The Renewed Ancient Text: An Evaluation with Suggestions for Its Use—The Entrance Rite

The Entrance Rite. Historically the entrance rite of the Holy Eucharist is one of three places in the liturgy which accumulates clutter, typically fossilized elements from earlier rites but also more recent innovations. Generally, committees and commissions tasked with revising the liturgy have sought to reduce the clutter either by eliminating some elements or making them optional.

The compilers of the 2019 BCP did the opposite: they added to the clutter. Rather than having been influenced by the earliest liturgies and the longstanding Anglican principles of noble simplicity and “less is more,” principles which the Roman Catholic Church shameless borrowed in the 1960s with the liturgical reforms of Vatican II, they show a decided leaning toward late Medieval and post-Tridentian nineteenth century forms of the Roman Catholic Mass, forms associated with the various editions of the so-called Anglican Missal. They show a proclivity for making rites and service more elaborate and longer rather than making them simpler and shorter and consequently more understandable, principles articulated in Thomas Cranmer’s essays in the 1549 and 1552 BCPs and characteristic of Anglican worship at its best.

The earliest form of the entrance rite was simply a brief greeting, immediately followed by the first Scripture reading. Later an opening prayer would be added to the greeting. The psalmody that was sung before the liturgy was originally a part of the daily office, and not the eucharist.

When Christian worship was moved from private houses into public buildings, a procession eventually became a part of the entrance rite of the eucharist and the singing of a psalm, the introit, or entrance psalm, which in the Medieval times would be reduced to a snippet, accompanied the procession. The rubrics of the 1979 BCP’s Rite II Holy Eucharist permit a rough approximation of the entrance rite at this stage in its development. After the opening acclamation an entrance hymn, psalm, or canticle may be sung, followed by the salutation, and the collect of the day.

Ideally the opening acclamation, a recent addition to the entrance rite of the Holy Eucharist in the global Anglican Church, should have been optional, enabling congregations to replicate the simplicity of the earlier entrance rite, a good feature for small congregations celebrating the eucharist in informal settings. Despite the drawback of an opening acclamation which cannot be omitted, the entrance rite of the Rite II Holy Eucharist of the 1979 BCP is far more flexible than that of entrance rite of the Renewed Ancient Text and far more suited to the wide variety of conditions found on the twenty-first century North American mission field.

The compilers of the 2019 BCP do not appear to have given much thought to the needs of congregations on the mission field, suggesting that they themselves were not acquainted with the challenges of planting and pioneering a new church in the twenty-first century. This author writes from the perspective of someone who has been involved in four successful church plants, a now disbanded traditional church, and a downtown church trying to cope with the new realities of COVID-19 era and has a fair idea of what will work and will not work on the mission field in the United States and Canada. I don’t claim to be an expert but do try to keep up with how conditions on the mission field are evolving and changing. We are not living in the 1950s or the 1980s.

Let’s take a look at the different elements whose use in the entrance rite is required by the rubrics of the Renewed Ancient Text, hereinafter referred to as the “RAT,” and those whose use is optional. 

Opening Acclamation. The compilers of 2019 BCP were not satisfied to encumber the RAT with three opening acclamations. They sought to ought outdo the 1979 BCP’s Rite II Holy Eucharist with a slew of unnecessary seasonal greetings in addition to the three opening acclamations which have found their way into a number of more recent Anglican service books. The opening acclamation or seasonal greeting is not optional. A number of the seasonal greetings are unwieldy and are evidence of the compilers of RAT’s propensity for making more elaborate and longer what should be kept simple and short. They cause the entrance rite to drag from the outset. It would have been much better to have given worship planners the option of using a seasonal sentence of Scripture if the use of seasonal hymns, psalms, readings, and prayers was not enough to mark the season. The seasonal greetings are superfluous as are the three opening acclamations. The opening acclamation was not introduced into the Holy Eucharist until the trial services of the 1970s, which resulted in the Episcopal Church’s 1979 BCP.

Collect for Purity. The earliest anything approximating the Collect for Purity became a part of the Holy Eucharist was in the eleventh century. The Collect for Purity was originally a collect found in the Sarum rite which the priest said after the Veni Creator Spiritus as a part of the priest’s private preparations as he vested for Mass. It was not until the 1552 BCP that the Collect for Purity was made a part of the public service. In 1549 BCP the priest privately recited the Lord’s Prayer and the Collect for Purity while the clerks sung the introit. It was a part of the priest’s private devotions.

Unlike the rubrics of the 1979 BCP’s Rite II Holy Eucharist, the rubrics of the RAT do not permit the omission of the Collect of Purity, a feature of the Rite II Holy Eucharist that recognizes that the Collect for Purity was originally a private devotion and not a part of the public service. They do permit the congregation to join in the Collect for Purity, a feature in a number of more recent Anglican service books which recognizes that it is a prayer of preparation in which the entire worshiping assembly should take part. The RAT would have greatly benefitted if the Collect for Purity had been made optional and when it was used, the rubrics would have required that it should be said by all, not just the priest. This is a feature in a number of the more recent Anglican service books.

