Musical Source of the Offertory for St Philip Neri

Having checked through the Offertoriale, it is clear that the chant for the Offertory for the feast of St Philip Neri is taken from that of the 19th Sunday after Pentecost, Si ambulavero, thus: 

1Viam1 2man2-3datorum tuorum cucurri3, 4cum dilatasti4  5cor meum.5 (T. P. Alleluja.) 

1Si am1-bulavero in medio tribulationis, 4vivificabis4 me, Domine: et super 2i2-ram ini-3micorum meorum extendes3 manum tuam, et salvum me faciet 5dextera tua.5 

A Month of Latin Masses

It just struck me that I've had a rare blessing: all the Sunday Masses I've attended this month have been celebrated in the Extraordinary Form (to use the expression given us by Benedict XVI of ever-blessed memory; strange to think he's still alive). On the 6th of July, I attended Mass at Lewisham (a Missa cantata), while visiting Sydney; on the 13th, I M.C.'d our first ever Latin Mass in Launceston (again, a sung Mass); on the 20th, I again M.C.'d for Fr Rowe at his Missa cantata in Hobart; and just yesterday, being in Melbourne for an important but rather sad reason, I assisted at the Solemn High Mass in Caulfield. It was a particular pleasure to hear the verse of the Offertory sung: I do like a Mass sung in plainchant throughout (Mass XI and Credo IV, plus all the propers of course, and a hymn in honour of the Sacred Heart at Communion, as its doxology revealed). Assuming I make it to Hobart this weekend (as I may decide to stay here, given that a relative will be recovering from an operation), that will make it five Sunday Latin Masses in a row – what a blessing!

The Sunday Offertory and verse (quoting Daniel iii, 40-42) was as follows, aptly paralleling the prayer In spiritu humilitatis prayed by the priest during the offertory rite:

Sicut in holocáusto aríetum et taurórum, et sicut in míllibus agnórum pínguium: sic fiat sacrifícium nostrum in conspéctu tuo hódie, ut pláceat tibi: * Quia non est confúsio confidéntibus in te, Dómine. V. Et nunc séquimur te in toto corde et timémus te et quærimus fáciem tuam, Dómine: nec confúndas nos, sed fac nobis juxta mansuetúdinem tuam et secúndum multitúdinem misericórdiæ tuæ. * Quia non est confúsio confidéntibus in te, Dómine. 

As in a holocaust of rams and bullocks, and as in thousands of fat lambs: so let our sacrifice be made in thy sight this day, that it may please thee: * For there is no confusion to them that trust in thee, O Lord. V. And now we follow thee with all our heart and we fear thee, and seek thy face, O Lord: put us not to confusion, but deal with us according to thy meekness and according to the multitude of thy mercies. * For there is no confusion to them that trust in thee, O Lord.

Note that there is a divergence between the Missal and the Offertoriale here: the Missal reads holocaustis, the chant books, holocausto. There are a small number of such variants that were approved by the Holy See when Solemnes restored the plainchant repertoire.

Theosis

Deus, qui humanæ substantiæ dignitatem mirabiliter condidisti, et mirabilius reformasti: da nobis* ejus divinitatis esse consortes, qui humanitatis nostræ fieri dignatus est particeps, Jesus Christus Filius tuus Dominus noster: qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitate Spiritus Sancti, Deus, per omnia sæcula sæculorum. Amen. 

(O God, Who wonderfully didst create the dignity of human nature, and still more wonderfully didst restore it: grant to us* that we may be sharers in His divinity, Who didst deign to share in our humanity, Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord: Who with thee liveth and reigneth in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.)

This Collect, with per hujus vini et aquæ mysterium ("by the mystery of this water and wine") inserted after the asterisk, is used daily in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Mass; the original text, however, was more or less as given above, prior to its adoption as part of the offertory rite; and in the modern Ordinary Form, this Collect, slightly altered (with et also before mirabiliter, and quæsumus, before nobis), is used at the Day Mass of Christmas, while the central portion of it is still used daily at the mixing of the chalice, with esse replaced by efficiamur – Per hujus aquæ et vini mysterium ejus efficiamur divinitatis consortes, qui humanitatis nostræ fieri dignatus est particeps.

