Thinking allowed

Harvest Thanksgiving: 6 October 2024

on Sunday, 6 October 2024 at 3.55 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: Joel 2.21–27; Psalm 126; 1 Timothy 6.6–10; Mat­thew 6.25–33

May the words of my mouth and the med­it­a­tion of my heart
be accept­able in your sight, O Lord.

Har­vest Festival.
Do you remem­ber cel­eb­rat­ing Har­vest Fest­iv­al as a child?

I can recall as a young school­boy what a big occa­sion it was.
We’d line up in class,
and then our cro­codiles would march down to the vil­lage church,
half a mile away,
each clutch­ing a bag of apples or tin of baked beans
or some­thing else that our moth­ers had giv­en us to take.
We’d sing one or two har­vest hymns
and depos­it our produce.
The rect­or would say a few words and some prayers,
and then we’d traipse back to school.

It’s a memory of quite a long time ago,
over half a cen­tury for me,
and obvi­ously made a bit of an impres­sion on the young Simon.
But what I can say is that
I didn’t really make much of a con­nec­tion with real life.

I mean, “Fair waved the golden corn”
didn’t seem to have very much to do
with buy­ing food from the butcher
or the green­gro­cer or fishmonger –
let alone from the supermarkets
that were just begin­ning to appear in our town.

Not until I was a good deal older did I begin to understand.

And there’s a clue to help us understand
on the front of today’s ser­vice booklet.

You see, the Church actu­ally calls this
not “Har­vest Fest­iv­al” but “Har­vest Thanks­giv­ing”.

Not “Har­vest Fest­iv­al” but “Har­vest Thanks­giv­ing”.

What’s in a word, you might ask?
Well, quite a lot perhaps.

You see, rather than celebrating
our own clev­erness and skill
and the things that we’ve made at a fest­iv­al,
what we are doing is giv­ing thanks:
giv­ing thanks for the good things that enable us to have …
(well) life.

At har­vest that’s par­tic­u­larly thanks that we have food –
enough food for the com­ing year so we will not starve.
And thanks that for us
that’s actu­ally a pretty remote possibility
– at least I hope it’s pretty remote –
but coupled with concern
that for many around the world
(and indeed in our own country)
not-enough-food is a very real prospect.

And that’s where I think our read­ings this morn­ing are tak­ing us.
In the Old Test­a­ment, Joel reminds his hearers
that God provided for the anim­als of the field
and for the trees bear­ing fruit.
And sim­il­arly for his people God will provide plenty.
And Jesus in the gos­pel reading
makes a sim­il­ar point, does­n’t he?
That God provides for the birds of the air
and for the flowers of the field.
And, Jesus says, in God’s king­dom we too will be provided for.

Jesus tells his hearers
‘Do not worry, say­ing, “What will we eat?”
or “What will we drink?”
or “What will we wear?” ’
Instead, Jesus’s instruc­tion, as we heard this morn­ing. is this:
‘Strive first for the king­dom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things will be giv­en to you as well.’

How does that work, do you think?
How will we be provided for?

I think it comes back to thankfulness
and to remem­ber­ing how the king­dom of God works.

So here’s a little exer­cise for us all …
You’ll remem­ber that in the gospels
Jesus tells us that the king­dom of God is near, it’s at hand.
I want us to think a little about that.
When, I won­der, do you think
we come closest to liv­ing in God’s kingdom?

Do you ever think about that?
Let’s just take a few moments to con­sider it now:
When do you think we come closest to liv­ing in God’s kingdom?

You might want to think about this on your own,
or you might want to turn to the per­son next to you
and share ideas.

When do you think we come closest
to liv­ing in the king­dom of God?

… [[pause for a few brief moments, per­haps 10 seconds;
if people start talk­ing to each oth­er give them a bit longer]]

Okay, how did you do?
Now you can find out
wheth­er your thoughts are any­thing like mine!
Because I reck­on there’s actu­ally quite a simple answer –
though I’m not say­ing it’s neces­sar­ily easy to put into practice!

In the gos­pels Jesus tells us
that we approach being in God’s kingdom …
whenev­er we do God’s will –
when we do God’s will here on earth as it is done in heaven

And that means shar­ing the things that God has giv­en us:
shar­ing our food,
shar­ing our wealth,
shar­ing our skills and our knowledge,
shar­ing our time and our energy.
And shar­ing God’s peace.

