Frequency of the Mass

The BCP obviously envisages morning and evening prayer to be the principal daily church services. I wonder, then, how often Holy Communion is supposed to be celebrated. In my church we have a daily Mass, preceded by morning prayer from the Roman office. Using the prayer book rite then, would it be "acceptable" for a daily service of Holy communion either in addition to, or in place of, morning prayer?

 

In the BCP ++Cranmer provided Collects, Epistle and Gospel readings for Sundays and major Holy Days. Presumably he intended HC to be celebrated at least on those occasions. The English Reformer's certainly wanted to encourage more frequent reception of HC as opposed to annual reception which had been common practice for laity during the Medieval period.

Yes, the 1662 BCP can be used for daily celebrations of HC. Whilst the BCP doesn't provide daily collects and readings for HC it directs that "... the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel appointed for the Sunday shall serve all the week after, where it is not in this book otherwise ordered." (The order of how the rest of Holy Scripture is appointed be read.)

 

Great answer, thanks symphorian. So, on a more theological note, do you see a benefit in partaking in the Lord's supper over the usual service of Morning (or evening) prayer? I'm very much of the mindset at the moment that the more we can receive Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, the better, hence I attend a daily Mass. Any thoughts on this?

 

I suppose it depends on the individual. I’ve never felt the need to receive on a daily basis. My village church no longer has HC on weekdays so I sometimes go to the Cathedral during the week but generally receive no more than twice weekly.

The 1662 BCP is not opposed to daily celebrations of HC and there were Anglican divines before the Oxford Movement who were in favour of daily reception such as John Cosin and William Beveridge.

As to the benefits of regular/frequent reception, the Blessed Body and Blood of Christ when received with faith operates on our souls. By eating and drinking frequently we grow by degrees in grace and in the knowledge of our Saviour. We are inwardly strengthened and made more fit for the service of God and also preserved from many sins and temptations.

 

Allow me to put in a word against overly-frequent reception of the Sacrament. Essentially it boils down to the teaching in Anglican Eucharistic devotional manuals that we *have* to study and prepare to receive the Body and Blood. Mere reception would avail little, goes the proverb.

Such a study would extend at least 24 hours to the entire Saturday, but even as far as up to a week before the reception, with study and preparation and meditation for every day of the week.

This level of intensity and piety may even be arduous for weekly Communion; it would make daily reception impossible/unnecessary. Maybe an argument can be made to receive *less* frequently than every week.

We’d receive less frequently but *more worthily*, so the argument goes.

I am of both minds on the issue.

 

It is healthiest if one prepares for and solemnly partakes as often as possible, which is why the St. Severus of Antioch developed the Liturgy of the Presanctified, which in its present Byzantine form is a recension attributed to St. Gregory the Great; in this manner the laity could confess and receive the Eucharist on weekdays in Lent and Holy Week when celebration of the regular Eucharist is prohibited, except on feast days and Maundy Thursday.

That said if Anglican parishes were to reduce choral Eucharist to once a month except in Advent, Christmastide through Epiphany, and Lent through Trinity Sunday, replacing it with an early said service, with congregational hymns, and using Mattins as the principle services on Sunday morning, and then for the monthly choral Eucharist preceding that service with Prime from the 1928 Deposited Book, followed by the Litany, that would be an ordo I would like (and anyone taking communion at the choral Eucharist would have to arrive during Prime and recite Quincunque Vult in addition to the Nicene Creed during the mass itself).

There should also be Choral Evensong or a separate Vespers, Litany and Compline on Saturday night, as a confessional service, and Choral Evensong again on Sunday, and during the week, Wednesday and Friday I should think, along with the Litany and in Lent, a said Holy Communion.

That Ordo would make me happy.

