Sursum Corda (1928 BCP)
Sursum Corda (1928 BCP) is the brief versicle and response "Lift up your hearts" in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer order for Holy Communion. In the 1928 rite it follows the Comfortable Words and immediately opens the eucharistic thanksgiving that leads through the Proper Preface and Sanctus into the Prayer of Consecration. The words are ancient, but their Prayer Book force is practical and doctrinal: the congregation that has confessed sin and heard the Gospel promise is summoned to give thanks to God in union with the worship of heaven.
Text in Holy Communion
The 1928 Holy Communion office gives the Sursum Corda as a four-part exchange between priest and people:
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up unto the Lord.
Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.
It is meet and right so to do.
The response is not private aspiration but common prayer. The priest summons the whole congregation; the people answer in the plural; then priest and people turn together to thanksgiving. The next sentence in the office explains why the ascent of the heart becomes eucharistic praise: it is "very meet, right, and our bounden duty" to thank the holy, almighty, and everlasting Father "at all times, and in all places."[2]
Scriptural Meaning
The phrase "Lift up your hearts" is liturgical, but its theology is deeply scriptural. It is not an escape from bodily worship or sacramental reception. It is the Church's turning of attention, desire, faith, and thanksgiving toward the risen Christ who is seated at the right hand of God.
If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God.
Colossians gives the ascensional pattern. Christians seek the things above because they are risen with Christ, not because they have left the world behind. In Holy Communion that doctrine becomes enacted prayer: the Church lifts the heart to the Lord, then gives thanks for creation, redemption, and the sacrifice of Christ.
Ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.
Hebrews guards the phrase from being reduced to a mood of reverence. Christian worship approaches "mount Sion" and the "heavenly Jerusalem" because Christ mediates the new covenant. The 1928 rite expresses that approach by joining the earthly congregation to the Sanctus: "Therefore with Angels and Archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy glorious Name."[5]
Place in the 1928 Rite
The Sursum Corda is the hinge between preparation and thanksgiving. Before it, the office has gathered the people through the Collect for Purity, the Law or Kyrie, Collect, Epistle, Gospel, Creed, sermon, offertory, intercession, invitation, confession, absolution, and Comfortable Words. After it, the office moves into the preface, Sanctus, Prayer of Humble Access, consecration, communion, thanksgiving, Gloria in excelsis, and blessing.
This order matters. The people do not lift their hearts as self-justifying worshippers; they do so after confession, absolution, and evangelical consolation. Nor do they lift their hearts away from the sacrament; the summons begins the thanksgiving in which the bread and wine will be consecrated and the communicants will receive Christ's Body and Blood according to his institution.
The 1928 office also shows the importance of this point by preserving it in the shortened form for Communion of the Sick. When circumstances require a briefer rite, the Prayer Book still keeps confession and absolution, the Sursum Corda through the Sanctus, consecration, humble access, communion, the Lord's Prayer, and blessing.[6] Its retention there shows that the Sursum Corda is not ceremonial ornament. It is part of the minimum eucharistic shape.
Historical Continuity
Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere identify the Sursum Corda as one of the recognisable fixed elements in early eucharistic worship:
They are elements common to most early liturgies and are attested by early writers as prominent points in the service.
That observation helps explain why the phrase survives across sharply different eucharistic rites. It is not a late Anglican invention, nor merely an English devotional flourish. It belongs to the inherited skeleton of eucharistic prayer, in which thanksgiving, Sanctus, institution, oblation, invocation, communion, and post-communion prayer are ordered around stable points of recognition.
Richmond Shreve, writing from a Canadian Anglican context in 1924, uses the Sursum Corda as the boundary between the preparatory portion and the eucharistic prayer proper:
the former comprising all that precedes the Sursum Corda, and the latter everything from that high call to the end.
Shreve's distinction is useful for reading the 1928 American rite. The Sursum Corda is not an isolated acclamation between unrelated parts. It announces that the deeper eucharistic action has begun, while still gathering up all that has preceded it: penitence, absolution, Scripture, Creed, intercession, and offering.
The Tractarian republication of Bishop George Bull's sermon on ancient liturgies likewise appealed to the Sursum Corda as a sign of catholic continuity:
There is no Liturgy in any church of CHRIST to this day but hath this form.
