Beyond Lent: Spiritual Disciplines for the Whole Year
For Anglicans and other liturgical Christians, Lent is the time we set aside each year to focus on the spiritual disciplines of prayer, repentance, almsgiving, and fasting.
In the weeks leading up to Lent, it is not uncommon to encounter folks criticizing the Lenten practices as unbiblical. Typically, the criticism is that we should not relegate these spiritual disciplines to a single time of year. Rather, critics argue, these practices should characterize the regular Christian life all year round.
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Both these critics and the practitioners of Lent may be surprised to discover that the Book of Common Prayer has historically done exactly that in its prescribed rule of life! That is, the Prayer Book disciplines do indeed include prayer, repentance, almsgiving, and fasting as a constant element of Christian living, even if we intensify those disciplines a bit more during Lent.
Modern Anglicanism has many local versions of the Prayer Book throughout the world, a majority of which received revisions within the last few decades. However, both the ACNA Fundamental Declarations and the GAFCON Jerusalem Declaration refer to the classic 1662 edition from the Church of England as the edition of the Book of Common Prayer that is the theological standard for the Anglican tradition. As such, it is very helpful to be familiar with this historic edition if we want to understand the theology behind our traditions and practices. For the following discussion, I will be referring to the 1662 International Edition, as it preserves the original 1662 rubrics and lectionary, but also gently updates some archaic spelling and word use.
Prayer and Repentance
One cannot pray with the classic editions of the Prayer Book without noticing the focus on repentance. All of the church’s public services include a general confession and absolution that highlights our unworthiness apart from Christ and the goodness of his grace. Indeed, for those following the regular rhythms of the Daily Offices, formal prayers of repentance occur at least twice daily (pp. 3, 18-19).
Additionally, the Opening Sentences used every day in Morning and Evening Prayer in 1662 are the penitential ones that later editions reserve for Lent and Advent (pp. 1-2, 17-18)! Repentance and prayer are at the forefront of the Anglican approach to the Christian life. Anyone who regularly uses the Book of Common Prayer cannot miss this focus.
Almsgiving
Similarly, anyone who attends an Anglican church will regularly encounter the exhortation to almsgiving in the offertory section of the Sunday liturgy. Of course, we are not alone in this practice; it is rare to find a church that does not have some sort of offering, especially in a country where churches rely so much on the generosity of private donations to operate!
Anglicans actually played an important role in founding this practice. Prior to the Reformation, the offertory was set aside to offer the bread and the wine, not alms. Archbishop Cranmer saw this as a departure from biblical norms, and thus restored the offertory as a time to collect gifts for the Church and the needy. Indeed, the offertory sentences that encourage generosity for the sake of the Gospel and the less fortunate were something of an innovation at the time of the original Book of Common Prayer (pp. 247-250).
Fasting
What about fasting? Indeed, one could argue that fasting is the most notable part of our Lenten disciplines, at least in the popular imagination.
Again, the historic patterns of the Book of Common Prayer focus on fasting much more than we might expect in modern times. On page xxv, we find a “Table of the Vigils, Fasts, and Days of Abstinence to be observed in the year.” The table lists the expected fast days as follows:
- The forty days of Lent
- The Ember days at the four seasons, being the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after: the first Sunday in Lent, the feast of Pentecost, September 14, and December 13
- The three Rogation Days, being the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Holy Thursday, or the Ascension of our Lord
- All the Fridays of the year, except Christmas Day
This means that in addition to our annual season of fasting prior to Easter, we have a weekly fast on each Friday, three days of fasting quarterly at the change of the seasons, and a smaller annual fast at the end of Eastertide, just prior to the Feast of the Ascension. Furthermore, some people interpreted the “vigils” listed on the page (i.e., the days before the major red-letter feast days) as implied fast days. All together, we see that the Prayer Book’s rule of life does indeed have us fast as a regular part of the Christian walk.
The New Testament Pattern
In all this, the Book of Common Prayer simply follows patterns established by the early church. While the New Testament does not give us specific days for the spiritual disciplines, our Lord said, “When you give… When you pray… When you fast” (Matthew 6:2, 5, 16). Jesus did not say, “If you give… if you pray… if you fast.”
By the turn of the second century, we find The Didache (the earliest extant extrabiblical Christian text) describing the recommended Christian discipline of fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, a pattern retained by some Christian communities to this day. The Didache also mentions the custom of fasting prior to baptism, which was the antecedent of the Lenten fast. That is, Lent began as a time when new converts would fast prior to their baptisms on the Easter Vigil. Eventually, the rest of the Church joined the new converts in this discipline.
The Prayer Book does not retain the Wednesday fast. However, a rubric requires us to add the Great Litany to Morning Prayer on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (p. 31). This is likely a nod to the customary fast and the old custom of fasting before receiving Communion on Sundays. That is, just as every Sunday is a little Easter, every Friday becomes a little Good Friday, and every Wednesday becomes a little Ash Wednesday.
Between the Believer and the Lord
That said, the Prayer Book does not detail every aspect of these spiritual disciplines. The Church, following Reformation principles, cannot “bind the conscience” where Scripture has not bound it. Therefore, the Prayer Book does not give specific rules to govern personal prayer, how much money to give, or what foods to avoid in fasting and abstinence.
Indeed, as the “Homily on Good Works, First of Fasting” from the Second Book of Homilies points out, customs have varied widely over different times and places. While local customs or even advice from more mature Christians may help, how we carry out these spiritual disciplines is ultimately between each of us and the Lord.
There is neither legalism nor moralism in the Prayer Book’s spiritual disciplines, whether in Lent or in the rest of the year. Let us practice all these things by the Spirit and unto the Lord, so long as Christ is glorified, our flesh is mortified, and the Church is edified.
Photo by Naassom Azevedo on Unsplash, with digital editing by Peter Johnston.
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