On November 30, 2022, the primate of The Episcopal Church, Bishop Michael Curry, who is not known for particularly high churchmanship, presided at a service of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament in Washington, DC. [1] It might be surprising to see an Anglican bishop leading such a peculiarly ‘Roman’ devotion. But Eucharistic Adoration (by which I mean various forms of paraliturgical worship of Christ present in the Eucharist), has gained a significant foothold in the Anglican Communion today. Prominent Anglo-Catholic parishes regularly offer well-attended services of Exposition and Benediction. For the last six decades, the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac has hosted an annual Eucharistic Festival to foster adoration of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. [2] And the strictures of the COVID-19 pandemic have sparked interest in eucharistic devotions even among some self-consciously low church Anglicans. [3]
More Protestant-aligned critics are understandably concerned that the rise of Adoration among Anglicans is incompatible with the church’s Reformation heritage. [4] The legacy of the Reformers is undeniable and unavoidable, and their insights ought to prompt careful examination by Anglicans of the liturgical theology and pastoral practice of eucharistic adoration. But I would argue that, with due attention to history, the flowering of Anglican eucharistic devotions need not be rejected as paradoxical or problematic. Indeed, intentional cultivation of these devotions offers significant spiritual benefits within our contemporary context.
Historical Background
A common critique of ritualized Adoration frames it as an innovation of medieval Catholicism without any grounding in primitive Christianity. But while that is true for many of today’s particular ceremonies, a more nuanced understanding of ritual development reveals rich paraliturgical eucharistic devotion quite early on. Within Christianity’s first five centuries, ritual practices of venerating Christ in the eucharistic elements proliferated greatly. This Adoration quickly extended beyond the context of the eucharistic assembly, to include things like reservation for private communion and the blessing of objects by touching the eucharistic bread to them. [5]
Medieval Europe’s innovation was not this paraliturgical devotion itself, but the relationship between this devotion and the liturgical assembly’s primary eucharistic act of offering and receiving. In the Early Church, the various practices of Adoration largely existed in tandem with full liturgical participation. But these devotional practices gradually supplanted actual reception of the Eucharist by the laity in the West. [6] By the High Middle Ages, the primary lay experience of the Eucharist was ‘ocular communion.’ [7] Adoration of the consecrated elements from afar became the central act of piety, and Christians found creative ways of incorporating Adoration into daily life, including the English practice of adoring a ritually entombed Host on Holy Saturday. [8] Secondary eucharistic piety was vital, but the average Christian rarely ever answered that primary Eucharistic call to take and eat.
It was this neglect of actually receiving the Sacrament that the English Reformers sought to remedy. Liturgical reforms attempted to promote frequent Communion by the faithful. Instead of detailing prescribed acts of adoration, the rubrics of the new Book of Common Prayer focused more on the reception of the Sacrament, requiring that people receive for Mass to even be celebrated. Theological formularies also laid heavy emphasis on the benefits of receiving Christ’s Body and Blood and looked with suspicion on the paraliturgical devotions that had displaced that reception. The Thirty-Nine Articles, for instance, stress that Christ instituted the Eucharist primarily for us to receive the Sacrament and that anything else wanders beyond that central ordinance.
This pastoral solicitude for the full sacramental participation of the people should color how we read the Reformers’ critiques of paraliturgical Adoration. Their theology is not, it seems, motivated by opposition to Adoration per se. Rather, they seem primarily motivated by a desire for eucharistic practices not to be divorced from or compete with the primary function of the Eucharist. As commentator E.J. Bicknell puts it, “The practices [of Adoration] mentioned are not condemned as sinful. No anathema is leveled at those who retain them. All that is asserted is that they are precarious, as going outside the ordinance of Christ.” [9] The animating pastoral concern of Anglicanism’s Reformation era on this front was not to extirpate Adoration but to recover the centrality of our receiving the Body and Blood.
This underlying positive impulse was quickly obscured, however, by the vicious partisan polemics that consumed the Church of England and her daughter churches after the break with Rome. Outward expressions of Adoration became laden with assumptions about doctrinal purity and political allegiance. And many parts of the Church saw active suppression of Adoration and even simple reservation of the Eucharist for communion of the sick. Later historical studies indicate this campaign never succeeded entirely, with Reservation and Adoration persisting in more muted forms. [10] But the partisan polemics dealt a huge blow to eucharistic devotion within Anglicanism, transforming it from a mode of sacramental participation into a battle between Protestant and Catholic identities.
