Do the red, read the black. It’s the common refrain of long-time Anglicans who remember a time when the Book of Common Prayer’s rubrics were printed in red and the prayers in black. This long-lost tradition makes it easier for clergy and laity to discern what is prayed and what acts are required. However, contemporary printings of traditional prayerbooks and contemporary prayerbooks either italicize and shrink the font of rubrics, or both. The rubrics in the 1662 prayerbook are more than just information on when to kneel, who is praying, and what actions should take place in a service. Rubrics are formative and informative as to the doctrine, the teaching of the Church.
For example, we learn from the following rubric after confessing our sins in morning and evening prayer:
The Absolution or Remission of sins to be pronouced by the Priest alone, standing: the people still kneeling.
We learn two items. First, the vocation of a priest, and not a deacon, is tasked to pronounce absolution. Second, the absolution is a remission of those sins confessed by the penitent faithful. This should not surprise us, as at the ordination of every priest, the Ordinal requires the bishop and priests to lay hands upon the ordinand, with the bishop praying:
Receive the Holy Ghost for the Office and Work of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the Imposition of our hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be thou a faithful Dispenser of the Word of God, and of his holy Sacraments; In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
This prayer and laying on of hands echoes the Scriptures, where Christ tells His newly commissioned Apostles, “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” (John 20:23, KJV). We see the rubric enforcing the duties to which every priest is called and ordained to perform. This is rooted upon the Holy Scriptures and evidences the Church’s doctrine.
Another example, which firmly roots the Anglican Church upon the Western, Augustinian tradition, may be found at the end of the rite for The Public Baptism of Infants, where the first rubric holds:
It is certain by God’s Word, that children which are baptized, dying before they commit actual sin, are undoubtedly saved.
This rubric serves as an encouragement to parents whose children are baptized but are called home to be with our Savior at a tender age. It reiterates and emphasizes that baptism is a means of grace, as further elucidated in Articles of Religion, and not to be esteemed as “only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession,” according to Article 25, “but rather they be certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of grace and God’s good will towards us, by the which He doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm, our faith in Him.” Therefore, when a child is baptized, it “is also a sign of regeneration or new birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive baptism rightly are grafted into the Church” according to Article 27. Quite simply, infants baptized into Christ rightly receive baptism and all its blessings. Hence, the rubrics instruct:
The Curates of every parish, shall often admonish the people, that they defer not the Baptism of their children longer than the first or second Sunday next after their birth, or other Holy-day falling between, unless upon a great and reasonable cause to be approved by the Curate.
This direction for the priests to strongly encourage their faithful to baptise their newborns early is understandable not only because the promises of God belong to them, but especially in light of the high infant mortality rate of the age. Although modern developed nations have decreased infant mortality rates, the rubrics require us to ask ourselves, why would we ever deny the grace of God to the little ones whom Christ calls, whose angels see His face, and whom He calls us to act like in order to inherit the Kingdom?
Rubrics are also practical and vital in living throughout church seasons, including Lent. We learn from the Table of the Vigils, Fasts, and Days of Abstinence that all forty days of Lent are “Days of Fasting, or Abstinence.” Additionally, the Table teaches us that the Ember Days, Rogation Days, and all Fridays of the year, except when Christmas Day falls on a Friday, are for fasting or abstinence. Notably, the 2019 ACNA Book of Common Prayer eases the Friday fast during “the 12 Days of Christmas and the 50 days of Eastertide,” but otherwise encourages the historic pattern. (2019 BCP, p. 689). Certainly, nothing prohibits a parishioner at a 2019 BCP parish from taking up the more ancient fast.
But I digress, back to Lent and the rubrics. The First Day of Lent, more widely known as Ash Wednesday, requires all services – whether the Daily Offices or Holy Communion – to pray the Ash Wednesday collect “after the Collect appointed for the Day,” that is, the Sunday collect. The prayerbook wants us to memorize the Ash Wednesday collect by praying it twice daily (through morning and evening prayer) and even thrice if one is keeping the offices and attending a Sunday communion (or the rare Lenten holy day) service. Why?
What is it that the prayerbook wants us to know like the back of our hand? Let’s take a look:
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
This beautiful collect walks alongside us as a constant companion and reminder of God’s faithfulness and love for us sinners. It draws from Psalm 51, after King David’s wretched sin, and it inspires hope within us daily that God erases our sin perfectly through His precious Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.
And if we follow the rubric and heed the prescription given to us by our doctor, the prayerbook, then we receive twice daily reminders from the Great Physician that He can, He will, and He does save all those who are repentant and believe upon the pierced Son. We walk in Lent with this reminder of grace on our lips as we go to the Cross with Jesus.
Similarly, the prayerbook beckons us each Advent to daily walk with the Lord in the collect for the First Sunday in Advent, which also is rubricly required “to be repeated every day with the other Collects in Advent, until Christmas Eve.” The prayerbook calls us into a life praying reminders to ourselves as we pray to the Father who gives “us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility.” (Collect, The First Sunday in Advent). The prayerbook diagnosis is we are sinners and her rubrics prescribe us to pray twice a day, feast on grace, fast from sin, and look towards “the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty, to judge both the quick and the dead,” with hopeful anticipation because “we may rise to the life immortal.” Id.
Alas, the modern prayerbooks, including the 2019 ACNA BCP, lack these rubrics that require the daily prayer of the collects of First Sunday in Advent and Ash Wednesday throughout their respective seasons. This is a loss, but not such a loss that cannot be rectified. A 2019 ACNA BCP user who is familiar with the prayerbook tradition and way of life can live the tradition by adding these collects into daily practice during their seasons by knowing the rubrics of old. For the rubrics are not mere rules, but are markers that keep us pressing onward and forward to Christ through our living the prayerbook life. More importantly, where the modern prayerbook is silent, I encourage the 2019 BCP user to abide by the prayerbook standard that is the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. After all, it is recognized either as a standard or the standard across ACNA and the global Anglican bodies to which ACNA belongs. (Point 6, Jerusalem Declaration; Point 6, Fundamental Declarations of ACNA; Section 1.1(a), GSFA Covenantal Structure Doctrinal Foundation: Fundamental Declarations).
The rubrics are rich in practicalities and doctrine. These are doctors’ orders, both directing the cure of souls while prescribing the cure for our souls. Namely, prayer, fasting, and feasting upon the Word of God with hearing His Scriptures in our ears, praying it upon our lips, receiving Him in the sacraments, and denying ourselves so His Holy Spirit may live within us and through us. This is the prayerbook life.
During our journey through the classic Anglican prayerbook, we will note the rubrics. They are the rod of the Good Shepherd, gently steering His flock to stay on the Way. They are harsh at times, but only as harsh as a loving Father who desires not the death of a sinner, but their repentance. They are hard at times, but for the mortification of our sins so we may glorify the Father in holy living. They are informative and instruct us in the catechesis that can never end until we cross over the Jordan at life’s end or Christ’s return, whichever shall come first. They are necessary, as roots are to a tree, so are the rubrics in rooting us in the prayerbook life.
