There is a priestly liturgical spirituality implied in the new Prayer Book. I have yet to see it discussed with any depth. It differs less radically from the 1928 BCP than the Vatican II liturgies do from the Tridentine Mass. Yet there is change. The four orders are explicitly represented in public worship, in cooperation and organic relationship rather than the old rigid hierarchy. Celebration is by the whole people, for the Eucharist does not belong to the priest, nor is priesthood reduced to saying a mass of priestly leadership and lay passivity. We have gone less far than Rome in turning our liturgies into Godly instructions or exhortations in the banal language of the market place. Mystery, symbol, beauty, the sacrality and otherness of worship are central values; and that sacred space and time nurtures our priests in their sense of the oddity of being a "God person," set apart ". ..in the world, for the world, against the world."(36) The Book of Common Prayer is the matrix of lay and priestly spirituality which binds the priest to her or his special calling as sacramental person, and integrates that focus into the Opus Dei of the whole gathered community. It is the mark and fruit of our Catholic and Reformed heritage; it defines our priesthood. ………

……The people have a right to ask of their priest not problem-solving, or therapy, but hints of the Experience of God. The priest therefore is a Theotokos, a God bearer; the priest is midwife, one who waits for grace to bear fruit in the community; the priest is also a nourisher: Catherine of Siena wrote that the priest holds the people to the breasts of Mother Church (39), to be fed the milk and meat of the Gospel. The priest as friend of the soul, as Abba/ Amma, stands as Mary, or John the Beloved Disciple, together with another Christian soul at the foot of the cross ……..