The Protestant-aligned bishops justified their suppression by appealing to a hermeneutic of rubric and canon law that presumed discontinuity with the past. Under this hermeneutic, only the prescribed is permitted. So the Reformers’ near-exclusive focus on the primary eucharistic act [11] was taken to be an absolute prohibition of any and all secondary eucharistic piety. [12] This argument from silence continues to be popular in some sectors, but growing historical awareness in the 19th and 20th centuries made such discontinuity increasingly untenable. It has gradually given way to a moderate hermeneutic of continuity, [13] clearing space for devotional practices like eucharistic Adoration to flourish openly.
Theological Framework
The Reformers’ thinking remains influential, evident in the caveat placed on all renewed eucharistic devotion, cautioning that the primary action of the eucharistic assembly should still be emphasized above any secondary piety. Describing the theology of retired Archbishop Rowan Williams, Owen Cumming notes, “It is the action of the Eucharist that produces the eucharistic gifts, and any isolation from this living and originating context is distortion of the eucharistic reality.” [14] It seems right, then, that Anglican theology of Adoration ought to anchor and situate itself within the themes and moments of the eucharistic liturgy. [15]
One such moment is a poignant pause within the three-day Triduum liturgy. It is now quite commonplace to see Anglicans keeping vigil with the Reserved Sacrament after stripping the altar on Maundy Thursday. Even in places with a markedly Protestant self-image, like my own Diocese of Minnesota, this has become a beloved practice with deep significance for many of the faithful. The resposition is often accompanied by the Taizé chant ‘Stay With Me,’ which speaks to a key theological anchor for paraliturgical eucharistic devotions. Even if parishioners do not consciously recognize their devotion as Adoration, this liturgical moment evinces an almost instinctual desire to simply be with Jesus and savor his presence.
This devotional savoring of Christ’s abiding presence does not, as critics allege, [16] depend on the mechanics of transubstantiation. It only requires that Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is objective and enduring, not contingent on the communicant’s disposition or set to expire when the liturgy is over. Some language in our liturgies could be construed to mandate a Receptionism that would render Adoration nonsensical. This tone is understandable given the Reformers’ animating concerns discussed above. But that is only part of the picture. The Reserved Sacrament is not reconsecrated before giving it to the sick, as though Christ suddenly ceases to be present in the Sacrament when assembly disbands. [17] And contemporary liturgical texts in the Anglican Communion quite readily identify the bread and wine with the Body and Blood in direct and certain terms before they are ever received by the faithful. [18]
Within this broader context of eucharistic worship and discipline, the Eucharist can be seen as a pledge of Christ’s presence, not just a vehicle for applying the spiritual benefits of atonement. Eucharistic prayers tell the story of God-with-us, engaged in a redemptive work that includes the whole Incarnation, not just Calvary. This presence is most potent and active when we receive Christ’s body with our own, but “the reality and greatness of that opportunity do not make unreasonable an intense desire for approach to Him in the Sacrament at other times.” [19] Adoration gives outward form to this inward yearning to enjoy the presence of the Beloved. In Adoration, we can approach Christ when we most need to be reminded of his enduring presence. That moment of vigil within the archetypal liturgy of the year is extended and opened so we can return repeatedly to that aspect of the eucharistic mystery.
We can understand Adoration as extending other liturgical moments in similar ways. Anglican liturgies authorized in the last century typically include an invitation to Communion along the lines of “The Gifts of God for the People of God,” or something similar. Even priests who are ritual minimalists often lift up the consecrated Gifts for the congregation to see as they issue this invitation, making this one of the most common instances of intraliturgical Adoration Anglicans are likely to experience. The invitation beckons the faithful to approach and receive the Body and Blood of Christ. Christ is in our midst, and we are drawn towards him to be more fully united with him in the paschal mystery. In showing us himself, he stirs up our desire to receive the fullness of the grace he offers.
Practices of eucharistic Adoration extend this moment of invitation into other areas of our lives. They allow that “paschal summons,” [20] which “during the celebration is for a few minutes only” [21] to expand into an invitation that we can return to again and again. Just as the constant presence of Christ with us in the Sacrament lets us return to that Maundy Thursday moment of bare abiding, the moment of invitation is made present whenever we behold “him who awaits our coming with a heart hungry for our love.” [22] Adoration is an opportunity to seek and approach the one who always stands offering the Gifts of God for the People of God, beckoning us into even deeper communion by receiving his Body and Blood.
This suggests how Adoration can stand together, not in tension, with the central eucharistic act. If Christ is truly present in the Eucharist (and despite qualms about emphasis, we Anglicans do hold that he is), then we ought to adore him—not as a totem or talisman, but as the living God drawing us into union with him in the eucharistic action. Acts of Adoration “have no more purpose than that of the eucharistic action itself, that is, to draw communicants into further graceful union with Christ in God.” [23] Adoration in its various forms is not an ersatz communion or the reduction of the eucharistic mystery to object. Eucharistic devotions are “graced prolongations of the eucharistic mystery in time and space,” [24] stemming from and flowing towards that primary act of eucharistic worship: Communion.
