Advent in the 1928 BCP
Advent in the 1928 BCP is the opening season of the Christian year in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer. The book treats Advent as a season of watchfulness, repentance, hope, Scripture, and preparation for Christmas, while also keeping the older Anglican emphasis on Christ's coming again to judge the quick and the dead.
Place in the 1928 Prayer Book
In the 1928 book the Advent propers stand at the head of "The Collects, Epistles and Gospels." Before the first Advent collect, the book gives a general rule for Sunday propers and for the use of a Sunday or feast collect at Evening Prayer on the preceding day:
The Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, appointed for the Sunday, shall serve all the Week after, where it is not in this Book otherwise ordered. The Collect appointed for any Sunday or other Feast may be used at the Evening Service of the day before.
This placement makes Advent more than a devotional theme. It is the Prayer Book's first ordered sequence of Sunday collect, epistle, and gospel, and it begins the annual rehearsal of Christ's saving work.
Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere describe that annual sequence as a two-part course, beginning with Advent and moving toward Trinity before the more practical Trinity season:
The Collects, Epistles and Gospels are, with some exceptions, the same that had been appointed in the ancient use of the English Church. They form two series, which may be distinguished as doctrinal and practical. The ecclesiastical year is divided into two parts. The first, from Advent to Trinity, is designed to commemorate the life of Christ on earth; and the several particulars of his life are celebrated in their order,-His incarnation, nativity, circumcision, manifestation to the Gentiles; His doctrine and miracles, His baptism, fasting, and temptation; His agony, His cross, His death, His burial, His resurrection, His ascension; and the mission of the Holy Ghost.
First Sunday in Advent
The First Sunday in Advent gives the governing collect for the season. The 1928 BCP prints it immediately after the heading "ADVENT SEASON" and then directs that it be repeated daily with the other Advent collects until Christmas Day:
ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen. This Collect is to be repeated every day, after the other Collects in Advent, until Christmas Day.
The prayer is built clause by clause around two Advents of Christ. "In great humility" names the first coming in the Incarnation; "in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead" names the second coming in judgment. Between those two comings the Church asks for grace now: not mere seasonal sentiment, but the moral conversion of casting away darkness and putting on light.
The appointed Epistle supplies the collect's language and moral urgency:
And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
The Gospel, St. Matthew xxi, is the entry into Jerusalem rather than a Nativity passage. The season therefore begins by confessing the King who comes meekly, yet with authority over the temple:
Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.
John Henry Blunt interprets this opening Sunday as the Church's yearly presentation of Christ in both humility and glory:
The four Sundays in Advent set forth, by the Holy Scriptures appointed for them, the Majesty of our Lord's Person and Kingdom. Christmas is to represent before us the lowliness to which the Eternal God condescended to stoop in becoming Man: and we begin on that day the detailed observance of each great Act in the mystery of the Incarnation. Before coming to Bethlehem and seeing the Holy Child in the manger, we are bidden to look on the glory which belongs to Him; and, ere we look upon the Babe of the humble Virgin, to prepare our hearts and minds for the sight by dwelling on the keynote which sounds in our ears through Advent, "Behold, thy King cometh:" a meek and lowly Babe, but yet Divine.
Second Sunday in Advent
The second Advent collect is the Prayer Book's great prayer for Scripture. It asks not only that the Bible be heard and read, but that it be marked, learned, and inwardly digested:
BLESSED Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
This collect is closely tied to the Epistle from Romans xv, where "whatsoever things were written aforetime" are given for patience, comfort, and hope. The Gospel from St. Luke xxi then turns hope toward the visible coming of the Son of Man:
And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.
The second Sunday therefore joins biblical reception to eschatological hope. Advent is not a season of vague expectation; it is hope disciplined by the written Word and directed toward Christ's appearing.