It is sometimes claimed that the Western Church focusses less on deification, theosis, than the Eastern: but seeing as the words of II Peter i, 4 about becoming "partakers of the divine nature" (divinæ consortes naturæ) are repeated in this Collect, whether at length or in abbreviated form, every day by every priest at the altar, whether in the older or newer forms of Mass (unless, say, a Dominican priest is offering the Sacrifice according to the proper Use of his Order), it can hardly be asserted that this doctrine is not prayed about very often indeed...

Another striking prayer, the Secret of the Masses of both the 4th Sunday after Easter and the 19th Sunday after Pentecost (EF; used a number of times in Eastertide in the OF), states that God makes us partakers of the one supreme Godhead by the rightly revered exchange of the Eucharistic Sacrifice – Deus, qui nos per hujus sacrificii veneranda commercia unius summæ divinitatis participes effecisti... Examples of this sort might be multiplied.

Especially at this Christmas season, we ought thankfully contemplate the unimaginable blessing whereby our good God did not merely (!) create us, but in a manner beyond all hope redeemed us, His Son becoming what He was not, while remaining what it was before, that, having vouchsafed to take upon himself our human nature, we might be made partakers of the one supreme divinity.  As one of the Fathers said (and the rest repeated), God became man, that men might be made gods – what the evil serpent lyingly promised could be achieved through sinful disobedience, God's Incarnate Son made truly possible to all engrafted into Him by graced obedience.

Just as power went forth from Him when the Hæmorrhissa dared to touch the fringe of His garment, so, too, the reception of every Sacrament in love and fear and faith is in truth the physical touch of Christ's Sacred Humanity, the Instrument of the Divinity, imparting life and grace, healing and salvation to us, and no mere moral connexion, no bare memorial. In the daring words of Suarez, Our Lady at the Annunciation "touched the hem of the Divinity"; we in our humility must dare to do likewise.  Thus we will be supernaturally uplifted beyond our nature, elevated, divinized, made capax Dei, able to enter Heaven and abide in God: and this is theosis.

The Dominican Offertory

A quick Mass is a good Mass – by which I mean, not a rushed Roman Low Mass, old or new, but that noble form of the pluriform Roman Rite, the Dominican Low Mass.  (I have only attended a Dominican High Mass once, back in the nineties, so I can't really comment on it too knowledgeably.  It is certainly more ceremonially complex than the Roman High Mass.)

One of the best features of the Dominican Mass is that the prayers at the foot of the altar, the offertory prayers, and the communion prayers are all shorter and less complicated than the Roman.  However, I will focus on the excellently arranged offertory prayers for the moment, and comment only on the Low Mass.

(To see the minutiæ of the rubrics, please refer to the handy online tutorial provided by the Dominican Province of St Joseph; as for the translations of the texts below, I took them from my copy of The Saint Dominic Missal, published 1959.)

Of course, the Dominican Offertory begins and ends as in all forms of the traditional Roman Rite: firstly Dominus vobiscum and Oremus, followed by the Offertory antiphon; lastly, the Secret.  It is the wisely devised set of prayers emplaced between these age-old parts of the Mass that testify to the genius of the Dominican Order, whose rite was fixed and stabilized in the 13th century.

Most surprisingly, the chalice in the Dominican Mass is already prepared before the Offertory!  This was in fact a common mediæval practice, surviving alone in the Dominican form of the Liturgy.  At a Low Mass, it is mixed at the very start; at a High Mass, during the Epistle.  In either case, the minister presenting the water says Benedicite (Bless), and the celebrant does so, saying In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti (In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost), to which the minister responds Amen.  There is no long prayer equivalent to the Roman Per hujus vini et aquæ mysterium.

Therefore, having prepared the chalice previously, the Dominican priest, standing at the altar, having read the Offertory antiphon, next says in a low voice, Quid retribuam Domino pro omnibus quæ retribuit mihi? (What shall I render to the Lord for all that He has rendered to me?)  If it were High Mass, the deacon would then say Immola Deo sacrificium laudis et redde Altissimo vota tua. (Immolate to God the sacrifice of praise, and render to the Most High your vows.)

In both cases, these selected psalm texts succinctly express the reason the priest stands at the altar – to render the perfect sacrifice of praise to God for all His blessings poured out upon him and all creation.  The Holy Eucharist is after all the perfect sacrifice of thanksgiving.

