A brief note about novena's- I have been trying really hard to research how long novena's have been in use, but I haven't had much luck. According to tradition, they are all descendants of the nine days of prayer following the Ascension of our Lord. If I am praying the Little Office, I use both the Pentecost Novena as well as the Nativity Novena (which is really just the great O antiphons) but thats it. Pending further research, I may not use these either!
Thursday, May 13, 2010
The St. Ambrose Prayer Book
I lost my "St. Ambrose Prayer Book" (From now on the SAPB) at the airport a while ago, but I still feel the need to write a brief review. The SAPB is more or less the "St. Augustine Prayer Book" (the famous Anglo-Catholic Publication) with a few (too few) corrections for Orthodox use, as well as a few prayers from Roman Catholic publications, such as Blessed Be God or Fr. Lasance's "My Prayer Book." Honestly, I don't miss it for a number of reasons. For one, my "St. Augustine" has all the material I used in the SAPB with the exception of the Liturgy of St. Gregory, which I use my Orthodox Missal for anyway. Secondly, for an Orthodox prayer book, the SAPB is more in line with 1950's Catholicism. To me it brings to mind images of blonde haired sacred heart pictures and flowery statues placed on doily's rather than the manly piety of the authentic Western Rite. The sacred heart devotions as well as many of the post schism communion devotions (Thomas Aquinas prayers, holy hours, etc.") are the kind of thing we in the Vicariate need to be avoiding. Many of our brethren are very suspicious of those kinds of devotions, and rightfully so. I am to. Why say a novena with a rosary and a litany to the sacred heart (blech) when you can pray the Divine Office, or even the Little Office. If you are feeling devotion minded, say a traditional Litany of the Saints or of the BVM. Also are the widely available (but rarely used) Penitential and Gradual Psalms, and the Office of the Dead. Western Rite faithful should also make use of the Akathist to the BVM, which has long been used in the West. There are so many things for Western Rite Orthodox to be praying without having these flat out non-Orthodox devotions distracting them. What this comes down to is that Lancelot Andrewes Press really needs to decide if they are an Anglican or Orthodox Publisher. They try too hard to please everyone, especially with their latest publications. I shudder to think what the new "American Missal" is going to look like. If you are looking for a Western Rite book, by all means invest in a Monastic Diurnal, but avoid SAPB and save your money.
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Thank you for this, Andrew.
ReplyDeleteSomebody asked me about a year ago what I thought of the SAPB. My reaction was based on my suspicioons but left my friend with no doubt in his mind that I wasn't its greatest fan. As it happens, he was relieved because he has a passing knowledge of the Orthodox Western Rite but knew of my love for it and had wanted to get the SAPB for me as a gift. Your post has confirmed my suspicions.
There are such lovely and heart-elevating devotions that we Orthodox Christians in the west can adopt that recourse to these things is really quite unnecessary. As it happens, I have known Anglicans to be initially interested by the LA Press only to quickly lose interest. At least on my side of the pond, modern Anglo-Catholics who are branch theorists and might be open to Orthodox influence tend to either use the modern Roman Rite or make their authorised liturgies resemble the modern Roman rite as closely as possible; while those who would be interested in something like the American Missal are those Anglo-Catholics who prefer the traditional rites, and who tend to be of the Anglo-papalist variety, so generally have little time for Orthodoxy. It seems that the LA Press really is catering for a narrow market as far as Anglicanism goes.
That said, North American Anglicanism has the continuum, which never really took off here, so who knows what they do?
Anglo-Catholics in America tend to be quite different from their English counterparts. When I was an Anglican, I went to a very Orthodox minded parish in Washington DC. They used a Tridentine-ised BCP liturgy with a few Eastern features like a sung litany. The folks in the continuum tend to be either strict 1928 BCP protestants or else they use the American Missal. No Anglo-Catholics here use the New Roman Rite, as far as I know. In fact, most American AC's would be outraged at the idea. They tend to have more in common with SSPX than with the modern Catholic Church. To me it is funny talking about this stuff again, it seemed so important a few years ago.
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