Always and Everywhere

In all time of our tribulation; in all time of our prosperity; in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment,

Good Lord, deliver us.

After the previous petitions, wherein we pray God’s deliverance through the grace made known in the sacred mysteries of our Christian faith, the Litany now concludes this section with one final petition to God—this time recalling our need for God’s deliverance in the ups and downs of our earthly pilgrimage, at the final moments of our life, and at the Last Great Day. In one short phrase the Great Litany manages to combine our daily existence with eternity. This is called eschatology: the spiritual consideration of “the last things” and their impact on the now.

To begin with, the words of this petition—like baptismal and marriage vows—point out that life is necessarily filled with joys and sorrows, times of prosperity and tribulation. We do not seek escape from these variations in life; rather, we pray that God will be palpably present with us throughout the journey. When we are in tribulation, we desperately need God; when we in prosperity, we need God as much! Reaching out to God is much easier when we are in trouble; yet without God in the “good times,” we grow arrogant and complacent. Measuring our life in its current state against this petition is, by itself, a spiritually-nourishing practice.

The petition concludes by emphasizing our finitude—the fact that we are by nature limited and impermanent. By putting us on the edge of eternity itself (the hour of death and the day of judgment), we are encouraged to see our true position in the scheme of Creation: as a priestly people with a mission to embody the Gospel in our thoughts, words, and actions. The rest of the Litany with its many intercessions for the world and its needs is based on that knowledge of who we are, where we stand, and the cosmic scope of our concern.

How Firm a Foundation

By the mystery of thy holy Incarnation; by thy holy Nativity and submission to the Law; by thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation,

Good Lord, deliver us.

By thine Agony and Bloody Sweat; by thy Cross and Passion; by thy precious Death and Burial; by thy glorious Resurrection and Ascension; and by the Coming of the Holy Ghost,

Good Lord, deliver us.

The inner logic of the Great Litany moves from praying for deliverance from exterior forces to a recollection of those things God has done for us in Christ. By recalling them, we pray God to deliver us from all adversaries (physical and spiritual) by the interior power of faith in him. Such faith is always a gift from God, something for which we must be profoundly grateful. If that gratitude fades, our faith is at risk.

This portion of the Great Litany has the character of a Creed or summary of the key elements of the Faith. It also recalls passages from the Epistles of St. Paul where the Apostle briefly summarizes the most important events in the life of Christ. These “proto-creeds” would be picked up by other early Christian writers (notably St. Ignatius of Antioch in several of his letters written on his way to martyrdom in Rome), forming the basis of the Creeds we use in worship today.

These petitions in the Litany makes very clear the centrality of historic Christianity in the Anglican faith. Many of the early heresies – and many modern mimics of these dead-ends in aberrant Christianity – obscure the fully human and fully divine nature of Christ with strange, convoluted, or imported ideas. Here, we are shown a Christ who was born into human life with all of its vulnerabilities and limitations, experienced pain, suffering, and death – while at the same time was (and is) the Son of God, bringing the divine into union with the human, rising from the dead and carrying our nature to the very throne of God. We also re-affirm the giving of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church, that Spirit always pointing to the authentic Christ and the Faith revealed by the Scriptures as interpreted by the ancient and undivided Church.

This portion of the Litany functions rather like the foundation to a building. On the articles of faith we confess in these two petitions, the entire edifice of Christianity rests. The security and hope we seek in life cannot be had on any other terms but these. All attempts to fashion life on man-made comforts or controls lead to failure and frustration. By recalling what God has done for us in Christ, we are strengthened in the gift of faith. In so doing, we are renewed in confidence, courage, and strength to show forth God's power to love and redeem.

Fully Alive

From all oppression, conspiracy, and rebellion; from violence, battle, and murder; and from dying suddenly and unprepared,

Good Lord, deliver us.

