What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Slow Eucharist – Teaching Mass – Lord’s Supper with FAQ

    I’m doing something a bit different on Monday. It happens to be the Feast of St Bartholomew and normally we would have a celebratory Eucharist in the morning instead of morning prayer. Now, I’m the master of having all the works in less than half an hour.  Clouds of smoke, a simple sung plainsong setting a wee homily and some prayers and off we go into the world refreshed by being inspired by the saint of the day. It all has to be sharp and to the point but it is fun none the less.

    However on Monday I’ve shifted the Eucharist to the evening and instead of it being over before you can blink, I’ve advertised it as a slow eucharist.

    The idea is that we’ll take time over it and I welcome questions throughout the service. I’ll probably have some questions to think about too.

    I’ve done a few services like this in my time.

    When I’ve done this before, it has been enjoyed by a range of people. It is particularly suitable for anyone who comes to the Eucharist and has been wondering about how the service hangs together. What do the individual bit mean? Why do we do it this way? I’ve also known parents who believe (in the face of the church telling them otherwise) that children should “understand” communion before receiving it enjoy bringing their kids. (My experience is that kids do understand it and adults have the questions, but that’s OK). It is particularly suitable for anyone of any age who wants to begin receiving communion but who hasn’t received so far because they don’t quite get it or have wondered whether or not they should.

    The kinds of questions that have come up in the past have included…

    • Why do you wear that colour on that day and how do you know?
    • Why do we have wafers when other people have bread?
    • Why do you do that with your hands?
    • Why do we sometimes have three people at the altar – what are they all doing there?
    • How do you know who is who by what they are wearing?
    • What really happens to the bread and wine?
    • What do all Anglicans believe about this
    • What are the secret prayers that the priest says?
    • What do you mean secret prayers?!!!
    • Why do people have different names for the service – Eucharist, Lord’s Supper, Mass, which is it?
    • Can you receive communion if you’ve arrived at the last minute?
    • If Jesus only gave communion to men then why do we give it to women too?
    • Did Jesus know he was starting something that would go on and on through the centuries?
    • What’s that called?
    • Who is allowed to receive communion? Is there anyone you would refuse communion to?
    • Can you be excommunicated from the Scottish Episcopal Church?
    • Why did I have to be confirmed to receive communion and now people don’t?
    • Why? Just why?
    • Why do we do this, when we used to do that?

    I’ll give plenty of time for questions and answers. Don’t presume I have all the answers. My hunch is that the best answers will come from the community that gathers.

    It will be fun. It will be informal. It will be holy.

    No question too silly.

    All welcome on Monday at 6.30 pm. Depending on numbers, we may start with a sacristy safari to gether all the bits and pieces together. If there are too many of us, we’ll reschedule that bit for another day. We should be all out of the building by 8.30 pm so slow but not interminable. (Length depends on the number of questions).

    Comments and questions welcome on here too.

     

14 responses to “Liturgical sadness”

  1. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Has anyone else been following the series in ‘The Tablet’ taking the Latin Sunday Collects from the Roman Missal (Ordinary Form), printing alongside them the official English translations and then commenting on the Collects?

    The effect the series has on me is not what was intended. I spend much of my time being puzzled and irritated by the looseness of the translations from the Latin – words and phrases left out, new ideas included, and sometimes translations which are at best a paraphrase.

    The point of mentioning this is that what I’ve seen of the new English translation of the Roman Mass is undoubtedly more faithful to the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.

    This will be important to some and, I expect, an irrelevance to others. However, an ecumenical gesture we could make (pause for breathtakingly unpopular suggestion!) would be to incorporate the new relevant parts of the new translation in our own Liturgy. That really *would* show ecumenical goodwill.

    Reply
  2. David |Dah • veed| Avatar
    David |Dah • veed|

    “…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form.”

    That is certainly debatable. I fail to see that the purpose of the liturgical reforms of the 70s and 80s which resulted in many new liturgical books for most major denominations and prayer books for Anglicans, was to get us all back to the Latin Mass.

    Rome has pretty much cut the rest of us “free” so to speak, as irredeemable for all the heresies of women’s ordination and now GLBT ordinations and same sex blessings, and I am fine with that. I would not go anywhere near the Tiber, but I share Kelvin’s sense of loss of something we pew sitters shared around the world.

    Reply
  3. Robin Avatar
    Robin

    Just to clarify, when I wrote “…the Latin, which is, after all, the definitive form” I meant that it was the definitive form for Roman Catholics.

    Reply
  4. Ritualist Robert Avatar
    Ritualist Robert

    Vicky wrote: “… it is unlikely new conversion areas such as China would find Latin accessible.”

    A Roman friend of mine who probably would know said to me the other day that the Catholics in China use the Latin mass because they missed out on the reforms of Vatican II. Does anybody know if this is true?

    I went recently to a Latin mass here in Sydney with the same friend and most of the servers and the priest were from Vietnam … and a good deal of the back-to-the-future seminarians one sees at the papist cathedral seem to be Korean … so I am not sure that the formality of the Latin mass, or a more formal English one will put off Asian converts.

    It’s a pity that the ecumenical implications of this translation exercise haven’t been pondered a bit more.

    Reply

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