There are times in life when it is best to be silent. Indeed, the Desert Fathers seem to indicate it would be best if we lived most of our lives in silence. People who know me well also know that I am far, far from achieving that condition. However, the last weeks have been a time, as least as far as this web log is concerned, for what a mentor of mine used to call “a season of silence.”
Writing one’s thoughts down for public consumption, even if it is only a few people who might see it, is a rather grave matter. Extracts of my writings in newsletters and other parochial publications have ended up in the local paper and all manner of other places. It is sobering to see one’s words return to one’s own eyes and ears like this. It reminds me of hearing my children say things I know I have said to them in the distant past—sometimes bringing joy, sometimes regret.
So, the last weeks have been a time to be much more about active ministry: listening, serving, and working alongside the other members of the parish. It has been uncommonly busy, but also uncommonly rich. While I have been using a lot of words, they have been the words of the Good Shepherd speaking (by God’s grace) through me and my own limitations, rather than words of reflection and analysis in a web log or a parish newsletter.
However, we are now at the end of the Autumn Embertide. This quarterly grouping of three days for prayer, fasting, and focused reflection on the ministry of the Church provide for a stopping point, an opportunity for deep consideration. During the Ember Days it has long been my custom to offer the Litany of Remembrance (often referred to as the Southwell Litany). It was composed by Bishop George Ridding of the newly-created Diocese of Southwell, England in the nineteenth century. Bishop Ridding wrote this litany for his diocesan clergy to say with him at the Embertides and other retreats when they gathered for prayer in perhaps one of the most beautiful rooms on earth: the cathedral’s Chapter House, with its extraordinary stone carving (the entrance to which is pictured above). What a thing to imagine in our day: a bishop simply praying with his clergy! No hired expert, no panel discussion, no complex agenda or expensive multi-day conference. Just prayer. Perhaps our economic difficulties will force us to consider such humble things once again.
I first met the Southwell Litany in a revised form for laypeople published by the Forward Movement Press in the Episcopal Church. It was the first “examination of conscience” I encountered. I met it again, this time in its original form for clergy, in a copy of The Cuddesdon Office Book I purchased on my first visit to England in 1984. At that time, I had no real idea how important these words would be, thinking as I did then I was going to be an attorney. When I entered seminary, however, the deep wisdom in this litany—even if couched in at times the most purple of Victorian prose—became evident and very applicable. It has formed a part of my Rule of Life since.
This prayer, along with the Litany of Missionary Intercession, The Litany of the Holy Spirit, and other traditional Embertide prayers has helped me to become open in new and deeper ways to what God is saying in my life. Far from being a welter of words or ecclesiastical rhetoric, such prayers have taken root in my soul. Their beauty has not masked their almost ruthless honesty, their absolute insistence that the Pastoral Life—like all Christian life—is a call to share in Christ’s holiness, Christ’s wholeness. I cannot imagine serving as a priest and pastor without such tools.
In our own day, the priesthood has been “deconstructed” and “demythologized,” so to speak. Clergy today have a tendency to be more akin to spiritual technicians or, as Rumpole of the Bailey once sneeringly put it, “members of the caring community.” This reaction to the mystification and hierarchical manipulation of an earlier era is to some degree understandable, of course. However, like all reactions, it has tended to become simply the inverse of the illness it seeks to correct.
While largely ignored today, the Embertides remain there in the calendar. They call to us—lay and ordained—with their quiet, patient voice, reminding us that no amount of techniques, seminars, how-to’s, revolutionary new technologies, or re-clothed bankrupt strategies of the past will suffice. Our ministries live or die to the degree they are lodged in the living Christ, who is always and eternally in the Will of the Father.
I like to think of Bishop Ridding in his billowing rochet, kneeling down in the Chapter House of Southwell Cathedral, leading his parish clergy in their quarterly prayers together. Sometimes it was cold and dank in that stone room; sometimes it likely was hot and sultry. But, they were there. They knew it was essential. I like to think of joining them in their sacred obligation to review their ministry and the state of their vows. I am grateful for their company, and I pray that through it, I may be strengthened to be a better pastor of the people I serve in this corner of Christ’s vineyard.
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A Litany of Remembrance
(Commonly called “The Southwell Litany”)
[Dr. George Ridding, first Bishop of Southwell, who composed this Litany for use at meetings of his clergy, was accustomed to introduce it with the following words:
Seeing, brethren, that we are weak men but entrusted with a great office, and that we cannot but be liable to hinder the work entrusted to us by our infirmities of body, soul, and spirit, both those common to all men and those specially attaching to our office, let us pray God to save us and help us from the several weaknesses which beset us severally, that he will make us know what faults we have not known, that he will shew us the harm of what we have not cared to control, that he will give us strength and wisdom to do more perfectly the work to which our lives have been consecrated--for no less service than the honor of God and the edifying of his Church. I will ask you to let me first say the suffrage to each petition, and then all join in repeating it together; after which a short pause shall be made.
