29 December 2012

Liturgy and Mission

‘Send us out in the power of your Spirit’ ... greeting worshippers at the west door of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

At the best of business meetings, and even the best of vestry meetings, good chairing will see that before the meeting concludes a summary of the meeting is presented, with a summing up of the decisions and the undertakings of all present.

If the Sunday Liturgy can be seen as the principal meeting of the Church, then that summary of decisions and undertakings is provided in the new Book of Common Prayer at Holy Communion Two, before the dismissal with the prayer: “Send us out in the power of your Spirit to live and work to your praise and glory” (page 221). This commission for mission is less explicit, but nevertheless is to be found, in Holy Communion One in the second prayer after the Lord’s Prayer, asking that we may “do all such god work as thou hast prepared for us to walk in ...”

We are sent out after every Sunday Eucharist in mission, to be authentic witnesses to Christ and to his kingdom in the world. But the commission to mission at the end of the liturgy is not merely an extra dimension coming after all has been said and done: the whole action of the Eucharist is missionary and the event of the liturgy is a mission event itself, in which the Church is formed as a missionary community and is sent out to engage in mission, in what the Eastern Orthodox Church calls “the Liturgy after the Liturgy.”

The Book of Common Prayer (2004) contains an embedded invitation to the ‘liturgy after the Liturgy’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

As the new Book of Common Prayer is introduced in parishes and dioceses throughout the Church of Ireland, there is a risk that in some places the emphasis will be on getting words and actions right, forgetting what words and actions are expected to follow them in the “liturgy after the Liturgy.”

The Eucharist is not just the remembrance of things past but is also a foretaste of the heavenly banquet: “We look for the coming of his kingdom” (page 210), “we look for his coming to fulfil all things according to your will” (page 215), and we ask to be brought “with all your people into the joy of your eternal kingdom” (page 215). This invitation to the banquet is constantly voiced and addressed not only to the members of the Church, but also to non-Christians and strangers too, in an invitation that is missionary in intention and scope.

The Romanian Orthodox theologian, Professor Ion Bria, has pointed out that there is a double movement in the Liturgy: on the one hand, the people of God remember the saving acts of Christ “until he comes again”; and on the other, the Eucharist is a symbol of and realises the process by which the cosmos, the whole of creation, is becoming ekklesia, the Church. The liturgy is both an invitation to the world into the Lord’s House and to seek the Kingdom to come. Because the Eucharist is a foretaste of the Kingdom of God, and because missionary activities provide symbols of our hope for the Kingdom of God, then it is only natural that the we should have a proper theology of liturgy as mission.

As Greek Orthodox theologians insist, the Liturgy is not an escape from life. It is a continual reorientation and openness to efforts aimed at challenging structures of injustice, exploitation, agony, loneliness, and at creating real communion of persons in love. And so, when we go out, “the liturgy has to be continued in personal, everyday situations,” Bishop Anastasios Yannoulatos told an Orthodox consultation on the liturgical life of the Church back in the mid-1970s. “Each of the faithful is called to continue a personal ‘liturgy’ on the secret altar of his own heart, to realize a living proclamation of the good news ‘for the sake of the whole world’. Without this continuation the Liturgy remains incomplete.”

Personal everyday life becomes liturgical, and that liturgical everyday life becomes missionary when it is empowered by the liturgy, drawing power from participation in the Eucharist.

Candles lighting in a Church in Crete ... Orthodox liturgical theology provides seven principles underpinning the Orthodox approach to mission (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

There is a danger, at times, of thinking that the Orthodox understanding of the Eucharist is very limited. But there is a vitality in many Orthodox circles that enables them to see the intimate link between liturgy and mission, and these insights have shaped the seven principles underpinning the Orthodox approach to mission:

1. Mission is about community. Mission is not just about the proclamation of truth, or a calling of individuals, it is also about the building of a community of faith that lives the truth of the Gospel. And so, the local church is the primary focus of mission.

