from the Olavus Petri Order from 1531 forms the basis of the invariable Preface found in Divine Service 4. It's ironic, in some ways, that the German-heritage LCMS would be the preserver of a text that the old Augustana Synod folk would immediately recognize. I've very glad that we still have it. BUT.
But I truly wish that we had left all of it intact. If we had, we'd have a prayer like this:
It is truly good, right, and salutary that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to You, O Lord, holy Father, almighty and everlasting God, for the countless blessings You so freely bestow upon us and all creation. Above all, we give thanks for Your boundless love, that when we were in so bad a state that naught but death and eternal damnation awaited us, and no creature in heaven or on earth could help us, then You did send forth Your only-begotten Son, who is of the same divine nature as Yourself, and suffered Him to become flesh, being born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and did lay on Him our sin, giving Him into death that we might not die eternally....
Sad thing is, I think it's largely Maxwell's and my fault that those bolded goodies were lost, for the preface as it appears in LSB DS IV is clearly a slight revision of the proposed Eucharistia that Maxwell and I suggested (and which Quill chronicles in *The Impact of the Liturgical Movement on American Lutheranism* - see p. 209,210) - and in that Eucharistia the phrases bolded above were not included. I don't know about you, but I think it a sad oops. It would have been that much stronger a prayer had we not "downsized" it in our paper and subsequently had it not been downsized in the Hymnal. http://feeds.feedburner.com/WeedonsBlog |
