One of the chief aims of the English reformers was to restore the
ideal of congregations regularly receiving the sacrament at the mass. In
the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic Church, it had become usual for the
laity to communicate only once per year, at Easter. The remaining 51
Sundays of the year were essentially celebrated as solitary masses, the
priest being the only communicant — this being based on a misconceived
notion of the ‘sacrifice of the mass’, by which mere presence for the
service and adoration of the sacrament was considered to bring about the
spiritual benefits of communion.
To encourage this, the authors of the First Prayer Book wrote
homilies (‘exhortations’) to be read before the communion. In a context
in which the laity had been used to not communicating, there had to be a
kind of large-scale re-catechesis of the English people: these
exhortations were the means by which the reformers intended to carry out
this ambitious project. In the modern prayer book there are three such
exhortations, none of which are today heard with any regularity. It is
clear from them that the reformers did not simply want the people take
communion for the sake of taking communion: they wanted the laity to
undertake similar preparations for reception throughout the year as they
had previously done for their single reception per year at Easter (when
the period of preparation had extended throughout the whole season of
Lent):
The […] sacrament being so divine and holy a thing, and so
comfortable to them which receive it worthily, and so dangerous to them
that will presume to take the same unworthily, my duty is to exhort you,
in the mean season, to consider the greatness of the thing, and to
search and examine your own consciences, and that not lightly, nor after
the manner of dissimulers with God, but as they which should come to a
most godly and heavenly banquet; not to come but in the marriage garment
required of God in the Scripture; that you may (so much as lieth in you)
be found worthy to come to such a table.
Similar ideas can be seen in the invitation to confession, which is
still part of the prayer book and consequently far more frequently heard
(emphasis mine):
Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are
in love and charity with your neighbours, and intend to lead a new life,
following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his
holy ways: draw near with faith, and take this holy Sacrament to
your comfort …
There is but one contrast to the pre-Reformation expectations of
preparation for the communion: an repudiation of the Roman Catholic
doctrine that auricular confession is a mandatory aspect of this
self-examination. Instead the emphasis is shifted to undertaking
whatever acts of penitence and contrition will satisfy communicants’ own
consciences, thereby endorsing by implication the truth of the
Protestant teaching that nobody can know for themselves the extent of
their own sinfulness:
If there be any of you whose conscience is troubled and grieved in
any thing, let him come to me, or to some other discreet and learned
priest, taught in the law of God, and confess and open his sin and grief
secretly, that he may receive such ghostly counsel, advice, and comfort,
that his conscience may be relieved, and that of us (as the ministers of
God and of the Church) he may receive comfort and absolution, to the
satisfaction of his mind, and avoiding of all scruple and doubtfulness;
requiring such as shall be satisfied with a general confession not to be
offended with them that do use, to their further satisfying, the
auricular and secret confession to the priest; nor those also which
think needful or convenient, for the quietness of their own consciences,
particularly to open their sins to the priest, to be offended with them
that are satisfied with their humble confession to God, and the general
confession to the Church: but in all things to follow and keep the rule
of charity; and every man to be satisfied with his own conscience, not
judging other men’s minds or consciences; whereas he hath no warrant of
God’s Word to the same.
Even despite the attempt at mass re-education,
this rapid and radical shift in doctrine was too much for many lay
people to bear: the authors of the Articles of the Prayer Book Rebellion
of 1549 demanded a restoration of the mediaeval abuse of the weekly
solitary mass. Thomas Cranmer in his
response to them wrote laudatorily of the practice of the apostolic
Early Church, giving us an idea of just how frequently he hoped devout
laity might communicate:
What injury do you to many godly persons, which would devoutly
receive it many times, and you command the priest to deliver it them but
at Easter! All learned men and godly have exhorted christian people
(although they have not commanded them) often to receive the communion.
And in the apostles’ time the people at Jerusalem received it every day,
as it appears by the manifest word of the scripture. And after, they
received it in some places every day; in some places four times in the
week; in some three times; some twice; commonly everywhere at the least
once in the week.
It is not hard to see a utopian vision of English society with a
reformed Church within the prayer book authors’ thinking: by encouraging
frequent communion and all the necessary preparation and godly
living which reception of the sacrament entailed, an entire nation in
constant preparation to receive the holy communion on the coming Sunday,
or even at several points during the week,
would live a truly apostolic lifestyle, always being in love and charity
with their neighbours. The corruptions of the Roman Catholic Church,
they must have thought, were what had led to the corruption of society —
and they had a chance to fix it.
What actually happened may be found in any English book of Church
history: the English people, more stubborn in their custom of infrequent
reception than the reformers had hoped, did not change their habits.
