On moving and unmoving the prayers of the people

Or, The Prayers of the People hit differently when relocated…

PeopleMover in Disneyland Tomorrowland (c. 1970s) daves_archive, CC BY 2.0

The Prayers of the People hit differently when relocated…

Lately I’ve been looking at different orders of service found in different Prayer Books and contemplating (with help from others) the significance of some of the different configurations that are out there. Some changes can be pretty subtle, like how the Prayer of Humble Access has hopped around a few times in the past 500 years. Other variations are a bit more substantial, though, and that’s where the Prayers of the People come into the discussion.

Over the centuries there are three places where they might be located: in the Eucharist Canon, in the Offertory, and in the Liturgy of the Word. Let’s check ’em out.

DISCLAIMER: The term “prayers of the people” is only a feature of modern Prayer Books, and in classical Prayer Book use it’s typically called the “prayer for the whole state of Christ’s Church [and the world]”. Because they are textually equivalent, I’m just going to use the modern title throughout this article. We’ll explore why it makes sense in some cases more than others.

Location #1: Sacrificial Prayers

The 1549 Prayer Book looks like a real oddball in the collection of Anglican Prayer Books. As essentially the first draft, it contains a number of features that promptly vanished, and the location of the Prayers of the People is one of those things. There, the Sursum Corda (“lift up your hearts”) is relatively early in the liturgy, and right after the Sanctus (Holy, Holy Holy) the priest or deacon turns to the people and says “Let us pray for the whole state of Christ’s Church.” And after the familiar ending of that prayer, “Grant this, O Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake…” he continues immediately with the Prayers of Consecration. No other Prayer Book since has done this, making it feel a rather strange option.

What I recently rediscovered, however, is that this is largely how it worked before the Reformation. In a 1526 version of the Sarum Missal, the Sanctus was followed by a few prayers of intercession, akin to what Catholics today might call “mass intentions.” Indeed, the Sarum prayers were lengthened by Cranmer for the first Prayer Book, perhaps setting the stage for a need to move them elsewhere in the service. In any case, the location of the intercessions here, literally at the altar, spoken by the priest, ad orientem (that is, facing the altar, same as the people), makes the character of these prayers particularly sacrificial. These intercessions are part of the Church’s regular sacrifice of prayer as we fulfill our priestly function in praying for one another and the world around us.

Location #2: Offering Prayers

Prayer Book revision quickly shifted the prayers for the whole state away from the eucharistic canon and landed them in the Offertory, where they remained until the mid-20th century revisions kicked in. This diminishes the sacrificial emphasis of the prayers and moves them more into the realm of the people’s offering. Indeed, this prayer even mentioned “our alms and oblations”, explicitly uniting the offering of our money and ourselves with the offering of our prayers. Thus the intercessions became less of a priest’s intentions at the altar and more of the concerns of a congregation, even though the actual text remained the same. At this point “Prayers of the People” starts to make sense, even though the reader of the prayer was still the priest, and the congregation was still referred to as “they” instead of the modern “we.”

Location #3: The People’s Prayers

In the mid-20th century, in the wake of Rome’s second Vatican Council, a huge movement of liturgical revision and renewal was underway, and no tradition was left unscathed. This novus ordo (literally, new order) rearranged much of the liturgy, and for the Prayers of the People this mean that they were now prayed after the Creed instead of after the Offertory. What’s more, the default reader of these prayers became the Deacon, “or other person appointed”, which implies a layman, not the priest. This was matched with a change of wording from “they” the congregation, to “we” the congregation, such as found in the Anglican Standard Text of 2019. The intercessions were now truly the Prayers of the People in the most literal sense. Gone were the sacrificial undertones of our work of intercession, and even the liturgical offerings sense was dramatically decreased. Rather than a sacrifice or an offering, the intercessions now became a work – the work of the people.

Interestingly, “the work of the people” is one of the ways to render the word liturgy into English (though I would prefer “public work” to better capture its meaning). So in that sense, putting the Prayers of the People more into the hands and mouths of the congregation makes a lot of sense. Furthermore, there is another line of precedent for this: in (at least) English custom, there was a practice of “bidding the bedes” before a sermon, which was essentially calling upon the congregation to pray for various needs in the parish, the city, the region, the realm, or indeed the world. This practice existed in parallel with the “mass intentions” in the proper canon of the liturgy, resulting in two points of intercession in the worship service, one dominated by the people’s concerns, and the other dominated by the Church. Indeed, this practice survived beyond the Reformation, and even popped up explicitly in the 1928 Prayer Book (see its page 71 and 47).

If you survey the various forms of the Prayers of the People in the 1979 Prayer Book (and similar texts put out in other provinces since), you will find that most of them have call-and-response elements, giving increased voice to the congregation. Some of them (including 2019’s own Renewed Ancient Text) are even explicit biddings, not technically praying at all, but instead instructing the congregation what to pray (be it silently or aloud).

Why not both?

This migration of the Prayers of the People over the centuries has revealed that there are indeed multiple places in the Communion liturgy where intercessions can (and should) be profitably made. In proximity to the Scripture Lessons, Creed, and Sermon, the people’s prayers naturally arise as we all respond to God’s Word and bring our own various concerns to bear. In proximity to the Offertory, a set of intercessions make sense as the congregation offers united prayer to God as part of its collective work and service. And in proximity to the consecration of Holy Communion, the Church accomplishes a priestly service, bringing to God a sacrifice of prayer, as is our bounden duty and our joy.

Given the history of our English liturgical heritage, we know that we don’t have to choose just one spot and stick with it. We can have intercessory prayers in the modern location (after the Creed) as well as in the medieval location (after the Sanctus). We don’t have to pick one or the other, or the compromise middle location (after the Offertory). All three locations have historic precedence, devotional value, and liturgical sensibility.

One easy way to experiment with this, using a modern Prayer Book such as the 2019, is to use the call-and-response Prayers of the People from the Renewed Ancient Text in the modern location, emphasizing congregational input, and then having the celebrant read the Anglican Standard Text’s Prayers of the People straight through (without responses) either after the Offertory or after the Sanctus. This way we have both the homegrown spontaneous heartfelt congregational prayers and the scripturally rich, authorized, priestly prayers of intercession for the Church and for the world. Together, these complementary postures of prayer teach all of us more about the significance of prayer in the Christian life, and shape us to pray both formally and informally, generally and specifically, as individuals and as one body.

The Rev. Matthew Brench, Vicar of Fitchburg

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