The Gloria Patri: A Rookie Anglican Guide
The Gloria Patri (Latin for “glory to the Father”) is that small but mighty doxology in Anglican worship where we proclaim:
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
The Gloria Patri is used most often in the Daily Office. Taking Morning Prayer as an example, the Gloria Patri is said during the Invitatory, at the end of a Psalm reading, and at the end of several of the Canticles. At its heart, the Gloria Patri is simply an ascription of worship, praise, and adoration to God. It simply proclaims what always has been and always will be: God is God. Due to its brevity, it’s often called the Lesser Doxology in contrast to the more verbose Gloria in Excelsis.
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A Biblical Pattern
The Gloria Patri aligns with the many biblical doxologies in Scripture. Think about this clear pattern: prayer and praise are always intimately linked in the Bible. Apparently, we can’t be long at prayer without breaking into praise! Just think about some of the biblical doxologies found in Scripture. Psalm 150 is probably the greatest example I can think of. Here, the whole book of Psalms, which moves like a great highway of prayer through the depths of lamentation to the heights of thanksgiving, now ends with this sustained acclamation of praise. Actually, the Psalter ends with five psalms of consecutive, unbroken praise all the way through the last verse of the last psalm:
“Let everything that has breath praise the LORD. O praise the LORD!”
Psalm 150:6
Or, think about Romans 11:33-36, where St. Paul wonders over God’s inclusion of all the nations in the plan of salvation. He ends his meditation by saying,
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!… For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
Romans 11:33-36
Prayer will ultimately become doxological—rejoicing in and lifting up the Lord. This biblical dynamic is reflected in the Gloria Patri.
But Where Did It Come From?
The Gloria Patri dates to at least the 4th century, though similar formulations in liturgy can be found even earlier, for instance, in the blessings provided over offerings given in during the Eucharist found in The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, section 6, which dates to about 215 A.D..
Now, the 4th century is a significant time frame. Think about the Christological controversies of this time, involving, for example, St. Athanasius and Arius. We see a particular Christological emphasis in the Gloria Patri. Its short, crisp couplet of affirmations stresses both the eternality and the unity of God as Trinity and, in relation, the divinity of Christ himself. In fact, this is affirmed so ardently that the divinity of Christ is affirmed twice, once in each line.
How so? Well, take the first line,
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
Here, the glory given is co-equal. In other words, this is distinctly and clearly Trinitarian. The Son is coequal with the Father and the Spirit.
But then the second line:
…as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
“In the beginning”—what does that remind you of? What was in the beginning? This is an echo of John 1:1:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
The second line is, again, a tight, compact expression of biblical orthodox Trinitarian belief regarding the Son. It was in this context that the Gloria Patri began to be used more broadly in worship. Say what you will, but there is nothing blasé about this doxology!
The Gloria Patri in Worship
Let’s expand now on how Anglicans use the Gloria Patri in worship. Let’s look first at how Gloria Patri is used in relation to the Psalter.
The Trinity and Christ
In the Daily Office, the Gloria Patri is either sung or said at the end of each psalm reading. Why is this a particularly appropriate doxology? Here, the Gloria Patri reminds us of the essential truth that Scripture is a unified whole—one story with one Lord. We read Scripture rightly through the lens of it being given by the Triune God and centered on Christ Jesus himself. Remember what Jesus said to his downcast disciples in Luke 24 when he gave them that great sermon on the Emmaus Road? To Cleopas and his companion, our Lord said that the psalms speak of him (Luke 24:44)! And so, in this brief moment of praise, we pause from prayer to simply be reminded that all of Scripture is threaded through as the tapestry of the Trinity.
We do well to remember this. The Trinity is not something we tack on to the “end” of Scripture based on New Testament revelation, but rather a truth that radiates throughout the whole of the Bible. So, instead of seeing these Old Testament psalms as “pre-Trinity,” these, too, speak of the glory and work of the Trinity. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it,
It makes good sense … that the Psalter is often bound together with the New Testament. It is the prayer of the church of Jesus Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Vol. 5, ed. Wayne Floyd, Jr. (Fortress, 2005), 158.
An Invitation
Second, the Morning Prayer, Midday Prayer, and Evening Prayer services all open with an Invitatory, which includes the Gloria Patri. The Invitatory is simultaneously a plea to God to help us praise him and a call for us to praise God as we should. In the context of daily prayer, the Gloria Patri lifts us out of whatever is going on in our lives and into God’s life and story, showing us that the Lord’s sure plan of redemption is being accomplished and will be brought to completion. Think of it as a glimpse or a vista point from which we can look onto large truths in our daily lives.
In corporate worship, this doxology reminds us that the story of Scripture is one of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation. The Gloria Patri calls us into the greater story of Scripture. In the face of whatever’s going on in our crazy, frazzled lives, it calls us to remember that this is what is true, as it was, is, ever shall be.
Pure & Purifying Praise
As I mentioned earlier, the Gloria Patri is a doxology. It’s written as a piece of pure praise. It is, in this sense, like training wheels for our lips and our lives, teaching us to rightly praise God (for that is what doxology literally means—a “glory word” to God!). Now, some say that using written liturgy can be difficult. It’s hard because we’re not always as engaged as we want to be, and our minds wander too much to stay focused on what’s happening.
To those people, I say, you’re right! Having a written liturgy is hard, not because it’s bad, but because we’re sinful, because our minds wander, because we get bored too easily, and because we don’t praise God in the way that we should! This is why we sing the Gloria Patri several times in worship. At a rudimentary level, it’s a way we can begin to give God the praise he’s due. Reflecting on the command of Jesus to “be ye perfect,” C.S. Lewis captures this ever-renovating work of God in Mere Christianity:
[This] is not a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were “gods” and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
When we pray “Glory be to the Father…,” what we are really praying for is the increase of our own sanctification and delight in God.
Our Chief End
This brings us to our last, and related, use. The Gloria Patri shows us our chief end. As To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism reminds us, when we call God “Father,” we “declare that I was created for relationship with him, that I trust in God as my Protector and Provider, and that I put my hope in God as his child and heir in Christ.” Every time we proclaim this doxology, we are both reminded of and prepared for our chief end: to glorify God. We are being prepared for an end that will come to fruition in the great marriage supper of the Lamb, when the saints are seated with Christ, crying out,
“Hallelujah!
Revelation 19:6b-8
For the Lord our God
the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult
and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to clothe herself
with fine linen, bright and pure.”
So then, the Gloria Patri is little, but it’s not small. It is filled to the brim with pure adoration and praise. And the question it asks us all is, will you enter into this circle of praise? Will you enter into the circle of praise, centered on the triune, eternal, and living God? Will you take the true and living God’s praise onto your lips and into your heart? To fail to do so is to live in true poverty, with a truly famished spirit.
May you, dear reader, enter in.
Image by Sidde from Pixels, courtesy of Canva.
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