Collect for Aid Against Perils (1928 BCP)

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Collect for Aid Against Perils (1928 BCP) is the fixed night collect near the close of Evening Prayer in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer. It asks God to illuminate human darkness and mercifully protect his people through the night, grounding both petitions in Jesus Christ. The collect follows the Collect of the Day and the Collect for Peace and precedes the optional anthem.

Unlike a Collect of the Day, the Collect for Aid Against Perils has no appointed Epistle and Gospel of its own. Its scriptural setting is the whole Daily Office, especially the Evening Prayer suffrages immediately before it. Its clauses draw together biblical themes of divine light, mercy, watchful preservation, peaceful rest, spiritual vigilance, and access to the Father through the Son.

Text of the Collect

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.

[1]

The text above is the complete collect through “Amen.” It agrees with the 1928 Standard Book facsimile; capitalization and typographic emphasis have been normalized without changing the words or punctuation.[2] The book also repeats the same prayer in the shorter form of Family Evening Prayer on p. 593, showing that its nightly petition belongs naturally in both congregational and household devotion.[3]

Place in Evening Prayer

The collect is the third of the three ordered collects: the variable Collect of the Day, then the fixed Collect for Peace, then the fixed Collect for Aid Against Perils. The sequence moves from the Church's season, through peace and obedience, to trust at night. Immediately before these collects, the minister and people have prayed a response adapted from Psalm 4:

Give peace in our time, O Lord.
For it is thou, Lord, only, that makest us dwell in safety.

[4]

The Collect for Peace answers the first line; the Collect for Aid Against Perils develops the second. The office therefore interprets safety as gift rather than achievement. Human precautions remain prudent, but the worshippers finally entrust body, soul, household, and Church to the Lord who alone keeps them.

Clause-by-clause meaning

“Lighten our darkness”

The opening petition takes literal night seriously without making physical darkness evil. Night limits human sight and control; it also becomes a biblical image for ignorance, sin, fear, and death. The prayer asks that God himself supply the light human beings lack. The Psalter gives the same petition:

For thou wilt light my candle: the LORD my God will enlighten my darkness.

[5]

“Lighten” here means illuminate, not make less heavy. The collect does not ask only for information or optimism; it asks God to make darkness traversable by his presence and truth. For Christians, that divine illumination is inseparable from Christ's own claim:

I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

[6]

The final naming of Jesus Christ thus interprets the first petition. The requested light is not an impersonal force. It comes from the Lord and is known in the Son who is the light of life.

“We beseech thee, O Lord”

The collect begins directly with petition rather than first stating a divine attribute. Its grammar is urgent but reverent: “we beseech” is the common prayer of dependent people, not a demand. The plural pronouns matter. Even in private recitation, the worshipper asks light and defence for the Church's “us,” not merely for an isolated self.

This direct opening also gives the prayer an unusually compressed collect form. J. B. Powell used it as his example when explaining how such collects are sung:

In Collects which begin with the Petition and have no Invocation, e.g., “Lighten our darkness,” the first principal point is of course omitted.

[7]

Powell's liturgical observation helps disclose the prayer's shape: petition comes first, its requested benefit is expanded, and the oblation or ground of asking is stated in the Christological conclusion.

“By thy great mercy defend us”

The ground of defence is God's “great mercy,” not the worshippers' deserving. “Defend” is positive divine keeping: the prayer seeks preservation of the whole person rather than promising immunity from every hardship. Psalm 121 holds together bodily protection, spiritual keeping, night, and the whole course of life:

The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

[8]

The collect's “us” and the psalm's repeated “thee” are complementary. Common prayer gathers individual vulnerability into corporate intercession, while the psalm insists that divine keeping reaches each person's going out, coming in, body, and soul.

“From all perils and dangers of this night”

“Perils and dangers” includes dangers that are physical, moral, and spiritual. Night historically carried risks from illness, fire, violence, weather, and travel; it also magnifies anxiety and temptation. The adjective “all” leaves the unknown with God rather than requiring the worshippers to name every threat.

The petition does not mean that faithful people will never suffer during the night. It asks for providential defence while entrusting the manner of that defence to divine mercy. Psalm 4 supplies the office's posture of confident rest:

I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety.

[9]

Peace here is trust in the keeper, not denial that danger exists. The collect's request for protection also remains morally alert. The New Testament associates darkness and watchfulness with spiritual conflict:

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: Whom resist stedfast in the faith.

[10]

Prayer for defence therefore does not replace vigilance. It locates vigilance inside dependence upon grace. The Christian may sleep because God keeps watch, yet the Christian also asks to be preserved from temptation and strengthened in faith.

“For the love of thy only Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ”

The conclusion gives the prayer its evangelical ground. “For the love of” means for the sake of the Son: the worshippers do not appeal to their own righteousness but approach the Father in Jesus Christ. “Only Son” recalls the Father's gift; “our Saviour” confesses what the Son has done; “Jesus Christ” names the mediator rather than leaving the petition at a general idea of providence.

The collect concerns preservation rather than justification, but its posture agrees with Article XI's exclusion of human desert:

We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith, and not for our own works or deservings.

[11]

The requested light, mercy, and defence are accordingly asked as gifts. The prayer ends in Christ because Christian confidence before the Father rests in the Saviour, not in the completeness of the worshippers' preparation for the night.

Historical development

The collect entered the English Prayer Book's Evensong in 1549. The first Prayer Book made the second and third evening collects invariable and printed the prayer in substantially the form retained in 1928:

with three Collectes. Fyrst of the daye: Seconde of peace: Thirde for ayde agaynste all perilles, as here foloweth. Whiche ii. laste collectes shall bee daylye saide at Evensong without alteracion.

