Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

One of the prayers that I think it unfortunate that we lost in the move from traditional language (Rite I) to our contemporary language (Rite II) liturgies is the Prayer of Humble Access.  It was written by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer for a 1548 collection of prayers and is one of the earliest pieces of our tradition.  It’s disturbing to the modern ear — and especially to the modern heart.  

We still pray it at 7:45 though:

“We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.”

What I appreciate about it most is that it, in no way, tries to make you feel good about yourself.  It’s not therapy.  It, in no way, tries to play down or diminish what you are about to do in receiving Christ’s Body and Blood.  This is no mere snack with Jesus.

I should not say “in no way” because the 1928 Prayer Book had this additional line, “that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood.”

One of the virtues of this prayer is that it asks us to set aside the vanities of our lives and simply come to the Lord ready to receive — not because we have done anything more worthy, more special, more holy, or more important than one who might be reduced to gathering up crumbs under a table.  

The prayer is focused on God and three times mentions the mercy of God and calls him gracious as well.  It’s easy to get caught up in what the prayer says about us — that’s the lamentable modern tendency with any and every thing, isn’t it?  This prayer, however, centers the Communion encounter on who God is, what God does, and then invites us to simply receive that mercy and grace. 

It seems to me that the root of all sin, great and small, is the temptation to believe that we alone matter.  Think about all the sins of our lives:

When we lie, we say only our version of the truth matters.
When we steal, we say only our desires matter.
When we murder, only our life matters.
When we gossip or grumble, only our opinion matters.
When we destroy the environment, only our generation matters.

On and on it goes.  

The Prayer of Humble Access reminds us that, when it comes to the Sacraments, we matter very little.  We are to come as one with nothing and receive everything.  This is the Christian life, the Christian vocation, and the goal of Christian living.  We are to come as those who live, love, and serve for the sake of the world, for the sake of Christ, for the sake of our neighbor.  All the other distractions, vanities, and self-importance that define the rest of our lives must be the things we lay on the Altar to be sacrificed, consecrated, and given up that we might more readily find ourselves given over to grace and formed by mercy — to be signs of grace and sources of mercy to the world. 

In such a schema we must matter only a little bit and only insofar as we are able to take on the life, the love, and the ministry of the one who calls us to evermore dwell in him as he longs to in us.  When we have done that we will have lost nothing and gained everything for we will be able to pray, without hesitation, that we are not worthy.

Fr Robert