The Christian is placed in a deeply disordered world. Rather than being oriented towards life, the world “as it is” now is oriented towards death. For many, daily life is lived under the horrors of “violence, battle, and murder.” Indeed, this is perhaps the “norm” throughout the world. Lawlessness, brutality, disregard for life are marks of cultures of oppression which in turn foster “conspiracy and rebellion,” usually perpetuating (rather than ending) the cycle. All of this leads to a deep pessimism about life, leading to Hobbes’ famous dictum: “Life is nasty, brutish, and short.” Once this is conceded, anything becomes possible and even acceptable.

For those of us who live in peace, safety, and plenty this petition can seem almost other-worldly. But, for those who have tasted the bitter cup of violence – and this includes many in our land who have fled here or those who have experienced domestic abuse or lived in a repressive “cult” – this petition is painfully honest. Without deliverance from these things, the richness and goodness of life is nearly impossible. When chaos and brutality reign, Evil seems triumphant, and even the good person may become silent and compliant with Evil’s purposes - becoming agents of evil in the process. The Church must stand against this; it must risk the reprisals of corrupt powers to witness to truth that God alone has the Power. Illegitimate rulers and systems of power may grab the reigns for a season, but they will be “cast down,” in the words of the Magnificat. Each of us has a part to play – tiny or great – in that work of the Gospel. Those who have not experienced such trials and terrors must recover a sense of humility, learning from those who have walked this "way of sorrows" so that their good fortune does not become their undoing.

The final portion of this petition speaks about something often confusing to people in the modern West: dying suddenly and unprepared. For many centuries, the Christian knew that he or she must have one’s “house in order” before leaving this world, for we were placed here to learn and do certain things, and if our “temporal affairs” are not in order, if we have people to forgive, need the forgiveness of others for our own wrongs, or have in some way not “set right” our relationship with God before our passing – then we have failed in a truly lamentable way. Modern people, overwhelmed by the consequences of life-sustaining medical technologies and therapies, often hear these words differently. We sometimes desire to leave the world suddenly, even unprepared. We might say: “How lucky she was, she died suddenly in her sleep” or “he never even knew what hit him.” But this says more about our fears than our faith – and fear is never the place for the Christian to live.

The early Christians knew the secret to daily life: live each day as if it were your last, for in some deep sense, it is. This was not morbid or hysterical; it was (and is) deeply rational, deeply wise. It is the wisdom of the Desert Fathers, the wisdom of the fully mindful and present with God. When we come to see each day as a unique gift, a gift to live fully alive as Christ lived fully alive, then we open ourselves to God’s grace and work of reconciliation. It may be a small advance, or it could be a great one – but it is an advance towards the Kingdom of God, and this is what the Lord thirsts for us when he says “I thirst” on the Cross. He thirsts for our salvation. He thirsts for our completion. He thirsts “for the life of the world."

We who bear the mark of that Cross on our forehead through Holy Baptism may drink from the font of New Life; his thirst has slaked ours; his offering has been made a gift to us. As we pray and labor to serve others that they may know deliverance from the evils of this world, so we, too, must be reconciled and growing in healing, that we may enter the Temple of God in the Heavenly Jerusalem where sin and death are no more. May God deliver us from dying suddenly and unprepared, so that we may continue the work of learning to live freely, preparedly, and fully. For, as St. Irenaeus remarks, the glory of God is the “human person, fully alive.”

For this, Our Lord continues to thirst.

A Holy Frailty

From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine,

Good Lord, deliver us.

There are many, many things we cannot control in life; perhaps this is for us the great “problem.” Secularism, in denying the essential brokenness of humans and the Creation, needs to create a “heaven on earth” in order to seem plausible. Replacing God’s grace with scientism and the doctrine of inevitable progress, the secular human expects ever more solutions to the problems of life. Yet, some things remain beyond our grasp. Therein is a great cause for anxiety in modern life. The current H1N1 flu scare is only the latest occasion for these concerns. While there are a number of ways we can lessen our exposure, and some of the finest scientific minds have worked diligently to bring us a vaccine to battle this particular virus, humans remain vulnerable to various “plagues” today as we have from the beginning. This petition in the Litany brings that vulnerability to the natural world to fore.