2. It follows that worship is the beginning of mission. As Ion Bria has said, worship constitutes that permanent missionary impulse and determines the evangelistic witness of every Christian. The mission of the Church rests upon the radical and transforming power of the Liturgy. As the glory of God is revealed in corporate worship, so those who are inside are sent out in mission and those who are outside are drawn in by the revelation of the glory of God. If our worship is not attracting the attention of those who do not know God, then it fails to please God.

3. Mission and unity belong together. God is one, and for churches to be engaging in mission apart from each other is a denial of the Gospel of reconciliation in Christ that they seek to proclaim.

4. Mission is based on the love of God. We reach out to each other because God first loved us. The key mission text in Orthodox theology is not Matthew 28: 19 but John 3: 16: “God so loved the world ...” Love is the superior motivation, higher even than obedience to the commands of Jesus.

5. The goal of mission is life, so, that Orthodox doctrine of theosis teaches that the believer can experience life to its fullest potential, even participating in the inner life of the Godhead. In this thinking, John 10: 10 provides the missionary objective “that they may have life in all its fullness.”

6. There is a cosmic dimension to mission as there is to liturgy. St Paul’s teaching that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5: 19) provides the cosmic dimension for mission. Our turning to God, to find in him our peace and fulfilment, is but a very small part of a universal movement initiated by Christ on the cross.

7. Mission must be holistic mission. St John Chrysostom, who shaped the order of the Eucharistic Liturgy ordinarily celebrated by the Orthodox, speaks of the “sacrament of the brother”. For him, there is basic coincidence between faith, worship, life and service. Therefore, the worship at the Holy Table is complemented not at the dismissal but in the offering on the “second altar”, the altar of the neighbour’s heart.

These Orthodox insights into mission and liturgy teach us that mission begins in worship, that it continues in the proclamation of the Gospel, and that it is completed in the service that we offer to others. As Ion Bria has argued, in the liturgy after the Liturgy, the Church witnesses to the cosmic dimension of the event of salvation, and puts into practice, daily and existentially, its missionary vocation. Hopefully, the new Book of Common Prayer will help each of us in putting that missionary vocation into practice.

The Last Supper in a carving at Bridgeman’s workshop in Quonian’s Lane, Lichfield ... mission begins in worship, continues in the proclamation of the Gospel, and is completed in the service we offer to others (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral. This essay was first published in Gazette Review, 25 June 2004, pp 1-2, a supplement to the Church of Ireland Gazette, to mark the publication of the Book of Common Prayer, and is republished here as a contribution to module EM8824: Liturgy, Worship and Spirituality on the MTh course

With the Saints through Christmas (4): 29 December, Saint Thomas Becket

Saint Thomas Becket ... a 13th century window in Canterbury Cathedral

Patrick Comerford

Thomas Becket (ca 1118-1170), the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury, is commemorated today [29 December] with a Lesser Festival in the Calendar of the Church of England.

Thomas Becket, also known as Thomas à Becket, was a skilled diplomat and Chancellor of England for many years before he succeeded as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1161. Thomas was forced into exile when he insisted on the privileges. Although he returned in triumph to Canterbury in 1170, the king’s words of anger at court prompted four knights to go to Canterbury where they chased Thomas into the cathedral, and there murdered him on the steps of the altar on this day in 1170.

Thomas Becket was born ca 1118-1120 in Cheapside, London. Tradition says he was born on 21 December, the feast day of Saint Thomas the Apostle, and so received his name. He may have been related to Theobald of Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury.

When he was a 10-year-old, Thomas was sent as a student to Merton Priory in England and he then attended a school in London. Later, he spent about a year in Paris around the age of 20.

When his father, Gilbert Beket, suffered a financial setback, Thomas earned a living as a clerk, and then found a position in the household of Archbishop Theobald.

