In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Today is our welcome back to the Full Choir of Men and Boys, and therefore the fresh start of one of the keystones of the mission of Saint Thomas, which is “to worship, love and serve our Lord Jesus Christ through the Anglican tradition and our unique choral heritage.” What makes our choral heritage literally unique is Saint Thomas Choir School, the only residential choir school for boys in the Church in North America.
Saint Thomas Choir School is not a school with a choir; it is a choir with a school. Its purpose is to house, nurture and educate the choirboys of Saint Thomas Church. Equally important with such other entrance requirements as academic and psychological capacity for the life of a Saint Thomas choirboy is the vocal audition. It is a choir with a school.
One of the greatest blessings that stems from having a residential Choir School is our ability to offer Choral Evensong. Evensong is truly a gem of the Anglican tradition, the choral expression of Daily Evening Prayer, which is itself the evening portion of the Book of Common Prayer’s daily office of Morning and Evening Prayer (Mattins and Evensong, as they are fondly called by aficionados among clergy and laity). Our choir sings Choral Evensong not only on Sundays at four o’clock, but at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Evensong is a great way to finish a day and sanctify an evening with worship. We find it is also one of our best methods of outreach. The worshiper is not confronted within Evensong with the Eucharist’s appeal to participate as a full communicant. One can remain more easily at the margins of things, as an onlooker, an inquirer, a seeker. There is a cool appeal to the intellect in Evensong which is, I think, one of the finest means of gentle evangelizing for classical Anglican Christianity. Many of our most devout members had their first encounter with the church expression they love at Evensong.
I want to take a few minutes to explain this beautiful service as we begin again a full choral season. Evensong (Evening Prayer) and Mattins (Morning Prayer) are the Prayer Book’s compression of the ancient monastic offices into two daily services, achieved by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in the mid-sixteenth century. The Anglican clergy were expected to recite these offices daily as part of their discipline, and where possible, to offer them in churches to lay people as well. The prayer life of the monasteries was to be simplified and offered to the whole church. They were rapidly appreciated as choral services and attracted the best minds of clergy and musicians. And so Anglican Mattins and Evensong have been for nearly 500 years.
One of the most important parts of the office is recitation of the psalms, which comes first. These are the poems, prayers and hymns of ancient Israel, reaching back to least 3000 years ago. They were Jesus’ own prayers; he was steeped in them; he died with some psalm phrases on lips (“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”) The Psalms are frank and honest with God; they cover the full range of human emotions and experiences, and the daily office is meant to acquaint the user with all of them – love, hope, faith, doubt (despair), anger (anger even at God), perplexity, fear, courage, enemies, friends, battle, peace. In choral evensong we sing them here to either ancient plainsong or to harmonious, even tuneful, Anglican chant.
Then there is the reading of Holy Scripture, classically one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament. As with the Psalms, the plan of the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer is to take the user through the entire Bible annually, in harmony with the church calendar. My own knowledge of Scripture (including the Psalms) arises from a commitment since ordination to do the Daily Office either publicly or privately and alone. I count it as one of the great blessings in my life, and I recommend it to anyone. It a means to acquiring, with the whole church, what might be called a biblical mind, a crucial ingredient of the mind of Christ. It takes commitment, but it repays the effort.
Following the lessons are biblical songs or canticles. At Evensong these are the Song of Mary, or the Magnificat, and the Song of Simeon, or the Nunc Dimittis, both of which were sung at events in Jesus’ infancy as reported by Saint Luke (the Magnificat, by Jesus’ three-month-pregnant mother as Mary visited her eight-month-pregnant cousin Elizabeth, carrying John the Baptist; the Nunc Dimittis, by the old man Simeon, who took up Jesus in his arms at the Lord’s Presentation in the Temple). These two canticles are among the texts most frequently set to sublime music in all human history; they comprise an enormous repertoire which we are privileged to hear at Saint Thomas.
Speaking of music again, the beginning and the end of Evensong are also sung to choral settings both ancient and modern; from the Preces and Responses (“O Lord open thou our lips,” etc.) to the Lord’s Prayer and Lesser Litany before the chanted collects and prayers at the end. Here we encounter what is rightly called the sanctification of time, the hallowing of the evening hour (as the morning hour is hallowed in Mattins).
To recapitulate: Psalms, Scriptures, Canticles, and the Sanctification of Time. All this comprises the glory of Choral Evensong. This 2007-2008 season, may many souls be blessed by the offerings of these services. May the evening hours at Saint Thomas and in this great city receive blessing and grace through these liturgical prayers of the Church.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