The Gospel recognizes that humans live in a dangerous world. Jesus rules out the simplistic idea that bad things only happen to bad people (the victims of Pilate, the Tower of Siloam in Luke 13:1-5). Sometimes, terrible things happen because of terrible coincidences. We hear about this through the news on a regular basis. Many have experienced such life-changing events first hand. Lancelot Andrewes, the great 17^th century Anglican bishop and preacher, lived through a rare earthquake in London. It occurred on a Wednesday; for the rest of his life, each Wednesday he called that event to mind, standing in awe of its power, and recognizing – as Jesus taught – that such unforeseen events are a call for us to live our lives in active repentance, ready to enter Eternal Life each day.

Rather than living in fear, or running away from our vulnerability by becoming “control freaks” (in the process often making everyone around us part of our anxiety), the Litany bids us bring to the surface our vulnerability, to admit it and offer it to God. Once again, we are called to be a priestly people: to offer to God in holiness and thanksgiving. Bringing to the surface our fears, our frailty in prayer and calling upon God for protection does not result in “magical” protection. Instead, it places us honestly before God, offering up our absolute need for his protection and strength. It also offers to God the reality of our mortality, something modern people, with our delusions of control and expectations of absolute security, have a particular need to do. Only by being free of the fear of death may we truly embrace Life in its fullness.

The Shattered Body of Christ

From all false doctrine, heresy, and schism; from hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word and commandment, Good Lord, deliver us.

This petition for deliverance in the Litany addresses the brokenness of the Church, with its consequences for its witness to the world and the lives of individual believers.

While it is Christ’s mystical Body, it remains a vulnerable, physical body on earth, just as Christ’s earthly body was vulnerable in his Passion and Crucifixion. Precious, but vulnerable. But to what form of illness is the Church vulnerable in its physical life today? The petition examines this in some detail.

False doctrine, like an inviting but ultimately misleading off-ramp from a freeway, takes us far from “the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” making us prisoners of a skewed or half-truth rather than the fullness of the Catholic Faith. We need to take stock of wherever false doctrine is being preached, taught, or received in the Church. We are called to repent of it and to flee from it.

Heresy almost always takes some part of the wholeness of Christian faith and amplifies it far beyond its proper place. Often, heresies result when people choose one side of an antimony (a pair of seeming opposites) which must be held together in order to enter into the fullness of belief (e.g. that Christ Jesus was “fully divine” and “fully human,” or that humanity is made in the image of God while at the same time fallen and distorted through sin). All of us have a “preferred heresy,” one we tend to gravitate towards. We should be very attentive to this, being watchful for those conditions and attitudes which invite us to trade in the Gospel in its wholeness for some diminished, partial caricature. Very often, people choose heresies because they seem easier than the paradoxical and challenging nature of true Christianity. We need to remember, though, that nowhere does Christ tell us the way of discipleship should be easy – in fact, he tells us quite the opposite. The more we gravitate towards a religion of comfort, the more likely we are choosing a heretical version of the genuine article.

Perhaps one of the most unspoken wrongs in Christianity is schism. This breaking of the natural and essential unity of the Faith into fragments is easily the most “heretical” witness to the world we make. Like a shattered mirror, contemporary Christianity reflects Christ to the world in a broken, partial, and often confused manner.

If Christians come to take schism for granted – almost as if it were no “big deal” – they show how little they understand the perspective of the unchurched, and how little they care for the expressed will of Our Lord for us. When Christianity looks like the rest of the world (divided, bickering, hateful, &c.) no amount of verbiage or appeals to “relevance” will overcome this basic failing. The unity of the Holy Trinity is the hallmark of the Kingdom of God, and the Church must pray for deliverance from the schisms marking it today if we are to reclaim our proper witness to the Gospel.