Taking up the chalice, already containing wine mixed with water, with the host resting on the paten atop it, the priest then answers his own question by saying Calicem salutaris accipiam et nomen Domini invocabo. (I will take the chalice of salvation and will call upon the name of the Lord.)  Only by taking up the chalice and invoking the Lord's name can the priest proceed to return a perfect sacrifice of thanks to God.

It is interesting to note how Quid retribuam and Calicem salutaris are the words on the priest's lips at the very start of the offertory, whereas in the traditional Roman Mass they are said directly before the celebrant drinks Christ's Blood from the chalice.

The friar celebrant continues to elevate the chalice with the paten atop, elevating the bread and watered wine contained therein, as he offers up the sacrifice to the Holy Trinity, using a short formula, shorter than the Roman, which very curiously is identical to that used in the diocese of Hereford in the Middle Ages:

Suscipe, sancta Trinitas, hanc oblationem, quam tibi offero in memoriam passionis Domini nostri Jesu Christi: et præsta, ut in conspectu tuo tibi placens ascendat, et meam et omnium fidelium salutem operetur æternam.

(Receive, O holy Trinity, this offering, which I present to You in memory of the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ: and grant, that it may ascend to You worthily in Your sight, and may bring about my eternal salvation and that of all the faithful.)

Therefore, there is no separate oblation of each element, as in the Roman Rite with its prayers Suscipe sancte Pater and Offerimus tibi Domine; and the particular Dominican recension of the Suscipe sancta Trinitas – of which dozens of variants existed in mediæval times – focusses admirably, as might be expected from so scholastic an Order, on the Mass as making present the saving Passion of Christ, that the salvation of priest and all believers be wrought by this application of the power of His Sacrifice.

As is expected, next the priest goes to the epistle side of the altar and washes his fingers, praying the usual Lavabo, but only two verses (originally, only one), rather than the whole remainder of the psalm, as in the Roman Mass:

Lavabo inter innocentes manus meas, et circumdabo altare tuum Domine: ut audiam vocem laudis, et enarrem universa mirabilia tua. Domine, dilexi decorem domus tuæ, et locum habitationis gloriæ tuæ. 

(I will wash my hands among the innocent, and will compass Your altar, O Lord: that I may hear the voice of Your praise, and tell of all Your wondrous works. I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of Your house, and the place where Your glory dwells.)

Returning to the middle, he bows down and prays the In spiritu humilitatis, which, however, has a slightly divergent text from that of the general Roman Rite:

In spiritu humilitatis, et in animo contrito, suscipiamur, Domine, a te: et sic fiat sacrificium nostrum, ut a te suscipiatur hodie, et placeat tibi, Domine Deus.

(In a humble spirit, and with a contrite heart, may we be received by You, O Lord: and may our sacrifice be so [performed], that it be received by You this day, and be pleasing to You, O Lord God.)

Several other religious orders having their own proper rite of Mass were forced by Roman pressure to reword this text, but the Dominicans never did. Unlike the Roman practice, this prayer is not followed by the Veni sanctificator.

The Dominican priest then turns to the faithful present and says Orate, fratres, ut meum ac vestrum pariter in conspectu Domini sit acceptum sacrificium.  (Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours may be pleasing in the sight of the Lord.)  There is no response to this – the brethren pray in their hearts in response, no doubt.

The only part of the Dominican offertory rite that seems an unnecessary duplication is that interposed between the Orate fratres and the Secret, albeit a common mediæval addition: the priest, after he has turned back to the altar, prays quietly Domine, exaudi orationem meam: et clamor meus ad te veniat. Oremus. (O Lord, hear my prayer: and let my cry come to You. Let us pray.)  This corresponds to the usual practice when Dominus vobiscum is not used in the Office, which suggests its origin was the transfer of such from Office to Mass; and this helps justify this apparently curious Dominican usage.

In sum, the Dominican Mass – and in particular, the offertory thereof – is to my mind plus simple et plus uni than the Roman.  Unlike Dom Claude de Vert, that early eighteenth century liturgist to whom I owe that phrase, my liturgy of predilection is not the Carthusian, but the Dominican.

If only I lived somewhat closer to a tradition-minded Blackfriar!  It's been weeks since I was at Fr Mannes' Low Mass...

Offertories Old and New

The essential difference between the Offertory Rite in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, and that ("the Preparation of the Gifts")  in the Ordinary Form, is the degree of prolepsis.

