(a discussion starter, from Peter Toon, adapted from a piece by F.P.Harton)
When the individual person takes his part in the celebration of the divine mysteries he is not making his own prayer – he enters into an act of prayer which is going on independently of himself as an individual, because it is the prayer of Christ, our high Priest. Even on earth each Eucharist is not a separate act of worship, but the taking up, in that particular place, of the ceaseless worship of the Church throughout the world, and is one with the worship of the Church Triumphant…
The prayers of the Liturgy are plural, not singular, “we” not “I” (just as our Lord taught us in the fundamental liturgical prayer to say “Our Father”), for they are the prayers of the whole body of Christ. We must realize the universality of the liturgy – that it is not simply the action of the few or many people gathered together in the particular building in which the Eucharist is being celebrated; in the celebration of the holy mysteries that congregation is one with the whole Church, semper et ubique, the barriers of time and space disappear, the faithful are lifted up to the heavenly places, Christ descends upon the holy table, and the Church militant, expectant and triumphant, is one.
In the Liturgy is realized the unity of the Body of Christ, for the Church is an entity; its vital principle is the life of Christ, it is one with him its head, guided by the Holy Ghost. The individual Christian is not an entity, but a member of this unity, a cell of this living organism which is the Church. He has his own spiritual life, which must be lived and developed, but which can never be developed fully apart from the life in the organism.
The collective prayer of the body differs considerably from the separate prayer of the individual, for it is not simply the sum of many individual prayers, but the prayer of an organism which is more than an aggregation of individuals, the prayer of the mystical body of Christ the high Priest.
Attempts are sometimes made to assimilate the prayer of the Liturgy to that of the individual, but such attempts are really misguided. Services of a popular character (using the word “popular” in its best not its cheapest sense) are necessary to the full expression of individual devotion and must exist side by side with the Liturgy, but the two must not be mixed or substituted for one another. A sensitive soul instantly feels that extempore praying and subjective hymn-singing, while eminently right at a prayer meeting, are out of place at the Eucharist, though perhaps he may not be able to say why he feels it. The individualist, on the other hand, wants to find in public prayer the direct expression of his own spiritual condition and needs, and to him therefore the Liturgy seems to be generalized, formal and cold…
The fact is that individual prayer, even when collective, is one thing, and the liturgical prayer of the Church another, and both are necessary. The Liturgy is not concerned with the individual as such; it is the expression of the worship of the body; hence liturgical prayer is essentially and rightly impersonal. The individual is required to sacrifice his individualism in order that he may enter into the fullness of the Body of Christ. Only as he is humble enough to do this does he find out what worship really is. In liturgical worship one is worshipping God the Father in union with the Incarnate Son, and this worship “through Jesus Christ our Lord” is far deeper than the most beautiful offering of our own which we can make to God the Son, because he is offering it in us who are members of his Body.
The liturgical worship of the Church is essentially impersonal, because it is supra-personal, and this impersonality is right. The sacred vestments, so far from doing honor to the individual priest, obscure his personality; he is not longer A.B., but Christ’s deputy. The priest who attempts to use his personality or consciously develops personal eccentricities at the altar is putting himself before his Lord, and so dishonoring him; and the layman who worships merely as an individual is doing, in his own degree, much the same thing.
[Note: the truly corporate Liturgy provided by “The Book of Common Prayer” in its public services is explained and commended by Dr Peter Toon in Worship without Dumbing Down: Knowing God through Liturgy (The Preservation Press of the Prayer Book Society of the USA, August 2005). It will be available from The Prayer Book Society, P.O. Box 35220, Philadelphia, PA. 19128-0220 for $12.50, postage included, from mid-August.]
The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon MA., D.Phil (Oxford)
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