Speaking together as a community

Audrey: I decided to be a liturgical deacon because it’s an important part of discerning whether my vocation might involve ordained ministry one day. The clergy suggested that this experience can be a good opportunity to learn about the liturgy by participating in this unique way. Lucy offered training for all the St James’s deacons, and I was glad to learn more about the role and its meanings within the church.

Ayla: I’m so glad that we have people at St James’s who want to be part of the Eucharist in this way. It’s a gift and a blessing we all share. Today (Sunday 11 January) is the Feast of the Baptism of Christ. Today in particular, as you were deaconing for the service, what was it like for you on this Sunday of baptismal celebration?

Audrey: I was a bit more distracted than usual today. Deaconing on Sundays grounds me. When I’m feeling distracted, taking part in the liturgy – speaking, leading, and focusing on the rituals – is a way of coming back to being more present in myself and in church. I really like the procession when we come into church together at the beginning of the service. Everyone is singing and I look to see who’s with us. I think a thing that really helped me when I first started deaconing and felt nervous was remembering that I’m just speaking to a community that I love, and that this community contains people that also love me.

The first thing a deacon does in the service is invite everybody to confession. And what I like about it is that there has to be a lot of humility involved in this invitation and mutual prayer. There can be something arrogant about somebody who doesn’t know who they’re addressing, calling them to confession. A deacon has to know who they’re addressing. It’s also declaring the deacon’s own need for confession and absolution too. It’s collective and for all of us together.

Ayla: I’m always grateful that it is the deacon’s voice who calls us all into that place of honesty about human limitations and the need for God’s grace and forgiveness. As a Christian, it means a lot to me.

Audrey: As part of these prayers, there is also a time when we keep silence together. The deacon is responsible for measuring – sometimes intuitively, but always for around 10 seconds before the prayer of confession, and around 60 seconds when the deacon introduces the intercessions (which is how the liturgy is done when we have a baptism as part of the Sunday service). I’ll be honest, silence doesn’t really come naturally to me. It makes me feel really uncomfortable. Or it did, I think, a lot more before I started deaconing. I think it definitely changed the way that I experienced silence in the liturgy. I think beforehand it made me a bit antsy if it went on for anything longer than a breath. But now I think resting in silence has a quality of wisdom in it. Silence is there for a reason and it’s part of this formula that humans have been prayerfully discerning for centuries, millennia really. Silence is a gift – it’s not something that’s being imposed upon me, which is how I experienced it in the pews. As a deacon, opening and sustaining that silence in the liturgy is a gift that I’m offering the congregation. That way of experiencing it makes it easier to do, and in turn this has also made it easier for me to experience the silence in a different way when I’m in the pews. I really like that.

Ayla: Deacons also prepare the altar for the Eucharist, setting out the patens (plates for the bread), and the chalices (cups for the wine). It’s the deacon’s responsibility to engage in a number of preparatory rituals that start things moving from the little table beside the altar onto the altar itself. What is this process like for you?

Audrey:  This process happens during a hymn, and so before I was a liturgical deacon I hadn’t paid attention to it. Before the service, the vergers ensure that everything is ready on the tray – when I arrive in the morning, I check briefly to see that it’s all ready. During the hymn, after the peace, I lay out the corporal.

Ayla: The corporal is very symbolic. All the elements (the bread and the wine) are laid out on this cloth. The word comes from the word ‘corpus’ – Latin for ‘body’. It’s a way of creating physical and spiritual space for the bread and wine to be named and experienced mysteriously as Christ’s body and blood. Sometimes I think of it as a bit like a picnic blanket for God’s feast, or even the shroud that tenderly wrapped Christ’s body before the resurrection. I think of it as holiness within holiness.

Audrey: Once all the chalices and the patens are on the altar, and the cloths to wipe the chalice rims (called purificators) are laid out beside them, I pour the wine and water into the chalices. It can be a bit difficult to judge how much we need, and getting the balance right so that it’s abundant – not too much and not too little – is importance and sometimes a challenge. If it’s a big service, I’ll pour in the full two jugs (called cruets) of wine. On typical Sundays I’ll just kind of vibe with it and pour it intuitively. In an ideal world, I’d be more aware of how much is left over – which the servers consume along with the leftover bread – and this could help to inform the decision the deacon makes about how much wine and water to pour.

Ayla: After everything is set up by the deacon on the altar, reading for the priest to come and begin the Eucharistic prayers, the deacon brings a little bowl, towel, and jug of water so that the priest can wash their hands. It’s a dialogue through water – very baptismal. Many of the liturgical deacons at St James’s are discerning a call to ordained ministry. With the ritual and the discernment process in mine, what’s it like for you to lead this part of the liturgy, offering water after filling the chalices?

Audrey: As with all tangible things at the altar, I feel both the practical fear of messing up and also an awareness that I’m dealing with something mystical. I always spill a bit of water, and I just have to accept that this will happen. I guess it feels very intimate, because obviously the priest is praying too. I’m not sure what the words you say are, because it’s so quiet, but I can hear that you’re praying. It’s mystical and it’s practical, and we do it together.

Ayla: My quiet prayer at that moment, which is part of a long tradition in the Church, focuses on God’s mercy and compassion. It’s called the ‘lavabo’ prayer (from the Latin phrase ‘lavabo me, Domine’ which means ‘wash me, God’). When I feel the water, I experience a kind of awe that this is what God asks us to do as a community together. After this, the Eucharistic prayers begin and the congregation gather to receive the consecrated bread and wine as Christ’s body and blood. The service ends with a blessing, but the priest doesn’t have the last word. The deacon does! Deacons tell people that the service is over, and that it’s time to ‘go in the peace of Christ’.

Audrey: I really like this moment at the end of the service. It seems like everyone is smiling, knowing that we’ve done something wonderful together with God, and that it’s time to take the experience of our Eucharist out into the world. It feels good when everyone responds together: ‘Thanks be to God’ or, depending on the prayer ‘In the name of Christ’. It’s like reflecting on what we’ve just done, the way our lives continue afterwards, and the affirmation that we’ve done this together and we’re a community together.