The Decalogue did not become a part of the Holy Eucharist until the 1552 BCP. Subsequent revisions of the Prayer Book have permitted the use of the Summary of the Law as an alternative to the Decalogue, shortened the Decalogue in various ways by limiting the number of congregational responses, and permitted its omission as well as the omission of the Summary of the Law. The 2019 BCP is unusual in that requires the use of the Summary of the Law if the Decalogue is not used. In earlier Prayer Books that permitted the use of the Summary of the Law, it was the other way around.

It has been never clear why Archbishop Thomas Cranmer added the Decalogue to the Holy Eucharist, whether he was imitating one of the Continental Reformed Churches’ liturgies, he regarded it as a fixed Old Testament lesson, or he saw it as a part of the penitential preparation culminating in the General Confession later in the service. All three theories have their supporters.

One of the characteristics of Cranmer’s services is that they tend to be more didactic than they are devotional. Since the Prayer Book Catechism emphasizes the Ten Commandments as well as the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, his purpose may have been to remind would-be communicants of God’s moral law as a part of their preparation to receive the sacramental bread and wine. The focus of Cranmer’s Holy Communion service is communion. All the major elements of the service lead up to the distribution of the elements. The prayer said before their distribution, while it has come to be viewed as serving a consecratory function, is when it is compared to the Continental Reformed Churches’ liturgies more in the nature of a prayer for the communicants.

In any event the Decalogue and the Summary of the Law are not essential elements of the Holy Eucharist and can be omitted. The 2019 BCP’s retention of these elements appears to be dictated by tradition rather than theological necessity. They fall into the category of clutter accumulated by the entrance rite and can slow the pace of the entrance rite, making it unnecessarily ponderous. Worshipper planners should have the option of omitting them. 

Kyrie or Trisagion. The use of a nine-fold Kyrie, without tropes, on its own, was a feature of the entrance rite of the Holy Eucharist in the 1549 BCP. While the use of Kyrie eleison as a response to the petitions of a litany was introduced in the Eastern Church as early as the fourth century and was introduced in the Western Church in the fifth century, its subsequent use in various ways in the Western Church since that time does not support the 2019 BCP’s compilers’ claim that the RAT is ancient. The Kyrie was dropped from the 1552 BCP and was not reintroduced until 1892 BCP and then in a threefold version after the Summary of the Law when the Decalogue was omitted. The rubrics of the 1979 BCP permit the optional use of the Kyrie on occasions when the Gloria in Excelsis or some other song of praise is not used. The use of both the Kyrie and the Gloria in Excelsis, a feature of the 1549 BCP’s Holy Eucharist’s entrance rite, is a late medieval development.

In Manual on the Liturgy—The Lutheran Book of Worship (Augusburg, 1979) Philip H. Pfatteicher and Carlos R. Messerli make this observation:

“What became the traditional entrance rite of the Western church (Introit, Kyrie, Gloria in Excelsis, Collect) is a reflection of the elaborate entrance the pope used to make into the churches of Rome. The processional psalm, which in the Introit shrank to a fragment of a psalm (usually one verse) with antiphon and Gloria Patri, and the Kyrie, and the Gloria I Excelsis were all sung in procession; the collect was then said as a “station collect” at the conclusion of the entrance when at last all were in their places. This elaborate rite, designed originally to cover the ceremonies of a papal visit, is far more than necessary or perhaps even desirable as a constant practice.” (pp. 210-211).

They go on to make suggestions as to when the Kyrie should be used with the Gloria in Excelsis, when it should be used alone; and when it should be used with some other song of praise.

One of the consequences of the compilers of the 2019 BCP’s decision to overload the RAT’s entrance rite with too many required but unnecessary elements is that the entrance rite is not only ill-suited to the various non-traditional settings in which the congregations of new church plants worship but also to the size of the congregation. Many small congregations have limited resources and lack to wherewithal to pull off such an elaborate rite. It looks decidedly out of place in the storefronts, community rooms, school cafeterias and gymnasiums, mortuary chapels, and other settings in which new congregations often gather for worship.

The Trisagion also has a pedigree that goes back to the first five centuries of Christianity. However, it was not used as a part of the Holy Eucharist in Anglican and Episcopal Churches until the second half of the twentieth century. An Australian Prayer Book (1978) and the 1979 BCP were the first Anglican service books to use it as an alternative to the Kyrie in the place with which it is associated in the Eastern and Gallican liturgies. Before that time a metrical paraphrase of the Trisagion was used in the burial office. Its use in the entrance rite does not warrant labeling the RAT as “renewed” or “ancient.” Since the late 1970s the use of the Trisagion in the entrance rite has been incorporated into the Holy Eucharist of several Anglican Provinces.