[12]

The 1549 text begins “Lyghten our darkenes” and concludes “for the love of thy onely sonne, our saviour Jesu Christ.” Changes between that spelling and the 1928 text are orthographic and punctuational rather than substantive. The prayer also remained the third collect in the 1662 English Evening Prayer, showing continuity across the Reformation-era and Restoration settlements.[13]

The English collect translates and expands a Latin prayer associated with the close of the day: Illumina, quaesumus Domine Deus, tenebras nostras; et totius hujus noctis insidias tu a nobis repelle propitius. William Palmer traced its place in English Compline and Western sacramentaries:

This collect is also found in the most ancient monuments of the English church, and likewise occurs in the sacramentaries of Gregory the Great and Gelasius.

[14]

Palmer's historical account also explains the collect's Prayer Book position. English Evening Prayer combined elements of Vespers and Compline: the Collect of the Day came from the Vespers sequence, while this prayer of nightly protection belonged to the end of Compline. The 1928 office preserves that inherited movement from evening praise toward final trust.

Percival Jackson interprets the collect without reducing “darkness” either to a metaphor or to a merely physical condition:

The light which we seek is evidently inward and spiritual light; the defence, in like manner, a defence from spiritual perils, though not excluding the others.

[15]

Jackson's balance is important. The collect is not embarrassed by literal danger, nor does it treat bodily safety as the whole of salvation. It asks one merciful Lord for illumination of the mind, defence of the soul, preservation of the body, and peaceful rest under Christ.

Use in worship and devotion

In public Evening Prayer the collect is said by the minister while the people remain in the office's posture of common prayer. Its “we” and “us” include the congregation, those absent, and all whose night may be marked by fear, labour, sickness, exposure, or danger. When an anthem follows, the prayer's themes of light, mercy, and protection can shape the music chosen.

In family or private prayer, the collect may be used exactly as printed. Its brevity makes it suitable for memorization, but familiarity should not flatten its range. “Darkness” may name ignorance or fear as well as night; “perils and dangers” may include temptation as well as physical risk; “defend us” extends intercession beyond the speaker; and the conclusion places every request in Christ.

For catechesis, the collect may be learned in four movements:

  • illumination: “Lighten our darkness”;
  • humble petition: “we beseech thee”;
  • merciful preservation: “defend us from all perils and dangers”;
  • Christological confidence: “for the love of thy only Son.”

The Collect for Aid Against Perils is therefore a concise theology of Christian rest. It neither denies vulnerability nor surrenders to fear. At the boundary between waking and sleep, the Church asks for light it cannot make, protection it cannot guarantee, mercy it cannot earn, and confidence grounded in Jesus Christ.

See Also

External Links

References

  1. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, Standard Book accepted by the General Convention of October 1928 and printed for the Commission (1930), exact “Collect for Aid Against Perils,” “The Order for Daily Evening Prayer,” p. 31; the complete collect was compared word for word and punctuation for punctuation with sources/justus1928/EP.htm, lines 602–607. The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: Daily Evening Prayer.
  2. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book (1930), “The Order for Daily Evening Prayer,” p. 31. The 1928 Standard Book facsimile, PDF p. 38.
  3. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book (1930), “Forms of Prayer to be Used in Families,” shorter form of Evening Prayer, p. 593. The 1928 Standard Book facsimile, PDF p. 600.
  4. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book (1930), “The Order for Daily Evening Prayer,” suffrages before the collects, p. 30. The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: Daily Evening Prayer.
  5. ↑ The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, Authorized Version (Oxford: Oxford University Press, standard text), Psalm 18:28. Psalm 18:28, King James Version, Bible Gateway.
  6. ↑ The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, Authorized Version (Oxford: Oxford University Press, standard text), John 8:12. John 8:12, King James Version, Bible Gateway.
  7. ↑ J. B. Powell, The Use of Collects: A Paper Prepared from Notes Used in the Introduction of the Above Subject before the February Chapter of the Society of the Holy Cross, 1878 (privately printed for the Society of the Holy Cross, 1878), section on the inflection of collects. The Use of Collects, Project Canterbury.
  8. ↑ The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, Authorized Version (Oxford: Oxford University Press, standard text), Psalm 121:5–8. Psalm 121:5–8, King James Version, Bible Gateway.
  9. ↑ The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, Authorized Version (Oxford: Oxford University Press, standard text), Psalm 4:8. Psalm 4:8, King James Version, Bible Gateway.
  10. ↑ The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, Authorized Version (Oxford: Oxford University Press, standard text), 1 Peter 5:8–9a. 1 Peter 5:8–9, King James Version, Bible Gateway.
  11. ↑ Church of England, The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, Article XI, “Of the Justification of Man,” official Book of Common Prayer text. The Articles of Religion, Church of England.
  12. ↑ Church of England, The Book of the Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments, and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church (London: Edward Whitchurch, 1549), “An Ordre for Evensong throughout the Yere,” rubric before the fixed collects; transcription based on The First and Second Prayer-Books of Edward VI (Everyman's Library, 1910). The 1549 Book of Common Prayer: Evensong.
  13. ↑ Church of England, The Book of Common Prayer (1662), “The Order for Evening Prayer,” “The Third Collect, for Aid against all Perils.” The Order for Evening Prayer, Church of England.
  14. ↑ William Palmer, Origines Liturgicæ; or, Antiquities of the English Ritual, and a Dissertation on Primitive Liturgies, vol. I, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1839), chapter I, part II, section X, “The Collect for Aid against Perils,” p. 262. Origines Liturgicæ: Evening Prayer, Project Canterbury.
  15. ↑ Percival Jackson, The Prayer Book Explained, Part I: The Daily Offices and the Litany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1901), chapter XIII, “The Service of Prayer,” p. 142. The Prayer Book Explained, Project Gutenberg edition.
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