Happy Family Day!

Coming quickly…

Lenten Retreat: Saturday, March 1, 9:30am – noon at the Trinity Centre. We’ll talk about what Lent means/what it means for us, we’ll do some group scripture reflection, and some individual reflecting on our faith and goals for Lent and beyond.

Re: Shrove Tuesday Pancake Suppers and Ash Wednesday worship services: I’ll send out a separate email with that information since there is a lot going on at various churches.

Prayer Study: Thursday, 4-5pm at the Trinity Centre. 

Guild of St. Joseph Breakfast: Saturday, March 8, 9:30am at the Trinity Centre.

Lenten Zoom Bible Studies: Mondays, 7-8:15pm, through Lent beginning on Monday, March 10

Can you believe there are no calendar observances this week? That’s just weird. Anyway…

A Liturgical Note For You: Participation as Talking

After spending nearly two weeks with a group of newly ordained clergy mostly from the Global South, this hammered home for me what I’ve shared before: Western society places a huge emphasis on talking. We seem to think that if we’re not saying anything in our worship services then we are not participating. We put a lot of emphasis on talking, in general, in Western society. 

This thinking creates a problem in our liturgies when we convince ourselves that everyone needs to be saying nearly everything along with the presider so that they are “participating”. We don’t want people to get bored, do we? Well…

Perhaps you’ve noticed the rubrics (red print) in the BAS that guide us in our orthodoxy (i.e “right worship”). There are parts of our liturgies that we say together every single time we gather. The Confession, the Lord’s Prayer, and the closing Doxology are all examples of this. However, the prayers that are new each week (ex. the Collect of the Day, the Prayer over the Gifts, the Prayer after Communion) are not said together. The Presider prays these on behalf of all the people gathered. There is a very good reason for this. This quotation from C. S. Lewis (from his Letters to Malcolm) helps us understand:

“As long as you notice, and have to count, the steps, you are not yet dancing but only learning to dance. A good shoe is a shoe you don’t notice. Good reading becomes possible when you need not consciously think about eyes, or light, or print, or spelling. The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of; our attention would have been on God.”

The prayers we say together, like the Lord’s Prayer, are the dance steps that we know. We can immerse ourselves in the prayer because we are so very familiar with the words. This is not so with the prayers that change week by week. We say the words with heavily divided focus – trying to correctly pronounce and understand while at the same time staying aligned with all of the other voices around us who are also reading the words for the first time – which leaves little focus left for actually comprehending what we’re saying. The Presider is expected to have read through the prayers ahead of time so that the prayer is indeed prayed rather than simply read. 

After experiencing multiple different types of worship services over the past two weeks, I have gained a deeper appreciation for worship in which I (and the rest of the congregation) hardly say anything at all. Beautifully done liturgy is a prayer on its own. 

In the joy of Christ,

Susan