Not at all. He was right about our Lord having said "This is My body" and "“This cup is the new covenant in My blood" as well. Miss that, and it just becomes a sip and a nibble, and the day you take it on makes little difference.
Indeed, whereas it is desirable to celebrate it as frequently as is permitted by one’s liturgical rite otherwise - I wish more Episcopal parishes in the US had a daily Eucharist, but some of our cathedrals do, and in the Church of England this is common. In the Anglican tradition, the Eucharist can in theory be celebrated on any day of the week, but in practice, high church Anglicans such as yourself usually follow the example of the traditional Western churches in having either not celebrating the Eucharist on Good Friday or in celebrating a pre-sanctified Holy Communion Service, sometimes using an Anglican Missal instead of the Book of Common Prayer, while in other cases using the BCP with special rubrics (in the Episcopal church the 1979 BCP offers enough flexibility to do a pre-sanctified mass on Good Friday or other occasions; indeed the so-called “Rite III” provides enough flexibility to interface with any other liturgical service books indirectly if one cannot obtain permission to use them directly, but since some Episcopal parishes are allowed to use the 1928 BCP or in the case of St. Thomas Fifth Ave in New York, celebrate Choral Evensong using the rubrics from the Church of England; I don’t know if they’re using the 1662 BCP or Common Worship, since traditional Choral Evensong can be done identically using either, and also using the 1928 Deposited Book and practically any other English Book of Common Prayer, albeit the prayers for the Royal Family are being replaced by prayers for the US as appropriate.
You could also do this using the 1979 BCP and Rite I; the main difference is that the English BCP combines the Preces for Morning and Evening Prayer in Rite I of the 1979 BCP for both offices and for the Great Litany, so if either of these three services are being celebrated, one uses this Preces:
Priest: O Lord, open thou our lips.
Answer. And our mouth shall show forth thy praise.
Priest. O God, make speed to save us.
Answer. O Lord, make haste to help us.
For some reason, in American editions of the Book of Common Prayer prior to the 1979, only the first half was used for any office (whether Morning Prayer/Choral Mattins, Evening Prayer/Choral Evensong or the Litany, with a few exceptions, for example An Office of Compline from the 1914 Book of Offices*) and this was not a result of Scottish Episcopalian influence (which is manifested in the Order for Holy Communion, which features the Epiclesis derived from the ancient Divine Liturgy of St. James, the historic liturgy of the Church in Jerusalem, and from which the only surviving Armenian Eucharistic prayer, the Anaphora of St. Athanasius, is derived).** The Scottish Episcopalians were among the proto-Anglo Catholic movements, because they believed in the real presence, like some members of the Caroline Divines and the very early High Church, whose wishes resulted in the infamous “Black Rubric” (a rubric that is not rubricated***, unlike other rubrics in the BCP, and which was basically a denial of the Real Presence of our Lord rather than a
bona fide liturgical instruction, which is what rubrics are supposed to be) being removed from the 1560 and 1604 BCP, not to make a reappearance until after the English Civil War, when the 1662 BCP reintroduced it (this, along with the Commination Service and the Visitation of the Sick, is one of the unpleasant aspects of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer that make me really regret the sinister coalition in Parliament that obstructed the formal adoption of the 1928 BCP in the House of Commons, which had been approved by the House of Lords and the internal parliamentary structures of the Church of England, and which was much more Anglo-Catholic.
* Compline from the 1914 Episcopal
Book of Offices, which was used with the 1892 and 1928 editions of the Protestant Episcopal
Book of Common Prayer, begins with this (note it says Minister and not Priest, since in fact in both the Church of England and the Episcopal Church, anyone can lead Evening Prayer or Compline and say most of the rest of the Divine Office, the only difference being that only a Priest or Bishop can use certain prayers of absolution following the Confiteor (which is the one that includes the petition for forgiveness “for we have left undone those things we ought to have done, and have done those things we ought not to have done”) the expectation in an Episcopal church is that at a mininumsomeone in some sanctioned ministerial capacity, such as a licensed Reader, or a choirmaster, would preside:
Minister. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Answer. Amen.
Minister. Turn thou us, O God our Saviour;
Answer. And let Thine anger cease from us.
