vain repetitions

Xeno.of.athens said:

The King James Version is the Bible translated by the Church of England, commissioned by King James I of England. In the Church of England, the Lord's Prayer is recited as part of the liturgy.

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Indeed all prayers are recited and several consist of repetitions, for example, the Litany.

Only vain prayers can be repeated. And we know from manuscript evidence, which trumps private revelation, that the early church was in fact liturgical, since we have first century, second century, third century and fourth century liturgical texts. The idea of the aliturgical church appears to have originated among the Anabaptists.

Additionally, the repetition of non vain prayers is extremely important. Within Orthodoxy the Jesus Prayer is highly regarded. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have Mercy on Me, a Sinner.

The Liturgist said:

And we know from manuscript evidence, which trumps private revelation, that the early church was in fact liturgical, since we have first century, second century, third century and fourth century liturgical texts.

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Lolol,.......

Everyone wants some sort of validation to their church building.

Look,.... the only thing that those Jewish believers might have followed outside of just the leading of The Holy Spirit, would have been some Jewish practices maybe, but GOD did away with that by Acts 15 once He turn unto the Gentiles.

The earliest source of Christianity is scripture. Beyond that the early church fathers,.... maybe.

ARBITER01 said:

Lolol,.......

Everyone wants some sort of validation to their church building.

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I thought that the invisible Body is as the very wind which blows to and fro and is comprised of invisible bodies which are dead yet are indwelled by the One True Living God.

I thought that gatherings of the universal invisible body are called churches or parishes.

Why is your laughter received with a self perceived air of doctrinal superiority?

Could you please help me not sense that you are being confrontational in a manner that is far from gentle in spirit?

I think the notion that praying the Lord's Prayer every sunday is "vain" is an extreme position, even among Protestants. Most churches I've been to have the Lord's Prayer as part of every service, and I've been to a wide variety of denominations.

FireDragon76 said:

I think the notion that praying the Lord's Prayer every sunday is "vain" is an extreme position, even among Protestants. Most churches I've been to have the Lord's Prayer as part of every service, and I've been to a wide variety of denominations.

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@The Liturgist
Additionally, the repetition of non vain prayers is extremely important. Within Orthodoxy the Jesus Prayer is highly regarded. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have Mercy on Me, a Sinner.



My 2 cents: Yes I have seen incredible abuse of this passage of Scripture among American Evangelicals. First of all, repetitions in prayer is Biblical....see Ps. 136 for twenty six repetitions. Abuse from this Scripture are those AE who think the liturgy is a "vain" repetition until pointed out that this verse is about prayer not the liturgy.

Jesus in his preaching on the Sermon on the Mount mentions "pagans" who pray with repetitions. Just who are these pagans Jesus' is referring to? We don't know.

Therefore, we have to make a distinction between what was knowable in Jesus' day over against what is knowable about this verse today. We just don't have enough information to make a fully informed judgement what a "vain" repetition is...much less who this pagan religion was.

My theory about this verse is probably close to the modern meaning of a mantra. A word that is repeated endlessly to the point of being meaningless. But that is only a guess.

Additionally, when we do not have a parallel passage of Scripture for any verse, extreme care needs to be maintained so we don't falsely apply the passage to modern life. Unfortunately, there are some American Evangelicals that willy nilly apply this passage of Scripture to anything that fits their fancy.

Xeno.of.athens said:

But when the Lord himself says "This, then, is how you should pray" was he encouraging Christians to pray the prayer he gives to them?

This, then, is how you should pray: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. '​

(Matthew 6:9-13 NIV )

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I don't believe the Lord was advocating for a particular prayer, but rather, showing the way one is to pray with the proper motivations and with the right spirit. We acknowledge God, we acknowledge HIs holiness, we pray for His will, His Kingdom, and look forward to that Kingdom, making all that we do preparatory for that event. We also make grace the center of our relationship both with God and with others. We do not pray selfishly to destroy others, but pray for God's justice to be done with mercy and with patience.

RandyPNW said:

We do not pray selfishly to destroy others, but pray for God's justice to be done with mercy and with patience.

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This is a rare time I agree with you. Cross reference Matthew 23:23 But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.

This also comes close to what Jesus says....“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. (Mark 8:34)

Christians are to endure suffering in patience as we seek God's justice tempered by His example of mercy for us.