Archbishop Theobald entrusted him with several important missions to Rome and sent him to Bologna and Auxerre to study canon law. In 1154, although he was not yet ordained priest, Thomas was appointed Archdeacon of Canterbury, and he acquired a number of other Church appointments, including becoming a prebendary of both Lincoln Cathedral and Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, and Provost of Beverley.

In January 1155, on the recommendation of Archbishop Theobald, King Henry II appointed Thomas Lord Chancellor of England.

Several months after the death of Archbishop Theobald, Thomas was nominated as Archbishop of Canterbury and his election was confirmed by a royal council of bishops and noblemen on 23 May 1162.

Thomas was ordained a priest on 2 June 1162 at Canterbury, and a day later he was consecrated a bishop by Bishop Henry of Blois of Winchester and the other bishops of the Province of Canterbury.

The new archbishop resigned as chancellor and changed almost immediately from being a pleasure-loving courtier into a serious-minded, simply-dressed cleric. He took to wearing a hair shirt under his robes, immersed himself in penitential cold baths and washed the feet of 30 paupers each day before he dined.

When he set about trying to recover and extend his rights as archbishop, a rift grew between him and the king, leading to a series of conflicts, including one over the jurisdiction of secular courts over the English clergy.

King Henry’s efforts to win over the other bishops against Thomas began in Westminster in October 1163, when the king sought approval of the traditional rights of the royal government in regard to the Church. At a council in Clarendon Palace, on 30 January 1164, Henry presided over an assembly of the most senior English clergy and in 16 constitutions, sought less clerical independence and a weaker connection with Rome. He drew on all his skills to secure their consent but failed to convince Archbishop Thomas.

Finally, even the archbishop signalled his willingness to agree, but he refused to formally sign the documents. The king summoned the archbishop to Northampton Castle on 8 October 1164 to answer charges of contempt of royal authority and malfeasance while he was Chancellor. When Thomas was convicted of the charges, he stormed out of the trial and fled to the Continent.

King Louis VII of France offered Thomas protection, and he spent nearly two years in the Cistercian Abbey of Pontigny until Henry’s threats against the Cistercians forced Thomas to return to Sens.

Thomas fought back by threatening to excommunicate the king and to place the king, the bishops and England under an interdict. When Pope Alexander III sent Papal legates to arbitrate between the king and the archbishop, Henry offered a compromise that would allow Thomas to return to England from exile.

In June 1170, the Archbishop of York, Roger de Pont L’Évêque, along with the Bishop of London, Gilbert Foliot, and the Bishop of Salisbury, Josceline de Bohon, crowned Henry’s heir as king-in-waiting at York. This action was a direct challenge to the privileges of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in November 1170 Thomas excommunicated all three. While the three bishops fled to the king in Normandy, Becket continued to excommunicate his opponents in the Church.

When the king heard the news of the archbishop’s actions, tradition says, Henry demanded to know: “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” However, his contemporary and biographer Edward Grim puts other words in Henry’s mouth: “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?”

Whatever Henry said, it was interpreted as a royal command, and four knights – Reginald fitzUrse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy and Richard le Breton – set out to confront the Archbishop of Canterbury.

On 29 December 1170, they arrived at Canterbury, where they placed their weapons under a tree outside the cathedral and hid their mail armour under cloaks before entering to challenge the archbishop. They ordered Thomas to Winchester to account for his actions, but when he refused they retrieved their weapons and rushed back inside.

Meanwhile, the archbishop was preparing himself for Vespers. The four knights drew their swords, caught up with Thomas near a door to the cloister, on the stairs leading to the crypt and the cathedral quire. As the third blow hit him, he fell on his knees and elbows, saying in a low voice: “For the name of Jesus and the protection of the Church, I am ready to embrace death.” The next blow to his head decapitated him, and his brains and blood were splattered on the paved floor.

After killing him, one of the knights said: “Let us away. He will rise no more.”

The murder was reported in minute detail: no fewer than five of Thomas’s companions in Canterbury Cathedral were witnesses on that fateful day. The monks who prepared his body for burial found that Thomas had worn a hair-shirt under his archbishop’s robes.

