What is the liturgy?

 Grace Episcopal Church

 

Plymouth, North Carolina

Episcopalians use a word for worship that we don’t hear in every day conversation.  You’ll often hear us refer to a worship experience as the liturgy. 

 

The word liturgy comes from two Greek words that together mean “the work of the people.”  As it is our bounden duty to always and everywhere offer praise and thanksgiving to our God who has created, redeemed, and sustained us, our primary work as God’s people is to worship.  We use the word liturgy to encompass all those things that make up our regular worship:  the words we say, the music we sing, the vestments we wear, and even our postures (standing, sitting, and kneeling).

 

Episcopalians worship using a set liturgy that varies from time to time and church season to church season.  The rubrics (directions) and words for the liturgy are found in The Book of Common Prayer.

 

Our regular Sunday liturgy is called the Holy Eucharist.  Eucharist is just another name for Communion or the Lord’s Supper.

 

 

 

 

The Church Year

The secular New Year begins on January 1st.  The Church New Year is the first Sunday of Advent, which is four Sundays before Christmas.

The Church Year has seasons as does the solar year.  The Church Year begins in the season of Advent, moves through the seasons of Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost before returning to Advent to begin again.  The calendar is organized so that we yearly remember the saving events of our Lord’s life, death, and resurrection in our worship in a regularized way.

The Book of Common Prayer

Episcopalians don’t have a book of order or a covenant to which we must agree.  What binds us together is the way we worship.  Our prayer book is our statement of faith.

 

The Book of Common Prayer was first devised in 1549 and was intended to offer the people of England (the birthplace of Anglicanism) the liturgy in their own language.  The prayer book has undergone many revisions since then and has been inculturated in the many contexts around the world in which Anglicans find themselves today.  Despite these variations, the concept of the prayer book still binds Anglicans together worldwide and binds Episcopalians together in this country.

 

The beautiful language of the prayer book serves us well as we corporately ponder the unfathomable wonder and mystery of God.