Of the good things that God has giv­en us
we give back the first fruits.
As God is gen­er­ous to us,
so we have the opportunity
to be gen­er­ous with all that we have.

In God’s king­dom, you see,
every­one bene­fits from generosity –
from God’s gen­er­os­ity to all creation …
and from our gen­er­os­ity to one another.

Jesus calls us to con­sider what we can give –
what we can give back to God,
and what we can give to one another.

So, as we give thanks today at harvest,
we do well to remember
that God calls us to share
the good­ness, the bounty,
that we have been given.

That’s not just good food,
but also things like peace and security,
hous­ing and per­son­al dignity.

This year in St Ives,
Fath­er Mark and Cal­lum have been helping
some of our loc­al schools and oth­er organizations
give thanks at harvest
and to bring gifts that will go to the St Ives foodbank.
For their gen­er­os­ity we can be very grateful.

And we too:
as we bring our gifts
and lay them before God at the altar,
as we give our time and our tal­ents and our wealth,
we are shar­ing God’s love
with some of those in our community
who des­per­ately need it.
And as we love our neigh­bours who are in need,
as we are gen­er­ous to them,
so too we are lov­ing Jesus.

Because – make no mistake –
It is when we serve the least of these
our broth­ers and sisters …
it is then that we serve Jesus.

It is then that we come near to the king­dom of God.

Thanks be to God.

Church Clocks

on Saturday, 21 September 2024 at 5.01 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as bellringing, clock and chimes

Trinity 7: 14 July 2024

on Wednesday, 17 July 2024 at 8.46 am by Simon Kershaw
categorised as sermon

Read­ings: 2 Samuel 6.1–5, 12b-19; Psalm 24; Eph­esians 1.3–14; Mark 6.14–29

May the words of my mouth and the med­it­a­tion of my heart be accept­able in your sight, O Lord.

When I came to pre­pare this ser­mon, two themes stood out.

First, John the Baptist and my “rela­tion­ship” with him.
I’ll come back to that in a moment.

The oth­er theme from our read­ings is …

Well … it’s dancing!

Dav­id dan­cing before the Ark;
Salome dan­cing before Herod.

Now it’s a bit of a co-incidence
that they are paired here together:
we’ve been hear­ing the story of David
over the last few weeks,
and we just hap­pen to arrive at this episode
as the gos­pel gets to this inter­lude in Jesus’s ministry.

But I expect lots of you watch tv pro­grammes about dancing –
Strictly Come Dan­cing anyone?
So per­haps you’re ima­gin­ing Dav­id and Salome
as celebrity con­test­ants in Strictly.
There’s Dav­id, king of Israel,
stripped down to a “lin­en ephod”
whatever that is,
but it def­in­itely sounds a bit scanty doesn’t it?
Dan­cing, ooh, the quick­step, perhaps.

And the prin­cess from Galilee, Salome,
(though she is called Hero­di­as
in our bible trans­la­tion this morning) –
young and attractive,
dan­cing some­thing a bit raunchy, a tango, maybe.
In pop­u­lar mod­ern culture
it’s the dance of the sev­en veils,
though that was only inven­ted by the writer Oscar Wilde –
the bib­lic­al text lacks the eroticism
which we might ima­gine into the story.

As for David,
the eph­od that he wore was a priestly garment –
knee-length, open at the sides, belted at the waist –
per­haps a bit like the vestment
that a dea­con some­times wears, a dalmatic.

But back to John the Baptist.
I have, as I men­tioned, a bit of a his­tory with John.
It’s get­ting on for 40 years since Kar­en and I moved here –
and when not serving, I’ve usu­ally sat some­where over there:
right by Comper’s statue of John the Baptist.
But long before that,
from when I was born,
I went to a church ded­ic­ated to John the Baptist:
I was a choir­boy and then a server,
and I was formed as a young Christian.

Now that church was a great Vic­tori­an barn of a place,
big­ger than here.
And one fea­ture I remem­ber vividly
was a set of three big win­dows at the east end,
behind and above the altar.

In the lower part of each window
there’s a scene from the story of John the Baptist,
and above each of them a par­al­lel scene
from the story of Jesus.
So the left win­dow depicts the Nativ­ity of Jesus,
a manger with a shep­herd and wor­ship­ping angels,
while below are scenes from Luke’s account of John’s birth.

