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Catechumenal Formation Meets Cosmic Invitation: On the Use of a Litany of Saints at the Great Vigil of Easter
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.” – Hebrews 12:1
The corners of the worship space are dark, but the nave is brilliant with
light from the handheld candles of a hundred worshippers. A large octagonal baptismal
font occupies most of the floor space in the apse. In a few moments, the first
of several adult catechumens will kneel in the water of the font to be showered
with several gallons of additional water, soaking her three times in her
clothes. Afterward, at the Passing of the Peace, white bathrobes and fuzzy
slippers await the newly baptized in the sacristy. But first, even before the
candidates are presented, two singers lead the congregation in chanting a
Litany of Saints. They chant, “Elizabeth and Simeon, Joseph, Monica and Helen,
exemplars in the love and care of children,” and the congregation sings in
response, “Stand here beside us!” They chant, “John the Baptizer, mapmaker of
the Lord’s coming,” and again the congregation responds, “Stand here beside us!”[1]
This goes on for nine minutes … yet it is not mentioned in The Book of
Common Prayer. The ancient practice of calling on saints throughout history
to be present with today’s worshippers, while retained and used periodically in
other denominations, has only recently begun to reappear in Episcopal churches.
When done well, the use of a Litany of Saints in the Great Vigil of Easter need
not burden the liturgy, can be adjusted easily to fit local and theological
exigencies, provides a logical flow from readings to baptisms, is justifiable
within the existing rubrics of the prayer book, and undergirds the training of
catechumens and the formation of the entire congregation.
The celebration of a paschal feast may date all the way back to the first
decades of Christianity,[2] but
the Litany of Saints may have appeared no earlier than the seventh century. The
Catholic Encyclopedia cites its early use in the rogation days, Holy Saturday,
penitential seasons, and various other occasions, including “times of drought,
famine, earthquake, and other calamities.” A litany of saints is used at the
Easter Vigil in the Sarum Rite during the procession to the font.[3] The
Protestant Reformers, “espousing a strong belief in justification by faith,
rejected the mediatory and intercessory role of the saints and therefore purged
the Reformation liturgies of any invocation of the saints.” [4] In
England, Thomas Cranmer kept the Litany of Saints in his early revisions but
did eventually remove it.[5]
The
Great Vigil of Easter is usually the longest-running liturgy of the year. From
the lighting
With
these questions in mind, we turn to the content of various litanies of saints
in current use in several denominations in close liturgical proximity to the
Episcopal Church. Roman Catholic practice is not strictly uniform: one litany used
in the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, provides some background on the
variety, naming three forms: “(a) the complete (solemn) text, used principally
in the rogation processions and public intercessions; (b) abbreviated texts,
based on the first and used in the Easter Vigil and in the revised rites of the
Roman Pontifical incorporated in a Mass; and (c) a short form used in
the rites with the dying.”[7]
This particular litany is typical in that it divides the saints into
categories: Prophets and Fathers of Our Faith, Apostles and Followers of
Christ, Martyrs, Bishops and Doctors, Priests and Religious, and a few Lay
saints. Some of the names listed may not be commonly known even in Roman Catholic
circles, including such martyrs as Isaac Jogues, Peter Chanel, and Maria
Goretti. Special instructions show that “the names of other saints may be added
in the appropriate place in the Litany.”[8] So
even in Roman Catholic practice, variety is generously permitted. The common
response to the invocation of these saints is, “Pray for us.”
Some may be surprised to learn that Evangelical
Lutheran Worship contains a Litany of the Saints, but each of these saints appears
in Scripture, and the word “saint” is not employed in the chanted text itself.
The Lutheran version begins not with the saints of the early Christian church,
but with Abraham and Sarah. As many women as men are named throughout salvation
history, from Deborah and Esther to Martha and Phoebe. In the portion of the
litany in which specific saints are named, the congregational response is, “Thanks
be to God.”[9] Meanwhile,
the Church of England’s “Thanksgiving for the Holy Ones of God” is recommended
especially for use “at Morning or Evening Prayer at All Saints’ tide. It may
also be used at services of Christian initiation in procession to or from the
font.”[10]
This relatively brief litany, like the Lutheran litany, begins with Abraham and
Sarah, but it continues through the Bible and into the history of the church,
naming in quick succession Ambrose, the Cappadocian Fathers, Julian of Norwich,
and many others. Perhaps most notable is its juxtaposition of “Thomas Cranmer
and all who reform the Church of God” with “Thomas More and all who hold firm
to its continuing faith.”[11]
With a
litany of saints approved for use in neighboring denominations and even by the
Church of England, it is surprising that no such thing exists even for optional
use in the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer or in any supplement
approved by General Convention. Yet some Episcopal churches have gone out of
their way to adapt litanies of saints to their local purposes. One such litany
is available from episcopalnet.org, a website for “traditional Episcopalianism
in the 21st century.” A hub for resources such as the 1928 Book
of Common Prayer and The Hymnal 1940, this site also provides a
litany of saints clearly based on Roman Catholic tradition, complete with the
congregational response, “Pray for us.”[12] Socially
progressive congregations might find this particular litany difficult to
justify due to its traditional language (“thees” and “thous”) and lack of gender-inclusive
forms. But other creative litanies have sprung up in recent years. The Church
of St. Stephen and the Incarnation in Washington, D.C., uses a litany first
composed by William MacKaye, former religion editor of the Washington Post.