Percy Dearmer notes that the first two Advent collects belong to the Prayer Book's own sixteenth-century English composition:
The Collect of the Day is generally, as we have seen, an ancient Latin prayer translated from the Sarum Missal by Cranmer or another. Most are from the Communion Service of S. Leo (c. 450), or of Gelasius (c. 480), or of S. Gregory (c. 580). But nineteen [6/7] (including the First and Second Sundays in Advent, Christmas Day, Quinquagesima Sunday, and the First and Second Sundays after Easter) were specially written for the Prayer Book of 1549; and three, as we have seen, were added when our Prayer Book took its present form in 1662.
Third Sunday in Advent
The Third Sunday turns to John the Baptist and to the ministry of preparation. Its collect addresses Christ directly and interprets John as the pattern for the Church's ministers:
O LORD Jesus Christ, who at thy first coming didst send thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee; Grant that the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy second coming to judge the world we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit ever, one God, world without end. Amen.
The collect's clauses are tightly ordered. Christ sent his messenger at the first coming; Christ's ministers now prepare his way by conversion and stewardship of the mysteries; the purpose is that at his second coming the people may be found acceptable. The Epistle from 1 Corinthians iv reinforces the ministerial theme: "ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God." The Gospel from St. Matthew xi identifies John as the messenger who prepares the way.
Procter and Frere explain the historical shape of these Advent collects and the daily repetition of the first collect:
The opening Collects of the collection exemplify this. Those for the first two Sundays in Advent were composed in 1549, and it is noticeable that they were formed from the Epistles of the Sundays: the same is observable about other Collects of that date. In consequence of this change only one was left of the series of Collects beginning 'Excita' which were characteristic of Advent in the Latin Books, namely at the Fourth Sunday. For the Third Sunday, which had not one of this series, as it was the Sunday after Embertide, and therefore exceptional, a new Collect was written in 1661 to supplant the translation of the meagre Latin Collect which had till then occupied the position. The direction for the repetition of the first Collect throughout Advent carries on in a simplified form the old system of saying Collects as 'memorials,' i.e. in a subsidiary position to the chief Collect of the day.
Fourth Sunday in Advent
The Fourth Sunday preserves the older "Excita" or "stir up/raise up" Advent pattern in English Prayer Book form. The 1928 text asks God to come among his people with power because sin hinders their race:
O LORD, raise up, we pray thee, thy power, and come among us, and with great might succour us; that whereas, through our sins and wickedness, we are sore let and hindered in running the race that is set before us, thy bountiful grace and mercy may speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be honour and glory, world without end. Amen.
The appointed Epistle from Philippians iv gives the Sunday a note of joy without canceling its penitence:
REJOICE in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.
The Gospel from St. John i returns to John the Baptist, this time as the voice that refuses to claim the Christ's place and points beyond itself:
He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias.
Blunt interprets this final Advent Sunday as the season's last herald note before Christmas:
On this Sunday, the close approach of the King of Glory to His kingdom of grace is heralded by Scriptures of which the pointed words are, "The Lord is at hand," "Make straight the way of the Lord." The Collect has lost its Gregorian pointedness by a return to its Gelasian form, which makes the whole a prayer for the Presence of God the Father, instead of what it was in the Pre-Reformation books, one for the Coming among us of the Incarnate Son.
Evening Prayer and Watchfulness
The Advent sentence in Evening Prayer condenses the season's watchfulness into a single dominical warning from St. Mark:
Watch ye, for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning: lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.
This sentence explains why Advent cannot be reduced to pre-Christmas nostalgia. Morning and Evening Prayer frame the season as alertness before the returning Master; the Communion propers teach the same alertness through collect, epistle, and gospel.
Historical Shape of the Season
Procter and Frere summarize the complicated early history of Advent as a preparatory season whose number of Sundays contracted in the West:
The history of the observance of Advent is still more obscure. It seems to have been modelled upon Lent as another period of forty days devoted to preparation for Christmas. Here again there was probably a gradual expansion: the full period of six weeks is still attested by the Ambrosian and Mozarabic Rites: in Gaul it took the form of a S. Martin's Lent (Quadragesima S. Martini) beginning after the festival of the Saint. In Rome it originally comprised five Sundays, and the signs of this arrangement are still clearly to be seen in the older Service-books: but a process of contraction succeeded that of expansion, and reduced the number of Sundays to four. The development of the fasting as a feature of the preparation was also arrested, and Advent never came, as did Lent, to be a formal fast.