And the bot­tom of the centre window
shows the story we have heard today.
There is Salome dancing –
fully and demurely robed I hasten to add.
There is John
kneel­ing before the exe­cu­tion­er wield­ing his sword.
There is a man open­ing a door,
pre­sum­ably bring­ing in the head of John,
though that hor­ror isn’t shown.

So, why do the win­dows pair these scenes?

Well John was an import­ant fig­ure to the gos­pel writers,
and all four of them include him in their stories.
He’d been the major fig­ure in what we might call
a reli­gious revival,
and crowds had flocked to see him,
a bit like some Billy Gra­ham rally perhaps.
Among them came Jesus.
Are the gos­pel writers a little embar­rassed about this?
About Jesus being bap­tized by John?
About Jesus per­haps play­ing second fiddle to John?
They want us to understand
that from their point of view,
from our point of view,
John was pre­par­ing the way for Jesus.

The first read­ers and hear­ers of Mark’s account
must have included people
who had been fol­low­ers of John,
who per­haps had come out to the Jordan and been baptized,
but maybe had had little involve­ment with Jesus.
The gos­pel writer wants these people to see
that Jesus is con­tinu­ing John’s proclamation:
repent­ance and new life.

But Jesus brings a new twist to the proclamation.
John had preached repentance
as pre­par­a­tion for the arrival of God’s kingdom.
But Jesus pro­claims that God’s king­dom has arrived already,
here, now:
Jesus’s fol­low­ers – you and me –
can repent
and move from the ways of this world
and live instead in the king­dom of God,
where the hungry and poor,
the troubled and the dispossessed
are lif­ted up
and people are reconciled
with each oth­er and with God.

And there’s a second mes­sage from today’s gospel.

Fol­low­ing Jesus isn’t always easy.

It can be hard to lift up the lowly
and be recon­ciled with others,
and some­times oth­ers don’t want to be reconciled,
some­times people don’t want the lowly lif­ted up,
per­haps because they like to have people to lord it over
or to exploit.
Some­times there are hard consequences.

Cer­tainly there are hard con­sequences for John –
that’s the story we have heard today:
John is con­demned and executed by Herod.
And soon Jesus in his turn
will be con­demned and executed
on the orders of Pon­ti­us Pilate
and with the con­niv­ance of this same Herod –
and of oth­ers who are challenged
by the idea of God’s rule, God’s kingdom.
In death, as in life,
John is the fore­run­ner of Jesus.

And this is what can be seen
in the middle win­dow at my old church:
above the pan­el with the behead­ing of John,
we see the Crucifixion.
Jesus pays the ulti­mate price of love and reconciliation,
put to death by the Roman governor
on charges brought by the Temple leadership,
a con­spir­acy between the rulers of this world
to attempt to defeat … love.

And there’s one more win­dow to look at.
The third win­dow at my child­hood church
reminds us of one more thing.
It shows, in the bot­tom, the end of today’s story:
John’s dis­ciples come and carry away his body
and place it in a tomb.
It is the end for John.

But the upper sec­tion of the window
shows a very dif­fer­ent scene.
The fol­low-up to the death of Jesus
is the empty tomb,
the burst­ing from the grave,
the defeat of death.
The tri­umph of hope.
That is to go bey­ond the story we have heard today, with the mes­sage of Jesus:
Love con­quers all.

You see,
John had proclaimed
that the end of the world was coming,
and people needed to repent.
And John had been killed and buried.

Jesus, though, pro­claims some­thing new:
not the end of the world,
but the end of the age,
and a new age
where God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
And Jesus too is killed and bur­ied … and …
rises to new life.

And that’s what we see in the last of the windows,
that sim­il­ar­ity-and-dif­fer­ence between John and Jesus.
John bur­ied; Jesus resurrected –
resur­rec­ted to new life,
life in the new age where God’s will is done.

As we heard Paul remind us in his let­ter to the Ephesians –
Jesus’s death on the Cross
recon­ciles us to God and also to one another.
And Jesus’s resur­rec­tion brings us
to share in life in God’s kingdom.
Right here and now.

So,
unlike John, we are Jesus’s fol­low­ers.
But, like John,
our role does include pre­par­ing the way for Jesus:
pre­par­ing the way for Jesus
in the hearts and lives of those around us.
John’s life – and John’s death –
remind us that this might not be easy
but the example he sets
is one of bold­ness in telling the truth
and in pro­claim­ing the gospel,
the good news that, in Jesus,
the king­dom of God is among us.