This litany borrows images from other sources and has been edited for local use
in various other ways. It employs a congregational response that avoids any
accusation of saint worship but goes far beyond mere remembrance: “Stand here
beside us!”[13]
It is unclear whether this congregation uses the litany at the Easter Vigil.
But at the Feast of All Saints, “the litany is chanted in procession. The
procession moves from station to station around the church during the singing
of the verses of ‘For all the saints.’”[14]
Among the saints whose presence is sought are “Catherine of Siena, the scourge
of popes … Gandhi the mahatma, reproach to the churches … Das Hammarskjold the
bureaucrat … Martin Luther, who could do no other.”[15]
MacKaye’s
setting as edited by St. Stephen and the Incarnation is the source for Dent
Davidson’s musical setting,[16]
though Davidson has reduced the number of names somewhat. A male and female
singer alternate lines of the chant, which begins a cappella. The choir
begins to hum a drone at “Peter of the keys, denier of the Lord,” and at “Bach
and Mozart, Britten and Duke Ellington,” a steady drumbeat begins. As the chant
progresses, the choir adds more and more harmony to the congregational
response, and the rhythms of the chant become jazzier. The section devoted to
martyrs is extensive and dramatic, and space is provided for a reading, over the
choir’s drone, for the church’s annual necrology at the Feast of All Saints.
This leads into the final section, in which the choir’s rhythms grow even more
complex. The chanters invoke “Holy Mary, unmarried mother” and, finally, Jesus
himself. All told, Davidson’s litany runs about nine minutes in length.[17] A
congregation that appreciates the power of this setting may well find it to be
nine minutes well spent in the course of two and a half to three hours.
The
decision of which litany to use, and whether and how to adapt it, is very
important and must rely at least partially on parish and diocesan customs,
priorities, and theological distinctions. The Episcopal Church is not subject
to the limitations of the Lutherans to saints in scripture or to the Roman
Catholics’ use only of saints formally canonized by the magisterium. But neither
is it advisable to use every name in Holy Women, Holy Men, and many
liturgists may feel that it is inappropriate to include faithful non-Christians
such as Gandhi. Therefore a liturgist must decide which names to include and
why, feeling free to alter existing litanies or to compose something new.
Can a
Litany of Saints be used at the Great Vigil of Easter without flouting the
rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer? At least two options for placement
are clear. In either place, the Litany of Saints can assist a seamless
liturgical flow and even an amplification of the theology of the Pasch. The
choice between these two options may depend on the architecture of the worship
space, specifically hinging on the question of whether a procession to the font
is desired.
If there
is to be no procession to the font, the Litany of Saints can serve as a musical
response to the final reading in the Liturgy of the Word, from Zephaniah
(3:12-20): “And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change
their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time I will bring
you home … for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of
the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord.”[18]
The Litany of Saints can serve thus not only as a “suitable psalm, canticle or
hymn,”[19]
but also as a bridge to the baptisms. Following the litany, the presider can
still use the appointed collect responding to Zephaniah: “O God of unchangeable
power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful
and sacred mystery …”[20]
The same collect is used on Good Friday to conclude the solemn collects. The
gathering to which Zephaniah refers now stands alongside the gathering of a
great cloud of witnesses at the font, saints who have gone ahead with Jesus
into death, including martyrs who have shared in Christ’s suffering in an
explicit way. The Litany of Saints can also be seen as a musical response to
the entire set of readings: the Evangelical Lutheran version recaps the
highlights of salvation history, from creation to the exodus to the prophets to
the coming of Jesus. After the collect, the presider may immediately go on to
say, “The candidates for Holy Baptism will now be presented.”[21] A
Vigil congregation with no baptisms may also consider using the Litany of
Saints at this point, immediately prior to the renewal of baptismal vows.
According
to one rubric, “If the Presentation of the Candidates does not take place at
the font, then before or during the petitions (page 305), the ministers,
candidates, and sponsors go to the font for the Thanksgiving over the Water. If
the movement to the font is a formal procession, a suitable psalm … or a hymn
or anthem, may be sung.”[22]
The Litany of Saints can be used as a suitable anthem: indeed, this is its
recommended use in the Church of England.[23]
In this case, the petitions, which would otherwise be sung in procession, can
take place upon the candidates’ arrival at the font. In this way, we are asking
the saints to pray for the candidates along with us. One consideration in this
case is the length of the Litany of Saints: it must be understood that no
procession to the font will take nearly as much time as the litany does.