Prolepsis - strange word!  What does it mean?  It means a "foreshadowing", a "foretelling", an anticipation (deriving from the Greek verb προλέγω).

We know – as Bishop Elliott reminded us in one of his liturgical handbooks – that the Mass is not a cereal sacrifice.  Furthermore, there is no oblation of bread and wine as such, since clearly such offerings cannot placate the Almighty.  Only insofar as the bread and wine will become the Body and Blood of the One Priest and Victim, Christ Jesus, the Lamb once slain Who lives for ever, do they have value: thus, anticipating their transformation into His Flesh and Blood Most Precious, already at the Offertory they are offered up.

This explains the language used in the Traditional Offertory prayers over the bread and wine and both together – in the Suscipe sancte Pater, the Offerimus tibi Domine, and the Suscipe sancta Trinitas.  The bread and wine are spoken of as already: the "spotless host" offered for all Christians, living and dead, that it profit unto salvation; the "chalice of salvation" whose sweet savour may ascend unto the Lord to avail for the salvation of the whole world; as "this oblation" offered to the Trinity in memory of Christ's saving works, honouring the saints and availing unto our salvation.  It would make no sense to speak of the bread and wine, before the consecration, in such terms except precisely proleptically.

Whence comes this language of prolepsis?  From the language of the Roman Canon itself: at its outset, long before the consecration of the elements by the very Words of the Lord (Verba Domini), the bread and wine are spoken of as hæc dona, hæc munera, hæc sancta sacrificia illibata ("these gifts, these presents, these holy unsullied sacrifices") and as hanc... oblationem, "this oblation".

The Offertory Rite, as the mediævals perceived, is thus already an anticipated doublet of the Canon of the Mass – which is why it was known then as the Canon minor.

The modern Mass, on the other hand, shies away from such full-blooded words.  This reflects the "problem" that theologians of the fifties and sixties had with prolepsis – despite it having been the norm in the Church for many centuries, in the Eastern Rites no less than in the Western.  (Indeed, the Mozarabic Rite is if anything the most proleptic of all, since its elaborate intercessions are offered up, speaking of the sacrifice of the Mass, long before the Preface and Consecration is reached.)

What to substitute for the old prayers?  Bugnini reports in his long apologia for the reform of the liturgy that at one stage, various Scriptural passages were suggested as possible for praying while the bread and wine were readied, such as "Wisdom hath built herself a house, she hath hewn her out seven pillars.  She hath slain her victims, mingled her wine, and set forth her table." (Wisdom ix, 1-2) Then someone had the bright idea of adapting the Jewish table blessings of bread and wine, much as, just perhaps (who can say?), Our Lord did at the Last Supper.  We therefore bless the Lord God of all things for the bread and wine we have to offer (that controversial word "offer" was retained), the produce of plants and of human effort (how didactic!), which will become – what?

It was decided that, unlike in the Ambrosian Rite, to pray directly and in anticipation of the epiclesis that the elements be transsubstantiated would be to anticipate too much (that dratted prolepsis again!), so instead, two poetic phrases were used: "bread of life" and "spiritual drink".  ("Spiritual drink" sounds very meagre, almost risible, in English: whisky is a spirit that we drink, for instance!)  Many commentators have noted that unfortunately (or ecumenically!) these phrases are rather equivocal, neither affirming nor denying the total change of the substance of bread and wine into the Body and Blood.

What has been lost?  There is now, in the Ordinary Form, no prayer in the Preparation of the Gifts offering them for such determinate ends, anticipating the offering up of the Divine Victim to compass our salvation and deliverance from our sins and all other blessings.  What remains?  The Orate fratres and its response, the Suscipiat.  This is a very important prayer: the priest asks the people to pray that the sacrifice that he offers, and that they offer up in union with him, may be acceptable to the Lord, that it may indeed be a true and saving satisfaction and impetration.  The people's response, to the effect that they beg God accept the offered sacrifice, to His praise and glory, and to benefit them and all the holy Church, does teach the truth of the Sacrifice.