Your quoted text serves as a great example of how Christians should use political rhetoric in the wake of 7/13.

Just one reason , that it seems extreme ,is for the following reasons .

# 1 It is for Israel ?

# 2 Are you WAITING for Christ Kingdom to COME ?

# 3 Are praying for your daily bread ?

# 4 In verse 13 what EVIL is coming into their lives .

I say it will happen to those Jew that live during the GREAT TRIBULATION !!

san p

Ain't Zwinglian said:

We don't know.

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If you’ve ever read surviving texts from various Pagan religious traditions such as the Mithraic mysteries, and compared them with the use of mantras in the Pagan religions of India, while we may not know the exacty answer with total certainty, it’s a pretty easy guess, especially compared to some of the true “hard sayings” of our Lord or other scriptural texts where even the Early Church Fathers did not resolve with even a firm plurality opinion on one definitive answer or explanation. For example, did the Witch of Endor make contact with the Holy Prophet Samuel? Or with a demon impersonating the prophet? Or was it all a charade, as so much of the occult tends to be? The Fathers seem evenly split so this remains for the Orthodox at least a realm of theologoumemna, that is to say, a realm for legitimate differences in theological opinion.

The Liturgist said:

theologoumemna

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Now that is a word I had to look up. And I definitively will use it in the future.

The Liturgist said:

If you’ve ever read surviving texts from various Pagan religious traditions such as the Mithraic mysteries

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Never. I will let the pro's like you synthesize the historic data for us here at CF.

Ain't Zwinglian said:

Now that is a word I had to look up. And I definitively will use it in the future.


Never. I will let the pro's like you synthesize the historic data for us here at CF.

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I read them so as to compare them with Christianity, and it serves as a kind of apophatic liturgiology. Orthodoxy relies heavily on apophatic theology, the use of the via negativa to get a sense of what the ineffable and inscrutable Divine Essence is by relying on scriptural revelation to be able to assert what God is not. And likewise we can apply this approach to comparative theology: we can say what Christianity is kataphatically, using the Creeds, but likewise the focus is made sharper when we look at and acquire some understanding of other religions and also counterfeit churches. Indeed I have what you call a day-mare about fake Orthodox chapels which have an iconostasis and all the apparent trappings but are devoid of grace and not part of the actual Orthodox Christian faith. In Orthodoxy this fear is more conceptual at present, but in Confessional Lutheranism I would expect you feel this as an oppressive reality, since most Lutheran parishes have fallen under the control of ecclesiastical bodies which reject even the most foundational aspects of the Christian religion, kyrie eleison.

Ain't Zwinglian said:

Now that is a word I had to look up. And I definitively will use it in the future.


Never. I will let the pro's like you synthesize the historic data for us here at CF.

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Hmm you know perhaps that should be my new signature. “If you can understand this post without referring to a theological dictionary, or a work of dogmatic theology or church history, I haven’t done my job properly.”

I jest of course, but there are those who would have me change and write in a different manner, and who have complained to me about my style, ad nauseum. But I have invincible confidence in the ability of members, aided by search engines, online libraries of ebooks, and other tools provided by the web, if they so desire, but which certainly are not required, to comprehend my writing if they are so inclined. And if I am to write on a complex subject, as St. Gregory Palamas did when defending St. Symeon the New and the hesychasts who followed in the ancient tradition, which predates even St. Anthony the Great, but which St. Symeon had in the previous century revitalized among the Hagiorite monks, it requires a certain complexity of prose. My audience is not the novices or inquirers CS Lewis wrote for in Mere Christianity but rather immensely gifted and learned people people, most of whom are more knowledgeable and capable than I am, such as yourself or @MarkRohfrietsch or @prodromos or @dzheremi , all of whom I look a bit of a dunce compared to, to a much greater extent than I would prepare to admit, and I am also very busy. i think it was Pascal who wrote an apology for writing a long letter because he lacked the time to write a short one.

The Liturgist said:

i think it was Pascal who wrote an apology for writing a long letter because he lacked the time to write a short one.

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That sounds like my wife when she was at university. She had no problem writing. The difficulty was getting it down under the word limit given for the assignment, which takes a lot more skill.
In contrast to my wife, I can't write an essay to save my life.

prodromos said:

That sounds like my wife when she was at university. She had no problem writing. The difficulty was getting it down under the word limit given for the assignment, which takes a lot more skill.
In contrast to my wife, I can't write an essay to save my life.