Having
assessed the content of various litanies of saints and options for placement,
we can assess their use theologically in the context of the Vigil. Liturgist
Derek Olsen writes that the Litany of Saints, “while not sanctioned by the
prayer book, reflects an organic understanding and application of the baptismal
covenant, and makes a crucial move towards communicating our baptismal
ecclesiology.”[24]
The catechumens are connected not just to a group of people who have died, but also
to the lives they led as Christians. Olsen continues:
The
inclusion of the litany of saints directly after the baptismal vows holds up
before the eyes of the whole community fellow baptized believers recognized not
for their ordination status or because of their historical importance but
because they offer us examples of a life lived in conformity to the vows that
we have just taken once again upon ourselves. They give us concrete, incarnate
pictures of the goal of baptized life … When we ask for the prayers of the
saints, we make a strong statement about the nature of baptism and the
life-in-Christ into which we are subsequently drawn: we affirm that the company
of the baptized still includes those who have gone before and that they
continue to share the same life-in-Christ and participate in the continuing
ministry of the church as the baptized whom we see around us.[25]
This
speaks to the possibility of using such a litany at the Feast of All Saints, as
St. Stephen and the Incarnation does, but why the Easter Vigil? In an email to
me on November 14, 2013, the Rev. Poulson Reed, rector of All Saints Church in
Phoenix, wrote:
The
Vigil’s theology is rich with the sense of the great cloud of witnesses, that ‘this
is the night’ when the Church around the world and through all time gathers to
tell the stories of our salvation and rejoice in Christ’s resurrection. It is a
night in which we recall ‘that wonderful and sacred mystery’ the Church, in
heaven and on earth. Particularly at a parish called ‘All Saints,’ the Litany
of Saints reminds us in the most important service of the whole year that we
are always supported by the communion of saints, this fellowship of love and
prayer. It is into that fellowship and communion that we have been baptized, as
members of Christ’s Body.
To say
that the saints are joining us at the font is an exercise in what Adam Seligman
and colleagues call “ritual as a subjunctive.” [26] For
them, ritual is “an endless work of creating a subjunctive world in overt
tension with the world of lived experience.”[27]
In Christianity, this world is the Kingdom of God, and in the sacraments of communion
and baptism, we imagine a world in which the saints join with us in
celebration. The use of a litany of saints can be a powerful imaginative tool
in helping reveal the Kingdom not only to those about to be baptized, but also to
the entire congregation.
Another
lesson this reveals is the inability of Christians to separate themselves from
the world around them. Gail Ramshaw outlines twelve proposals demonstrating the
effect that Christian worship can have, through its worshippers, on the rest of
the world. Her Proposal #3 reads: “Participation in a weekly gathering reminds
us that the individual does not, cannot, ought not, exist alone.”[28]
Evelyn Underhill puts it this way: “It is plain that the living experience of
this whole Church, visible and invisible, past and present, stretched out in
history and yet poised on God, must set the scene for Christian worship; not
the poor little scrap of which any one soul, or any sectional group, is
capable.”[29]
This is an antidote to Western culture’s radical overemphasis on individuality.
According to Alexander Schmemann:
The
purpose of worship is to constitute the Church, precisely to bring what is ‘private’
into the new life, to transform it into what belongs to the Church, i.e.,
shared with all in Christ. In addition its purpose is always to express the
Church as the unity of that Body whose Head is Christ. And, finally, its
purpose is that we should always ‘with one mouth and one heart’ serve God,
since it was only such worship which God commanded the Church to offer.[30]
At the same time, the Litany of
Saints stresses the “in but not of” nature of Christian community. Richard Norris,
in reflecting on the writings of Clement, concludes that Christianity “is another
society, living a new and different sort of life, which one enters only through
a personal revolution … and which for that reason is inevitably set apart in
its world.”[31]
Through the church, God calls people into a life lived in tension between
immersion and separation. J. Neil Alexander explores this tension:
We have rediscovered that becoming a Christian
is less something one does than it is something one survives and reckons with
on a daily basis throughout our life … The exigencies of the end of the twentieth
century have called us, indeed forced us, to rediscover what it means to be the
Church, to offer a living witness to Jesus Christ, and to embrace life in
response to the Gospel in a context that is largely hostile to the Gospel’s
demands for justice and mercy.[32]
The
saints, in their varied stories and legends, offer endless witness to the life
into which baptism calls every one of us. Derek Olsen writes, “The
saints then are not mediators through whom prayers must be channeled in order
to reach God; they’re fellow voices just as my priest, parish, and family pray
for me and I for them. In naming the saints, though, I align my prayers with
theirs, and reinforce my own commitment to live a life like theirs which is
marked by service in the image of Christ.”[33]
In its
use at the Great Vigil of Easter, the Litany of Saints teaches catechumens and
the entire congregation about the life of the baptized while simultaneously
amplifying the theology of the entire Triduum. It demonstrates our ancestors’
dedication to Christian service as exemplified on Maundy Thursday. The invocation
of the martyrs, accompanied by the use of a collect most recently heard on Good
Friday, underscores the indivisibility of death and resurrection while reminding
Easter worshippers of the saints’ acts of service to the world around
them, strengthening the connection between the mission of Christ and the
mission of the Church. The newly baptized have become a part of the family of
those who take up their cross for the sake of the world, just as Jesus did. Finally,
the saints also exemplify the eschatological gathering together of all the
faithful through the Paschal mystery of the Resurrection. Far from diluting or
distracting from the common theology of the three parts of the Triduum, the
Litany of Saints strengthens and upholds all of them.[34] In
their baptismal vows, the catechumens take hold of the dedication of the saints
and make it their own. From their baptism, they go on the Eucharistic table and
bring all of us with them. Presumably, the saints we have invited to our
celebration join us there as well.
