During Lent at both our 8 am and 10 am services, we will be using Rite One liturgy, which uses more “traditional” language reflecting the piety and worship of the Elizabethan era. Many who grew up in the Episcopal church are drawn to this language as it takes us back to the services we attended with our parents and grandparents. For others, perhaps a little newer to the Episcopal tradition, the language came seem archaic and, to be honest, excessively penitential. This is totally valid — in one of the Confessions for sin, the penitents say that their “manifold sins and wickedness” which we “most grievously have committed” have provoked “thy wrath and indignation against us.” Yikes! (FYI, there are two confessions of sin; we will be using the other one.)
Amongst the loyal “Rite Oners” one of the high points of the service is the “Prayer for Humble Access” said before receiving communion. “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table,” we pray. While this is a very penitential prayer, the prayer continues with a lovely Elizabethan turn of phrase, “but thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.” The emphasis, seen from a different angle, is on God’s kindness and mercy; we are penitential only insofar as it leads us to a deeper awareness of God who in and through the Eucharistic meal wants to “assure us thereby of [his] favor and goodness towards us,” “that we may evermore dwell in [Christ] and he in us.”
The emphasis on penitence shouldn’t be about us; nor should it be about making us “feel bad” about ourselves and our self-worth. Maybe this is what can be most challenging for us in the 21st century. Just to be clear: God doesn’t want to diminish our self-worth. God created us in love, and redeemed us in love, and he wants us to appreciate our worth. Which is to say, it is because we have such infinite worth that we can be honest about how we often settle for so much less than our worth. In this deep honesty that Rite One allows, we come to rely more and more on a God who isn’t wrathful or angry, but infinitely kind, a God whose “property is always to have mercy.”
Join us on Sundays as we worship using the penitential language of Rite One, and of course feel free to drop me a line or let me know in passing what it is like gathering around this old and sacred language.
Faithfully,
Garrett