Evensong on back to back holidays

Discussion in 'Feasts, Fasts, and Church Calendar' started by Moses, Dec 21, 2020.

  1. Moses

    Moses Member

    Posts:
    99
    Likes Received:
    70
    Country:
    USA
    Religion:
    Orthodox Christian
    Yesterday was the fourth Sunday in Advent, and today is the feast of St. Thomas. Which of the following was the correct course of action for the daily office?

    1. Skip 1st evensong for St. Thomas.
    2. Skip 2nd evensong for Advent IV.
    3. Move St. Thomas to Dec 22 so we can celebrate two evensongs for each day.

    The rubrics in the 1928 prayer book left me unsure.
     
  2. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

    Posts:
    2,723
    Likes Received:
    2,563
    Country:
    America
    Religion:
    Anglican
    For those who can celebrate corporately in the Church, then both, on both days. At least that’s how I understand the 1662 directions. Yes it’s a lot, but the church understood the life of a Christian as mostly spent together in worship of the one true God. So it didn’t seem like it’s too much for them. All clergy are mandated to do the office daily, for instance.

    That being said, the daily office wasn’t intended for family or personal devotions, so if you’re celebrating in that context, then you want to do the family prayer instead. You will still say the Collect on the feast days, so you’ve go that covered.
     
  3. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

    Posts:
    1,718
    Likes Received:
    1,008
    Religion:
    ACNA
    I wish I had a church nearby that did daily evensong or morning prayer.
     
  4. Moses

    Moses Member

    Posts:
    99
    Likes Received:
    70
    Country:
    USA
    Religion:
    Orthodox Christian
    Obviously the ideal is for it to be done as a public service, but is there a rule against Anglican laity doing it at home when it's otherwise unavailable? I'd assumed the 1928 book just added family prayer on the assumption that families might be too busy for the full services.

    The prayer book office is such a treasure it seems like a shame that you guys couldn't celebrate it unless your parish does.
     
  5. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

    Posts:
    1,718
    Likes Received:
    1,008
    Religion:
    ACNA
    I have never heard of a rule and I say some form of the daily office most days
     
    Moses likes this.
  6. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

    Posts:
    2,723
    Likes Received:
    2,563
    Country:
    America
    Religion:
    Anglican
    I definitely don't know of any rule against doing the Matins and Evensong at home, and know of several people who do just that. I only meant to say that it isn't seen as required. Two hours of personal prayer every day on a continual basis, is something that historically has been seen as mainly limited to the spiritual masters, even in the prior eras of church history. Wouldn't you agree?
     
    Moses likes this.
  7. Moses

    Moses Member

    Posts:
    99
    Likes Received:
    70
    Country:
    USA
    Religion:
    Orthodox Christian
    I gotcha, definitely.

    With my southern drawl, Matins and Evensong take me about 16-20 minutes each depending on how many of the optional prayers I include after the collects. I have no musical talent, so I don't sing anything, and I skip the sermon and the general confession. (Oddly enough, the 1928 book doesn't allow for replacing the absolution with the Trinity XXI collect if you're not a priest.)

    When I first started I was using the 1943 psalter and lectionary, which made the services even shorter, around 13 minutes. I can definitely see how the services could get much longer, but as I do them it's not even close to two hours of prayer.
     
    Stalwart likes this.
  8. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

    Posts:
    1,718
    Likes Received:
    1,008
    Religion:
    ACNA
    I love it. It is part of my regular daily exercise to say some form of the daily office be it Morning, Midday, Evening Prayers or Compline.
     
  9. Stalwart

    Stalwart Well-Known Member Anglican

    Posts:
    2,723
    Likes Received:
    2,563
    Country:
    America
    Religion:
    Anglican
    I use original non-truncated 1662 Prayer Book, and maybe there is a difference there, but when I do it all point by point, it takes me a good 45 minutes. So maybe 1.5 hours in total for the two services instead of 2, but still, a good chunk of time. I actually fell back to the family prayer for a while. And returned to the Litany in the last month, because of everything that's happening. The 1662 Litany alone takes me about 15 minutes.
     
    bwallac2335 likes this.
  10. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

    Posts:
    1,718
    Likes Received:
    1,008
    Religion:
    ACNA
    In the 2019 book it takes around 15 minutes for me to do Morning or Evening Prayers. The Litany is 10 minutes, Compline is 10 minutes, and Mid Day Prayers are 5 minutes
     
  11. Shane R

    Shane R Well-Known Member

    Posts:
    1,138
    Likes Received:
    1,181
    Country:
    USA
    Religion:
    Anglican
    My parish usually does Wednesday evening Evensong whenever we are in purple on the Ordo Kalendar. It takes 35-40 minutes. Saying it at home takes 20-25 but I rarely read the prescribed lections at home; I'm usually reading some portion of Scripture that I'm studying in some depth.

    I used to attend a parish that alternated Morning Prayer and Sunday school week by week. You wanted to keep your weeks straight because if you got mixed up and showed up for Sunday school it was horrendous.
     
  12. PDL

    PDL Well-Known Member Anglican

    Posts:
    1,086
    Likes Received:
    839
    Country:
    United Kingdom
    Religion:
    Church of England
    My understanding is this.

    Sundays of Advent outrank all saints' days; therefore, if the choice is the Second Evensong of Advent IV or the First of St. Thomas then it is the Second Evensong of Advent IV.

    I know my answer is too late for that occasion but it is based on a general rule, so I hope it helps.
     
    Moses and bwallac2335 like this.
  13. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

    Posts:
    760
    Likes Received:
    442
    Country:
    US
    Religion:
    Christian Orthodoxy
    I wish I had a church nearby that did Morning Prayer, period. The only Anglican church where I live that I like is a Continuing High Church parish, St. George’s Anglican Church, that does said Evening Prayer followed by said Eucharist on Wednesday, and on Sunday, said Eucharist followed by choral Eucharist, using the 1928 BCP.

