Thinking allowed

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

Stations of the Cross

on Friday, 4 March 2022 at 3.59 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as liturgical texts, liturgy, reflection

Sta­tions of the Cross is a tra­di­tion­al devo­tion for Lent, and espe­cially for Holy Week. It ori­gin­ated in Jer­sualem, where pil­grims would lit­er­ally walk along the route from the centre of the city to the tra­di­tion­al place of Christ’s exe­cu­tion, stop­ping en route to recall vari­ous incid­ents recor­ded in the gos­pels, or else­where in the tra­di­tion. The num­ber and names of the sta­tions were later codi­fied at four­teen (to which a fif­teenth sta­tion of the Resur­rec­tion was added in more recent times). Many sets of words and pray­ers have been writ­ten to acccom­pany the walk. I com­piled this par­tic­u­lar set for an ecu­men­ic­al ser­vice in my home par­ish, and sub­sequently pub­lished them on the Think­ing Anglic­ans blog. It envis­ages a scen­ario in which some of those who par­ti­cip­ated in or wit­nessed the ori­gin­al events are gathered to remem­ber what happened on that day.

1. Pil­ate con­demns Jesus to death
2. Jesus takes up his cross
3. Jesus falls the first time
4. Jesus meets his mother
5. Simon helps Jesus carry the cross
6. Veron­ica wipes the face of Jesus
7. Jesus falls the second time
8. Jesus speaks to the women of Jerusalem
9. Jesus falls the third time
10. Jesus is stripped of his garments
11. Jesus is nailed to the cross
12. Jesus dies on the cross
13. Jesus is taken down from the cross
14. Jesus is placed in the tomb
15. Jesus is risen

Common Worship Almanac for 2021-22

on Monday, 11 October 2021 at 9.48 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as elsewhere on the net, liturgical news, liturgical texts, liturgy, software

My Alman­ac for the litur­gic­al year 2021–22, the year begin­ning Advent Sunday 2021 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

• the Down­load tab now shows a live pre­view of the data that will be added to your cal­en­dar; as you select options from the menus the live pre­view auto­mat­ic­ally reflects your choices
• 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
• in the View tab the bible read­ings now have an addi­tion­al link to the NIV text at Bible Gate­way, as well as dis­play­ing the NRSV text (or the Com­mon Wor­ship psal­ter for psalms)
• a new short­er format for sub­scrip­tion links (old-style links con­tin­ue to work as well)

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.

2020-21 Almanac for Common Worship and BCP

on Thursday, 17 September 2020 at 5.31 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as elsewhere on the net, liturgical news, liturgical texts, liturgy, software

Now avail­able for the year begin­ning Advent Sunday 2020: Alman­ac, the cal­en­dar, lec­tion­ary and col­lects accord­ing to the cal­en­dar of the Church of Eng­land, for Com­mon Wor­ship and for the Book of Com­mon Pray­er. Down­load to your cal­en­dar or use the web app.

Down­load is free, dona­tions are invited.

What's new?

The Alman­ac web page has been com­pre­hens­ively updated since last year to make it easi­er and more use­ful. Updates include

• the down­load page and the daily view have been integ­rated into a single tabbed page
• the oremus Bible Browser (which includes the full NRSV, the AV, and the psal­ters from the pray­er book and Com­mon Wor­ship) is added on anoth­er tab
• a resources tab provides dir­ect links to all the offi­cial Com­mon Wor­ship texts, hymn sug­ges­tions (with links through to Hym­nQuest) and some oth­er litur­gic­al resources
• the Alman­ac daily view includes sun­rise and sun­set times, which can be cus­tom­ized to your location
• on phones and tab­lets you can add an Alman­ac icon or tile to your screen so that it is access­ible like an app (details in the Help tab), and you can swipe for­wards and back­wards through the days, and through bible pas­sages in the Bible tab

As usu­al, the Alman­ac is avail­able in a num­ber of formats for adding to Microsoft Out­look, Apple Cal­en­dar, iPhone or iPad, Google Cal­en­dar and oth­er cal­en­dar applic­a­tions. It can be synced from a desktop cal­en­dar to a tab­let or smart­phone (includ­ing Apple iPads and iPhones, Android phones and tab­lets, and Win­dows Sur­face tab­lets). There is also a csv format, which can be opened in a spread­sheet for fur­ther manipulation.