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Well what your writing lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality, and specifically in those qualities which those of us who aspire to piety appreciate and seek to cultivate.

The Liturgist said:

Hmm you know perhaps that should be my new signature. “If you can understand this post without referring to a theological dictionary, or a work of dogmatic theology or church history, I haven’t done my job properly.”

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Hahaha. That's brilliant. Does it still count if we need the dictionary to remind us how to spell it, rather than what the definition is? I'm sure I've used theologoumemna somewhere in the thousands of posts I've made here, but I'm willing to bet I didn't spell it right, at least not on the first try. As the saying goes, it's all Greek to me!

The Liturgist said:

I jest of course, but there are those who would have me change and write in a different manner, and who have complained to me about my style, ad nauseum.

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When I have gotten similar complaints around here in the past, I've answered that of course my posts are overly long; I'm Coptic Orthodox -- everything we do takes forever.

The Liturgist said:

My audience is not the novices or inquirers CS Lewis wrote for in Mere Christianity but rather immensely gifted and learned people people, most of whom are more knowledgeable and capable than I am, such as yourself or @MarkRohfrietsch or @prodromos or @dzheremi , all of whom I look a bit of a dunce compared to, to a much greater extent than I would prepare to admit, and I am also very busy. i think it was Pascal who wrote an apology for writing a long letter because he lacked the time to write a short one.

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This is overly kind. I want to reply as the great bishop HG Severus al Ashmunein did in the preamble to his Lamp of the Intellect that if there is error (in writing or thinking), it is my own grievous fault, but if there is truth, then it is not us who speak, but the Holy Spirit speaking through us, but I fear that would be taken as quite presumptuous. Suffice it to say that we should all want it to be this way, even in our little interactions on this message board, so hopefully we can follow in his line of thinking here. It is the Lord, after all, Who is responsible for all good things. Of our own selves, we can do nothing.

prodromos said:

That sounds like my wife when she was at university. She had no problem writing. The difficulty was getting it down under the word limit given for the assignment, which takes a lot more skill.
In contrast to my wife, I can't write an essay to save my life.

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Hahaha. I sympathize with your wife here. My university master's thesis, on the use of the Coptic language in the modern Coptic Orthodox liturgy, lacks a suitable conclusion even now (9 years after being successfully defended, somehow) due to my having run up against the page limit that I was definitely well aware of for the master's thesis at my institution, without suitable time to go back and edit before the entire thing was due in its 'final' form. I was, of course, rightly nailed to wall on this fact during my rather nerve-wracking defense, but at the same time was told that the subject itself was esoteric enough that they (the committee) understood how difficult it would be to bring everything together in a satisfactory way while still respecting the limits of the format. Sort of an admission that I didn't do it right, but for understandable reasons, I guess? Hahaha. It haunts me everytime I get a notification from Academia.edu (sort of like the academic version of LinkedIn) saying "So-and-So from the University of Such-and-Such has read your paper." I want to add some sort of note to my page there to please not read this thing, as it's not technically finished, but I think after 9 years that would be completely pointless. I don't even run my own page there (it's automatically filled-in according to credential, study area, etc.), so I guess it'll just be there forever, like an albatross around my neck. Hahaha.

dzheremi said:

Does it still count if we need the dictionary to remind us how to spell it, rather than what the definition is?

