As many readers will know, Anglican churches used to have a white light burning before the Blessed Sacrament ... as we do in the Church of the Holy Rood in Oxford, and as described in Betjeman's Lincolnshire Church and in his moving poem Felixstowe about the old nun, sole survivor of her Order,
... And all the world goes home to tea and toast.
I hurry past a cakeshop's tempting scones
Bound for the red brick twilight of St John's.
"Thou knowest my down sitting and mine uprising".
Here where the white light burns with steady glow,
Safe from the vain world's silly sympathising,
Safe in the Love that I was born to know,
Safe from the surging of the lonely sea,
My heart finds rest, my heart finds rest in Thee.
We used to follow strictly such Roman legislation as the old CIC 1271 and S.R.C. 3576 (5), which laid down that the light before the Most Holy should be white (but tolerated coloured glass). I remember hearing it asserted that red lights* were a Franco-Anglo-Irish RC corruption ... one example among so many of how we kept the rules so much better than they did (no, we weren't very nice people, were we?).
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*In heavily Gothic Victorian churches, we had (sometimes as many as) seven (vide Revelation cap 5 et alibi) red lights burning before the High Altar, but not as an indication of the Sacramental Presence which might have been on a side altar and which, wherever It was, had Its own white light. A red light would probably also burn before the image of the Sacred Heart, and a blue one before the Great Mother of God.
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Is the Patrimony Red or White? In some churches in Brazil, the answer would be Yes, since either colour requires an actually burning flame. But the more trendy churches have substituted an electric light bulb before the Blessed Sacrament.
Yes, it seems far more symbolically appropriate to burn a white lamp/candle before the Blessed Sacrament, blue for Our Lady and red for altars and images of other saints.
And how marvellous to have those seven hanging red lamps! (I have seen six red and one white where the Blessed Sacrament was reserved.)
A new movement?
In 1985 the late Fr Donald Neilson of the Archdiocese of Vancouver showed me the beautiful anglo-catholic church of St James, built to serve in a poorer part of that city, since the poor should have beauty too. It had the seven red lamps burning above the altar to honour the "shekina" the presence of the glory of the Lord. And there was a white light burning before the Tabernacle.
Thank you, Fr Hunwicke, for bringing this to mind.
But what is happening during "lockdown"? If no-one is allowed into (CofE) churches, is (a) the Reserved Sacrament being regularly renewed, and (b) the sanctuary lamp being replenished when the oil is exhausted?
at an australian jesuit school in the 50's we asked why the sanctuary lamp was red. Our teacher, Rev Fr Charles Dennet SJ answered simply "so Pellegrinis (Church supply shop) can sell more red glass"
The mention of St. James, Vancouver, British Columbia is of interest. It is the oldest congregation in the Archdiocese of New Westminster, and upheld Oxford Movement and Ritualism from the very beginning. Whilst the Catholics pioneered there, there always was a strong Evangelical wing, which led to competing seminaries. Those seminaries were ultimately merged into the Anglican Theological College, which didn't make it through the 70s (it was collapsed in with a Canadian United Church seminary, and the Anglican identity disappeared). Because of its proximity, the Diocese of Oregon, of which I am a member, had many clerics from ATC (much closer than the seminary, CDSP, in the San Francisco Bay are). I was told a story that one of the more infamous Evangelicals was called upon to preach in one of the more advanced parishes in New Westminster. This church had the Bl. Sacrament reserved in a tabernacle in the center of the altar, and a single RED lamp burned before it (hanging down in the center). The clergy on staff were slightly concerned what a notable Protestant my say in a Catholic parish. Warming up to his theme, the preacher gesticulated towards the lamp, and declaimed, "When you see that lamp, it is the Sacred Heart of Jesus, burning, throbbing with love for you and me." And so, you see, red lamps are to be preferred.
As an American I have been used to red all my life, although some parishes replace the red globe with a clear one at Eastertide.
The lamp becomes less noticeable, as the clear globe doesn't scatter as the red does.
I've sometimes fancied that if a more "festive" lamp for Easter is desired, a clear globe cut with prisms would do nicely. This is probably against Canon Law, the Spirit of VII, or both.
"Warming up to his theme, the preacher gesticulated towards the lamp, and declaimed, "When you see that lamp, it is the Sacred Heart of Jesus, burning, throbbing with love for you and me." And so, you see, red lamps are to be preferred."
Well, he seems to have been aware of the sermons of the Puritan divine John Owen (1616-1683) who preached a sermon on "the heart of Jesus open to usward," a sermon I once read about in a book by Louis Bouyer. Bouyer was discussing the antecedents, shared by Catholics and Protestants alike, of what became in Catholicism devotion to the Sacred Heart.
Pius XII who gave us '55 also seemed to think a red lamp was appropriate.... silly modernizer.....
From Pius XII:
"A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God, that God's Son is only a symbol, a philosophy just like any other. In the churches, Christians will seek in vain for the RED lamp where Jesus waits for them. Like the sinful woman weeping before the empty tomb, they will cry out: "Where have they taken him?" "
Pius XII who gave us '55 also seemed to think a red lamp was appropriate.... silly modernizer.....
From Pius XII:
"A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God, that God's Son is only a symbol, a philosophy just like any other. In the churches, Christians will seek in vain for the RED lamp where Jesus waits for them. Like the sinful woman weeping before the empty tomb, they will cry out: "Where have they taken him?" "
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