The Novus Ordo also, it must be remembered, still retains the In spiritu humilatis, quoting from Daniel iii, 39-40, wherein the priest prays that (as new ICEL puts it), "With humble spirit and contrite heart may we be accepted by you, O Lord, and may our sacrifice in your sight this day be pleasing to you, Lord God."  It is important that sacrificium nostrum... placeat tibi, Domine Deus be read in the strongest sense, as praying that the sacrifice offered – which is Christ – please the Lord, placate Him, appease Him, be a propitiation availing for us men and for our salvation.  Undeniably, however, this is doctrine is deëmphasised in the modern Liturgy relative to the old.

A secondary difference is the degree of what might be called (by moderns) "uncomfortable words", relating to sinfulness and unworthiness.  In the Old Mass, the priest offers the host as a propitiation "for my innumerable sins and offences and negligences" – such a prayer is well-nigh unimaginable in the sunny New Mass!  Yet, strange to say, events of recent times have revealed that priests might well need to beseech forgiveness "for innumerable sins and offences and negligences" - can anyone dispute this, after so many scandals, "so much filth in the Church" as the Pope himself said, yea, as he has just said during his visit to Fatima, the greatest enemies of the Church are the sins of her members!

The Supreme Pontiff formerly known as Cardinal Ratzinger mentioned, while yet in that rank, that Gaudium et spes has passages that sound almost semi-Pelagian in their overconfident view of "modern man".  It is evident that this hubristic spirit is not absent from the liturgy drawn up by those too-optimistic men of the sixties...

Let us be clear, it is worse than foolishness, it is wilful blindness, to speak not of the need to offer God sacrifices in reparation "for... sins and offences and negligences" – are we to continue the pretence that "all is calm, all is bright" and still smile pathetically at Mass, "fiddling while Rome burns"?

Again, though, I must be fair, and note that the priest in the Ordinary Form, while washing his hands, prays the Lava me – "Wash me, Lord, from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin" (Psalm 50:4) – so the sense of sin is not entirely lacking in the modern Mass.

Note well: throughout this post I have left the Secret or Prayer over the Gifts out of the discussion!  I well know that this ancient prayer is the very soul of the offertory, since it existed before any other offertory prayers at all were developed and added.  But as to whether the emphasis of the doctrine it conveys has changed in the development of the modern Missal, that is a more complex topic, requiring much careful analysis...

A Basic Difference in Attitude

In my experience, all but the most way-out and scarcely Catholic priests wouldn't dream of interpolating extra prayers into the Mass, or materially changing its structure by omitting items holus-bolus; the most they do is change a word here or there, which is annoying but hardly earth-shattering... and of course this only applies to the Ordinary Form - anyone offering the Traditional Mass wouldn't dare make changes (apart perhaps from following older rubricks, such as singing Benedicamus Domino not Ite missa est in Advent).  The only 'mainstream' addition I can think of is the happy one – an innovation due to the piety of an English bishop shortly after the Council – of having the people say a Hail Mary at the end of the bidding prayers, before the collect that concludes them.

Compare and contrast this with what prevails among our separated brethren of the Anglican sort: some very estranged indeed, some not to be separated for much longer...

Among Anglo-Catholics, it appears a sort of liturgical anarchy reigns.  Whatever of the official liturgical books, at the least these are tricked out with all manner of pomp and ceremony, and supplemented with all manner of extra prayers: some from modern and some from olden Roman books, some from mediæval Uses, and some from who knows where.  It is common, and in fact a clichéd joke, for folk to say "we're strictly Prayer Book Anglicans" when the sights and words of their liturgies would suggest otherwise!

(Don't get me wrong: as one bishop put it, Anglicans believe in salvation by good taste alone!  The High tend to be very careful about worshipping the Lord in the beauty of holiness, and in this are a blessed relief for Catholics too often experiencing philistine and minimalist worship.  Take the use of good music, of the eastward position at the altar, of incense - apart from Traditional Latin Mass circles and rare Reform of the Reform liturgies, and to a lesser extent some cathedrals, Catholics these days tend to be deprived of all three.  One could say they've the form and we've the substance...)

But back to my topic, via a concrete example: I have never heard of a Catholic priest using the old Offertory prayers at the modern form of Mass; at most, I've seen priests mix the chalice first, rather than after offering the host, or even offering both host and chalice together, which are strictly incorrect but actually quite well-precedented little changes; but I have seen with my own eyes an Anglican service, where both the Tridentine and the Novus Ordo Offertory prayers were used, sandwiched in between the BCP Prayer for the Church Militant and the Preface leading into an "Interim Rite" Prayer of Consecration and Oblation.

