forms of worship we have owe their existence to the remarkable innovation which the BCP was in its time.

After lunch I went home, but tiredness caught up with me again so I didn't go into the office as proposed, deterred by the rain and the lethargy it instils in me. Thankfully the rain had all but stopped to enable me to return to College for Evensong, with my former colleague Jenny Wigley preaching. She's invited me to preach at services during Holy Week, as well as cover for her when she takes a post Easter Sunday break. It'll be good to share Holy Week with her again. It must be seven years since we worked together in the old Benefice of Central Cardiff. By the time I'd cooked and eaten supper and driven to Penarth for Tai Chi, the lethargy lifted sufficiently for me to benefit from a good work-out.