Join us on August 27th at 9:15am in the Parish Hall (or on Zoom) as we start the new year of Adult classes with "Giving Thanks and Praise" led by the Rev. Dr. Ruth Meyers, Assisting Priest at All Souls and Professor of Liturgics at Church Divinity School of the Pacific.

A central prayer of our eucharistic celebration is the Great Thanksgiving, also known as the eucharistic prayer. We begin by affirming that “it is right to give thanks and praise,” and then the presider leads us in giving thanks for what God has done for us. Over the centuries, churches have developed many different forms of this prayer. At All Souls, these prayers change every season. In this series, we’ll explore different ways we give thanks, digging deeply into the meaning and significance of eucharistic prayers, including prayers from different periods of Christian history and some that we use at All Souls today.

Week One, August 27: We’ll begin by reviewing a table prayer from the late first century and two prayers from the Middle Ages.

Week Two, September 3: We’ll turn our attention to prayers from Anglican history, one from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, used in pre-revolutionary colonial days in what became the United States, and one from the 1789 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church. You may be surprised at how different they are! We’ll compare these to one of the prayers from the 1979 BCP that we use today.

Week Three, September 10: We’ll conclude the series by studying a few of the prayers we use at All Souls, some used in the Episcopal Church, and others used in other parts of the worldwide Anglican Communion.