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Nah, for many of the words the correct Latinization is debated anyway. Is it the Synaxarion or the Synaxarium? The Copts like you spell it the former way in your service books, whereas Eastern Orthodox service books usually go for the latter, despite the fact you never hear of a “Pentecostarium” or an “Horologium” et cetera. For that matter, is it St. Epiphanius or St. Epiphanios who wrote the Panarion or Panarium? Is it St. Gregory Nazianzus or St. Gregorios the Theologian? Is it Mar Aphrem or Mar Efrem or Mor Ephrem or Mor Aphrem or St. Ephraim the Syrian or Hagios Ephraim? And is it St. Ephraim the Syrian or St. Ephraim the Harp of the Spirit? We could go on, ad nauseum and almost literally ad infinitum. Indeed perhaps that’s what the devil and demons and their followers in the Lake of Fire are forced to do by the menacing flame-sword wielding cherubim, which is to recite all possible permutations of all the saints in Heaven, which is something the saints in Heaven do gladly along with a myriad of other activities, singing litanies of the saints like the Litany of Loreto, or the litany in the Coptic Orthodox liturgy (I love when it comes to the Gregories; there is a priest here in Los Angeles, Fr. Raphael Hanna, and it was either he or the bishop Metropolitan Serapion who in 2013, before he was promoted to Metropolitan, recorded for Epiphany a divine liturgy in which they enumerated the saints, “St. Gregory the Wonderworker, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Gregory the Armeeeeeeeeeenian”; I love the flowery melismatic quality of Tasbeha (which I must inform for the sorry souls who have not, like you and I, shared the pleasure of the Coptic Orthodox divine liturgy*, is the proper name for the traditional system of Coptic liturgical chant and hymnody. The Coptic liturgy blurs the line as to where chant ends and hymns begin, which is good, because I don’t like it where this line is particularly hard. I particularly dislike how in Church Slavonic based churches like my own OCA, we tend to chant the Hours and other parts of the Divine Office in near-monotone, using an annoying melody, whereas the Greeks and Antiochians with Byzantine Chant, and the Syriac Orthodox with their hymnography and chant from the Beth Gazo, which like the Eastern Orthodox systems of music and also traditional Western church music such as Gregorian Chant, English plainchant and Ambrosian Chant, is divided into eight modes (technically Gregorian Chant has a ninth mode).

* Even in my case, and I hope in yours also, the rare treat of the Divine Liturgy of St. Cyril with the Syrian Fraction (which is aptly named since that is the fraction prayer always used in the Syriac Orthodox Eucharistic Liturgy, which is called the Qurbono Qadisho, or in India where a more classical dialect of Syriac is used liturgically, the Qurbana Qadisha; I think the Maronites also call their mass the Qorbono (they seem to not use the “u” so Husoyo becomes Hosoyo and so on, which suggests that in their pronounciation of West Syriac they may have dropped an additional vowel, which would be bad, since the reduction from seven to five vowels is known to annoy Assyrians from Iraq, most of whom still speak Aramaic in the vernacular, and there is a slightly different Syriac Orthodox liturgical tradition centered around Tikrit, but my efforts to determine the extent to which it differs other than in wearing a fez-like headgear by the Archbishop of Mosul and other Iraqi bishops, including Patriarch Mor Ignatius Zakka Iwas, memory eternal, rather than the turban worn in Syria and elsewhere, have not made much progress thus far, but I know it exists, and the difference may be down to hymnody, but it is also endangered, since the Indian churches standardized on the liturgical books from Damascus, which I believe were printed for many years for the Syriac Orthodox by Roman Catholic missionaries seeking to make ecumenical inroads; a lot of Eastern and Oriental Orthodox liturgical books were historically printed both by Orthodox and Roman Catholic printers in Venice, during the era of the Otttoman Empire, but I digress),

At any rate, this combination of the ancient Divine Liturgy of St. Cyril** is my favorite liturgical combination that can happen in the Coptic church, along with the Coptic Orthodox service for the consecration of Holy Oil and the general application of Holy Unction on the last day of the Great Lent, which is almost identical to the Eastern Orthodox service for the same, word for word, and sometimes the Eastern Orthodox will light seven wicks into a bowl of oil being consecrated as some Copts do, while other Copts arrange oil lamps in a cruciform pattern, which I particularly love, and it is clear this is the original usage: seven priests, seven wicks or lamps, seven sets of scripture lessons and prayers - it is exquisitely beautiful. Of course the Eastern Orthodox, being Byzantine, cannot help but add a Canon to it, with all odes except ode 2 which is of course used only in the most penitential services, being taken from a reproach of Moses in Deuteronomy*), which is lovely.

** The Divine Liturgy of St, Mark / St. Cyril is I believe the oldest attested liturgy thanks to the Strasbourg Papyrus (it is either it or the Syriac Anaphora of the Apostles according to the recension still used by the Ethiopians, that St. Hippolytus the Martyr quoted in his very important third century book, the Apostolic Tradition, in Latin, which caused various people to assume that it was the original form of the Roman Mass despite all evidence suggesting that the Roman Canon has always been the primary Eucharistic prayer in Rome (with the other being the prayers of the Mass of the Presanctified, which are shared between the Eastern Orthodox church and the traditional pre-1955 Roman liturgy, as well as derivativees of it, such as English vernacular translations made for use by the most high church of High Church Anglicans, the subset of Anglo Catholics known as “Missal Catholics”, but just as Pope Piux XII ruined the Mass of the Presanctified, Annibale Bugnini made almost as bad of a mistake with Eucharistic Prayer 2, rearranging it so that the epiclesis preceded the Words of Institution like in the Roman Canon, which was a very poor decision, but the even greater mistake made both by Bugnini and by the liturgical Protestants such as the Episcopalians who put that prayer back in the right order (Eucharistic Prayer B in the 1979 BCP)