The petition continues with a wise awareness of what illness in the Body of the Church translates to in the lives of individual Christians: the bitter hardness of heart (often after becoming partisans in church battles of various types) and contempt for God’s Word and commandments. When we fail as a body to live up to the pattern set for us by Christ (or, worse, institutionalize this failure as somehow “normal”), we betray the work of the Holy Spirit in us, and there are painful consequences for parishes, denominations, and whole communions as a result. Whenever we offer the Litany, we are reminded of this, and bidden to question the condition of our own hearts, and the ways in which we have grown lax, loose, or downright contemptuous of God’s word and commandments to us – as communities of faith, yes, but also as individuals: for, we cannot ask of others what we will not observe ourselves.

Strength in Fragility

From all evil and wickedness; from sin; from the crafts and assaults of the devil; and from everlasting damnation, Good Lord, deliver us.

From all blindness of heart; from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice; and from all want of charity, Good Lord, deliver us.

From all inordinate and sinful affections; and from all the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil, Good Lord, deliver us.

In these three petitions we bring before God the vulnerabilities, flaws, and delusions which beset all humanity. Why this? How can it be “good psychology” or “beneficial self-esteem” to do this? It is because the strength we seek can only be found by a clear understanding of our own fragility.

The first petition cries out to God that we are utterly beset by brokenness. Any honest, clear-eyed assessment of the world will attest to this fact. We had best admit this; if it were not so, why would be appealing to God on behalf of a suffering world in the first place? This brokenness, this illusory search for life apart from God, has a name: sin. It is not just an impersonal “concept.” It is a highly personal fact, addressed to each one of us by our ancient foe: the devil. Evil’s desire is for our final “undoing,” our complete rejection of relationship with the Triune God. The ultimate cost of yielding to the false logic of sin is an everlasting aloneness.

The second petition moves from the grand scale to the theatre of the human heart. In our search for life apart of God, we have become blind of heart: alienated from the illumination coming from God alone, we grope in the darkness of our own aloneness. Having lost full union with the God who gives us dignity and value, we have substituted pride and vainglory, searching for identity and purpose by exerting power and control over others. Because we are not whole and honest with the God who formed us, we have split the world in two – the world of “being seen” and the “personal life” where we live and do as we please, giving rise to hypocrisy. With these distortions in our heart, we are constantly tempted to act out of their deadly fruit: envy, hatred, malice, and want of charity. Our Lenten pilgrimage each year deepens our recognition of this “other law” within us, a law we must acknowledge in order to fight against in the power of God revealed at Easter.

The third petition “gets down to cases,” as we might say. We confess to the specific ways in which sin operates on the personal level. In a society obsessed by comfort and license, we recall the inordinate and sinful affections we place higher than “the kingdom of God and its righteousness,” and by which we allow the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the devil to go unchallenged as our personal (if unacknowledged) “logic.” Thus, the tragic dimension of our fallen reasoning, desires, and expectations are laid honestly before our own eyes and before our God. But why do we do this here in the Litany?

The reason is difficult for the secular – or the secularized Christian – mind to comprehend, distorted as it has become by confusing self-esteem with self-awareness. The Christian confesses his or her fragility precisely because it leads to renewed trust and strength in God. Without this we will likely only further the wrong done by those before us. By renouncing Satan’s ancient lie – that by severing our life in God we can become “gods” – and embracing the gift of True Life which comes from God alone through salvation in Christ, we are freed to do the true work of discipleship. Only then, with humility (in the sense of knowing and living in reality), may we proceed in prayer aware of our true place, our proper and indeed essential role of sharing in Christ’s ministry of reconciliation and intercession. It is when we come to understand, with St. Paul, that we are "treasures in clay vessels" that God's strength may be "perfected in human weakness."

(Photo: Ad Meskens)

Remember Not

Remember not, Lord Christ, our offenses, nor the offenses of our forefathers; neither reward us according to our sins. Spare us, good Lord, spare thy people, whom thou hast redeemed with thy most precious blood, and by thy mercy preserve us for ever. Spare us, good Lord.