Do-it-yourself liturgy on such a scale (and I don't say it's unorthodox, rather the contrary, given that it is done to catholicize the rite) is to Catholic eyes rather surprising to say the least.  More seriously, it has to be said that it appears rather like a continual reinvention of the wheel.

As is well-known, Forward in Faith Anglicans in the C. of E. (who may or may not cross the Tiber in who knows what numbers come February the 22nd) tend to use the modern Roman Rite of Mass: it must be for them that Anglicanorum cœtibus mentions that the use of the Roman Rite is not excluded in the forthcoming Ordinariates.

Then there is the Anglican Use of the Catholic Church, Mark I - the Book of Divine Worship – which even those involved in drawing it up have described openly as not what they would have wanted, presumably because it follows the 1979 U.S. B.C.P. rather than the more classically Anglican 1928 U.S. B.C.P., and also because it has large inserts from the Novus Ordo (above all, the modern Roman three-year lectionary, and the modern "Preparation of the Gifts"), rather than following the Ritualist tradition of taking as much as possible from the older Roman liturgy done into hieratic English.

The Anglican Use Mark II, which is supposedly under final development, would I assume be a mixture of the best of the classic B.C.P.'s (the last of which was the Canadian book of 1962) and enrichments from the Roman Rite, largely if not wholly from its pre-Conciliar form, and even taking elements from the Sarum Rite.

But whatever options are given, Rome will intend that liturgical anarchy cease, and that the rites so thoughtfully provided be used as appointed.

Options already semi-officially available via the B.D.W. are the use of the so-called "Minor Propers", which are in fact the Introit, Gradual, Alleluia or Tract, Offertory and Communion – the classical Roman Rite's liturgical chants, done into English.  They are provided for by the innocuous rubricks at the start of the Rite of the Holy Eucharist, between its readings, at its offertory and at communion: "Here may be sung a Psalm, Hymn or Anthem".  This is elastic enough to permit of the use of a modern Responsorial Psalm or of a Sarum Sequence...

Personally, I would prefer that an Anglican Use be "Anglican", not just a strange hybrid of all the nicest bits of B.C.P. and Roman Missal (old and new) thrown together.  Here would be my very tentative suggestion, taking as its base the most Catholic of the family of B.C.P. rites – the Scottish – and supplementing it where necessary, but nearly always from Anglican sources:

• Psalm, Hymn or Anthem / Introit Psalm with Glory Be
• ["The Lord be with you..., Let us pray" & Threefold Kyrie (Nonjurors' 1718)]
• [Lord's Prayer]
• Collect for Purity
• Decalogue / Summary of the Law, with Responses; &/or Kyrie eleison
• [Collect for Grace and Strength to keep the Commandments (Scottish & U.S.)]
• "The Lord be with you..." & "Let us pray"
• Collect of the Day
• [Lesson (for those who use three lessons at Mass, following more modern Lectionaries)]
• Epistle with Title and Conclusion
• Psalm, Hymn or Anthem
• Gospel with Title and Responses
• Creed
• Notices & Sermon & Exhortation (if used)
• Bidding Prayer (used here because the Prayer for the Church is used after the Consecration, as the form of intercession during the Eucharistic Prayer; the 1928 U.S. Bidding Prayer is admirable)
• "Let us present our offerings to the Lord..." (Scottish)
• Offertory Sentence / Psalm, Hymn or Anthem
• [Mixing the chalice with wine and water; washing hands – nihil dicens]
• "Blessed be thou..." (the Scottish Offertory prayer – see below, †)
• [Would the Orate fratres and Secret be necessary importations from the Roman Rite?]
• Sursum corda &c.
• Preface
• Sanctus & Benedictus
• Prayer of Consecration (with a pre-consecratory Epiclesis, praying that the elements "become the Body and Blood", as in the 1764 Scottish formula)
• Prayer of Memorial and Oblation (incl. "which we now offer unto thee" - Scottish & American, but removing the post-consecratory epiclesis)
• Prayer for the Church (incl. "to accept our oblations and to receive these our prayers which we offer", so expressing the Sacrifice as impetratory; inserting the name of the Pope; and commemorating the Saints by name)
• "As our Saviour Christ... we are bold to say:"
• Lord's Prayer with Doxology
• The Peace of the Lord be with you...
• Invitation, General Confession, Declaration of Absolution (non-Sacramental, so changing "you" to "us", etc.), Comfortable Words [this could be put before the Offertory as in most other Anglican forms, and as the B.D.W. already does]
• Prayer of Humble Access
• Agnus Dei
• [Ecce Agnus Dei &c.? - Roman but apparently much used; perhaps the 1549 "Christ our Paschal Lamb..." could be used also; the B.D.W. deleted the 1979 U.S. B.C.P. "Take them in remembrance..." formula presumably as altogether too Zwinglian]
• Psalm, Hymn or Anthem
• "The Body / Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ..."
• ["Having now received..." / versicles (optional Scottish forms)]
• Prayer of Thanksgiving
• Gloria in excelsis (in most modern Anglican forms moved back to its original place, but quite decent here as a thanksgiving; the B.D.W. has it at the start, but I don't think this would be absolutely necessary)
• [Collect before the Blessing (vide infra, *)]
• "The Peace..."
• [Dismissal?]

