DURING the past century, the eucharist was elevated to unprecedented prominence in the worship of the post-Reformation Church of England: “the Lord’s People, around the Lord’s Table, on the Lord’s Day”, as the Parish Communion Movement had hoped. What the next century will hold is not clear.
The place of the eucharist is under strain and in dispute (Feature): under strain, on account a shortage of clergy; in dispute, since the eucharist is no longer held across the Church in the regard previously typical of Anglicanism. This calls us to think together, letting the variety of our experience count as a strength, drawing on our shared heritage, not least in the Book of Common Prayer.
Before the 20th century, celebration of the eucharist had not necessarily been rare, but matins had often been the main Sunday service most weeks (perhaps with the first part of the communion service, but no communion). When the eucharist took that place, it meant more frequent communion for most churchgoers.
However enthusiastic one might be about giving first place to the eucharist, it is difficult to deny that one consequence has been less reverence in approaching the Lord’s table, and less by way of preparation. Contrast that with the Prayer Book’s exhortation that we must “consider the dignity of that holy mystery, and the great peril of the unworthy receiving thereof . . . search and examine your own consciences . . . that ye may come holy and clean to such a heavenly Feast, in the marriage-garment required by God in holy Scripture, and be received as worthy partakers of that holy Table.”
In the 20th century, more frequent communion was also established in the Roman Catholic Church, not least under the advocacy of Pope Pius X. That involved rethinking the relation between sin and the eucharist: from sin as a bar, to eucharist as remedy.
As Pope Francis put it, the eucharist “is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak”. The distinction between venial and mortal sins is useful here: between sins that do not kill the life of God in us, and ones that do (1 John 5.16-17). The Council of Trent put it well: the eucharist is “an antidote, by which we are freed from daily faults, and preserved from mortal sins”. None the less, no one should receive communion in a state of mortal sin. That needs to be dealt with first, by confession.
The Church of England view is not so different. The Prayer Book urges the priest to withhold communion from anyone in “malicious and open contention with his neighbours, or other grave and open sin without repentance”. It also urges serious preparation, advising anyone in that process who is worried about grave sin to consider speaking to “some other discreet and learned Minister of God’s Word”.
WE NEED to take preparation for communion more seriously. That calls for clear, vigorous, compelling teaching. As a warning, there is the danger of irreverent or flippant communion (1 Corinthians 11.27-31); as an encouragement, there is the idea that, although the sacraments have a marvellously objective character, the larger and less leaky the vessel with which we approach the eucharist, the more we take from it. As we seek to explore and revive greater dedication to preparation for communion, it may be that some of the churches where the eucharist is not celebrated so often have preserved some of the earlier Anglican seriousness around these matters, and, in that, can teach the rest of us.
If slackening reverence has been one danger of shifts in liturgical practice, the other has been a loss of familiarity with other forms of Anglican worship. Even devout Anglicans may not now be familiar with the treasures that are morning and evening prayer, once so central to public and private devotion. It would be good to see them offered more often on Sunday, not necessarily instead of communion, and, indeed, during the week.
I opened with the idea that the two pressures on the celebration of the eucharist are a lack of priests and a lack of enthusiasm in certain quarters. Despite the former, it is still not generally too much to expect holy communion to be celebrated somewhere in every benefice each Sunday, so that anyone who wants to receive the sacrament can do so. That is, after all, what is urged upon us by the law.
As to the lack of enthusiasm, I am encouraged by the widespread rediscovery among Evangelicals of the great theological tradition that stretches back through the Reformers and medieval teachers to the Church Fathers. Over the past century, Protestants have often sold their theological, sacramental, and ecclesiological birthright for a mess of pottage. Happily, that is quickly turning round.
There is also an evangelistic opportunity here, since people — especially younger people — seem increasingly drawn to forms of Christianity that are serious, rooted, demanding, mysterious, even a bit strange. The eucharist, alongside baptism, is the most serious and mysterious thing that we have.
As to the suggestion that many of our new church communities are distant from the eucharist because their leaders are not ordained, the problem may simply be one of definition. The growth of small, local gatherings led by faithful lay people is surely a gift of the Spirit. If these are not sites of preaching and the sacraments, however, they are not local churches (Article XIX). They are a marvellous thing — at once an evangelistic initiative and a home group — but not a local church in itself. Such small and more informal groups belong within the bosom of an association large enough to offer trained pastoral care, learned preaching, and the sacraments.
IN ANGLICAN polity, pastoral care, preaching, and sacramental ministry go together, alongside episcopal authority and administrative responsibility. We call it ordination, which also brings heightened accountability and visibility in relation to the wider Church. However much we embrace novelty, there is no reason for that to change. “New things” belong in the local church, and the local church has clergy and sacraments.
The two exhortations in the Prayer Book order for holy communion are remarkable. The priest is to use one or the other more often, depending on whether the danger is coming to communion unprepared or not coming at all. Both play on themes from Christ’s parable of the Great Banquet (Luke 14.15-24; Matthew 22.1-14). To the lax in preparing, as we have seen, it reminds us to put on the wedding garment of due reverence; to the lax in attending, it warns us that God punishes those who are negligent in receiving it at all, alongside those who receive it negligently.
So much of what we need to navigate in questions about frequency of communion and preparation for communion is already there in these exhortations. “Ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it” (Jeremiah 6.16).
The Revd Dr Andrew Davison is Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford and a Residentiary Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. His books include Why Sacraments? (SPCK, 2013).