*** Pope Pius XII ruined the Mass of the Presanctified by completely changing the text, and by eliminating the beautiful traditional vestments such as the folded chasuble worn by deacons, and by changing the liturgical color to bright red (which is supposed to be a joyous color associated with the Holy Apostles, Martyrs, and in the Western Church, the feasts of Palm Sunday and Pentecost - in the Eastern Orthodox church we use green on those days, but do not use green as a default liturgical color, with gold rather serving in this capacity) - from the traditional black used by at the time by Roman Catholics, high church Anglicans, Lutherans and other liturgical Protestants, and not only the Eastern Orthodox, but also by the Coptic and Syriac Orthodox, who use dark vestments, typically black, or in the case of deacon’s stoles in the Coptic Orthodox Church, a very dark shade of blue or indigo, a bit like Sarum Blue in terms of hue, but dark nonetheless, and in stark contrast to the red used the rest of the year - most Coptic stoles sold these days are conveniently reversible, otherwise between that and the alb I don’t think Coptic deacons - technically readers, as you know, but commonly called deacons (I know of only two actual deacons and both are retired and live at St. Anthony’s Monastery near Yermo, California). At any rate, red and black are two opposite extremes in the spectrum of liturgical colors, regardless of liturgical rite, for red is for purely joyful occasions and black for those occasions of extreme solemnity. Indeed, they are almost interchangeable with white and violet, purple or morello, although white is usually used for Feasts of our Lord, and the latter colors are more penitential yet also less mournful than black, especially in the West, although in the East the black color has also come to symbolize the triumphant passion of Christ on the Cross, of his victory over Hades. Christ is Risen from the Dead, Trampling Down Death by Death.

**** Technically the Typikon, the book that contains all of the rubrics governing the order of Eastern Orthodox worship, analogous to the Directory used by the Armenians or books of various names such as the “Ordo” and a few others used by Roman Catholics and other Western Christians, for example, there were in the 19th century two competing Anglo Catholic versions, which could also be used together, the Directorium Anglicanum and Ritual Notes on the Order of Divine Services***** only calls for light or dark vestments, and so dark red or purple or some permutation will occasionally be used, but black became the most popular color; all Orthodox vestment color schemes are matters of informal tradition or canons specific to local churches, and sometimes even among Orthodox who one would think would agree, there is disagreement, for example, white is used on Pascha by ROCOR and most other Orthodox churches, , but the other Orthodox of Russian heritage, including many parishes of the Orthodox Church in America and probably most parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate use red vestments, which are officially reccommended in one guide to Russian Orthodox services for Pascha, although white is still the color changed into from black at the Paschal Divine Liturgy on Holy Saturday, and is also worn at Paschal Matins, before another change of vestments and paraments is accomplished while the congregation processes around the church, this time from white to red