Bull's claim should be read as theological and polemical as well as historical: he is defending set forms of public prayer and the apostolic seriousness of eucharistic thanksgiving. For Anglican use, the point is that the Prayer Book receives an ancient form while expressing it in intelligible English and in a reformed order governed by Scripture and common prayer.
Theological Use
In classical Anglican teaching, the Sursum Corda holds together three truths. First, worship is directed to the Lord, not to the congregation's own religious feeling. Second, eucharistic thanksgiving is the fitting answer to the Gospel promise just heard in the Comfortable Words. Third, the Church's earthly Communion participates in heavenly praise without needing to define that participation by later scholastic categories.
Charles Chapman Grafton gives a high-church devotional reading of the same movement:
the Sursum Corda opens the vision of heaven, and we are one in our worship with the angels and saints.
Grafton's language presses the heavenly character of the action. A Reformed or Reformed Episcopal reading can affirm that emphasis while insisting that the ascent is by faith in Christ, not by any merit in the worshippers or any repetition of Calvary. A Prayer Book Anglican reading therefore treats the Sursum Corda as a call to faithful thanksgiving before the one sufficient sacrifice of Christ, sacramentally received according to his promise.
For catechesis, the phrase can be taught clause by clause. "Lift up your hearts" is a command to turn the whole inner life toward God. "We lift them up unto the Lord" is a corporate profession of faith and attention. "Let us give thanks" names the eucharistic action. "It is meet and right" teaches that thanksgiving is not optional sentiment but the proper duty and joy of redeemed people.
See Also
- Book of Common Prayer (1928)
- Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
- Comfortable Words (1928 BCP)
- Prayer of Consecration (1928 BCP)
- Sanctus (1928 BCP)
References
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion," Sursum Corda after the Comfortable Words; Society of Archbishop Justus transcription, Holy Communion - The 1928 Book of Common Prayer. Local comparison:
sources/justus1928/HC.htm, lines 428-443. - ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion," opening of the eucharistic preface after the Sursum Corda; Society of Archbishop Justus transcription, Holy Communion - The 1928 Book of Common Prayer. Local comparison:
sources/justus1928/HC.htm, lines 444-448. - ↑ Colossians 3:1, Authorized Version; wording checked against the 1928 Prayer Book Easter Day Epistle in Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, Easter Day, Epistle, Colossians 3:1; Society of Archbishop Justus facsimile, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer, formatted as the original. Local comparison:
sources/justuspropers/ReadingsB.htm, lines 1098-1102. See also Bible (King James)/Colossians, Wikisource. - ↑ Hebrews 12:22, Authorized Version, Bible (King James)/Hebrews, Wikisource.
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion," Sanctus introduction after the Sursum Corda and preface; Society of Archbishop Justus transcription, Holy Communion - The 1928 Book of Common Prayer. Local comparison:
sources/justus1928/HC.htm, lines 449-458. - ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Communion of the Sick," shortened form rubric; Society of Archbishop Justus transcription, The Visitation of the Sick - The 1928 Book of Common Prayer. Local comparison:
sources/justus1928/Visitation_Sick.htm, lines 627-637. - ↑ Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, with a Rationale of Its Offices, revised edition (London: Macmillan and Co., 1910), chapter XII, "The Communion Service," discussion of early liturgical fixed points, pp. 434-435; Society of Archbishop Justus transcription, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, chapter XII.
- ↑ Richmond Shreve, The Prayer of Consecration in The Holy Communion Office: A Comparison of Certain Liturgies (St. Johns, P.Q.: The E. R. Smith Co., Limited, 1924), p. 14, Project Canterbury transcription by Terry Brown, The Prayer of Consecration in the Holy Communion Office.
- ↑ George Bull, "Bishop Bull on the Ancient Liturgies," from Sermon XIII, republished as Tracts for the Times, no. 64 (Oxford: J. H. Parker, 1835), Project Canterbury transcription, Tract Number 64.
- ↑ Charles Chapman Grafton, "Plain Suggestions for a Reverent Celebration of the Holy Communion," chapter IX, "The Mystical Meaning of the Liturgy," in The Works of the Rt. Rev. Charles C. Grafton, vol. 6, ed. B. Talbot Rogers (New York: Longmans, Green, 1914), pp. 49-57; Project Canterbury transcription, Plain Suggestions for a Reverent Celebration of the Holy Communion.