Minister. O God, make speed to save us.
Answer. O Lord, make haste to help us.”
these Preces, which I quite like, as it demonstrates the Orthodox belief shared with many Anglicans, Lutherans and other liturgical Christians that God, being pure love, desireth not the death of a sinner, and therefore His wrath is not like the human passion of wrath, which is a sin, but rather, the wrath of God is the experience of the consuming fire of His love by those who reject it and hate Him; God purifies that which is in opposition to His holiness as a function of His infinite and pure love for us, and if one voluntarily elects to hate God one will experience this purification, and that is the wrath of God - furthermore, the Orthodox additionally believe that Hell is not a creation of God for the intentional torture of sinners, as if God sadistically devices tortures and punishments such as one sees in the nonsensical books “Inferno” and “Purgatorio” of the
Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri (which is important as a work of literature but which unfortunately reflects to some extent actual widespread early Renaissance era eschatological beliefs that resulted from the emergence of Scholastic theology, particularly in the depiction of the Beatific Vision in the third volume “Paradiso” in the same manner in that Left Behind is reflective of actual Premillenial Dispensational theology, both being positions I disagree with), but rather, hellfire would be the experience of God in immediate proximity in the life of the World to Come for those who hate Him, and in order to spare them such a torture, God allows them the Outer Darkness, as an ultimate mercy to the merciless, in which their worst torment is, according to the likes of St. John Chrysostom, a realization of the joy they are eternally missing out on, which is indeed the worst possible torment, but most of them would not change it; a fictional work which is somewhat depressingly realistic is The Great Divorce by CS Lewis which depicts people from Hell being given the chance to enter Heaven but making up excuses as to why the slight inconvenience of going to Heaven is not worth their time; CS Lewis also gave us another very valid observation, “the gates of Hell are locked on the inside.”
** The Divine Liturgy of St. James is also the principle Anaphora (Eucharistic Prayer) of the Syriac Orthodox Church, and one of four in frequent use, and one of
fourteen readily available in English translation, which is already the record (since I think the C of E counting both the 1662 BCP and Common Worship has ten, the Episcopal Church including Enriching Our Worship Vol. 1 and not counting the 1928 and earlier versions of the BCP, which are minor variations on Eucharistic Prayer A of Rite II or the first Eucharistic Prayer of Rite I, has eleven, and the Ethiopian Tewahedo Orthodox Church has thirteen, with the Eastern Orthodox having, not counting the Western Rite liturgies, three in regular service counting the Pre-sanctified Liturgy of St. Gregory, and four more infrequently used including Divine Liturgy of St. James, which is used on the feast of St. James in many parishes in North America on October 23rd and in rotation with the main liturgies of St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom at the New Skete Monastery, the Pre-Sanctified Liturgy of St. James which was recently revived and is occasionally used by ROCOR at their main seminary at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York, and the very seldom used Divine Liturgy of St. Mark (which exists in an 1893 recension very similar to the existing liturgies of St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom), and the even less commonly used Divine Liturgy of St. Peter (which uses the Byzantine synaxis, but as the anaphora it uses a version of the Roman Canon; both of these liturgies were in use by the Russian Old Rite Orthdox living in Turkey under the Ecumenical Patriarchate, before they had to flee to the West and when leaving the country, their ancient service books were confiscated, but a Greek Euchologion with content identical to the Church Slavonic Euchologion they had described was found on Mount Athos, and from that source we have the Divine Liturgy of St. Peter.
This liturgy, like that of St. Mark, could probably be used in some parishes in lieu of the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil or St. John Chrysostom with no one noticing, but in others, the priests read all the prayers aloud, and in some cases they make a point of doing this during the build up to Lent so people can hear the difference between the St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom liturgies aside from the substitution of the hymn of Marian devotion “All of Creation” (which before the recent genocide was in my signature” instead of “It Is Truly Meet.”
