With the Communion of the Saints
At Nashotah House, we are convicted that “our ordered lives” must profess the order that makes possible a lifetime of ministry.
A sigh of relief. I think that was my first response to the celebration of the Holy Eucharist from the Book of Common Prayer. Here was something solid, something sure, something not just older than I am, but way older than the country where I live. A musician growing up, I had led worship in my childhood church and figured that a part of my adult life would always be at a piano bench, singing worship songs and knowing when to repeat the chorus one more time. The relief I experienced in the eucharistic liturgy and then in the Daily Office was two-fold.
That this form of worship—both the structure and its content—was something to be received was one of my biggest realizations. The eucharistic liturgy comes not from the Episcopal Church or the Church of England, but “from those who stand upon another shore and in a greater light, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom, in this Lord Jesus, we are one forever more”—the ancient church and her saints. Whereas previously, it seemed as though each new worship service needed to provide a better experience, a richer sense of God’s presence, a more effective song sequence to bring the worshipers to just the right emotional place, all that receded before this different, more ancient approach. Worship in the Catholic tradition follows the pattern found in Luke 24—the Lord is made manifest, first in the Scriptures read and expounded, and then in the broken, offered bread. It is there that we are made one with the Lord Jesus in the self-offering of himself as priest upon the altar of the cross, the eucharistic offering.
The other relief comes in the objectivity of God’s presence. It is a glorious thing indeed to know that Jesus does give himself to us in the Eucharist in a way unlike any other, and one which is not dependent on our experience of it. Yet this gift is not a static one: the quasi-magical appearance of a deity who, moments before, had been absent. This gift of the fullness of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist is premised on the “wonderful exchange” of the eucharistic liturgy—a personal exchange, back and forth, between the Body of Christ and its Head. The Eucharist is our response to his divine command and to his own act of love in his incarnation, death, and resurrection: we offer to him, along with our prayers and praise and bread and wine, “our selves—our souls and bodies.” And in response, in the acceptance of our offering, the Lord returns our offering to us as that which we need most: Jesus Christ himself, present, offering to us the fruit of his redeeming work.
The value of worship that follows the language and structure of historical Christian liturgies in the Prayer Book is not ultimately found in its pragmatic usefulness. It’s substantially better than anything I could compose on my own, that’s for sure. And there’s no doubt that Christian liturgy is a great teacher: instructing me how to pray, the sort of things for which I should pray, and allowing me to pray the content of Christian belief and the language of Scripture. But to see only the pragmatic goods of liturgy, and thus to value it only for what it does for us, is to miss something of infinite worth: God. The eucharistic liturgy expresses the Church’s conviction that this is the most worthy and acceptable worship that creatures can offer their Creator.
What makes this gift even more glorious is that this ordered prayer is something into which we join with others, always corporal and communal. Even when praying Morning Prayer alone on the train on our way to work, we are part of the communion of saints praying the same. In every early Christian liturgy, the great hymn, “holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts; heaven and earth are full of thy glory,” is introduced the same way: “With angels, and archangels, and with all the company of heaven . . . we praise you and make this offering to you.”
At Nashotah House, our approach to theological study and formation for ministry is anchored in an absolute commitment to this view of liturgical worship. Day in and day out, 365 days a year, Morning Prayer is prayed, the Holy Eucharist is celebrated, and Evensong is prayed as the sun goes down. We are convinced that the true study of the God who raised Jesus from the dead, having first raised Israel from Egypt (to quote Robert Jenson) must be anchored in a disciplined life of prayer. We are convicted that “our ordered lives” must profess the order that makes possible a lifetime of ministry. And that order is anchored in the Daily Office and daily Mass. Here, we pray within community—faculty, staff, students, and their families—morning and evening, day after day, as we seek and strain for that for which we have sold everything, the treasure buried in the field: the face of Jesus Christ.
The Rev. Matthew S.C. Olver, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Liturgics and Pastoral Theology; Director of St. Mary's Chapel at Nashotah House Theological Seminary. Fr. Olver was raised in the Brethren in Christ tradition and sensed a vocation to Christian ministry at a young age. A trained musician, he studied literature as an undergraduate and during that period was introduced to Anglicanism and the possibility of a vocation to the priesthood. In 2005, he was ordained in the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas, which began eight years of full-time pastoral ministry: first at St. John’s Episcopal Church and School (2005-06) and then from 2006-2013 as the assistant rector at Church of the Incarnation, Dallas. There, he oversaw adult formation as well as the parish’s renowned music and liturgy program and also served as the diocesan Ecumenical Officer (2005-2010) and on the Executive Council of the diocese (2008-2011). From 2006-2015, he was a member of the Anglican-Roman Catholic Consultation in the U.S. (ARCUSA) the official dialogue between the Episcopal Church and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.His other research interests include sacramental theology, the development of doctrine, ecclesiology and ecumenism, the Roman Canon, and the history of Anglican liturgy.
Fr. Olver has articles published in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Nova et Vetera, Antiphon, and the Anglican Theological Review with chapters in a number of collected volumes. He has published multiple essays in The Living Church and is a contributor to their blog, Covenant. In March of 2018, Fr. Olver defended his doctoral dissertation entitled, "Hoc est sacrificium laudis: The influence of Hebrews on the origin, structure, and theology of the Roman Canon Missae" under the direction of Susan Wood, SCL.
Image: Kentaro Toma, ‘The Book of Common Prayer’