Selskar Abbey, Wexford ... Henry II is said to have spent Lent 1172 here in penance after the murder of Saint Thomas Becket (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

According to local lore in Wexford, Henry II did penance for the murder by spending Lent in 1172 in Selskar Abbey.

On Ash Wednesday, 21 February 1173, Thomas was canonised by Pope Alexander III. On 12 July 1174, in the midst of a revolt, Henry did public penance for the murder at Becket’s tomb, in an act of penance, donning sackcloth and walking barefoot through the streets of Canterbury while 100 nervous monks flogged him with branches. Henry concluded his atonement by spending the night in the martyr’s crypt, which quickly became a popular place of pilgrimage.

However, the assassins were never arrested and their lands were never confiscated. Pope Alexander excommunicated all four. Seeking forgiveness, the assassins travelled to Rome, where the Pope ordered them to spend 14 years as knights in the Holy Land.

In 1220, Thomas’s bones were moved to a shrine behind the high altar in the Trinity Chapel. The shrine was destroyed on the orders of Henry VIII at the dissolution of the monasteries in 1538. The king also destroyed Becket’s bones and ordered that all mention of his name be obliterated. The paved floor where the shrine stood is now marked by a lit candle.

Saint Thomas Becket was undoubtedly a proud and stubborn man, for all his gifts, and his personal austerities as archbishop were probably an attempt at self-discipline after years of ostentatious luxury. His conflict with Henry II stemmed from their conflicting ambitions, exacerbated by the claims of the papacy. His martyrdom became the emblem of spiritual resistance to secular tyranny, and no king until Henry VIII dared repeat Henry II’s assault on ecclesiastical jurisdiction in England.

The Church Historian Eamon Duffy wrote in The Guardian earlier this year:

“Today’s readers, all too conscious of ecclesiastical cover-up of clerical abuse, are unlikely to warm to Becket’s cause, but more was at stake than clerical privilege. The medieval church was the sole source of moral value, and one of the few contexts within which criticism of tyrannical rule was possible. Kings such as Henry II were rarely concerned with abstract justice, and royal control of the church posed problems not unlike those posed nowadays by state censorship of the press or suppression of the right of peaceful protest. Becket saw himself as a champion of the cause of Christ and the liberties of the church.”

Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is set in a company of pilgrims on their way from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket, the “holy, blissful martyr,” in Canterbury Cathedral.

Peter Glenville’s 1964 movie Becket starred Richard Burton as Archbishop Thomas Becket and Peter O’Toole as King Henry II.

In the interlude in TS Eliot’s play, Murder in the Cathedral, Thomas Becket preaches his Christmas sermon shortly before his murder. He explains that the “peace to men of good will” that the angels announced at the first Christmas was “not peace as the world gives,” but, to the disciples, “torture, imprisonment, disappointment … [and] death by martyrdom.”

He links the birth at Christmas with the death of martyrdom, asking: “Is it an accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of Christ? By no means.”

Having remembered Saint Stephen the first martyr on 26 December, Saint John, who reaches soaring heights and whose concept of love reaches the furthest breadths (27 December), and the Holy Innocents, who remind us of all children at risk (28 December), this day to continues to recall the connections between the Incarnation and witnessing to the Gospel, even at the cost of martyrdom.

Collect

Lord God,
who gave grace to your servant Thomas Becket
to put aside all earthly fear
and be faithful even to death:
grant that we, disregarding worldly esteem,
may fight all wrong, uphold your rule,
and serve you to our life’s end;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Readings:

I Kings 19: 9-13a; Psalm 54; Hebrews 13: 10-16; Matthew 10: 28-30.

Post Communion Prayer:

God our Redeemer,
whose Church was strengthened
by the blood of your martyr Thomas Becket:
so bind us, in life and death, to Christ’s sacrifice
that our lives, broken and offered with his,
may carry his death and proclaim his resurrection in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Tomorrow (30 December): Josephine Butler.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.