Gloria in Excelsis or Song of Praise. In the early Western rites, a variable hymn, a song of praise that was sung daily or frequently in the daily office and therefore familiar and popular with the congregation, was sung at this point in the Holy Eucharist. In the Gallican rite this hymn was typically the Benedictus Dominus Deus. The Gloria in Excelsis, which had been a part of the morning office since the fourth century was one of these options and appears to have been one of the more popular daily office canticles. The Gloria in Excelsis did not become a fixed element in the entrance rite of the Holy Eucharist, except during Advent, Pre-Lent, and Lent, until the eleventh or twelfth century, first in the Roman rite and subsequently in the Ambrosian, Mozarabic, and Celtic rites, replacing the other options in these rites.

The 1979 BCP led the way in restoring the use of a variable song of praise at this point in the liturgy in the Anglican Communion and several other Anglican Provinces have followed suit. The Lutheran Book of Worship (1979) pioneered the restoration of this practice in the Lutheran Churches. The 1979 BCP permit the omission of the Kyrie or Trisagion when the Gloria in Excelsis or some other song of praise is used, and the Lutheran Book of Worship makes both the Kyrie and the Hymn of Praise optional. The 2019 BCP, on the other hand, only makes the song of praise optional so worship planners are limited to choosing between an entrance rite suited for penitential occasions or one suited for a visit from the Pope!

In Joyful Noise: Teaching Music in Small Churches—A Walk Through the Eucharist Musically, produced by The Episcopal Radio-TV Foundation in 1984, Jerry Godwin of The Standing Committee on Church Music observes that singing an entrance hymn and then a Kyrie, Trisagion, or song of praise may be too demanding for many small congregations. He recommends that these congregations omit the Collect for Purity and sing the entrance song in place of the song of praise, preceded by the opening acclamation and followed by the salutation and the Collect of the Day. Byron Stuhlman makes a similar recommendation for simplifying the entrance in Prayer Book Rubrics Expanded  (Church Publishing, 1987). This is good advice. Reciting the Kyrie, Trisagion, Gloria in Excelsis, or some other song of praise is lame in a celebration of the Holy Eucharist.

The late Louis Weil recommended the use of a metrical version of the Gloria in Excelsis in place of the prose version in congregations that have a large number of children, cannot not sing chant, or otherwise were prevented from singing the prose version. A number of hymn writers, including Carl P. Daw, Jr., Christopher Ingle, Edwin LeGrice, and Michael Perry have written metrical versions of the Gloria in Excelsis. Evangelical Lutheran Worship’s Holy Communion Setting 10 has metrical versions of all the Ordinaries of the Mass.

Salutation. The salutation, “The Lord be with you; and with your spirit” printed in the RAT is not found in the Bible. It is an artificial construct, which takes a phrase from Ruth 2:4, “The Lord be with you,” and combines it with a phrase, “with your spirit,” from Paul’s parting words to Timothy from his second letter to Timothy. Paul closes the letter with these words. “May the Lord be with your spirit. And may his grace be with all of you” (2 Timothy 4: 22). It is a later development. In the earliest liturgies the opening greeting was “Peace be with you” or “The Lord be with you,” to which the congregation responded, “And also with you.” The first greeting was a common greeting in Judaea, Jerusalem, and the Jewish Diaspora between Jews. The second greeting is a variation of the greeting which Boaz gave to the harvesters in Ruth 2: 4 and to which they responded. The rubrics that follow the RAT permit the use of the second greeting in place of the salutation, “The Lord be with you; and with your spirit.” The Scottish Episcopal Church has restored the use of the version of Ruth 2: 4 greeting found in most Bible translations, “The Lord be with you; the Lord bless you,” in a number of its liturgies.

Among the reasons that Archbishop Thomas Cranmer dropped the salutation from the 1552 order for the Holy Eucharist was its long association with the doctrine of transubstantiation. It had become to be viewed as a prayer for the priest for grace to confect the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. It was not reintroduced into the Holy Eucharist until the 1928 BCP. Its use as a prayer for the priest for this purpose is also a part of the rationale for its use in the two orders for the Holy Eucharist in the 2019 BCP. Anglicans who do not subscribe to the doctrine of transubstantiation or to any other doctrine that teaches that Christ is substantively present in the communion elements after their consecration or Christ’s presence is infused with the elements or imparted to them during consecration will not want to use this salutation. They may choose to us, “The Lord be with you; and also with you,” or “The Lord be with you; the Lord bless you.” They may wish to drop it altogether.

Collect of the Day. A short prayer is one of the first things that would be introduced between opening greeting and the Scripture readings. The Collect of the Day, or the Prayer of the Day, as it is called in Lutheran Holy Communion services, concludes the entrance rite. 

Like the gathering and presentation of the people’s gifts, including the bread and the wine, and the preparation of the table, the entrance rite and closing rite are ancillary rites. They are minor rites that should not be allowed to overshadow the Liturgy of the Word and Liturgy of the Table, the two chief parts of the Holy Eucharist. The compilers of the 2019 BCP do not appear to have fully grasped the subsidiary nature of these rites. As a consequence, the book’s two orders for the Holy Eucharist, which are upon close examination the same order with different eucharistic prayers, are front-heavy. This can be attributed at least in part by what appears to be a fascination not with ancient rites but with late Medieval ones and their post-Tridentian Roman Catholic successors.