End Notes
[1]
This practice reflects my experience of Dent Davidson’s A Litany of All the
Saints at St. Thomas Church in Medina, WA, at the Great Vigil of Easter in the
years 2006-2008.
[2]
James W. Farwell, This Is the Night: Suffering, Salvation, and the Liturgies
of Holy Week (New York: T&T Clark, 2005), 39.
[3]
Frederick E. Warren, trans., The Sarum Missal in English, Part I
(London: A.R. Mowbray & Co., Ltd., 1913), 277-280.
[4]
Berard L. Marthaler, exec. ed., New Catholic Encyclopedia, Second Edition, Vol.
8 (Washington, D.C.: Thomson Gale, 2003), 601.
[5]
Ibid.
[6]
Phillip Tovey, ed., Introducing Times and Seasons 2: The Easter Cycle
(Cambridge, England: Grove Books Limited, 2007), 17.
[7]
“Litany of the Saints for Solemn Intercessions,” accessed November 20, 2013, http://www.dio.org/uploads/files/Catholicism_Project/Episode_Guides/Episode_8/OWC8extra01_LitanySaintsSolemn.pdf.
[8]
Ibid.
[9]
Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2006),
#237.
[10]
Church of England, All Saints to Advent, 558-560, accessed November 20,
2013, http://www.churchofengland.org/media/41160/tsallstsadv.pdf.
[11]
Ibid.
[12]
“Litany of the Saints,” accessed November 20, 2013, http://www.episcopalnet.org/TRACTS/LitanyOfTheSaints.html.
[13]
“For the Feast of All Saints,” accessed November 21, 2013, http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/62.html.
[14]
Ibid.
[15]
Ibid.
[16]
Dent Davidson, A Litany of All the Saints, score in PDF form, emailed to
me directly by the composer in 2011.
[17]
Ibid.
[18]
The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), 291.
[19]
Ibid., 288.
[20]
Ibid., 291.
[21]
Ibid., 301.
[22]
Ibid., 312.
[23]
Church of England, All Saints to Advent, 558, accessed November 20,
2013, http://www.churchofengland.org/media/41160/tsallstsadv.pdf.
[24]
Derek Olsen, “More on the Baptismal Litany of the Saints,” haligweorc,
December 20, 2012, http://haligweorc.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/more-on-the-baptismal-litany-of-the-saints/.
[25]
Ibid.
[26]
Adam B. Seligman, Robert P. Weller, Michael J. Puett, and Bennett Simon, Ritual
and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity (New York: Oxford
University Press, Inc., 2008) 20.
[27]
Seligman et al., 28.
[28]
Gail Ramshaw, Christian Worship: 100,000 Sundays of Symbols and Rituals
(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2009), 203.
[29]
Evelyn Underhill, Worship (New York: Harper & Row, 1957), 85.
[30]
Alexander Schmemann, “The Task and Method of Liturgical Theology,” in Dwight
Vogel, Primary Sources of Liturgical Theology: A Reader (Collegeville,
MN: The Liturgical Press, 2000), 60.
[31]
Richard Norris, “The Result of the Loss of Baptismal Discipline,” in Michael W.
Merriman, ed., The Baptismal Mystery and the Catechumenate (New York:
The Church Hymnal Corporation, 1990), 29.
[32]
J. Neil Alexander, “Christian Initiation: Ritual Patterns and the Future Shape
of Revision,” in Ruth A. Meyers, ed., A Prayer Book for the 21st
Century (New York: The Church Hymnal Corporation), 18-19.
[33]
Olsen.
[34]
For more specifics on the “lateral juxtaposition of the Triduum liturgies,” see
Farwell, 51-61.
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