~

The Ordo in the Slavonic Orthodox Churches, which works well and at present generates the greatest attendance at Divine Office services other than on Sunday of any liturgy, and which I personally like, but would like more if Terce and Sext were celebrated more frequently and a homily was delivered at Noone on Sunday following the parish Agape (Orthodox liturgies most often are followed by lunch), is to do Vespers, Compline, Nocturns, Matins, Lauds and Prime, with abbreviations, in a 90 minute to two hour service on Saturday night which matches the 90 minute to two hour and thirty minute length of the liturgy the following morning, which is preceded by Terce and Sext. The priest takes confessions during Terce, Sext and certain parts of All Night Vigils. In some monasteries and Old Believer churches it is much longer, but the last time All Night Vigils was served with no abbreviations was in 1910; it took ten hours and the seminarians who served it experienced something of an altered state for days afterwards. Fortunately the BCP services max out before then, so you could actually do all of the services on Saturday night without risk of that happening.

 

This is an issue that has occupied my mind somewhat of late. I was asked by my parish priest to serve for him at the altar on a Tuesday evening. I also receive communion once a month along with other residents of the Indepenent Living accomodation in which I live on a Tuesday and receive regularly on a Sunday. Is this too often? Is it not often enough? Should I not receive on the Tuesday evening when I serve, because I had already received during the day? How much time should elapse between one communion and another?

All these questions seem predicated on different basic assumptions concerning why we should receive communion and what is gained by so doing.

On the one hand, it is simply not possible to be made sufficiently 'holy'or 'sinless' or 'perfect' or 'acceptable' in God's estimation by the mere receiving of the sacrament of Holy Communion. We are saved by God's Grace alone, not by 'sacraments' of any kind. Therefore the question of 'frequency' simply is irrelevant. It is a foolish question.

Will I or anyone else ever reach a state of grace where communion can confer no greater grace upon me? No! Never. If I did nothing but receive communion all day and every day I would never become sinless, because all have sinned, all have fallen short, and anyone who says or thinks he/she, has no sin, is a liar and makes God a liar also.

So, should I decline to receive in the evening if I have already received during the day, on the grounds that I have not committed any sin, (to my knowledge), since my previous communion?

Not at all. I cannot ever assume that I have no sin. If I do I make John the Apostle a liar and have deceived myself. I am always utterly dependent soully on God's Grace. There is no more certain basis for believing myself accepable in God's sight than the 'once and for all' sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the Hill of Golgotha outside Jerusalem's city wall close on 2000 years ago.

So I reached the conclusion that it is not possible to either receive too frequently or to receive too infrequently.

If the opportunity to receive presents itself we should not refuse it, we should always accept. If we are are ever as unfortunate so as to be deprived of it, for however long a time, we should never be dismayed, because it is God's Gracious act of a single all efficatious sacrifice for the sins of the whole world that secured our salvation. Not the repeated performance of a ritual however frequently we may participate.
.

 

Regarding multiple reception on the same day only:

In the ancient churches (Rome and the Orthodox) and presumably among Anglicans, a day is reckoned to begin at Sunset with Vespers or Evening Prayer. So in theory your communion at the second service as an altar server would occur on Wednesday.

In practice, in the Byzantine Rite at least, whenever there is a Vesperal Divine Liturgy (a mass served in the evening), it is preceded during the day either by a Typika Service, which is like the old Anglican Ante-Communion in that it has the Liturgy of the Catechumens, which the Romans now call the Liturgy of the Word, or Synaxis and the Propers, but no Liturgy of the Faithful, and no anaphora (Eucharistic Prayer), or else the Royal Hours (on Christmas Eve, for example), in which the 3rd, 6th and 9th hour, and perhaps also the 1st, are elongated and turned into a particularly rich service, with special hymns, whereas usually these hours are not served in a particularly splendid manner (although they could be, if someone wanted to). So no Communion during the day.

A Vesperal Divine Liturgy takes Vespers and combines it with the Anaphora of the Divine Liturgy and portions of the Synaxis, or the Liturgy of the Catechumens (the Liturgy of the Word, which is the only thing present in the Typika that is typically served earlier), albeit a different synaxis from the preceding typika with different propers, and the Anaphora used is that of St. Basil the Great rather than St. John Chrysostom. At this liturgy communion is served, but not at the preceding Typika or Royal Hours.

