As a frequent cyclist in London for decades, I often pass groups of tourists marvelling at some iconic sight. Unless they are a dangerous obstruction, I positively like to be reminded that we have such buildings and vistas on our doorstep. And I need it, because amazing things that we see often can easily slide from our consciousness.
So also in our church liturgy. There are sometimes things which are new and striking, which really make us think, and often things which we’ve heard and said so many times that they have disappeared. I think that the verse traditionally known as the Little Gloria is one of those disappearances. That’s the one that goes like this:
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and shall be forever. Amen
It’s called the Little Gloria to distinguish it from the Great Gloria (“Glory to God in the highest, and peace to his people on earth… etc.”). We tend to add the Little Gloria at the end of Psalms and other sections of worship, so you will hear it three times at Evensong, for instance. At that service the Prayer Book tags on the curious words “World without end”, which at least wakens the brain to ask how that fits with the belief that Jesus will return when the world ends. But that apart, I suspect that the words of the Little Gloria have disappeared from most worshippers’ consciousness.
That such astonishing words, part of Christian liturgy since the earliest centuries after Christ, could disappear in such a way is itself astonishing. So my suggestion is that the next time you hear those words in worship, you try to focus on them. That as creatures of the creator God, as followers of Jesus Christ with the Holy Spirit indwelling within us, we must surely be dazzled by the glory that shines forth from them. And that their existence across the sweep of time: from the very origin of time itself through the present and on into the unfathomable eternity ahead should leave thinking creatures dazzled beyond comprehension.
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