In his Christmas message, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, had this to say about the Book of Common Prayer:

The Prayer Book is a treasury of words and phrases that are still for countless English-speaking people the nearest you can come to an adequate language for the mysteries of faith. It gives us words that say where and who we are before God: 'we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep', 'we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table', but also, 'we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs through hope of the everlasting kingdom'. It gives us words for God that hold on to the paradoxes we can't avoid: 'God... who art always more ready to hear than we to pray,' 'who declarest thy almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity, 'whose property is always to have mercy.' A treasury of words for God – but also a source of vision for an entire society: 'Give us grace seriously to lay heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions'; 'If ye shall perceive your offences to be such as are not only against God but also against your neighbours; then ye shall reconcile yourselves unto them; being ready to make restitution'.

The world has changed, the very rhythms of our speech have changed, our society is irreversibly more plural, and we have – with varying degrees of reluctance – found other and usually less resonant ways of talking to God and identifying who we are in his presence. If we used only the Prayer Book these days we'd risk confusing the strangeness of the mysteries of faith with the strangeness of antique and lovely language. But we're much the poorer for forgetting it and pushing it to the margins as much as we often do in the Church.

This is one of the reasons I love the Prayer Book. The language may be difficult and dated, but for myself, at least, it has a way of putting into words things I sometimes have trouble expressing. There is a challenge – a good challenge – in wrestling with the phrases and thoughts, one that will draw you deeper in the mysteries of faith and the wonders of God.

We do ourselves a great disservice when we cast off as irrelevant those things which require some work to understand. In the case of the Prayer Book, we miss out on some of the richest prayers and words of worship, and some of the most profound ways of expressing the timeless truths of the Christian faith.