Recently at a Anglican Eucharist, the server running short of wine added a small amount of water to the chalice. Apparently they had been told by the incumbent they could do this the visiting minister objected and said this should not be done. Can anyone point me to any Church of England rules on this? Thanks.
If the consecrated wine proved insufficient when the chalice was being administred to communicants, the Priest should return to the altar and consecrate more. This is is according to the rubrics of Common Prayer 1662 and Common Worship 2000. If you're referring to the preparation of the chalice, the practice of having a mixed chalice (a little water added to the wine) is of great antiquity in the Church. It was a cuItural practice of Jesus' day to mix water with wine. Liturgically it developed symbolism. It's symbolical of the humanity and divinity of Jesus (water = humanity, wine = divinity.) It also symbolises the piercing of Jesus' side at the Crucifixion when blood and water flowed forth. The First Book of Common Prayer (1549) had a rubric directing a mixed chalice but the rubric was dropped in later editions. The legality of having a mixed chalice has been called into question in the Church of England in the late 19th century (along with other so called 'unlawful' practices such as elevation, use of mass vestments, having lighted candles on the altar, use of wafer bread etc.) but such things are now common place and widely accepted.
I instinctively feel that this is porr sacramental practice. It almost seems to point to some idea of a diluted salvation or a watered down Gospel. In a day and age where much is made of the common cup debate with all sorts of options being made available (don't start me) I think watering down the sacrament to make it stretch out a little more is the last thing we should be doing. By the mingling of this water and this wine may we share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.
Thanks for the comments. In a discussion with a fellow minister he remembers seeing a Bishop add wine rather than water. From talking to other clergy, both happen but appear not to be the norm.
Quite so! Charging the cup with wine and a little water before the elements are consecrated is a different matter to what the OP is suggesting here. If more is required, just adding water is not sufficient, (unless one has a great deal of faith and six stone jars each containing 20 to 30 gallons of it). That being said though, it is the faith by which it is received that matters, not the proportionate alcoholic content.
Recently I read about some English minister (centuries past, I think in the 1600s) who ran out of consecrated wine and continued serving communion with unconsecrated wine; he was sentenced to 1 year in prison for the offense!
In antiquiry, only the Armenian church used pure wine in the chalice. Everyone else dilluted it with water, and most still do. In the Byzantine Rite boiling water is poured into the wine shortly before the communion of the laity, to heat it up, increasing the blood-like aspect (and of course, white wine is unheard of). I recall reading with horror a liberal Methodist and Episcopalian discuss the “need” to remove references to blood from the liturgy, to avoid inadvertantly traumatizing congregants. I should enjoy seeing their reaction to the Eastern Orthodox Proskomide, the elaborate Liturgy of Preparation; which normally only the priest and deacon. in full vestments, participate in, and which one hears of rare instances of saintly monastic priests spending hours doing, depending on how many names of people they want to commemorate, but which in its default mode still takes quite a length of time and is a bit elaborate in its description of the crucifixion, with the use of the liturgical spear and other implements. One reason why I am a strong believer in a male priesthood and episcopate is because, while I would not want to replace the existing preparatory rites of the various ancient liturgical traditions, including that which one finds in high church Anglicanism, with the Byzantine Proskomide, or Prothesis, since I consider all of the ancient liturgies to be of equal value and validity, and since several of them, such as the West Syriac Rite (Orthodox, not the Maronite recension), the Coptic Rite, and the Armenian Rite feature similiar, if shorter, preparations of the gifts before the liturgical synaxis begins, well, I would not want to meet a woman who was comfortable performing those liturgical services, given that all of them consist of extremely detailed and graphic recollections of the passion of our Lord, while the bread is ceremonially cut down and prepared for consecration. Theodore of Mopsuestia was of an interesting opinion* that in the liturgy of preparation, the gifts became, either symbolically or actually, the crucified body of our Lord, and then in the consecration, this either signified or actualized the resurrection, and then the reception of the Eucharist in turn referred to the descent of the Holy Spirit. *I should note there is scholarly debate over how literal Theodore was being in the homily in question, whether he was implying a symbolic, representative or spiritual action or rather meant an actual transformation.