The Promotion of Christian Knowledge

In the U.S. church, today is the feast of St. Thomas Bray, priest (d. 1730). He was appointed in 1696 by the Bishop of London as Bishop's Commissary for the Maryland colony, made one visitation to the colony in 1699, and worked for the benefit of the American colonies after his return to England, raising money for mission work and encouraging young priests to go to the colonies.

As part of his work, Bray founded the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the SPCK, which still exists. Appropriately for his feast day, I had an opportunity to Promote Christian Knowledge this morning: a visitor at Matins.

She was new to the Daily Office, so we did an "instructed Matins." I was so flustered by having a visitor that I forgot that today was Wednesday and thought that it was Friday, so we read the wrong Lessons. I showed her the Lectionary and how it worked and took the pericopes from there, rather than going to my bookmarks in the Bible, which would have put me in the right place. I thought at the time "aren't we skipping something?" but did not stop to ask what day of the week it was, or check my pocket calendar. The visitor corrected me when I got to the Collects and was about to read the Collect for Fridays. "Isn't this Wednesday?" she asked. It may have been providential, because Friday's lesson from Genesis is considerably more edifying than today's, and let us sing the fine Wesley hymn "Come, O thou Traveller unknown," which we did with enthusiasm.

Still, she got an introduction to the Daily Office. The equivalent moment years ago changed my life. I hope it might be equally valuable for her. And I hope she comes back.

It was, also, my first experience of saying the Office with someone who was following the texts from her telephone. I believe that Father Bray would be pleased; any way to get the texts of Scripture and the Book of Common Prayer in front of people is good.