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November 2001, Page 4.
Index of articles.
Worship:
index,
Creed,
New books,
Creed 2,
Humble Access,
HC prayers,
Braille & Tapes.
In this issue:
(November 2001)
Vicar's Letter,
Tithing,
CW Books,
Question.
With the new blue services book now launched at St Luke's, here are some more thoughts on the changes...
What to pray over bread and wine
One big difference in the new Common Worship services is that there is now a vast choice of eucharistic prayers for the communion part of the service. In our new blue books we haven’t printed them all: we would have needed twelve extra pages for this, and even then we wouldn’t have covered all the seasonal options.
Whether you understand this part of the service depends on whether you have ever seen that there is a basic structure in the prayers. All the prayers run the same way:
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• The Lord be with you,
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The congregation join in the bold bits, and the minister says the rest on behalf of everyone.
The same structure remains in the new prayers, and although the words may vary a lot, the meaning is basically the same in all the different variations.
Some of the changes are to do with saying different things at different seasons of the year (for instance, at Pentecost we might focus more on the Holy Spirit). Some of the variations are to bring out different aspects of the meaning of communion more clearly (for instance, one prayer focusses more on the invitation of God to the whole world, and another focusses more on the “sacrifice” language of the bible in describing Jesus’ death).
When we use these prayers, the trick is not to worry about the precise words, but instead to pray along with the minister in the same way as we pray along with the person leading the intercessions earlier on. The bits we all join in with are the same in each prayer, and these are the bits which are printed in the blue book.
Some may say it’s a disadvantage not having the full text. I think the opposite: not having the words frees us from reading them along with the vicar, so instead we can think about their meaning as we come to the Lord’s table.
John Hartley