Nat­ur­ally I hope that the Alman­ac is free of errors, but I dis­claim respons­ib­il­ity for the effects of any errors. My liab­il­ity is lim­ited to provid­ing a cor­rec­ted file for import, at my own con­veni­ence. Please help by noti­fy­ing me of pos­sible errors.

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 web page car­ries the date 8 Septem­ber 2000, so, as the Beatles sang, “it was twenty years ago” that I first provided a digit­al litur­gic­al cal­en­dar, which in a couple of years evolved into a fully worked-out lec­tion­ary. 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.

Centenary of the WW1 Armistice

on Wednesday, 6 June 2018 at 2.28 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as commemoration, liturgical texts, liturgy

Over the last few years the Church of Eng­land has pub­lished vari­ous litur­gic­al resources for com­mem­or­at­ing the cen­ten­ary of sig­ni­fic­ant moments in the First World War.

It has now added to that col­lec­tion a set of resources for the cen­ten­ary of the Armistice on 11 Novem­ber, and entitled ‘Steps towards Recon­cili­ation’: a mono­logue inter­spersed with words and music.

How are we to mark the end of a War in which so many lives were lost and dam­aged? We will cer­tainly remem­ber, but we must also com­mit ourselves afresh to work­ing togeth­er for peace. Recon­cili­ation requires an hon­est ‘truth telling’, and the text that fol­lows seeks to respect the fact that we may only be able to take steps towards that goal.

This is an ima­gin­at­ive and thought­ful resource that can be used in a num­ber of set­tings on and around 11 Novem­ber 2018. It has been com­piled by mem­bers of the Litur­gic­al Commission.

The text is avail­able as a pdf file here.

Towards a Safer Church: Liturgical Resources

on Monday, 4 June 2018 at 1.04 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as liturgical texts, liturgy

On Fri­day, the Litur­gic­al Com­mis­sion of the Church of Eng­land pub­lished “safe­guard­ing resources, for use in churches across the coun­try, includ­ing Bible read­ings, pray­ers and sug­ges­ted hymns, chosen in con­sulta­tion with sur­viv­ors” under the title Towards a Safer Church: Litur­gic­al Resources.

There is a press release here, and the litur­gic­al resources are avail­able in PDF format here

The Chair of the Litur­gic­al Com­mis­sion, Robert Atwell, Bish­op of Exeter, in an intro­duc­tion to the resources has written:

The Church needs to be at the van­guard of fos­ter­ing a change of cul­ture across soci­ety. Safe­guard­ing is at the fore­front of pub­lic con­scious­ness and the Church needs to embody best prac­tice in safe­guard­ing in our net­work of par­ishes, schools and chap­lain­cies as part of our com­mit­ment to excel­lence in pas­tor­al care.

Many of these resources are already being used widely across our churches, but we thought it would be help­ful to gath­er them into one place for ease of access. Col­lect­ively they are neither the first word nor the last word on this sub­ject, but they are offered in the hope that by God’s grace the Church may become a safer place where every­one is valued.

Libby Lane, Bish­op of Stock­port, has also writ­ten about the resources here

The resources have been com­piled by the Litur­gic­al Com­mis­sion and staff, in con­sulta­tion with sur­viv­ors, who have them­selves sug­ges­ted some of the resources, with the aim provid­ing pray­ers and oth­er resources for vari­ous occa­sions. This includes use with sur­viv­ors and oth­ers dir­ectly affected, as well as events such as the com­mis­sion­ing of safe­guard­ing officers in par­ishes and dio­ceses. Most of the mater­i­al had been pre­vi­ously pub­lished (includ­ing com­men­ded and author­ized litur­gic­al texts), but it has been brought togeth­er in one place so that it is easi­er to find and to use.