Faced with this, the reformers gave in to popular practice (and to the
Puritan emphasis on Word over Sacrament) and, in the 1552 revision of
the prayer book, allowed the ante-communion (or ‘dry
mass’, as it had hitherto been known) to be said alone on most Sundays,
stipulating only that the faithful should communicate at Easter and two
other times per year. That remains the state of the rubrics to this day;
doubtless at the time, many did not even obey this relatively minimal
requirement.
This is a great tragedy, for it robbed the English church not only of
the opportunity for its laity to become frequent and worthy
communicants, but of the frequent celebration of the eucharist entirely,
for centuries.
Regular celebration and reception of communion has, in recent years,
finally become commonplace in the Church, so in a sense the reformers’
wish has finally come true. This is only at some length the fruit of the
reformers’ efforts — it has more to do with the Anglo-Catholic and
Parish Communion movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. In another
sense, however, what has happened is an even greater perversion of the
1549 reformers’ wishes than the previous settlement was, for in our
modern church we have set aside any wish that, as communities, we might
live such apostolic lives, in which worthy reception of the body of
Christ is only the central symbol of the love and charity we share with
all our neighbours, and of our commitment to full-time Christian
living.
In the practice of the modern church there is almost no emphasis or
even expectation of any particular preparation for reception of the Holy
Communion. In Common Worship the three long exhortations
are gone and replaced by the rubric (which
most lay people will never even have chance to see) ‘Careful
devotional preparation before the service is recommended for every
communicant. A Form of Preparation for public or private use is
provided.’ The idea that preparation for
communion is supposed to be of a devotional nature only, and that the relatively
short ‘Form of Preparation’ service is sufficient, speaks volumes
about how the official doctrine has been downgraded in response to the
Parish Communion movement.
To condone, implicitly or explicitly, the idea that reception is open
to all without the need to take the difficulties of discipleship
seriously devalues the sacrament, and even the sacrifice of Christ’s
body and blood. It is a nightmare of Bonhoefferian ‘cheap grace’:
The sacraments […] are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is
represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she
showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or
fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! (The Cost
of Discipleship, chapter 1)
Further, to receive without examination of ourselves not only
cheapens the sacrament, but by extension it cheapens the whole idea of
Christian life. To receive only carefully acknowledges the true nature
of the gospel message: that to be a Christian and to live a Christ-like
life is hard, and a task that none of us will always succeed
at. When we do happen to fail at living Christianly for a while, we
ought not to pretend that we have succeeded and to pretend anyway that
we can lay claim to full membership in the Body of Christ.
As the reformers’ struggle for regular lay communion shows, though,
worship habits die hard. It will not be easy to change peoples’ minds on
this in an era when the cheapness of the sacrament is celebrated by
opening the altar to the unbaptized, and even explicitly to
non-Christians — especially when the Church itself is struggling to maintain attendance.
Telling people things which they will interpret as meaning that they are
not worthy to take communion is admittedly not a great way to improve
membership figures. Reading out the exhortations leaves a parish open to
accusations of aesthetic traditionalism, of reading the exhortation only
because it seems like a cool and retro thing to do, while tacitly
admitting ‘nobody believes that stuff any more’;
putting the same message in a newly-written sermon stinks of this kind
of elitism.
But the message is not elitist. The Anglican emphasis, since the
Reformation, has never been on telling people who can and cannot receive
the sacrament. Bonhoeffer himself in the introduction to The Cost
of Discipleship writes disdainfully that
The real trouble is that the pure Word of Jesus has been overlaid
with so much human ballast—burdensome rules and regulations, false hopes
and consolations—that it has become extremely difficult to make a
genuine decision for Christ. […] Jesus invites all those that labour and
are heavy laden, and nothing could be so contrary to our best
intentions, and so fatal to our proclamation, as to drive men away from
him by forcing upon them man-made dogmas.
The invitation to consider one’s own conscience in the sight of God —
so central to the Anglican via media in many ways — ought
to be considered central to our message on what discipleship means. The
Christian message is not a legalistic ‘come to church and take
communion every Sunday’. It is rather a deeper call to live, to the best
of our abilities, as our Saviour did, however impossible that might
seem; and the sacrament is a symbol of having heeded that calling, and
taken seriously our faith in the commandments he gave us: to love God
and to love each other.
Then he called the people to him, as well as his disciples, and said
to them, ‘Anyone who wants to be a follower of mine must renounce self;
he must take up his cross and follow me. Whoever wants to save his life
will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and for the
gospel’s will save it. What does anyone gain by winning the whole world
at the cost of his life? What can he give to buy his life back? If
anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this wicked and godless age, the
Son of Man will be ashamed of him, when he comes in the glory of his
Father with the holy angels.’ (Matthew 8:34–8, REB)