A presanctified liturgy, served in Lent and Holy Week is also served after a shortened vespers, with only four of the Lamp Lighting Prayers replacing the private prayers of the Three Antiphons in a regular liturgy; then a somewhat normal Liturgy of the Catechumens follows, and the pre-communion Liturgy of the Faithful; in addition to the Litany of the Catechumens said to bless them before they depart, there is also a Litany for the Energumens, “Those awaiting Illumination”, that is to say, Baptism and Chrismation (the seal of the Holy Spirit, or Confirmation, administered immediately after Baptism), at a Vesperal Divine Liturgy served on the morning of Holy Saturday or Easter Even in Anglican province (the Baptisms happen, like in the Roman Rite, during the reading of 17 Old Testament prophecies, 12 in the old Roman Rite before Pope Pius XII spoiled it). The the newly baptized receive their first communion later. Before these presanctified liturgies and the Vesperal Divine Liturgies on the morning of Holy Thursday and Holy Saturday, the Third, Sixth and Ninth Hours are served, whereas at other times of year usually the Ninth Hour is not served in Parishes, but only in monasteries. The Presanctified Liturgies are also usually served before Vespers ordinarily would be served, in the mid afternoon (most logically, at the end of the Ninth Hour; many Greek monasteries such as that of St. Anthony’s in Florence, AZ, under the Athonite monk Elder Ephrem, ordinarily serve the ninth hour followed by Vespers at 3:30 PM every day; this ends at 5 PM and is followed by dinner in the trapeza, or refectory, where as in the West a monk reads to those dining (Orthodox dine with the monks, and non-Orthodox are then admitted to have their fill of the leftovers), and then Compline is served, everyone becomes totally silent by 7 PM at the latest, and then the Divine Liturgy is served following Matins and the First Hour, which start at midnight (a monk wakes everyone up with an instrument called a symandron). And then there is breakfast, but only for the guests; the monks work in the morning and will not eat until midday.

Now in the Roman Rite, and as far as I am aware, only the Roman Rite, a priest can receive special dispensations to serve two, three or even four masses on a given day where pastoral neccessity exists. Priests are also obliged to serve a daily mass (hence the plethora of masses available at most Roman Catholic churches and the shortage of Matins and Vespers), except on Good Friday where a Presanctified Liturgy is served. In the related Ambrosian Rite of Milan, a hybrid of Roman and Gallican liturgy, which also shows a strong Byzantine influence, according to legend tracing back to St. Ambrose himself introducing antiphonal singing to keep the spirits of his people up during a long sit-in type Vigil, of ten days or so, to keep the Arians from taking over one of his parishes as ordered by Emperor Theodosius “Lest they perish in soulless monotony”*, priests wear black vestments on Weekdays of Lent and do not serve Communion at all; I can’t recall if the Ambrosians have a mass of the Presanctified. But the rest of the year, the Ambrosian Rite is somewhat normal, except the default color in Ordinary Time is Red, and Advent lasts six Sundays, as in the Eastern Rites.

In the Syriac Orthodox use of the West Syriac Rite, this would only be possible on Pascha, because uniquely, instead of serving a Paschal divine liturgy either at midnight as in the Byzantine Rite or during the morning as in the Roman, Ambrosian, Anglican and Armenian rites, the Syriacs serve a liturgy both at midnight (practically, 8 PM, like the other Eastern churches in most of the US, due to a mix of pastoral and safety issues), which is the main deal, and then a service in the morning, which is less popular and does not feature the elaborations and extra ceremonial of the night ceremony. Some of these, like a dialogue at the outrr door following an outdoor procession, the Armenians do on the morning of Palm Sunday, but at the curtain (most Byzantine, and all Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Assyrian altars are concealed by curtains of increasing width and shrinking iconostases, but Byzantine and a few Coptic churches also have doors).

In the Armenian Rite, the Eucharist can only be served on Sunday and a few feast days, where I believe it can also occur in the evening of a Saturday, leading to two Eucharists on the same day, but I have not confirmed that. In the West Syriac Rite as used by the Syriac Orthodox, the Eucharist, or Qurbono Qadisho (Holy Sacrifice) can only be celebrated on Sunday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The Copts can do it daily.