Pastoral Implementation
The Reformers’ concern for preserving Communion’s centrality is valid. The Eucharist is indeed, by Christ’s institution, something to be received. But the English Reformers faced a dramatically different landscape than Anglicans face today. After 500 years, their vision of full sacramental participation has been realized, and Anglicans across the world now gladly receive the Eucharist weekly or even daily. There seems to be little risk today of ocular communion replacing the actual reception of the Body and Blood. Within this context of sacramental practice, eucharistic devotions can live, as intended, in symbiosis with the eucharistic action, enhancing our engagement with the sacred mysteries.
The ritual forms of this Adoration ought to enrich this symbiosis. And just as it would be a mistake to expect modern Exposition and Benediction in the Early Church, it would also be a mistake to assume that the practices of Adoration we value now ought to endure forever. Rituals akin to those of the Roman Rite are most common among Anglicans today, but we are not bound to imitate any other rite in the manner of adoring Christ truly present in the Sacrament. [25] The fact we adore Christ is what is most important. We can—and, I think, should—develop new ritual expressions of this devotional principle that foster its connection to the central liturgical action of the Eucharist (as indeed the Roman Catholic Church is doing). [26] The forms of Adoration we have inherited from the past may not be the best-suited for fostering this devotion today.
But for contemporary Anglicans, no inadequacy of existing rituals and no history of distorted emphasis need make us skittish of these devotions in and of themselves. The liturgy is celebrated and the people receive, more readily today than ever before. Adoration of Christ in the Holy Eucharist is the instinctual response to his Real Presence that we hold to be true. Despite much turmoil, our tradition has affirmed “the inalienable privilege of every Christian” to express that basic devotion. And when such ritual expression is anchored clearly in the primary purpose of the Sacrament surely it can only enrich our experience of Communion in Christ’s Body and Blood and heighten our desire for fuller union with him.
Endnotes
[1] Michael Curry, “Last evening Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry was Presider,” Facebook, December 1, 2022.
[2] “Eucharistic Festival,” Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac, May 14, 2022, https://www.diofdl.org/ef.html.
[3] Liza Anderson, “Gathering Crumbs.” (speech, Appleton, WI, May 13, 2022).
[4] William Adams, “A Speech upon Eucharistic Adoration,” (speech, Milwaukee, WI, February 11, 1874), Project Canterbury, http://anglicanhistory.org/dekoven/confessional.html.
[5] Edward Foley, Eucharistic Adoration after Vatican II (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2022), 5.
[6] In the Christian East, the symbiotic relationship between adoration and reception was retained to a much greater degree.
[7] Foley, Eucharistic Adoration after Vatican II, 13.
[8] Foley, Eucharistic Adoration after Vatican II, 16.
[9] EJ Bicknell, A Theological Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1919), 401.
[10] Shirley Carter Hughson, Reservation and Adoration: A Historical and Devotional Inquiry (West Park, New York: The Holy Cross Press, 1919), chap. 8.
[11] Elements like the so-called ‘Black Rubric’ were added at various stages which explicitly denounced Adoration, but it should be noted that these were added by civil actors, not the ecclesiastical authorities.
[12] Hughson, Reservation and Adoration, chap. 3.
[13] Hughson, Reservation and Adoration, chap. 10.
[14] Owen Cumming, Canterbury Cousins: The Eucharist in Contemporary Anglican Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 2007), 145.
[15] Foley, Eucharistic Adoration after Vatican II, 87ff.
[16] Adams, “A Speech upon Eucharistic Adoration.”
[17] James DeKoven, “The Canon on Ritual and the Holy Eucharist” (speech, New York, NY, October 26, 1874), Project Canterbury, http://anglicanhistory.org/dekoven/canon.html.
[18] See, for example, Eucharistic Prayer C in the American Book of Common Prayer (1979) and the words of administration in the Canadian Book of Alternative Services (1985) and the English Common Worship (2000).
[19] Darwell Stone, The Reserved Sacrament (London: Roxburghe House, 1917), 93.
[20] Foley, Eucharistic Adoration after Vatican II, 44.
[21] Stone, The Reserved Sacrament, 93.
[22] Hughson, Reservation and Adoration, chap. 17.
[23] Cumming, Canterbury Cousins, 35.
[24] Foley, Eucharistic Adoration after Vatican II, 86.
[25] Hughson, Reservation and Adoration, chap. 16.
[26] Foley, Eucharistic Adoration after Vatican II, 92ff.