Let us each con­sider this week
how we might begin
to pre­pare the way to Jesus
for just one person.

Amen.

MA in Worship and Liturgical Studies at Mirfield

on Tuesday, 2 January 2024 at 10.02 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as Uncategorised

The Mir­field Litur­gic­al Inti­tute has recently announced a PGDip / MA in Wor­ship and Litur­gic­al tud­ies. The qual­i­fic­a­tion is val­id­ated by the Uni­ver­sity of Durham, and can be stud­ied part-time online. The pub­li­city says:

Would you like to

• Deep­en your under­stand­ing of how and why Chris­ti­ans wor­ship God?
• Gain a post­gradu­ate qual­i­fic­a­tion that will sup­port you in your min­istry in the church, lay or ordained?
• Refresh your approach to worship?
• Equip your­self to teach oth­ers about liturgy and worship?

To find out more, con­tact the course dir­ect­or, the Revd Dr Jo Ker­shaw jkershaw@mirfield.org.uk or at https://college.mirfield.org.uk/academic-formation/the-mirfield-liturgical-institute/

Dis­claim­er: I should point out that Jo Ker­shaw and I are not related at all, and our fam­il­ies even come from oppos­ite sides of the Pen­nines (though Mir­field is on the right side).

Coronation Liturgy Talk

on Wednesday, 22 March 2023 at 12.30 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as coronation, liturgy

Last week I par­ti­cip­ated in a “col­loqui­um” organ­ized by Prax­is on the sub­ject of the Coron­a­tion, giv­ing an intro­duct­ory talk on the ele­ments of the ser­vice or liturgy at pre­vi­ous coron­a­tions. (We don’t yet have details of the 2023 ser­vice.) The oth­er major presenter was the Very Revd Dr Dav­id Hoyle, the Dean of West­min­ster, who is closely involved in the plan­ning and will be a major par­ti­cipant at the service.

The slides I used at that talk can be found here, in two ver­sions – a large illus­trated ver­sion and a small ver­sion with no illustrations.

• illus­trated Power­Point (126MB); PDF (1.2MB); PDF with notes (588kB)
• text only Power­Point (100kB)

Both ver­sions con­tain some notes, and they can also be read in con­junc­tion with my earli­er post on the Coron­a­tion liturgy.

Addi­tion­ally a record­ing of the col­loqui­um is avail­able on You­Tube. My sec­tion starts at about 7 minutes in – do watch all the record­ing if you have time.

• record­ing

The Coronation Oil

on Monday, 6 March 2023 at 2.51 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as coronation, liturgical news, liturgy

The oil that will be used to anoint the king and queen at their coron­a­tion on 6 May has been con­sec­rated in Jer­u­s­alem by the Ortho­dox Pat­ri­arch of Jer­u­s­alem and the Anglic­an Arch­bish­op. The Arch­bish­op of Can­ter­bury’s web­site reports the details here, and that art­icle is archived below.

(more…)

The Coronation Liturgy

on Thursday, 2 March 2023 at 9.11 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as coronation, liturgy

This is a longer ver­sion of an art­icle pub­lished in Prax­is News of Wor­ship, March 2023.

In 973 at Bath Abbey, Edgar was crowned King of Eng­land by Dun­stan, Arch­bish­op of Can­ter­bury. The Coron­a­tion ser­vice in use derives dir­ectly from that com­piled by Dun­stan over a thou­sand years ago. It has gone through sev­er­al revi­sions or “recen­sions”, with the third being used through the later Middle Ages and (in trans­la­tion) for the first four Stu­arts. The last major revi­sion was made in 1689 by Wil­li­am Compton, Bish­op of Lon­don, for Wil­li­am III and Mary II, but it has been tweaked for each sub­sequent occa­sion, with new mon­archs usu­ally want­ing a short­er cere­mony than their predecessor’s, and new anthems or set­tings being com­mis­sioned. It remains to be seen how much will change in 2023, but the prin­cip­al ele­ments are clear.

The coron­a­tion is set with­in the Euchar­ist, as it has been since 973, and since 1689 most of the cere­mo­ni­al has taken place after the ser­mon and Creed (though there has been no ser­mon since 1911). There are five main elements:

1. The Recog­ni­tion
2. The Oath
3. The Anoint­ing
4. The Invest­it­ure, cul­min­at­ing in the Crowning
5. The Enthrone­ment and Homage.

