Monday, May 14, 2012

Prince Charles on Liturgy...and the Weather

Recently the Prince of Wales opened the exhibition "Royal Devotion: Monarchy and the Book of Common Prayer" at the Lambeth Palace Library. In his speech the heir to the throne, who has long been known as a defender of the Church of England's traditional liturgy and is the Patron of the Prayer Book Society, eloquently defended the use of the classic language of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, rejecting the notion that it is not sufficiently "accessible" to modern Christians.

"As somebody who was brought up on that prayer book - day after day, year after year, Sunday after Sunday, school worship after school worship, evening prayer, communion, everything - those words do sink into your soul in some extraordinary way," he told a group at Lambeth Palace.
"One of the things I have never understood is why there is such an anxiety about accessibility when in fact, if we think about it, we all get older and we are not all 18 or 16 forever.
"Even though you may not understand those words at that age, it is only when you get a bit older and you have lived through life and had all sorts of experiences and you have suffered, and you have survived perhaps, that you then realise just how valuable those forms of words are, just how valuable the sense of the sacred is in our lives.
"And how, when you are up against it, and you have terrible moments to endure or overcome, whether it is being in war or faced with some appalling difficulty, or even facing death, then those words, those wonderful words, come back to you, if you have been lucky enough to have absorbed them over your lifetime.
"So I do think that sense of the beauty of holiness is something of enormous importance."


If only more contemporary Anglican clergy demonstrated such an understanding of the importance and value of tradition!  HRH will make an excellent Supreme Governor of the Church someday.

On a lighter note, about a week later the Prince surprised BBC Scotland viewers by reading the weather forecast, which he did with great aplomb and humour:








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