The Order for Visitation of the Sick

Thanks for the prayers, and I remember all of you here in my prayers -- this forum is a rare place, truly!

Pp, the more we discuss this the more it conceals itself as a mysterious thing. God is not the author of evil, and yet we can't say that God permits/tolerates evil. Regarding soteriology I find that Anglicans especially stress His attribute of mercy, instead of warring over various theories. Rather like various atonement theories, there is truth in each of them because they emphasize but one facet of the glorious reality. Evil happens but not outside God's will...I can live in confidence that no matter how terrible things get it's all part of larger planned narrative that I can't see yet. My friends may tell me to curse God, all the while I will struggle to remember Job.

 

Hi Anne. I think we have to say that God permits evil. As you say, "Evil happens but not outside God's will." I would add that while he doesn't will any evil, He allows evil to occur as part of granting us the freedom to act as we please and to turn from Him. I never blame God for the evil I experience; I am a fallen man in a fallen world. Rather, I thank him for providing a means of salvation. Thank you again for your prayers.

 

Peteprint, something happened as I read your response -- let's use your words: "...we have to say that God permits evil." From your perspective, isn't this the same as saying that "... it is God's visitation."

I might be trying to stretch things a bit, but I'm only doing so because from what I've read of your posts I think you are actually in agreement

 

Anne, I don't think God's allowing men to disobey Him and do evil things is quite the same is Him visiting the evil which they do.

 

But we're talking about sickness, not willful sins of men. If you agree that He "permits evil" then is it too far a stretch to include sickness as a permission?

 

Hi Anne, of course He permits sickness (as well as death). My issue is that I don't believe He always sends the illnesses we have to us. If I catch a cold from being around a sick person it is not a visitation from God.

 

A leaf falling in the forest is God's visitation too, isn't it? It's a peculiar phrase, "visitation." God surely isn't sitting there with a finger divinely ordaining the leaf to especially to fall, and yet the Natural Law which drops the leaf, and makes the planets run, and makes the machinery of your body run... this machinery of the world was divinely ordained by God.

 

There's a difference between being the spark that lights an engine and the one minutely directing the machinery to turn, gear by gear.

 

Hello Stalwart. It can be looked at that way, but the example of a leaf falling is not the same as saying God has sent a sickness to someone. Also, isn't a visitation a "visit?" The leaf falling, as with the sun rising and setting, certainly operates according to natural law which God has created, but these are not particular visitations, such as the angel announcing to the Virgin Mary she will bear a child.

 

Hello again brndurham. I couldn't agree with you more.

 

What is the difference? It is a biological malfunction, no?

Right and so we could not equate the malfunctions of the body to the visitations of God. We can say that our illnesses are caused by the divine natural law, and yet are not divine visitations. Does that make sense?

 

Yes, it does, but does not allay my concerns with how this is stated in the 1662 Prayer Book. Going by the Prayer Book, a priest goes to a gravely ill man and tells him that his illness is a visitation sent by God. The English 1928, American 1928, and Canadian 1962 Prayer Books rightly removed this section in my opinion. While illness can be sent by God, I would not ascribe all illness that a person suffers as being a visitation to try him or chastise him.

 

The Prayer Book is the Prayer Book. We are bound to obey it as the standard of Anglican worship, even if we don't agree with it- and I don't actually personally agree with parts of it myself. But it is still the Prayer Book, and I am bound as an English Anglican in good conscience to obey it. Otherwise we're no better than modern Low Churchmen, Anglo-Papalists, or liberals.

 

You are in England where the 1662 Prayer Book is the law, so I understand your position. I am in the United States however. Here a man can obey the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and he would certainly not be considered either Low Church. liberal, or an Anglo-Papist. As an aside, if my memory serves me, when the Commons vetoed the English 1928 Prayer Book, some bishops authorized its use in parishes anyway. But that is related to the issue of Erastianism, and isn't pertinent to the discussion.

 

Oh, right, you're ACNA. Sorry, I wasn't sure if you were a C of E guy like me or not. My bad.

 

No problem bmdurham.

 

Related topic, and since it's so awesome I have to quote a fairly long passage. Natural law is an odd idea, one G. K. Chesterton was quick to notice in Orthodoxy. The idea that there is some aspect of the creation that's wound up like a clock, that God sits back and watches the planets in their courses instead of actively guiding them is a cold view of the universe. We are told that "He holds all things together" -- and so the sun rises every morning because He tells it do so:

"All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical ENCORE. Heaven may ENCORE the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his positively last appearance."
-- Orthodoxy

 

Yes, Chesterton is wonderful to read. Lewis also wrote extensively on natural law, but what he meant by it was the moral law (or Tao) which God has implanted in every human heart.

 

Hmmm, so if you accept the difference between a divinely-caused illness and a divine "visitation" akin to an Annunciation; then what makes you think that the Order of the Visitation refers to the latter, and uses the modern meaning of the term "visitation?"

I.e. how confident are you that the Prayerbook especially means, by every kind of sickness, the same sort of visitation as present in the Annunciation? Seems like a huge stretch to me, and I haven't seen it even hinted at here or anywhere in the other Rites/Communions of the Church.

I'm not a Prayerbook expert but it seems to me that if this sleepy and forgotten Rite included such a radical idea it'd be far more famous and commented on, than it has been. Really no one among non-anglicans objects to the Order of the Visitation, when it's usually the Order of Holy Communion or some of the other Rites that are singled out.


EDIT: I just thought of its title... the order of the visitation of the sick. Visitation, the word is in the very title of the Rite. Seems like an altogether different meaning for the concept that you seem to be reading into it.

 

Hello Stalwart.

I don't know any other way to read it. It says that whatever illness you have, be certain that God has visited it upon you. Seems straightforward enough to me. Recognizing that God is the first cause of all creation and other ways that have been suggested here for understanding it differently do not seem logical to me and seem a stretch. I think I am a reasonably educated man. I am a doctoral candidate at present and hold three Master's degrees. It seems fairly obvious to me what it says in the rite.

Byron D. Stuhlman, in his work Occasions of Grace: An Historical and Theological Study of the Pastoral Offices and Episcopal Services in the BCP writes:

The ambiguous theology of the rites is tellingly revealed in the three ways in which the word "visit" and "visitation" are used in them. First of all, the office itself is entitled "the visitation of the sick," and here the word refers to the visitation made by the minister. Second, the initial collects of the rite ask that God "visit and relieve" or "visit...and...restore unto this sick person his former health." But, third, the word is also used in a more ominous way. The sick person is instructed in the exhortation that sickness is "God's visitation," and the collect at communion speaks of the sick person as one "visited by (God's) hand." This theology of sickness as God's visitation -which directly relates all sickness to the sin of the person afflicted-contradicts the words of Jesus in John's Gospel and can scarcely be said to be theologically defensible. pg 161

Paul F. Bradshaw, in The New SCM Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship writes:

Thomas Cranmer substantially abbreviated the Sarum rite to create an "Order for the Visitation of the Sick" for the 1549 BCP...by means of a newly scripted exhortation, the afflicted were encouraged to accept the ailment as a means of spiritual discipline. pg.437

Such a view in my humble opinion is not scriptural. I cannot see ascribing dogmatic status to any prayer book, even the one's I prefer; they are not scripture, but are the rites and ceremonies of the Church. They can be changed, and they can err.