The 1928 BCP inherits that four-Sunday Western and Anglican shape. It does not prescribe Advent as a formal fast, but its texts are penitential and expectant: darkness is to be cast away, sin hinders the race, the ministers of Christ prepare his way, and the people are taught to watch for the Lord.
Theological Summary
Advent in the 1928 BCP has four connected emphases.
First, it is Christological. The first collect holds together the first coming "in great humility" and the last day when Christ comes "in his glorious majesty." The Gospel of the first Sunday says, "Behold, thy King cometh," while the fourth Sunday says, "The Lord is at hand."
Second, it is scriptural. The second collect teaches the Church to hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest Holy Scripture so that patience, comfort, and hope are formed by the Word.
Third, it is penitential without being despairing. The season asks for grace to cast away darkness and for divine power to help and deliver those hindered by sins and wickedness. Its repentance is ordered toward joyful readiness for Christ.
Fourth, it is ministerial and ecclesial. The Third Sunday prays that "ministers and stewards" may prepare Christ's way by turning hearts, while John the Baptist's witness appears on both the Third and Fourth Sundays. The Church prepares for Christmas by receiving the King, hearing the Word, turning from sin, and watching for the final Advent.
See Also
References
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Collects, Epistles and Gospels," p. 90; Society of Archbishop Justus PDF, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Collects, Epistles and Gospels. Quotation checked against
tmp/revision-research/advent-in-the-1928-bcp/1928-propers-pypdf.txt, lines 58-61, and local HTML sourcesources/justuspropers/ReadingsA.htm, lines 95-99; spacing normalized from PDF extraction. - ↑ Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, with a Rationale of Its Offices, revised edition (London: Macmillan and Co., 1907), p. 522-523, chapter XIII, "Collects, Epistles, and Gospels"; Society of Archbishop Justus transcription, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer: Chapter 13. Quotation checked against fetched source
tmp/revision-research/advent-in-the-1928-bcp/procter-frere-ch13-http.html, lines 88-100. - ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The First Sunday in Advent," collect and rubric, p. 90; Society of Archbishop Justus PDF, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Collects, Epistles and Gospels. Quotation checked against
sources/justuspropers/ReadingsA.htm, lines 106-132, and the 1928 propers PDF extractiontmp/revision-research/advent-in-the-1928-bcp/1928-propers-pypdf.txt, lines 62-75; OCR spacing and small-cap formatting normalized. - ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The First Sunday in Advent," Epistle, Romans xiii. 8, p. 90; Society of Archbishop Justus PDF, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Collects, Epistles and Gospels. Quotation checked against
sources/justuspropers/ReadingsA.htm, lines 134-149, andtmp/revision-research/advent-in-the-1928-bcp/1928-propers-pypdf.txt, lines 77-94. - ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The First Sunday in Advent," Gospel, St. Matthew xxi. 1, p. 91; Society of Archbishop Justus PDF, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Collects, Epistles and Gospels. Quotation checked against
sources/justuspropers/ReadingsA.htm, lines 151-173, andtmp/revision-research/advent-in-the-1928-bcp/1928-propers-pypdf.txt, lines 95-123; PDF hyphenation in "Behold" normalized. - ↑ Church of England; John Henry Blunt, ed., The Annotated Book of Common Prayer: Being an Historical, Ritual, and Theological Commentary on the Devotional System of the Church of England, new edition (London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895), p. 247, note on "The First Sunday in Advent"; Internet Archive scan/OCR, The Annotated Book of Common Prayer. Quotation checked against local OCR
tmp/blunt_annotated_bcp_1895.txt, lines 54312-54332; OCR spacing normalized. - ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Second Sunday in Advent," collect, p. 91; Society of Archbishop Justus PDF, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Collects, Epistles and Gospels. Quotation checked against