During the Rogation Fast, while the Oriental Orthodox eat nothing on Monday and Tuesday until a Divine Liturgy on Wednesday, in the Church of the East (the Assyrians) there are nightly vespers followed by an ordinary Qurbana or Raza, meaning Mystery, and I believe the Assyrians and Copts are a bit like the Byzantines, in that they can have communion on most days (but the Coptic presanctified liturgy has become disused, but the Assyrians have brought it back, so Copts do not take Communiom during Holy Week except on Maundy Thursday. In general, the rule of the Eastern churches is always that one priest or group of concelebrating priests, or priests concelebrating with a bishop, can serve one liturgy, each day, from vespers to vespers, and each altar may have only one liturgy served upon it on each day, so the few Eastern churches with multiple liturgies have multiple altars, but still fewer than the spectacular number of chapels one will find in Continental European cathedrals, where in 1900, there would be a Solemn High Mass sung at the High Altar on Sunday, where only the Priest, and I think the Deacon and Subdeacon, would communicate, but the regular faithful would instead attend Low Mass at the side chapels, usually with their favourite priest celebrating, and one server. The high point for most was simply seeing the consecrated host elevated, but at the low mass anyone could partake, in theory.

In the Novus Ordo era, concelebration has been introduced, multiple low masses occuring in parallel happens mainly at St. Peter’s and other places of extreme pilgrimage, and I have heard the faithful can receive repeatedly a few hours apart.

In Anglican use I have never seen a rubric on this in the Book of Common Prayer, but the Exhortations imply infrequent communion, as well as the rubric requiring those desirous of partaking to inform the priest, thus allowing the priest to repel “notorious evil livers.” But now, when in the Episcopal Church USA and even in our beloved Church of England, we have priests and even bishops who, according to the Anglican formularies, are notorious evil livers and are unfit for service at the holy table, and the unbaptized are invited to receive the Eucharist, who knows?

~

I hope this answers all possible questions concerning taking communion repeatedly, on the same day, in any rite.

*Monotony used to be the preferred musical style in the Church of Rome apparently, before the influence of the East led to Old Roman Chant and then Gregorian Chant, which shares an eight tone system with the Eastern Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox (although in Gregorian chant there is technically an extra ninth tone). I believe Ambrosian and Mozarabic Chant there are also eight tones. And in Anglican Plainsong, which is adopted from the chant used in the Sarum Rite, and thus from Gregorian chant. And St. Gregory the Great may well have imported Gregorian chant from Constantinople; the Presanctified Liturgy usually used by the Eastern Orthodox in Lent and Holt Week, and the Mass of the Presanctified the Romans serve on Good Friday, when there is no communion in any of the Eastern churches except for the Maronites, used, until the liturgical ruination caused by Pope Pius XII in 1955, virtually identical wording during the serving of the previously consecrated and reserved Eucharist.

The Romans are believed to have used Monotony in Low Masses until at least the ninth century; at some point, the decision was made these would be mostly silent, except in France, where the clergy are silent but there is a tradition of organ accompaniement. Monotony survived in the Church of England into the 1960s, and perhaps still does in some places; the confiteor of Choral Evensong was chanted in monotone in some high church parishes, and you can hear this in some recordings of BBC Choral Evensong in this playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEv7ZfArXoUmccrCBRyiRri_20MYSP4nv

In the Eastern churches, monotony is extremely rare, and even silent services or Anglican style “Said services” are quite rare; the Russians sing or chant everything, and the only thing I have heard spoken were parts of the Hours at a Greek monastery, by a Cantor at his desk in the middle of the nave, before the Solea (the place where in a cruciform church, the transept intersects the nave; in a monastery church the monks are in the transept and the laity in the nave, towards the back, and in some of the more strict monasteries the non-Orthodox remain in the Narthex.

 

So there you have it, a grand tour of Eucharistic frequency with a segue into Church Music, East and West, or the lack thereof, and Byzantine Monastic severity. Although Byzantine monks are pretty loving people in my experience.

 

I think it is worth saying that the grace we receive in partaking of Eucharist is not saving grace (because saving grace was given to us at the moment we believed), rather it might be termed 'grace for living a sanctified life' or something similar.

