Common prayer
by Charlotte Gauthier, Artillery Row:
Britain, and her monarchy, have a language fitted for times of joy and sorrow alike — so why does the Church of England make such poor use of our traditional liturgy?
Following the recent announcement that King Charles has been diagnosed with a form of cancer, the Church of England communications team offered this decaffeinated modern-language version of a prayer originally taken from the service for the visitation of the sick:
Father of mercies,
grant to Charles our King
comfort and sure confidence in you,
and keep him in perpetual peace and safety,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Some commentators noted the curious omission of the original prayer’s request that God would ‘look down from heaven, behold, visit, and relieve’ the King of his illness. Comfort and confidence, peace and safety are desirable gifts, but so of course is healing. (Other faiths got right what the CofE got wrong: Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis led Jewish communities in praying that the Lord would grant His Majesty a refuah sheleima — an “absolute and total recovery” — from his illness.)
Contrast the CofE comms team’s anaemic offering with the rich language of the Book of Common Prayer’s “Prayer for the King’s Majesty” — which also, crucially, includes an explicit prayer for the Sovereign’s health:
O Lord our heavenly Father,
high and mighty, King of kings, Lord of lords, the only Ruler of princes,
who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth;
most heartily we beseech thee with thy favour
to behold our most gracious Sovereign Lord, King Charles;
and so replenish him with the grace of thy Holy Spirit,
that he may alway incline to thy will, and walk in thy way:
endue him plenteously with heavenly gifts;
grant him in health and wealth long to live;
strengthen him that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies;
and finally, after this life, he may attain everlasting joy and felicity;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The difference between the two is not merely aesthetic, sumptuous as the Prayer Book language is. Words matter. The Bible teaches that God spoke creation into existence, and that the eternally begotten Word “was made flesh and dwelt among us” in the person of Jesus Christ. When we pray, we return words to their ultimate source — in thanksgiving, in petition, in intercession. What conception of God does the Church give the general public when it prays in the dull and flaccid words of modern corporate communications?
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