sources/justuspropers/ReadingsA.htm, lines 184-193, andtmp/revision-research/advent-in-the-1928-bcp/1928-propers-pypdf.txt, lines 124-132. - ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Second Sunday in Advent," Gospel, St. Luke xxi. 25, p. 92; Society of Archbishop Justus PDF, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Collects, Epistles and Gospels. Quotation checked against
sources/justuspropers/ReadingsA.htm, lines 216-231, andtmp/revision-research/advent-in-the-1928-bcp/1928-propers-pypdf.txt, lines 154-171. - ↑ Percy Dearmer, The Prayer Book: What It Is (London: Oxford University Press, 1907), pp. 6-7, "The Material of the Prayer Book"; Project Canterbury transcription, The Prayer Book, by Percy Dearmer. Quotation checked against fetched source
tmp/revision-research/advent-in-the-1928-bcp/dearmer-1907.html, lines 65-71. - ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Third Sunday in Advent," collect, p. 92; Society of Archbishop Justus PDF, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Collects, Epistles and Gospels. Quotation checked against
sources/justuspropers/ReadingsA.htm, lines 237-248, andtmp/revision-research/advent-in-the-1928-bcp/1928-propers-pypdf.txt, lines 172-182. - ↑ Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, with a Rationale of Its Offices, revised edition (London: Macmillan and Co., 1907), pp. 525-526, chapter XIII, "Collects, Epistles, and Gospels"; Society of Archbishop Justus transcription, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer: Chapter 13. Quotation checked against fetched source
tmp/revision-research/advent-in-the-1928-bcp/procter-frere-ch13-http.html, lines 186-201. - ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Fourth Sunday in Advent," collect, p. 93; Society of Archbishop Justus PDF, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Collects, Epistles and Gospels. Quotation checked against
sources/justuspropers/ReadingsA.htm, lines 301-310, andtmp/revision-research/advent-in-the-1928-bcp/1928-propers-pypdf.txt, lines 215-225; HTML OCR artifact before "deliver" corrected against the PDF. - ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Fourth Sunday in Advent," Epistle, Philippians iv. 4, p. 93; Society of Archbishop Justus PDF, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Collects, Epistles and Gospels. Quotation checked against
sources/justuspropers/ReadingsA.htm, lines 312-319, andtmp/revision-research/advent-in-the-1928-bcp/1928-propers-pypdf.txt, lines 226-233. - ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Fourth Sunday in Advent," Gospel, St. John i. 19, p. 94; Society of Archbishop Justus PDF, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Collects, Epistles and Gospels. Quotation checked against
sources/justuspropers/ReadingsA.htm, lines 321-330, andtmp/revision-research/advent-in-the-1928-bcp/1928-propers-pypdf.txt, lines 234-253. - ↑ Church of England; John Henry Blunt, ed., The Annotated Book of Common Prayer: Being an Historical, Ritual, and Theological Commentary on the Devotional System of the Church of England, new edition (London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895), p. 249, note on "The Fourth Sunday in Advent"; Internet Archive scan/OCR, The Annotated Book of Common Prayer. Quotation checked against local OCR
tmp/blunt_annotated_bcp_1895.txt, lines 54870-54879; OCR spacing normalized. - ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Order for Daily Evening Prayer," opening sentences for Advent, pp. 21-22; Society of Archbishop Justus transcription, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: Evening Prayer. Quotation checked against local source
sources/justus1928/EP.htm, lines 86-89, and fetched copytmp/revision-research/advent-in-the-1928-bcp/1928-evening-prayer.html, lines 86-89. - ↑ Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, with a Rationale of Its Offices, revised edition (London: Macmillan and Co., 1907), pp. 330-331, chapter IX, "Introductory Matter"; Society of Archbishop Justus transcription, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer: Introductory Matter. Quotation checked against fetched source
tmp/revision-research/advent-in-the-1928-bcp/procter-frere-ch9-http.html, lines 748-759.