It is also good for us to recall that we receive such grace whenever we commune with our Lord in prayer, too. This we can do (and hopefully will do) multiple times each day. Our heavenly Father loves us, and He loves it when we willingly spend time with Him. No liturgy or formality is actually necessary to do this. We can praise Him, ask Him a question, intercede for another person, or cry out about a need... and it can be entirely unscheduled and spontaneous.

Liturgy has its value and its place in our lives, but there's so much more to our daily walk with our loving Lord and Creator.

 

I can’t agree with that on the basis of John 6 and the Catechism of the BCP. To say that mere intellectual assent without the regenerating sacrament of Baptism and the nourishment of Holy Communion, received with humility and contrition and discernment of the body and blood of our Lord (1 Corinthians 11) seems critical for all Christians able to access them. Otherwise one would be guilty of spiritual sloth.

There is also a difference between the spiritual communion of prayer and the Holy Communion, which the Scottish Non Juring Episcopalians in their liturgy of the 1730s, quoting the Divine Liturgy of St. James, referred to as a bloodless and rational sacrifice, and to which even low church Anglicans ascribe extreme importance via Calvinist spiritual presence or Zwinglian symbolism (memorialism being less common in Anglicanism than among Baptists or Evangelicals), and which the BCP stresses the importance of participation in via its famed Exhortations, ontologically, spiritually, teleologically and with regards to soteriological effect. For example, the Eucharist received unworthily can cause death, according to St. Paul; his choice of words suggest death or damnation as possible outcomes, whereas spiritual communion, e.g. fervent prayer, probably cannot, unless perhaps one is inadvertantly praying to the devil (this conceivably happens in heretical cults). But in John 6, in the Synoptics and in 1 Corinthians 11 our Lord commands us to eat and drink his body and blood for the remission of sin and life everlasting, which prayer by itself presumably cannot grant.

There are edge cases. The Orthodox, and I expect the Anglicans, would generally assume saved a catechumen or infant awaiting baptism. The Church Fathers admitted a Baptism of Blood, wherein people martyred before receiving baptism in the Church are baptized by virtue of their martyrdom and become saints. And many Roman Catholic theologians talk of a Baptism of Desire, which presumably applies in cases where a person seeks but for some reason is unable to obtain access to the sacraments.

 

In another thread I laid out an explanation that in John 6 Jesus was not referring to Eucharist. He said the manna was a type of Himself; Christ is the antitype which the manna prophetically pointed to. Jesus also explained to His disciples that they should not stumble over the physical aspect of His metaphorical comparisons because it is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. This is why, in the liturgy at my parish, the rector's final admonishment prior to distributing Eucharist is, "The Gifts of God for the People of God. Take them in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your hearts by faith, with thanksgiving." If the act of ingesting the Eucharist were a source of saving grace, then we would be led to conclude that (1) a physical work can be performed to receive spiritual regeneration, and (2) the spiritual regeneration which took place previously in the person (whether you want to say it's through believing, through the act of baptism, or through the previous acts of ingesting Eucharist) were somehow incomplete or insufficient. I believe that the saving grace and the Holy Spirit's indwelling, both received at the moment one believes, are full, complete, and fully effectual in regenerating and justifying us. What remains is our sanctification, which progresses throughout our lives, and for that we need grace, too... but I would not call it "saving grace."

"Mere intellectual assent" is your phrase, but I do not share in it. Faith is not intellectual assent but is a spiritual 'change of heart,' an inner conviction which informs our intellect. Our brain recognizes and processes it, but the brain is not the origin. It's more like the brain suddenly says, "Huh! Something just happened. Suddenly I find myself believing!"

Absolutely there is a difference. But there is also a similarity. I am by no means equating the two, but drawing a parallel.

I understand what you are saying. Look at it this way, though. Let's suppose we have two people, Joe and Fred. Joe came to an inner conviction that he is a hell-bound sinner and that Christ died and rose from the dead to remove the penalty for his sins (i.e., Joe truly believes in Jesus); Joe appreciates what God has done for him and, out of love and gratefulness he strives to live a 'good' life; but through a lack of Bible knowledge he doesn't perceive the importance of regular church attendance or of Eucharist, so he never goes to church. Fred, on the other hand, grew up in a liturgical church environment; he was baptized as an infant and he receives Eucharist every Sunday; however, he does all out of 'mere mental assent' concerning Jesus Christ. Which one will we be likely to see in God's heavenly Kingdom?