This liturgy would almost wholly use elements common to the Anglican Prayer Book tradition, while being made perfectly orthodox, by reason of careful bolstering of its epiclesis and its expression of the offering of the Sacrifice for all ends.

My personal view is that, if one wants the Traditional Latin Mass, have a Traditional Latin Mass; if one wants the Novus Ordo, do it but do it properly; and if one wants an Anglican Use Mass, have one that is proud of itself, not a mish-mash of a few Anglican bits floating in a Roman sea.

(I would of course have no objections to, say, the Sarum Rite being revived, whether in Latin or done into decent English, but such a multiplicity of rites for a relatively small group of incomers, however welcome, may seem excessive.)

******

* Note that the South African 1954 B.C.P. (and its forerunners earlier in the century) proposed a very full-blooded reference to the Eucharistic Sacrifice, being transparently based on the Placeat sancta Trinitas, to use before the Blessing; apparently it excited quite some controversy among the Protestants:

LOOK with favour, most Holy Trinity, on this our act of worship and service; and may this sacrifice set forth before thine eyes be acceptable to thy Divine Majesty, and avail for us and all for whom we have offered it; who livest and reignest, one God, world without end. Amen.

What a nice prayer to use at the end of an Anglican Use Mass!

(As it is, I often use this as a private prayer at the end of the Masses I attend.)

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† The Scottish offertory prayer, based on King David's prayer at the people's giving gifts for the building of the Temple (I Chronicles xxix, 10b-12a,14b), deserves to be better known; it is certainly more splendid than that tired pair of anæmic berakhoth used in the Novus Ordo ("Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation..."):

BLESSED be thou, O Lord God, for ever and ever. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine: thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and thou art exalted as head above all: both riches and honour come of thee, and of thine own do we give unto thee. Amen.

This prayer is intended to be recited when the host and mixed chalice are readied: the priest "shall then offer up, and place the bread and wine prepared for the Sacrament upon the Lord's Table" – custom was to hold the paten and chalice a little above the altar, and at the final phrase to lift them up a little, as a gesture of oblation.

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While writing of ideal liturgies, the Nonjurors' 1718 Communion Office included the following prayer at the end of the offertory directly before the Sursum corda, being abridged from St Basil's Liturgy; while too exotically oriental and too long to really fit in a Western rite, it is noteworthy for what it says about their understanding of what the priestly ministry is:

O ALMIGHTY God, who hast created us, and placed us in this ministry by the power of thy Holy Spirit; may it please thee, O Lord, as we are ministers of the New Testament, and dispensers of thy holy mysteries, to receive us who are approaching thy Holy Altar, according to the multitude of thy mercies, that we may be worthy to offer unto thee this reasonable and unbloody Sacrifice for our Sins and the Sins of the People. Receive it, O God, as a sweet smelling savour, and send down the grace of thy Holy Spirit upon us. And as thou didst accept this worship and service from thy Holy Apostles: so of thy goodness, O Lord, vouchsafe to receive these Offerings from the hands of us sinners, that being made worthy to minister at thy Holy Altar without blame, we may have the reward of good and faithful servants at that great and terrible day of account and just retribution; through our Lord Jesus Christ thy Son, who, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth ever one God, world without end. Amen.

Could not this serve as a suitable prayer of preparation before Mass for a priest?