    In California in my home town of Ventura there is a low church Continuing Anglican parish, also called St. George’s Anglican Church that does Choral Mattins every Sunday except the first Sunday of the month when they have Holy Communion, again using the 1928 BCP. They have very nice people but lack their own building, renting a chapel in an SDA parish (the Adventist opposition to Sunday worship apparently ends where the cash flow begins). This church is unfortunately struggling severely due to the dreadful Chinese Virus and the immoral and unconstitutional restrictions imposed on churches in California (which make no sense, simce research has shown that church attendance is one of the best ways for people to maintain their mental health in the face of this horrible pandemic, and churches in many other states are operating with social distancing entirely compatible with the CDC. If St. George’s in Ventura folds I will be extremely upset, because they are incredibly sweet people.

    Mount Calvary Monastery, an Episcopalian monastery and retreat center, had mattins, the Eucharist, midday prayer, evening prayer and compline daily, but recently closed permanently due to the Coronavirus. It was slated to close the week following Easter this year, due to the lack of vocations; there were only four monks, one of whom recently reposed in the Lord and another of whom is 93 and recently had to retire to a nursing home. The last conservative Episcopalian priest in the area, Fr. Dean of St. Francis of Assisi Episcopal Church in Simi Valley, had a very high opinion of the monks at Mount Calvary Monastery. This leaves just two monasteries of the Order of the Holy Cross in the Episcopal Church, in the US. The building that Mount Calvary Monastery was located in was previously an Episcopalian convent; the last surviving nun donated it to them in the 2000s when their old monastery in the hills was destroyed by fire.

    One nice thing about London, “Oxbridge” and certain cathedral towns, and to a lesser extent New York City, is the high availability of Anglican services. I am fairly confident that between St. Paul’s, Southwark Cathedral, The Collegiate Church of St. Peter (commonly called Westminster Abbey), the parish churches in the City of London and high profile parish churches located around greater London, particularly the City of Westminster and the Royal Burroughs of Southwark, Kensington & Chelsea, Lambeth, and other smaller places, before the Pandemic began and after it ends and some normality returns, one would be assured access to at least one Evening Prayer, and one might have a choice of multiple forms of evening prayer, including Choral Evensong, said evening prayer, Anglo-Catholic Vespers, Compline from the 1928 Deposited Book and its derivatives, and said and choral evening prayer in modern language from Common Worship, and Anglican services in Welsh*

    There are also disagreeable evening services on some nights at Holy Trinity Brompton and its satellite parishes accompanied by “praise and worship” “music” which is basically rock, peformed on the electric “gitar”, keyboard and drumkit hooked up to powerful amplifiers, which I personally feel should be prohibited from Anglican churches by canon law, but that’s my opinion, and if memory serves, HTB did play a key role in developing a successful catechetical program, I think it was the Alpha Course, and Archbishop Welby was once in the clergy at that parish if memory serves. Also, to their credit, they do have one satellite church which offers traditional low church evangelical services.

    *St. Bennet’s, a perfectly preserved Christopher Wren building in the square mile of the City of London, home to St. Paul’s Cathedral, England’s answer to St. Peter’s Basillica and the inspiration for most domed legislative capitol buildings in the United States, St. Magnus the Martyr, St. Stephen Walbrook, St. Sepulchre-without-Newgate and St. Mary Le Bow, was granted by Queen Victoria to the Welsh speaking community in the 1890s and has in the past had choral evensong, if memory serves, although at present they just have a Sunday morning Eucharist.
     
  14. Liturgyworks

    Liturgyworks Well-Known Member Anglican

    Posts:
    760
    Likes Received:
    442
    Country:
    US
    Religion:
    Christian Orthodoxy
    There are a pair of really handy 19th century Oxford Movement Anglo-Catholic books which can be used even by low churchmen to resolve liturgical questions, the Directorium Anglicanorum and Ritual Notes, both of which are in the public domain; their only downside is they were written with the 1662 BCP in mind; someone should write glosses to cover the 1928 American BCP and the 1962 Canadian BCP, as well as other prayer books in use outside of the province of England.

    Here are links to the Directorium, Ritual Notes, the historical liturgical text collection of which they are a part, and a site with every major edition of the Book of Common prayer, except the Reformed Episcopal Church versions, the 2019 ACNA BCP, A Prayer Book for Australia, and the minimalist, low church evangelical service book published by the conservative province in New South Wales.*

    http://anglicanhistory.org/liturgy/directorium/



    * Of the four missing books, I own a copy of every one except A Prayerbook for Australia; of the three that I do have, the only one I actually like is the Archdiocese of Sydney’s service book.
     
    Last edited: Jan 17, 2021
    Moses likes this.
  15. bwallac2335

    bwallac2335 Well-Known Member

    Posts:
    1,718
    Likes Received:
    1,008
    Religion:
    ACNA
    What don't you like about the 2019BCP
     
  16. PDL

    PDL Well-Known Member Anglican

    Posts:
    1,086
    Likes Received:
    839
    Country:
    United Kingdom
    Religion:
    Church of England
    I think inappropriate to give it this name. Yes, the first reported cases were in China but China did not deliberately send it round the world. It is misleading because the correct name of this virus is Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2, which is contracted to SARS-CoV-2. The name of the disease that it causes is Coronavirus Disease 2019, which is contracted to COVID-19. The first reported cases of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) were in the USA. However, I am sure Americans would be offended if the rest of us called it the American Virus.
     
    Fr. Brench likes this.