***** The former work is attributed to INSERT while the latter is ascribed “To the editors of The Order of Divine Services &c &c &c” which reflects the very real persecution that was experienced by Anglo Catholics in the late 19th and early 20th century, who faced arrest for the unspeakable crime of wearing a chasuble, all while running charitable operations which were rivaled only by those of the Salvation Army, and also setting up industries to support the poor of South London and East London, such as chandlers to make candles for liturgical use, and other companies specializing in liturgical furniture, vestments, paraments and liturgical supplies, which gave jobs to impoverished people who needed them to survive, also, unlike their colleagues form the Salvation Army, or the clergy of the Roman Catholics, who by the end of the 19th century no longer faced any civil disabilities owing to their choice of Roman Catholicism as their religion, but at rate, apparently being Anglican and wearing a chasuble, despite the fact that as pointed out by Rev. Percy Dearmer, who pointed out that not only was this legal, but probably mandatory, in the very excellent manual The Parson’s Handbook, due to the Ornaments Rubric which was the basis for persecuting Anglo Catholics actually was farcical, for it permitted and arguably required vestments as worn during the reign of King Edward VI, during whose reign the chasuble was still very much in use, at least initially. By the way, I think every priest of a liturgical church ought to read The Parson’s Handbook, even if it is specific to Anglicanism and unfortunately in its technical aspects dated, since one can tragically no longer assume the presence of a boys’ choir in an Anglican church, because its elegant prose inspires one to think about liturgical beauty and liturgical aesthetics and to want to write the same type of work for one’s own liturgical tradition. Specifically Rev. Dearmer was at pains to differentiate between the authentic English liturgical patrimony (especially of the Sarum RIte) and the various Romanizations embraced by Anglo Catholics on the incorrect assumption that what was current on the continent and in Roman Catholic churches in the United Kingdom, that is to say, the Tridentine Mass standardized since the Council of Trent around the uses then current in Rome, which were themselves a hybrid of the ancient Roman liturgy and parts of the Gallican Rite. He was also opposed to certain 19th century assumptions about the Sarum Rite which he argued were unfounded, for example, the belief that Sarum Blue was a different color from violet; on this point I think the jury is still out as to whether or not the blue color popularized in the 19th century and adopted by many Protestant denominations for use in Advent, which does not bother me as an Orthodox, since Advent is an inherently Mariological and Angelogical season, and in the Orthodox Church the color blue is used to represent the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Bodiless Powers, that is to say, the Angels (it sees some use to this extent in the West, particularly in Spanish and Latin American churches). Now for some reason most Orthodox parishes seem to wear red during the six sundays of our Nativity Fast, but nonetheless there is an angelic and Marian aspect to it, and this is particularly clear in the beautiful Syriac Orthodox liturgy - the Syriac Orthodox by the way increasingly follow Eastern Orthodox and sometimes Western liturgical coloring in some of their churches, such as the Cathedral of St. Mark in New Jersey, but elsewhere one is likely, as always, to see priests and bishops wearing different colored vestments concelebrating with deacons, subdeacons and readers wearing different colored stoles, and I think this colorful quality is likely to remain the norm, but it is certainly allowed for a Syriac Orthodox parish to adopt a scheme of liturgical colors. The Copts on the other hand really don’t want anything beyond the use of white, gold and, for bishops and married clergy and deacons, red, except during Holy Week. At any rate, standardization like in the Tridentine mass had previously been done on an individual basis by some of the Mendicant orders, such as the Dominicans and Carmelites, and related orders like the Norbertines, all of whom shared the problem of needing to be able to reassign priests between cities in the same country and between different countries where the Roman Rite was celebrated according to traditional local uses, such as, in England, the main use in the South being the Sarum Rite, which directly influenced the Book of Common Prayer, and elsewhere, the uses of Hereford, Durham and York, which were less influential, since the Sarum Rite, named oddly for Salisbury and not Canterbury as one might expect, was the liturgy used in Canterbury and in London and at Oxford and Cambridge, so what was used in York or Hereford or Durham and their surrounding environs was of less relevance to Thomas Cranmer.

These uses of the friars and other Religious Orders (for instance, the solemn mass of the Carthusian hermit-monks, which textually bears a striking resemblance to the Dominican mass) survive among the Traditional Latin Masses, whereas sadly most regional uses outside of those of Lyons, Braga and a few other cities (possibly Cologne) have perished, except for the Gallican-influenced Ambrosian Mass of Milan, which is celebrated by a few million Catholics and sadly, because it is a Western Rite mass specific to a city, it, and the Mozarabic Rite once celebrated throughout Spain, and still preserved almost as a museum piece in a dedicated chapel of the Cathedral of Toledo, are the only two Roman Catholic liturgies one cannot experience in North America, although Pope John Paul II once celebrated a Mozarabic Rite mass in Rome, and if I recall Pope Paul VI had initially served in Milan. But in Western Rite Orthodoxy and in Anglicanism, these have occasionally been used - indeed there is a Book of Common Prayer written for use in Mexico by the Episcopal Church around 1915 in Spanish and English which is directly based on the Mozarabic Rite, which is appropriate as this liturgy has always been used to a limited extent in Mexico, for example, the traditional Mexican wedding contains traditions of Mozarabic origin.

At any rate, I would like to wish the blessings of God Almighty, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, on everyone reading this thread and on our forum this fine morning, and not merely those with the patience and courage to read it to the end of this post.