Language of the Book of Common Prayer

 Parish newsletter item.

Just last Sunday as I write this, and a few weeks ago as you read this, we stumbled through the Rite 1 Eucharist [in the first Sunday of Lent]. I say stumbled because there were hitches in the service from the language it was written in. We don’t usually use this rite, but for those of us who are of a certain age, it was familiar because we grew up with a similar sounding rite in the 1928 prayer book. The language used in both the current and previous prayer books comes from Elizabethan English, spoken and written in the mid-1500s to the mid-1600s. It is the same language used by Shakespeare, and what the King James Version of the Bible was written in. The language further evolved into the more modern form that our Declaration of Independence was written about 200 years later. Because we pray in a modernized version of very early Modern English, it can be a challenge to understand what exactly we are saying. The tone of the early Eucharistic services has also been preserved and it is more somber than in Rite 2.

Because late Middle English and early Modern English in the 1500s sounds so different from 21^st century English, we tend to think of it as very formal. That formality was also present in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer written by Thomas Cranmer, in the 1662 book as the official prayer book of the Church of England, and in the 1789 book as the first American prayer book.  Words we don’t use today throw us off, such as “thy” (informal “your”) and “thee” (informal “you”) as do words such as “travail” (from the French verb travailler, to work), vouchsafe (to grant or make happen), beseech (to implore), and meet (suitable). But these words from Middle English indicated a formality in 1549 that was appropriate for a worship service. The same goes for verbs, such as didst, hath, spake (past tense of to speak), and art (“are/is”, as in “Our Father, who art in Heaven…”) that came directly from Middle English into the 1549 prayer book. 

By now, you have noticed that Rite 1 places more emphasis on our sinfulness and imperfection even as we worship God who loves us. Phrases like “And although we are unworthy, through our manifold sins, to offer unto thee any sacrifice…” and “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table” can create a feeling of humility and timidity on our part. These were important themes in the early Anglican Church of the 1500s that were replaced with a theme of celebration and fulfilling an obligation present in prayer book revisions in the later 20^th Century. The Book of Common Prayer contains what we believe, as prayers and services, leading to the defining phrase “We pray what we believe.”  That makes it not only a book that explains what we believe, but also a record of how Anglican theology has changed as the world has changed. So, when we use Rite 1, we experience the tradition of the Church. Regardless of the language used, we worship using nearly the exact same words in 2025 that Anglicans used almost 500 years ago.

I hope that by now you have become familiar and comfortable with the language and lyrical rhythm of Rite 1. I encourage you to visit the website http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1549/Communion_1549.htm to see what the Eucharistic prayers looked like 500 years ago. It will be surprisingly familiar. A word of warning: spelling rules were virtually non-existent in 1549, so read the text with modern pronunciations in mind to make sense of it.