(This item has also been pos­ted on the main Think­ing Anglic­ans page.)

Further resources for the Queen's 90th birthday

on Friday, 6 May 2016 at 1.27 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as liturgical texts, liturgy

Church House has pub­lished online a set of Litur­gic­al Resources for the Cel­eb­ra­tion of HM The Queen’s Nineti­eth Birth­day con­tain­ing: Notes of Guid­ance; an out­line ser­vice; col­lects and graces; and sug­ges­ted readings.

The resources are avail­able as a PDF here.

The notes say:

It is hoped that many churches and com­munit­ies will be able to cel­eb­rate the nineti­eth birth­day of Her Majesty the Queen. This leaf­let con­tains, by kind per­mis­sion of the Dean and Chapter, the Out­line of the Ser­vice of Cel­eb­ra­tion and Thanks­giv­ing which will be held at St Paul’s Cathed­ral on Fri­day 10 June 2016. Churches are invited to use ele­ments of this out­line in their own pre­par­a­tions, espe­cially the bid­ding pray­er, inter­ces­sions, and act of thanks­giv­ing in the appen­dices. In addi­tion to the resources below, St Paul’s has com­mis­sioned the Mas­ter of the Queen’s Music, Judith Weir, to com­pose a chor­al anthem, I love all beau­teous things, which can be used in the con­text of a cel­eb­ra­tion ser­vice and is now available.

Also included here are the Col­lects which The Queen has been pleased to approve for use in ser­vices cel­eb­rat­ing her birth­day, and Graces for use at church and com­munity gath­er­ings. Finally, the Litur­gic­al Com­mis­sion sug­gests a num­ber of appro­pri­ate read­ings suited to a cel­eb­rat­ory service.

Thanksgiving for the Queen's ninetieth birthday

on Wednesday, 3 February 2016 at 6.14 pm by Simon Kershaw
categorised as liturgical texts, liturgy

The Litur­gic­al Com­mis­sion has pre­pared two col­lects (one in tra­di­tion­al lan­guage and the oth­er in mod­ern lan­guage) for use at ser­vices cel­eb­rat­ing the nineti­eth birth­day of HM the Queen, which falls on 21 April this year. These have been approved by the Queen, and the Com­mis­sion has asked that they be cir­cu­lated as widely as pos­sible. The Com­mis­sion has also provided two graces for use at church and com­munity gath­er­ings such as street parties.

Col­lects:
Heav­enly Fath­er, who hast brought our gra­cious sov­er­eign Queen Eliza­beth to the com­ple­tion of her nineti­eth year, and dost gath­er her people in cel­eb­ra­tion of the same: grant that we, rejoicing before thee with thank­ful hearts, may ever be united in love and ser­vice to one anoth­er, and her king­dom flour­ish in prosper­ity and peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Heav­enly Father, 
as we cel­eb­rate the nineti­eth birth­day of Her Majesty the Queen, 
receive our heart­felt thanks
for all that you have giv­en her in these ninety years 
and for all that she has giv­en to her people. 
Con­tin­ue, we pray, your lov­ing pur­poses in her,
and as you gath­er us togeth­er in celebration, 
unite us also in love and ser­vice to one another; 
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Graces:
Boun­ti­ful God, giver of all good gifts,
we give thanks for the many years and long reign of our Queen; 
Bless our food, our neighbourhood,
and our enjoy­ment of each other’s company.
Help us to learn from Queen Elizabeth’s com­mit­ment to her people,
so that our com­munity may be strengthened 
and all may flourish.
We ask this in the name of Jesus, the King of love.

Gra­cious God, give our Queen con­tin­ued wis­dom and strength
to carry out the prom­ises she has made;
and bless (this food, and) those who are gathered here,
that, sus­tained by ser­vice for others,
we may faith­fully serve you, all the days of our life. 
[With words from The Queen’s First Christ­mas Broad­cast, 1952]