COLLECTS
OF THE CHURCH YEAR
Commencing on page
157 of our present Book of Common Payer (BCP) and continuing through
page 261 are the traditional and contemporary versions of the
Collects. The Propers, Collects, Readings, and Psalms are
appointed for each Sunday in our liturgical year as well as for the
specific Holy Days. The opening Collect,
“collecta,” in the original Latin, or summing up of
our prayers, has been a tradition in the Christian eucharistic service
from the fourth century. For the most part, our Collects
derive from the earliest collections of prayers, called Sacramentaries,
which were identified with particular Popes, such as Leo, Gelasius, and
Gregory, from the fifth through the seventh centuries. In
turn, there was an effort to correlate the Lectionary reading to
reflect or complement the Collect.
In great part,
our current Collect selection is the product of Archbishop Thomas
Cranmer who composed our first Anglican BCP in 1549. Since
that time, numerous substitutions, redactions, and relocations, as well
as new collects, have provided us with a variety of origins and prayers
in the several services the BCP. Approximately one half of
the Collects in the 1928 BCP still remain in our current BCP.
The
Collect is a distinctive and carefully designed literary art form, in
the same sense as our poetic sonnet or the Japanese haiku.
There can be three or five clauses:
| 1. Address | 1. Address | |
| 2. Acknowledgment or Attribution | ||
| 2. Petition | 3. Petition | |
| 4. Aspiration | ||
| 3. Pleading | 5. Pleading |
Let’s
examine a particular Collect: The First Collect for Christmas Day, page
212, BCP
| 1. Address | O God, |
| 2. Acknowledgment | you make us glad by the yearly festival of the birth of your only son Jesus Christ: |
| 3. Petition | Grant that we, who joyfully receive him as our redeemer, |
| 4. Aspiration | may with sure confidence behold him when he comes to be our Judge |
| 5. Pleading | who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. AMEN |
In the words of one of the last
Collects of the Season of Pentecost, we can
“…read, mark,
learn, and inwardly
digest them…” in so many ways that will be
pertinent to our lives.
Succinct and varied, they
are also representative of our Anglican faith in that they are
based
on “scripture, tradition and reason.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The
Book of Common Prayer – 1979
The Book of Common
Prayer – 1928
The Oxford American Prayer
Book Commentary
Dr. Massey Hamilton Shepherd, Jr.
Oxford
University Press, 1959
Commentary on the American
Prayer Book
Marion J. Hatchett
Harper Collins,
San
Francisco, CA, 1994
The Collects in American Liturgy
Martin
R. Dudley,
The Liturgical Press,
Minnesota,
1994
The Collects of Thomas Cranmer
C.
Frederick Barbee & Paul F. M. Zahl
Williams B.
Eardmans Publishing Company
Grand Rapids Michigan 1999
Ancient
Collects
William Bright
Forward Movement Publications
Cincinnati,
Ohio, 1993
Should you have any questions,
suggestions or comments about the weekly postings, please feel free to
contact Richard W. “Rick” Wheeler at:
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Concord MA 01742
978 369 7736