What is in Kelvin's Head?

US Liturgy Resources new downloads

12/11/2013
One of the busiest sets of pages on the Scottish Episcopal Church’s website is the set of pages which allow people to download the liturgies of the Scottish Episcopal Church. This has been the case for quite a while and was very much proved when we had a difficult week last year when the site was hacked and went off-line. All of a sudden we started to hear from people who needed, sometimes urgently needed, some liturgical resource or another. People seem particulaly interested in the Marriage Rite as clergy use that with couples in helping them to plan their special day.

Anyway, good news on the horizon from over the Atlantic with the news that the US based Episcopal Church is also now allowing its liturgical resources to be downloaded freely online. Like here, you can still buy the books but you can download the pdfs too.

There’s quite a lot to have a look at too and some of it is excellent stuff that we just don’t have over here, like pastoral material for using with families when life-support coming to an end and a lot of material for different pastoral situations like the death of an infant.

Well worth a look.

Here’s what you can download:
- The US Book of Common Prayer – note for UK audience, this is mostly modern language material.
- Enriching Our Worship 1: Morning and Evening Prayer, the Great Litany, and the Holy Eucharist
- Enriching Our Worship 2: Ministry with the Sick or Dying; Burial of a Child
- Enriching Our Worship 3: Burial Rites for Adults, together with a Rite for the Burial of a Child – including the Burial of one who does not profess the Christian faith
- Enriching Our Worship 4: The Renewal of Ministry and the Welcoming of a New Rector or Other Pastor
- Enriching Our Worship 5: Liturgies and Prayers Related to Childbearing, Childbirth, and Loss – note the resources dealing with infertility which we’ve not even begun to think about in liturgical terms over here
There’s also the new US resources for blessing same-sex couples that can be downloaded. (I say merely in passing that I don’t actually think that much of this venture, but that’s for another day).

One of the interesting things, particularly for those of us in congregations with an international flavour is that some of these resources are available in German, French and of course, Spanish. Having good quality liturgy translated already into other languages is a big bonus.

All well worth having a look through. Hurrah for the internet and hurrah for people prepared to share these gifts of God.

[Tip of the biretta to Scott Gunn]
liturgies, US Episcopal Church

23 responses to “What if this is the end of the Eucharist?”

Thomas Scott

06/05/2020

Just noticing here that DGD (of happy memory) seems to have left out of his catalogue of joyous, sad, perilous, and solemn occasions any instance of celebrating during a plague or pestilence. I’m not worried about the mass. The eucharist need not be celebrated as though it were a car battery, as if not offering it now would somehow allow the power to run down. It is not at risk, we are, which I think is your point. The questions asked are worth asking, of course.

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Mo Nicholson

06/05/2020

Mo Nicholson. This is an intriguing discussion and what I would like to add to it is the observation that I have had to learn the hard way that participation in the Eucharist being made impossible in no way diminishes an individual’s ability to worship God or be in fellowship with other believers. I am barred from receiving Holy Communion in the Catholic church because allergies make this impossible for me. The pain induced by this has little to do with feeling separation from God, in fact nothing at all as I do not feel that. It comes from feeling excluded from the community, different sections if which regard it as desirable or tolerable that a member of the community should be excluded in this way. This experience has made me understand as never before that if we place prime value on liturgical celebrations, ir indeed anything else, above charity, compassion, welcome and inclusivity, in other words love, then we have become the sounding gong which St Paul warned against. If we truly believe that God is love, as I do, then it is obvious that it is love for one another which makes us true children of God our Father, and in light of this we could begin to look at these present challenging circumstances as simply an opportunity to love more, to reach out to one another in whatever way possible in the knowledge that this is what actually matters and always did. Only perhaps we were tempted to almost make a fetish of our rituals, sacraments and so on. And perhaps this can show us a better way more adapted to the world we are supposed to serve.

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Lynsay Downs

06/05/2020

You and your conversation with Dave Roberts prompted me to write this. Does it resonate for you?

https://astonishing.community/2020/05/06/conversations-in-coronatide/

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1. Kelvin
  
  06/05/2020
  
  Thanks Lynsay – yes, it does resonate with me very much.
  
  I’ve shared it on facebook. I think it is really helpful.
  
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Fr Keith

06/05/2020

Thanks again for such a thoughtful piece. With the Eucharist central to much of, at least Anglican/Episcopalian, worship in recent generations, we perhaps forget that the Church in these islands was, between the Reformation and the liturgical revivals of the 19th and 20th centuries, sustained by Mattins and Evensong as the regular diet of worship on Sundays. I’m not advocating a return to such times, but there is, as you suggest, work to be done on non-Eucharistic worship (though not defining it as a negative). Thanks again.

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Fenland Boy

07/05/2020

For the record, I’m not in favour of lay presidency at the Eucharist. I believe, for better or worse, in an ordered church.

Why are you concerned about lay Presidency?

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Chuck

08/05/2020

May I say respectfully, lighten up. Many Anglicans/Episcopalians lived on the edges of civilization in the nascent U.S. and various elements of the British Empire. Priests to celebrate the Holy Eucharist and to baptize were seldom seen, at most twice a year in many areas. (Bishops, only every several years.) The Church carried on in this manner decade after decade. If circumstances require, the Church will carry on again despite our profound sense of loss.

I should add, to those who grew up under threat or reality of war, persecution, oppression, famine, other disease, etc, the present difficulty is not unfamiliar in many respects.

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Miriam MacCarthy

08/05/2020

Thank you! It is wonderful to read these serious, personal thoughts about the Eucharist. My feeling is that it has become celebrated to the point of boredom. Church, and what we do in it, is in danger of becoming simply a habit. It could just as well be crackerjack for a fast-asleep congregation. My heresy is that the direction Jesus gave is to “do this in remembrance of me”, and that means everything we eat at any time, whether alone or with others, in thanksgiving. If that is seriously done, it has vastly more meaning. It really gets ones attention and requires preparation. Would not become popular or usual, I predict!

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