The above words follow immediately after the Invocation of the Trinity in the Great Litany. They are what is known as a “obsecration,” or earnest pleading. In it, we pray God not to remember sins, pleading that the consequences of our sins will not be visited on us. Henry Purcell, the great 17^th Century Anglican composer, set the 1662 version of the text to music; it is a haunting and profound meditation on this masterpiece of prayer.

This prayer necessarily follows the Invocation, in that once we call to mind the holiness of God, our own sin becomes immediately apparent. How may we proceed in praying for the world when we ourselves are so compromised, so identified with the very brokenness we submit to Christ for healing and redemption? We should instinctively join the Prophet in saying: “Woe is me…for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” (Isaiah 6:5)

To remember – to make present – is central to the Christian life. At every Eucharist we remember Christ’s command to “do this” – making Him present by the action of the Holy Spirit in the Holy Mysteries. Each time, the consequences of God’s love in Christ are poured out upon us.

In this portion of the Litany, we in effect ask God to forget. Joining with the Psalmist in Psalm 51, we cry out: “in your compassion, blot out our offenses.” We, who are burdened by the present effects of our sin, our lost opportunities for holiness, plead with God to lift from us all the unbearable horror of this oppressive weight.

“With men it is impossible, but with God, all things are possible.” (Matt. 19:26) As the Litany is addressed to Christ, so it is through His mercy and grace made known eternally on the Cross that we have access to the Father, and thus the weight of sin, which “clings so closely” (Heb. 12:1) may finally be shed.

Intercession on the world's behalf is senseless without the mercy of the Cross. Our puny attempts to “make a difference” by ourselves would be worse than hopeless. In Christ, though, we have the victory that frees us from despair and helplessness. Sharing as we do with Him in a ministry of reconciliation, it becomes our joy and our mission to bring before the Throne of Grace all those many people and needs which come our way. Indeed, the "fruit of good deeds" done in our own local or personal circumstances require a direct connection to the concerns of the wider world. Through the life-giving Cross, this connection can be made without overwhelming us. Rather, we find added compassion and peace by sharing in Christ's ongoing intercession for the world.

By turning to Christ with contrite hearts in this opening petition of the Litany, we take off our “spiritual shoes” and stand on the holy ground of God’s own redeeming. We are now ready to call upon our God in humility – the prerequisite for true Christian intercession.

The Invocation: Beginning Aright

O God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth, Have mercy upon us.

O God the Son, Redeemer of the world, Have mercy upon us.

O God the Holy Ghost, Sanctifier of the faithful, Have mercy upon us.

O holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, one God, Have mercy upon us.

The Litany begins with an Invocation of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. This is as it should and must be, for the revelation of One God in Trinity of Persons is at the core of all Christian prayer, thought, and practice. By locating this fact at the head of this great offering of intercession, we make clear our appeal to the True God. It also reminds us that we are not “making” anything happen in this or any other prayer; we are responding to the work of God in us and through us. This is central to a healthy, scriptural, and balanced understanding of Christian intercession.

It is God who “creates, redeems, and sanctifies.” Christ is the Great High Priest, through whom all our intercessions find their meaning, validity, and power (indeed, the entire Litany is addressed to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity). The Holy Spirit activates our intercession, giving us the intention and words. The Father’s Life passes through the Son by the Spirit into us, bringing us into our appointed place as participants in the Divine Life of prayerful communion – a communion of wills. The final petition of the Invocation, addressed to the “holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, one God” is an explicit affirmation of this implicit understanding of what it means to pray in a deep unity with God “on behalf of all mankind” as a Christian.

