Not too long ago it was the case that ALL churches which had a Paschal Candle lit it on Easter Eve/Morning and extinguished it 40 days later on Ascension Day after the reading the biblical account of the Ascension. The fifty days from Easter to Pentecost were thus 40 plus 10.
Today, virtually all churches which have a Paschal Candle and use post 1960s liturgy keep it alight for fifty days as if the Resurrected Lord ascended at Pentecost/Whitsuntide. And the rubrics of the new Prayer Books require this innovation.
Why the change?
In short, because of a new definition of the word “Easter”.
In an important essay published in 1984, Massey H. Shepherd Jr., a prominent member of the Standing Liturgical Commission of the ECUSA, explained that the shape or structure of the 1979 Prayer Book owed much to the scholarly reconstruction of the liturgy, and especially of the Easter liturgy, in the ancient Church. He wrote: “The unifying principle of most of the restoration or renewals of liturgy in the 1979 book from the ancient Church is the Paschal Mystery” (“The Patristic Heritage,” in The Historical Magazine of the Episcopal Church, Vol.53, 1984, pp.22ff.). He went on to claim that the whole Paschal Mystery was relived by the faithful in those early centuries once a year, on the anniversary of the Lord Jesus’ own Passover—the very center of the Christian Year, the festival of festivals, and the feast of feasts.
In these reconstructions, the Pascha, as it is called from the Greek form of the Hebrew Pesach or “Passover,” was held to be a unitary festival, recalling the suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, as well as the gift of the Spirit to the Church on Pentecost. Though centered on the events of Good Friday through Easter Day, with the most important rite being that of Easter Eve in the Great Vigil of Easter, what the scholars conceived of as one continuous festival actually lasted fifty days until Pentecost. Thus they spoke of “the great Fifty Days” or the “fifty-day Sunday,” and of the seven Sundays of Easter (not “after” Easter as in the 1928 Book). Then, with the typical zeal of some scholars for the implementation of the latest theory, the liturgists required that the Paschal Candle remain lit until Pentecost to signify the fifty days of Easter. Further, they explained that standing at all times, with no kneeling, is the “norm” for the celebration of this fifty-day Easter and, further, that the general confession of sins should be omitted because this fifty-day Sunday is a period of celebrating the resurrection, not of penitence for sins.
Introducing such innovations into the Episcopal Church of the 1970s and 1980s was exciting to some, but worrying to others, whose piety and devotions were deeply rooted in the Christian Year as it exists in the historic Prayer Book, and whose practice included extinguishing the Paschal Candle at the reading of Acts 1 on the fortieth day, the feast of the Ascension. The facts speak for themselves that the Early Church moved on from celebrating this unitary festival as it further developed the Church Year and identified not only Easter Day but also Ascension Day and Pentecost as specific feast days with their own significance. This identifying of Ascension Day obviously had the effect of minimizing talk of the “great fifty days” because this period of fifty days was now necessarily divided into forty days plus ten. So, too, the period of ten days after Ascension Day assumed a different ethos and spirituality from that of the forty days from Easter Day that led up to it, if only because the Church assigned an octave to the observance of Ascension Day.
In terms of Baptism, there is nothing wrong and much right with preparing candidates during Lent for the receiving of this sacrament on Easter Eve. However, the re-introduction of the Vigil of Easter, which the Roman Catholic Church has also revived, in no way logically or necessarily commits the Church to an academic reconstruction of the “fifty-day Sunday” as observed in the early centuries before the Christian Year was fully developed. The Anglican Way is not based on “primitivism” for its own sake, but it has always sought to follow the Early Church in what might be called her “maturity”—after she had had time to settle the Canon of Scripture, develop basic canon law, dogmatically express the great truths of the Faith, and develop the basic festivals of the Christian Year, under the guidance of the Holy Ghost.
One of the corollaries of this “fifty-day” scheme in the modern context is that the bodily resurrection and ascension of Jesus is minimized or neglected, the resurrection of Jesus is seen in the light of the “Spirit” (of Pentecost) and thus the resurrection is presented – unwittingly perhaps – as the triumph of the essential life of Jesus over death so that resurrection appearances are just that, appearances. In other words, this scheme suits modern theology in allowing for the diminution of the importance of the Ascension (and it is not surprising that Ascension Day is now often transferred to the Sunday following).
Let us return to the 40 plus 10!
Let the Paschal Candle be extinguished in your parish on Ascension Day!
Then the Forty Days will be accomplished. The Lord Jesus Christ will have ascended into heaven. The Church will be waiting prayerfully for the Descent of His Paraclete, Advocate and Comforter, the Holy Spirit.
The Candle has burned to signify that He had been raised from the dead, is appearing to His disciples as the resurrected Lord, and that as such He is the Light of the world.
The Candle is extinguished (a) to proclaim his Ascension into heaven, that He is no longer with his disciples in the mode of physical presence, and (b) to signify that He is to be with His people in and by the Spirit, his Paraclete, henceforth (and as such He is not located in any one place and time but is present to all everywhere).
The recent custom of allowing the Candle to burn for the “fifty days” causes over a thousand years of church symbolism to be set aside in favour of a symbolism that is not agreed and which differs from place to place, parish to parish – further, the new custom also strengthens the modern tendency to discount the importance of the Ascension and to dilute the reality of the Resurrection of its physical aspects.
Light the Candle again next year for the 40 days and the 40 days only!
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon M.A., D.Phil. (Oxon.),
Christ Church, Biddulph Moor & St Anne's, Brown Edge
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