Let us pray.]
O Lord, open our minds to see ourselves as Thou seest us, or even as others see us and we see others, and from all unwillingness to know our infirmities,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
From moral weakness of spirit; from timidity; from hesitation; from fear of men and dread of responsibility, strengthen us with courage to speak the truth in love and self-control; and alike from the weakness of hasty violence and weakness of moral cowardice,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
From weakness of judgment; from the indecision that can make no choice; from the irresolution that carries no choice into act; and from losing opportunities to serve Thee,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
From infirmity of purpose; from want of earnest care and interest; from the sluggishness of indolence, and the slackness of indifference; and from all spiritual deadness of heart,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
From dullness of conscience; from feeble sense of duty; from thoughtless disregard of consequences to others; from a low idea of the obligations of our Christian calling; and from all half-heartedness in our service for Thee,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
From weariness in continuing struggles; from despondency in failure and disappointment; from overburdened sense of unworthiness; from morbid fancies of imaginary backslidings, raise us to a lively hope and trust in Thy presence and mercy, in the power of faith and prayer; and from all exaggerated fears and vexations,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
From self-conceit, vanity and boasting; from delight in supposed success and superiority, raise us to the modesty and humility of true sense and taste and reality; and from all harms and hindrances of offensive manners and self-assertion,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
From affectation and untruth, conscious or unconscious; from pretence and acting a part, which is hypocrisy; from impulsive self-adaptation to the moment in unreality to please persons or make circumstances easy, strengthen us to manly simplicity; and from all false appearances,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
From love of flattery; from over-ready belief in praise; from dislike of criticism; from the comfort of self-deception in persuading ourselves that others think better than the truth of us,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
From all love of display and sacrifice to popularity; from thought of ourselves in forgetfulness of Thee in our worship; hold our minds in spiritual reverence; and in all our words and works from all self-glorification,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
From pride and self-will; from desire to have our own way in all things; from overweening love of our own ideas and blindness to the value of others; from resentment against opposition and contempt for the claims of others; enlarge the generosity of our hearts and enlighten the fairness of our judgments; and from all selfish arbitrariness of temper,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
From all jealousy, whether of equals or superiors; from grudging others success; from impatience of submission and eagerness for authority; give us the spirit of brotherhood to share loyally with fellow-workers in all true proportions; and from all insubordination to law, order and authority,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
From all hasty utterances of impatience; from the retort of irritation and the taunt of sarcasm; from all infirmity of temper in provoking or being provoked; from love of unkind gossip, and from all idle words that may do hurt,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
In all times of temptation to follow pleasure, to leave duty for amusement, to indulge in distraction and dissipation, in dishonesty and debt, to degrade our high calling and forget our Christian vows, and in all times of frailty in our flesh,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
In all times of ignorance and perplexity as to what is right and best to do, do Thou, O Lord, direct us with wisdom to judge aright, order our ways and overrule our circumstances as Thou canst in Thy good Providence; and in our mistakes and misunderstandings,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
In times of doubts and questionings, when our belief is perplexed by new learning, new thought, when our faith is strained by creeds, by doctrines, by mysteries beyond our understanding, give us the faithfulness of learners and the courage of believers in Thee; alike from stubborn rejection of new revelations, and from hasty assurance that we are wiser than our fathers,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
From strife and partisanship and division among the brethren, from magnifying our certainties to condemn all differences from all arrogance in our dealings with all men,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
Give us knowledge of ourselves, our powers and weaknesses, our spirit, our sympathy, our imagination, our knowledge, our truth; teach us by the standard of Thy Word, by the judgments of others, by examinations of ourselves; give us earnest desire to strengthen ourselves continually by study, by diligence, by prayer and meditation; and from all fancies, delusions, and prejudices of habit, or temper, or society,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
Give us true knowledge of our brethren in their differences from us and in their likenesses to us, that we may deal with their real selves, not measuring their feelings by our own, but patiently considering their varied lives and thoughts and circumstances; and in all our relations to them, from false judgments of our own, from misplaced trust and distrust, from misplaced giving and refusing, from misplaced praise and rebuke,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
Chiefly, O Lord, we pray Thee, give us knowledge of Thee, to see Thee in all Thy works, always to feel Thy presence near, to hear and know Thy call. May Thy Spirit be our will, and in all our shortcomings and infirmities may we have sure faith in Thee,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
Finally, O Lord, we humbly beseech Thee, blot out our past transgressions, heal the evils of our past negligences and ignorances, make us amend our past mistakes and misunderstandings; uplift our hearts to new love, new energy and devotion, that we may be unburdened from the grief and shame of past faithlessness to go forth in Thy strength to persevere through success and failure, through good report and evil report, even to the end; and in all time of our tribulation, in all time of our prosperity,
Save us and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.
O Christ, hear us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Christ, have mercy upon us.
Lord, have mercy upon us.
Our Father…
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all forever. Amen.
