This year as Ash Wednesday gave way to the season of Lent , many church leaders began to struggle with how they might adapt public worship services for the sake of protecting their parishioners in response to the spread of COVID-19. For many of us, that meant limiting various practices related to Coffee Hour or the Passing of the Peace. As days passed, these mild inconveniences proved insufficient. After many states placed limitations on public gatherings of any kind, the Federal Government made recommendations to restrict gatherings to no more than 10 people. For most parishes, this meant they could not hold regular Sunday Services in quite the same way. Within a week, many states began to place prohibitions against any travel or gatherings beyond essential services.
The response from Church leaders has been split. On a national level, many have called for services to be celebrated Sine Populo, or with only one participant beyond the priest. That small service would then be recorded or live-streamed so parishioners can view the service and feel that they have in some way experienced the Church. Barely two weeks into Lent, the Presiding Bishop recommended as much for all Episcopal churches. However, other leaders have pushed back against the idea. The Rev. Dr. Ephraim Radner, professor of Historical Theology at Wycliffe College in Toronto, warned that the use of virtual services to fill the void could have an effect of “infantilizing” the parish, by treating them as a Mother does a scared child. I hasten to note that in both cases, the assumption is that lay people will use technology to watch services and perhaps even participate spiritually, but would supplement that tech (or in Radner’s case replace it) in their own homes with private study, reading scripture, and perhaps even singing hymns as a family.
And this is where the Church is failing her people.
The purpose of our public worship is not the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Don’t get me wrong, it is essential. It is foundational. It is the means by which we are joined together with Christ, “that he might dwell in us, and we in him.” The Eucharist is a central aspect of our public worship, just as the flesh of Christ is a central aspect of our Justification. (For if Jesus does not have human flesh, he cannot die; if he does not die, he cannot be resurrected; if he is not resurrected, he cannot ascend to the Father; and if he does not ascend to the father, then the Father cannot see us when he looks at the Son, nor see the Son when he looks at us.) Indeed, the importance of the Eucharist to our public worship cannot be overstated, but it is not the purpose of our worship. The term worship comes from an Old English term weorthscipe, which literally means to “give worth to something.” In the context of the Church, it means to give reverence to God, to acknowledge that we find him worthy of praise and adoration. That means, in simpler terms, that we feel that taking a short period of our short lives and giving that time over to the praise of God (to the study of his relationship with us, to meditation on his Word, to sharing in a Sacramental Life with him and each other) is of some value; that it is time well spent.
When we gather together for the Eucharist on Sunday mornings, the gathering is important. The teaching and preaching are important. The sacred music is important. The Eucharist is important. But the giving of our time to those activities for the sake of God (and in the manners prescribed by him through Direct, Special, and General Revelation,) that giving of time which we might otherwise use to our own purposes, is the purpose of our public worship. And that’s the difficulty of our current situation. By taking away the opportunity to join in public worship, in the communal giving of time to God, the onus for “giving worth” is taken from the Church and placed squarely on the shoulders of individual Christians.
And as a Church, we haven’t prepared them for the burden of giving worth to God.
In his underrated book The Heart of the Parish: A Theology of the Remnant,* Martin Thornton promotes a “Rule of the Church” consisting of three parts: The Daily Office, The Eucharist, and Private Prayer. For decades, the Church has allowed this rule to dissolve to a state in which (1) the clergy (and perhaps a few regulars) keep the Daily Office in some quiet, irregular form, (2) the laity gather (somewhat irregularly) to have the clergy present the Eucharist to them, and (3) private prayer is relegated to moments of great conflict (and perhaps a simple grace at communal meals.) Thornton describes that third part as “that important part of the spiritual life which the soul pursues in private, and, in the purely physical sense, alone.”
Because we have made the Eucharist into a production (complete with microphones and lighting) that “only Father really understands,” we have turned the laity into a passive audience and silently suggested that their prayer life is better left in the hands of the clergy who “know how to do it right.” Therein lies a major issue, because there are, in fact, several “right ways to do it” each of which responds to a different aesthetic, a different charism, or a different context. In short, each individual’s Private Prayer life will differ based on the individual. However, as Thornton points out, that “individuality is legitimate so long as the primary truth is not forgotten: that every prayer, however subjective in form, every self-examination, confession, personal petition, and intercession is only of value in that it adds to the prayer of the Mystical Body, and so is part of the total prayer of the Church.”
What Thornton is pointing to is the essential nature of Private Prayer in the overall life and health of the Church. We might draw any number of assumptions from this as it concerns the current state of the Church, but the more immediate point is how this is playing out as it concerns our current restrictions. If the Church has not taught her people the Daily Office and cannot share the Eucharist, the the only life left for the Church is the Private Prayer of her people.
Yes, the priests will continue to celebrate the Mass (even without a mass of people.) Yes, we may record or live stream the Daily Office (and if we do, it will hopefully be a means to the end of them being prepared to officiate it themselves by the time this is all done.) The question that remains is whether we can find the means to reteach our laity to engage in Private Prayer. If we can, then perhaps the Church will find new life (even in the midst of so much death.) If we cannot, then we’ll experience further Spiritual death (even in the midst of so much physical death.)
*Martin Thornton, The Heart of the Parish: A Theology of the Remnant, (Cambnridge, Cowley, 1989), 226-247.
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