The coron­a­tion of a Queen Con­sort follows.

The ser­vice begins with the entrance pro­ces­sion. Since 1626, verses from Psalm 122 (“I was glad”) have been sung, and in 1902 Sir Hubert Parry incor­por­ated into his set­ting the acclam­a­tion (“Vivat”) by the schol­ars of West­min­ster School. This set­ting is now an estab­lished tradition.

Next the Sov­er­eign is intro­duced as the right­ful mon­arch and acclaimed by the con­greg­a­tion, a vestige of the ancient elec­tion of the mon­arch. In 1953 the Oath was moved to fol­low this, hav­ing pre­vi­ously been at a later point. The mon­arch prom­ises to pre­serve and pro­tect the Church and to obey the laws of the land. In 1953 the Present­a­tion of the Bible to the mon­arch was moved to this point hav­ing since its intro­duc­tion in 1689 been imme­di­ately after the Crown­ing. Only when the Oath has been sworn and the Euchar­ist begun does the ser­vice move on to the Anoint­ing. “Zadok the Priest” has been sung as an anthem here since 973, and Han­del’s set­ting has been used since 1727. The sov­er­eign moves to King Edward’s Chair (which holds the Stone of Scone) placed in the Cross­ing of the Abbey before the Altar, and is stripped. Under a can­opy to pro­tect their mod­esty, they are anoin­ted in the form of a cross on the head, breast, and palms (in the reverse order in 1937 and 1953). After­wards a white lin­en under­gar­ment is put on, the Colobi­um Sin­donis, and a golden robe, the Super­tu­nica, and then the Invest­it­ure begins.

The regalia now used were largely made in 1660 for Charles II, the earli­er items hav­ing been wan­tonly des­troyed by the repub­lic­an gov­ern­ment of the Com­mon­wealth. The ancient regalia, crowns, sceptres, rods and vest­ments, are thought to have been taken from the tomb of St Edward the Con­fess­or when he was trans­lated to a new shrine in 1269, and were used at every sub­sequent coron­a­tion at West­min­ster down to Charles I in 1626. These sac­red items nev­er left the Abbey, being depos­ited by the mon­arch at the end of the ser­vice, and a vestige of that tra­di­tion remains.

The Spurs are brought and touched to the monarch’s heels (in 1953 to the Queen’s hands), and then the king is girded with the Sword (in 1953 it was put in the Queen’s hands). He straight­away ungirds it and places it on the Altar as a gift to the Abbey. It is redeemed for 100 shil­lings and car­ried by one of the Peers.

Next come the Armil­ls (brace­lets) and Stole Roy­al. These were made in 1953 and their form and role has been unclear since the ori­gin­als were lost in 1649. The sov­er­eign is next ves­ted with the Robe Roy­al, a great cloak of cloth of gold embroidered with roses, thistles, and sham­rocks – and imper­i­al Roman eagles, a remind­er that from 973 the Eng­lish were copy­ing the sym­bol­ism of the Byz­antine emperor.

Each stage of the invest­it­ure is accom­pan­ied by pray­ers. Since 1689 these pray­ers have care­ful to bless the per­son receiv­ing each item, the mon­arch, rather than bless­ing the item itself.

The Orb – sym­bol­iz­ing the globe sur­moun­ted by the cross – is placed in the monarch’s hand, and imme­di­ately giv­en back and replaced on the Altar. The ring, sap­phire with a ruby cross, is put on the fourth (ring) fin­ger of the mon­arch’s right hand. His­tor­ic­ally the next item was the Crown, but since 1689 this has been the final item to be presen­ted. Next comes the Sceptre, topped with a cross, and the Rod, with a dove stand­ing on the cross at the top.

Finally, the cul­min­a­tion of the invest­it­ure, the mon­arch is crowned with St Edward’s Crown, made in 1660 to replace the lost crown taken from the saint’s tomb. The con­greg­a­tion acclaim the mon­arch “God save the King”, trum­pets sound, and a gun salute is fired from the Tower of London.

After the Crown­ing the mon­arch is sol­emnly blessed by the Arch­bish­op, and up to 1902 the Te Deum was sung at this point.