However, the Syriac Orthodox exceed even the fifty or so anaphoras of the Maronites (all but six of which have been disused since Vatican II) with a record-setting eighty six Eucharistic prayers, which is quite a large number. I have access to many of them written in Estranglo, but without the text set up for OCR, thus, translating them is too much work for me right now, although I hope to work on that at some point, and if anyone is interested in working with me on it, there does appear to be an automated process, and additionally certain new AI systems do have knowledge of Classical Syriac and also have the ability to orchestrate tasks. So it might not take that much time or money to translate the roughly forty or so that I have access to PDFs of. Additionally I have a complete English translation of a Syriac Orthodox anaphora in addition fo the fourteen one can find on Syriac Orthodox Resources, and a partial translation of a few others that could be combined with the common parts, as most of the anaphoras are identical except for the text surrounding the Kiss of Peace, the Sursum Corda, the Sanctus, the Institution Narrative, the Words of Instituttion and the Epiklesis, but the entire text is provided, and occasionally something else is subtly different. And it is frustrating that there are so many beautiful Eucharistic prayers in existence which are inaccessible except to the small number of people who not only can read or speak Aramaic but who can read Estrangelo text and know the Classical Syriac Dialect (of which I have some knowledge, but not enough to understand all of these manuscripts; trying to do so with my level of Syriac knowledge is akin to that of a web developer attempting to rewrite a core part of the Linux kernel such as the process scheduler.
***
Rubrication refers to the practice of printing liturgical instructions in red ink, which dates back to the very early church and is found in some of the oldest extant liturgical texts, hence the phrase “Read the black,
do the red” commonly heard in liturgical churches. The practice was later adopted by enterprising printers to make Red Letter Bibles in which the words of Jesus Christ in the New Testament (but frustratingly, not other statements made by God elsewhere in the BIble) were printed in red ink. I I would rather rubrication be used as it was historically, for indicating rubrics, and not to delineate those words spoken by Jesus Christ which can carry the problematic implication that they can be contextually separated from the rest of Scripture - no ancient manuscript of the Bible was rubricated in that manner, but instead, ancient manuscripts were beautifully illuminated, and I wish there were more illuminated manuscripts at present, which might then be mass-replicated using our modern printing technology. I myself am considering doing an illuminated manuscript; if anyone is interested in this do let me know.
Of course, to save money, most versions of the Book of Common Prayer including the version of the 1979 BCP on pews in the US simply write rubrics in italics. That said, some editions do use red ink, for example, the famous Standard Editions of the 1892 and 1928 Book of Common Prayer which were designed by the master printer Daniel Berkeley Updike, a PDF recreation of the 1892 version is available here:
If one likes to use an ebook version of the Book of Common Prayer, I strongly suggest this rendering of the even more elegant 1928 edition:
Whereas the PDF scans of the vellum-printed folio of the 1892 edition show exquisite Art Nouveau design (caution, this is a 68 MB PDF file):
http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1892Standard/1892standard.pdf
A Prospectus was created for the 1979 BCP by the master printers of Arrion Press in San Francisco, but was tragically not ordered by the Episcopal Church (they could have sold subscriptions for it for quite a lot of money, which would have offset the printing costs of the 1979 BCP and could have funded many charitable endeavors):
http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1979Prospectus.pdf
However, since all versions of the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer are public domain, and most of the 2019 ACNA BCP is being released as public domain, this can still happen as a means of producing a beautiful prayer book and of funding important Anglican charitable work, for example, contributing to relief efforts for the persecuted Christians in the Middle East, Africa and Pakistan (the Anglican Church of Pakistan is one of the most endangered churches at the moment, along with the Syrian parishes of the Syriac Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Anglican, Latin Rite Catholic and Melkite Greek Catholic churches in the Christian parts of cities and towns such as Damascus, Maaloula, Aleppo, Homs and Latakia.
Additionally, the public domain MMXXIII BCP produced by the Anglican members of my LiturgyWorks group might have a standard edition in the future, produced in print in a standard configuration for charity (normally, this is a modular book which can be adapted for different needs).
Lastly, as a fun little aside, the Church of England printed
Alternative Service Trial Liturgies with very elegant typography in the late 1960s and early 1970s,
Series II and
Series III, that featured rubrics printed in blue ink, which I like to call “
Blubrics.” Or perhaps one might call them Brubrecks in honor of the very talented jazz musician responsible for the classic “Take Five.” Which I will need to do after writing all of this…
