Patterns Of Worship Research Articles

Politics and Piety in the Household of Lady Margaret Beaufort

The sermon which John Fisher preached at the month's mind of Lady Margaret Beaufort, on 29 July 1509, compared her with Martha, traditionally the woman of action and counterpart of Mary, the woman of contemplation. The virtues he stressed, in addition to nobility of character and lineage, were those of good order: the disciplining of Lady Margaret's body and manner of life through prayer and abstinence, her hospitality and charitable dealings with her neigh-bours. The bishop saw discipline also as the mark of her household: statutes for its government were read four times a year, her servants well cared for, her almsfolk regularly supported. Whenever factions arose among her servants she applied herself with great skill to keeping the peace and finding a solution to controversy. Fisher's account has recently been compared by Retha Warnicke with other memories of her household recorded by Henry Parker, Lord Morley. The same elements are found in both descriptions, but Morley complements Fisher's portrait of charity and able household management with a spectacle of splendid conviviality worthy of the great ladies of the past, Queen Elfleda and Matilda, wife of Henry 1. Morley's memories of the household he entered in the early 1490s are not all contemporary with Fisher's who did not become Lady Margaret's confessor until 1498 or later, and the bishop allocates more of her day to religious observance. But whether her piety grew more exacting and intense in her last decade, or was simply more closely observed by her confessor, she remained until her death the centre of a network of patronage and influence in which she took an active part. Her household was a society with many facets, defined not merely by the austere and charitable practices of its head, but by her importance as a tenant-in-chief of the Crown and mother of the king. It was the combination of all these elements that placed her so high in contemporary estimation. This article explores the life of her household not only as the home of works of charity and a pattern of worship whose special feature was devotion to the Name of Jesus, but also as a centre of justice and regional influence and as a source of support for the activities of the Crown.

Reaction

It is closer to the biblical pattern of worship to view it as first and preeminently an act directed toward God. But this vertical worship of God is to have horizontal effects in the lives of the worshipers.

Church Music and Changing Worship Patterns

Church Music and Changing Worship Patterns

The therapeutic value of hymns

T O THE CLERGYMAN informed and alert in the field of pastoral care, the therapeutic value of corporate worship is apparent. In a sense, the public worship of God is a form of group counseling. Many persons who hesitate to go to a minister for personal counseling often find help in being a part of a worshiping group where; in the anonymity which the common group provides, they find help through general confession, words of assurance, petition on their behalf (pastoral prayer) and instruction for Christian living (sermon). Of course all this presupposes a leader trained not only in the use of historic worship patterns, but familiar with the basic problems of persons caught in the tensions of modern society. One of the most important areas of help in breaking down the feeling of loneliness and despair experienced by so many today is in the field of hymns. As Evelyn Underhill, the English authority in the field of mysticism, puts it: "The hymn gathers the faithful together round the treasure of life which it contains, and breaks down as nothing else can the isolation of the soul." Because of the rich and deep emotional associations which music supplies, and because these associations are even more farreaching when familiar words become bound up with the tunes, a hymn used in corporate worship may: (1) Focus attention outside of preoccupation with self (2) Bring comfort (3) Reduce anxiety (4) Alleviate the sense of guilt (5) Strengthen inner resolves Not all hymns will do these things. We must go cautiously in this field, for some of our so-called "hospital hymns" merely hold up a mirror to the mind disturbed, and plunge people even more deeply into morbid attitudes toward life. Psychiatrists can tell a great deal about some of our hymn writers by using their hymns as barometers of emotional life. But in this paper we are concerned with a more positive emphasis, and shall examine a few hymns which may be used to develop mature Christian character.