 

Not seeking an endless evangelical vs. high church confrontation, nor to re-enact the Wars of Religion, the English Civil War or the Elizabethan Settlement, I merely have to say that if what you say were true, then I should not understand what all the fuss is about in the Book of Common Prayer regarding the sacraments.

Conversely, I do believe I outlined in my post a sufficient range of scenarios where someone who had faith and wanted baptism and the Eucharist but died before getting there would be saved on the basis of their faith, thus adequetely preserving sola fide without derogating to the untenable Baptist position of nuda fide.

 

Very good, this is precisely what we need here, because alas I don’t know my way around early Anglicans enough to address this sort of argument on purely Anglican pre-Tractarian terms. The Anglican church I love is this sort or delicate flower that appears, due to the efforts of Jewel, Hooker, Laud and others, who my knowledge of is uncertain (although from what I have read about Laud, I like him), and the Tractarians, if by magic, as if by magic, late in the reign of Queen Victoria, like a blossoming flower, which alas is now withering but not due to age, but rather poison from the corrupting influence of postmodern theology and the sort of bishop epitomized by Pike or Spong.

 

Reading Jewel's treatise, a question comes to my mind about the Orthodox church belief concerning Eucharist: are recipients supposed to (or required to) believe that the elements change in substance to literal flesh and blood? I thought I'd heard this to be so, but I'm not certain.

 

Yes, this is our doctrine. And also a common view among Anglo Catholics starting with the Non Jurors after the Glorious Revolution.

 

I was under the impression that the Orthodox followed closely to the writings of Chrysostom. But Jewel quotes Chrysostom in this manner:
“He showed us in a Sacrament bread and wine, after the order of Melchisedech, to be the likeness of the body and blood of Christ.”
“If Christ died not, whose sign and whose token is this Sacrament?”
“The very body of Christ it self is not in the holy vessels, but the mystery or Sacrament thereof is there contained.”
“The nature of bread remaineth in the Sacrament.”

I'm wondering if Chrysostom's position is mischaracterized, or if they simply chose not to follow his reasoning on this subject?

 

I would suspect rather that the writing in question is spurious, because it contradicts so much else of what St. John Chrysostom wrote, in particular the Epiklesis of his own liturgy (which was changed from a weaker Epiklesis in the Anaphora of the Apostles, from which the Anaphora of St. John Chrysostom is derived.

There are so many spurious writings and forgeries and urban legends about Orthodox that even the faithful get confused, for example: Quincunque Vult was almost certainly not written by St. Athanasius, nor is it likely that he wrote either of the two liturgies bearing his name, and the quotation attributed to Proclus on the history of the liturgy (basically, it says that the liturgy of St. James was 4 hours, which it isn’t, by the way, not inherently, although you can stretch it to four hours if you want, and that St. Basil owing to the impatience of the impious laity shortened it to two and a half hours as an act of economy and In condescension to their spiritual weakness, and that St. John Chrysostom, seeing that this was still not enough to compensate for their sloth, cut it down to 90 minutes.). This has been exposed as a 16th century forgery and is untrue; the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and that of St, Basil are approximately the same length in the Byzantine Rite, and the Paschal liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is about three hours.

The only sure thing you can say about liturgical duration is that the Ethiopians have the longest services, the Russians, especially the Old Believers, the second longest, the Athonite monks come in third; the Roman Rite and its derivatives like the Anglican Rite have the shortest services, and everyone else is in the middle.

 

There is no evidence that that passage from St Chrysostom is spurious though. It’s not really fair to dismiss anything which goes against a desired narrative to be spurious. Chrysostom merely teaches the normal doctrine of the Eucharist taught by the fathers, which Jewel looks to teach as well. The Sacrament points to the sacred Body, just like the wedding ring points to the invisible but unbreakable bond of Matrimony.

Nor does the Epiklesis have a specific Eucharistic theology implied in it at all (other than generic real presence which we all believe in).

Nor is their evidence that St Chrysostom wrote the “Liturgy of St Chrysostom” any more than the Athanasian Creed being written by St Athanasius.