The Gift of the Commandments

A Reflection on The Penitential Order and Decalogue in Worship

If you have worshiped at Christ Church during Lent, you may have noticed that the beginning of the service feels a little different.

The liturgy opens in its familiar way with the Opening Acclamation—“Bless the Lord who forgives all our sins”—and the people’s response, “His mercy endures for ever.”  But instead of moving straight into the usual rhythm of the service, the liturgy pauses.  The Penitential Order shifts the structure.  Confession comes early.  The Kyrie replaces the Gloria.  Scripture is proclaimed before we have even settled into the ordinary cadence of worship.  And then, in a call-and-response form that feels ancient and deliberate, we recite the Decalogue—the Ten Commandments.

Why do we do this?  Why reorder the liturgy at all?  Why add the Ten Commandments?  Why make worship feel slightly unfamiliar?

The answer is both practical and historical.

First, the practical reason.  One of the quiet strengths of the Church’s liturgical tradition is that it changes the emphasis of worship according to the season.  The core structure of the Eucharist remains the same throughout the year, but the Church gently shifts the focus so that certain spiritual themes come to the fore at particular times.

Lent is the Church’s season of repentance and preparation.  It is the forty-day journey in which we prepare ourselves to walk with Christ toward the cross and the empty tomb.  The Penitential Order helps bring those themes into sharp focus.

By placing the confession of sin at the very beginning of the liturgy, the Church reminds us that repentance is the doorway to grace.  Before we hear the Scriptures, before we proclaim the Creed, before we gather around the altar, we acknowledge our need for mercy.

The shift is subtle but meaningful.  In ordinary time, confession comes midway through the liturgy, after we have heard God’s Word and prayed for the world.  In Lent, however, we begin by standing honestly before God.  We start by acknowledging that we need forgiveness.

The Kyrie—“Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.”—reinforces this posture of humility. Instead of the triumphant joy of the Gloria, Lent begins with a prayer for mercy.  Yet even that prayer is not gloomy or despairing.  The Kyrie is a cry of hope, trusting that God’s mercy is always greater than our sin.

Then comes the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments.

For some people, this part of the service can feel surprising.  Why recite ancient commandments from Exodus?  Haven’t we moved beyond that?

To understand why the Church includes the Decalogue, we need to look back a little into Anglican history.

When the first Book of Common Prayer was published in 1549, the Eucharist began with something called the “Ninefold Kyrie.”  In medieval Christianity, worshipers would call upon God’s mercy three times to the Father, three times to the Son, and three times again to the Father: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy— said in that order three times.

But only three years later, in the 1552 revision of the first Anglican prayer book, the reformers replaced that opening Kyrie with the Decalogue.

Why the change?

Because in the Christian tradition for centuries prior, there were three things every believer was expected to know before confirmation: the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Ten Commandments.The architects of the prayer book wanted these foundational elements of the faith to be constantly before the people. So they placed them directly into the Sunday liturgy each week.

So for centuries in Anglican worship, the Ten Commandments were not an occasional feature—they were a weekly one.

In fact, the American Prayer Book required their regular recitation well into the nineteenth century.  The 1892 prayer book was the first to permit them to be omitted at the top of the liturgy, but still required that they be said every Sunday somewhere in the liturgy.  The 1928 prayer book relaxed the requirement slightly more, directing that the Decalogue be said at least once each month.

In other words, for most of Anglican history, the Ten Commandments were a normal and expected part of Sunday worship.

The fact that we now hear them primarily only during the six Sundays of Lent is actually a relatively recent development.

But the historical explanation is only part of the story.  The deeper question remains: why does the Church continue to place the Ten Commandments before us at all?

The answer is that the commandments help us remember something essential about the Christian life.

When God gave the law to Moses, the commandments did not begin with rules. They began with a reminder of grace.

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”

Before God gives instruction, God reminds the people of their liberation.  The law is not given as a burden placed upon slaves.  It is given as guidance offered to a people who have already been set free.

The commandments are not chains.  They are a map.

They show us what life looks like when we live in right relationship with God and with one another.

This is why the law remains so important in the New Testament.  The Apostle Paul spends much of his writing wrestling with the role of the law.  He teaches that the law cannot save us—only Christ can.  But he also says that the law helps us see clearly where we fall short and where we need grace

The law reveals our need for redemption.

And Jesus himself makes clear that the law is not something to be discarded. In the Sermon on the Mount, he says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.”

For Christians, the commandments are not merely ancient regulations.  They are signposts pointing toward the life God desires for us.

So when we recite the Decalogue during Lent, we are not simply revisiting a relic of the past.  We are refreshing our memory about the shape of faithful living.

We are remembering that our relationship with God involves both grace and obedience.  Mercy and transformation.

Lent invites us to look honestly at our lives.  The Penitential Order gives us the space to do exactly that.  It reminds us that repentance is not about guilt for its own sake—it is about returning to the God who loves us enough to show us a better way.

And so each Sunday in Lent we hear again those ancient words given at Sinai.  Not as condemnation, but as invitation.

They remind us of who God is.  They remind us who we are called to be.
And they prepare our hearts to receive the mercy that awaits us at the cross—and the new life that bursts forth on Easter morning.

Pax et Bonum!

Fr. Ben +