As I had expected, these books included the Genevan Psalms, but they also included vernacular translations of Roman canticles and chants and antiphons, with the original music maintained. There I was taken by surprise by some liturgical books from the early generations of the Hungarian Calvinists. I was doing some research on metrical psalmody. While the worship of my home congregation never dissatisfied me, I think that Lutheran service was my first taste of transcendence.Ībout ten years ago I spent a month in Hungary, at the marvelous old library in Debrecen. For my brother’s graduation service I was an acolyte, and that service affected me powerfully, with the music and the incense and the light. “This is most certainly true.” I can remember first being taken by the words of the Te Deum when I was in fifth grade. We had to memorize daily scripture verses as well as Luther’s Small Catechism. The school took teaching the tradition as part of its task. And that meant learning Matins and Vespers along with my 3 R’s. I grew up in Christian school, but because we lived in Brooklyn, that meant Lutheran school. How is it that Calvin never brought such treasures over into his own liturgical legacy? He accepted the use of Roman Catholic buildings and monetary endowments, so why didn’t he accept the use of good Roman Catholic prayers? Why didn’t Calvin do what Cranmer did, or even Bucer, for that matter? And then, on the more distant and broader horizon, why do some of us Reformed people have to make ourselves suspect by always nosing around the Anglicans? What does that say about Calvin’s brand of piety, and his ecclesiology, and the nature of the Reformation, not to mention the best aspects of the Roman tradition that he was reforming? How remarkable that Roman collects should feel like Calvin. When I came home from vacation I looked these collects up in Hatchett’s Commentary on the Prayerbook, and discovered that all of them were Roman collects, and only slightly revised. Were these by Cranmer himself, Calvinist that he was, or maybe Hooper or Parker, or some later Conformist of Reformed persuasion?
Amen.Īs I prayed this collect all week, I thought, “That could have been written by Calvin.” Look at it, does it not express his piety? In fact all of the collects for July feel Calvinist.
O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
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