The sov­er­eign now moves from King Edward’s Chair to the Throne to be enthroned there. The Arch­bish­op and oth­er bish­ops do their Fealty togeth­er, prom­ising to be “faith­ful and true” and the Arch­bish­op kisses the king’s left cheek. Then the roy­al dukes and the oth­er peers pay their Homage and the lead­ing peers kiss his cheek. His­tor­ic­ally this has been a lengthy part of the ser­vice even when sig­ni­fic­antly shortened so that each degree (dukes, mar­quesses, earls, vis­counts and bar­ons) pays homage togeth­er, and might be fur­ther shortened in 2023.

The Queen’s Coron­a­tion fol­lows, almost unchanged since that of Mary of Mod­ena in 1685. She is anoin­ted – in recent times only on the head, but up to 1761 on the head and breast, her appar­el being opened for that pur­pose – inves­ted with a ring, and then in a sur­viv­al of the earli­er order, crowned. Finally, she receives a sceptre and a rod, and is enthroned next to the king.

The Coron­a­tion itself is now com­plete and the Euchar­ist resumes at the offer­tory, includ­ing in 1953 a con­greg­a­tion­al hymn (Old 100th, “All people that on earth do dwell”), instead of an anthem. Tra­di­tion­ally the mon­arch makes an offer­ing of the bread and wine, an altar-cloth and a pound-weight of gold, and a queen con­sort anoth­er altar-cloth and a “mark-weight” of gold.

The ser­vice fol­lows the 1662 order, as it will in 2023, with the pray­er for the Church mil­it­ant, the Gen­er­al Con­fes­sion and the Com­fort­able Words. The Sur­sum Corda is fol­lowed by a prop­er pre­face, Sanc­tus (sung to the melody of Mer­be­cke in 1911 and 1937), Pray­er of Humble Access, and Con­sec­ra­tion. The Arch­bish­op and assist­ing clergy receive Com­mu­nion fol­lowed by the King and Queen. There is no gen­er­al com­mu­nion. The ser­vice con­tin­ues with the Lord’s Pray­er, post-com­mu­nion (‘O Lord and heav­enly Fath­er’) and the Glor­ia. The mon­arch then moves into St Edward’s Chapel, where they are dis­robed of their golden vest­ments – his­tor­ic­ally St Edward’s vest­ments and crown were not removed from the Abbey. Since 1911 the choir sings the Te Deum at this point. Finally, the mon­arch and con­sort pro­cess out through the Abbey to the west door, in vel­vet robes and the mon­arch wear­ing the Imper­i­al State Crown.

For the text of the Coron­a­tion ser­vice, as used at each coron­a­tion from 1689 to 1953 see oremus.org/coronation

Common Worship Almanac for 2022-23

on Tuesday, 18 October 2022 at 12.04 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as elsewhere on the net, liturgical news, liturgical texts, liturgy, software

My Alman­ac for the litur­gic­al year 2022–23, the year begin­ning Advent Sunday 2022 is now avail­able. The Alman­ac is a com­plete and cus­tom­iz­able down­load that can be added to the cal­en­dar on a desktop/laptop, a tab­let or a smart­phone provid­ing a fully-worked out cal­en­dar and lec­tion­ary accord­ing to the rules of the Church of Eng­land. Sev­er­al down­load formats are provided, giv­ing access to most cal­en­dar soft­ware on most devices.

As before, down­load is free, and dona­tions are invited.

What's new?

The Alman­ac is also avail­able as a web page that can be installed as a web app on smart­phones and tab­lets for easy access to all the data. New fea­tures include

• In the View tab you can toggle the dis­play of verse num­bers in the read­ings, mak­ing it sim­pler to copy and paste pas­sages to oth­er doc­u­ments in the desired format.
• Fol­low­ing the new Roy­al War­rant, updated BCP and CW pray­ers for the King and Roy­al Fam­ily are linked in the Resources tab; Acces­sion Day is now on 8 Septem­ber, rather than 6 February.
• Although not strictly a CW or BCP obser­va­tion, an entry is included this year for Coron­a­tion Day on 6 May 2023; it is expec­ted that resources for pub­lic observ­ance of the coron­a­tion will be pro­duced, and this mater­i­al will be added when it is available.
• Astro­nom­ic­al data (sun­rise, sun­set, moon rise and set and phase, sol­stices and equi­noxes) is now fully work­ing again, as is the sep­ar­ate Cross­cal cal­en­dar down­load at crosscal.oremus.org.

