Roman
Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves
to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and
inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all
adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil
thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus
Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy
Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and
inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all
adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil
thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus
Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy
Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
This collect for the upcoming Third Sunday in Lent was in our prior prayerbooks for the Second Sunday in Lent, and Hatchett (Commentary on the American Prayer Book, p.175) says it was so in the Gregorian Sacramentary, the Roman book dating to the sixth century. Hatchett says it reminds us that God’s protection is necessary to defend us from assaults upon the soul as well as those on the body.
Historically we take our liturgy from the Roman church, but during my summer 2014 Ignatian retreats I experienced their worship as more adapting to the world than ours. Wondering if they have discarded ancient prayers that we cling to, I downloaded their online Roman Missal this morning. Here is their collect for Lent 3.
O God, author of every mercy and of all goodness, who in fasting, prayer and almsgiving
have shown us a remedy for sin,
look graciously on this confession of our lowliness, that we, who are bowed down by our conscience, may always be lifted up by your mercy.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
have shown us a remedy for sin,
look graciously on this confession of our lowliness, that we, who are bowed down by our conscience, may always be lifted up by your mercy.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Our near obsession with clinging to antiquity unnecessarily dates our worship. Many of our Episcopal parishes customarily use Cranmer’s liturgy at one service, but General Convention needs to make the other service is truly contemporary (not to slide into the trite word “relevant”) and not just change the thees and thous and erase the vouchsafes and call it “contemporary.” It isn’t. It is not contemporary. Rather than setting the stage for worship as the collect was meant to do, our above collect from Gregory’s era is a distracting mind stopper. Like it or not, we still have much to learn (and mimic) from Rome.
TW+