How many times are we encouraged to “name it and claim it” in our American Christianity, approaching God as one would anyone else? In so doing, we mistake what is in fact a privilege and gift for a personal right. The gift of knowing God in Trinity is a revelation from the Divine to us. We could never reason our way to it. It is a Holy Mystery. That mystery of the Divine must be at the center of our intercessions. We must not delude ourselves into attempting to “control outcomes” or form a self-concocted picture of what God “must do.” Rather joining Christ at Gethsemane, we must lay all our intercessions, all our prayers and desires at the feet of the Holy God whose “never failing care and love” will do “better things than we can desire or pray for.”

It is precisely for this reason that we begin this and most Litanies with an invocation of God the Holy Trinity.

A Little Rubrical Archeology…

“To be said or sung, kneeling, standing, or in procession; before the Eucharist or after the Collects of Morning or Evening Prayer; or separately; especially in Lent and on Rogation days.”

The rubrics (ceremonial directions) of the Prayer Book often tell us important things. Those printed at the head of the Litany tell us something of its history and usage in the Church. First, the Litany’s early and normative way of being offered was for it to be sung in procession. Litanies have a certain character of prayer; the fixed or only occasionally-changing response means the participants may enter into a rhythmic relationship with them, rather like the rocking of a child or a person in deep emotional need. Litanies have this very ancient, physical dimension that invites the whole person – body, mind, soul – into God’s presence and power. Experiencing the sung Litany in procession at a parish church or cathedral (especially on a Rogation procession) reveals this unifying characteristic.

The rubic also makes provision for saying the Great Litany standing or kneeling. This is certainly the most common form of using the Litany in the post-reformation Anglican Church, used both liturgically and in personal prayer.

The use of the Litany has varied over the years. Currently it is used as a prelude to the Eucharist (rather like the Great Litany of the Eastern Orthodox churches), seamlessly moving from intercession on behalf of the world before God into the Collect of the Day. In addition to being used after the collects at Morning or Evening Prayer, the rubric notes that the Litany may be used as a separate devotion. It is precisely this aspect which has fallen out of use and which I would submit the Church must recover.

It was once a common devotion among us to offer the Great Litany at noonday, especially on Wednesdays and Fridays, and daily during Lent, the quarterly Embertides, and Rogationtide. Thus, there was a time when people either as a community or in personal prayer would regularly offer this prolonged form of supplication and intercession. It was part of our DNA to intercede in a broad and intentional way for the world well outside the confines of the Sunday liturgies. By doing this, a community is raised from self-consciousness and self-obsession to its true priestly function of offering the world to Christ the Great High Priest.

When the Church regains its proper sense of purpose as the uniquely-called (and uniquely humble!) people of God, the meaning and value of such prayers as the Litany will once again be clear.

Reflections on the Great Litany - a preface

There are few better prayers in our tradition than the Great Litany for breadth and depth. Once, this litany accompanied each Sunday’s transition from Morning Prayer to the Holy Communion. It formed what was sometimes called the “English Introit,” a rich and probing series of petitions, praying for “all sorts and conditions” of humanity as the Church prepared to offer the Holy Mysteries "for the life of the world."

The Litany was also used at the end of Morning and Evening Prayer, to provide an intercessory balance to the Office’s other components of confession, instruction, and praise. In addition, it was also a separate devotion, often at Noonday, especially in Lent and at times of great national or communal upheaval.

Today, it is rarely seen or heard in most Episcopal Churches. Some in our comfort-driven era greet this with joy, fatigued by its length and a perceived “negative” character. Yet, a careful study of this litany yields much treasure in today's era of watered-down or entertainment-focused worship. For the coming weeks, it is my hope to enter into this ancient offering of prayer and come to a renewed understanding of its place in the teaching and practice of a faithful, apostolic Anglicanism of today.

There are many online resources which speak to the history and structure of the Great Litany (and litanies in general). Suffice it to say that the Great Litany actually pre-dates the Book of Common Prayer, and has been revised from time-to-time in the editions of the BCP since. The form used for these reflections will be that of the 1979 BCP of the Episcopal Church.

Of your courtesy, pray God's blessing on this endeavor.