Donations

This Alman­ac is offered free of charge, and without war­ranty, but as you might ima­gine it takes some effort to com­pile. If you would like to make a con­tri­bu­tion to my costs then dona­tions may be made via PayP­al at paypal.me/simonkershaw. Altern­at­ively, Amazon gift vouch­ers can be pur­chased online at Amazon (amazon.co.uk) for deliv­ery by email to simon@kershaw.org.uk .

The Alman­ac has been freely avail­able for over 20 years. There is not and has nev­er been any charge for down­load­ing and using the Alman­ac — this is just an oppor­tun­ity to make a dona­tion, if you so wish. Many thanks to those of you who have donated in the past or will do so this year, par­tic­u­larly those who reg­u­larly make a dona­tion: your gen­er­os­ity is appre­ci­ated and makes the Alman­ac possible.

The Coronation of English and British Kings and Queens

on Saturday, 8 October 2022 at 2.13 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as coronation, history, liturgical texts, liturgy

Begin­ning with the coron­a­tion of James I in 1603 there have been six­teen Eng­lish-lan­guage coron­a­tions of Eng­lish, or from 1714 Brit­ish, mon­archs. Before that, upto and includ­ing the coron­a­tion of Eliza­beth I, the ser­vice had been con­duc­ted in Lat­in. The sev­en­teenth, for King Charles III, is sched­uled to take place on Sat­urday 6 May 2023.

As a small boy, over half a cen­tury ago, I was cap­tiv­ated by a souven­ir of the 1937 coron­a­tion of King George VI and Queen Eliza­beth which belonged to my grand­par­ents, and which con­tained the text of the ser­vice along with copi­ous illus­tra­tions and some his­tor­ic­al notes. From 1994 I have col­lec­ted cop­ies of the order of ser­vice of every coron­a­tion back to that of George IV in 1821, along with repro­duc­tions and edi­tions of the earli­er ser­vices back to 1603, as well as the music edi­tions that have been pub­lished since 1902.

For some time I have thought of pro­du­cing an his­tor­ic­al edi­tion of the coron­a­tion ser­vice with the dif­fer­ent texts in par­al­lel columns, mak­ing it easy to see the changes that have been made over the cen­tur­ies. This is a bit com­plex to pro­duce as a book (and per­haps not com­mer­cially viable) but a web page is easi­er to cre­ate, and can have oth­er help­ful fea­tures such as hid­ing or show­ing dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the page. So now there is a new page at oremus.org/coronation that con­tains the text of all the coron­a­tion ser­vices from 1953 back (cur­rently) to that of George II in 1727. Work on adding earli­er texts continues.

In each column the texts are aligned so that cor­res­pond­ing rub­rics and spoken words match across the page. Indi­vidu­al columns can be hid­den, mak­ing it easy to com­pare dif­fer­ent years. Hid­ing rows, or sec­tions of the text across all columns, is a fea­ture that will be added soon.

The coron­a­tion of King Edward VII and Queen Alex­an­dra sched­uled for June 1902 was post­poned because of the king’s ill­ness. When it did take place in August, a num­ber of modi­fic­a­tions were made to place less stress on the con­vales­cent king. Both the June and August texts are included in par­al­lel columns.

With the Coron­a­tion of King Charles and Queen Cam­illa sched­uled for next year, I hope this will be a use­ful his­tor­ic­al archive.

Liturgy at the Funeral of Queen Elizabeth II

on Friday, 23 September 2022 at 4.34 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as liturgical texts, liturgy

The death of the head of state of a coun­try is a sig­ni­fic­ant event, even more so when that per­son has been head of state for 70 years, and is head of state of more than one coun­try. The death of Queen Eliza­beth II, guar­an­teed to come at some point, was non­ethe­less an event that touched many people, and mil­lions if not bil­lions of people around the world mourned her in some way.

For the first time, Orders of Ser­vice for the funer­al at West­min­ster Abbey, and the Com­mit­tal at St George’s Chapel, Wind­sor, were pub­lished online, enabling those watch­ing on tele­vi­sion to fol­low the text and join in if they desired.

For future ref­er­ence, cop­ies of these Orders of Ser­vice are attached to this post:

• • Funer­al Service
  • Com­mit­tal Service