Collect for Aid against Perils
The Collect for Aid against Perils is a fixed prayer in Anglican Evening Prayer, best known from the Book of Common Prayer by its opening words, “Lighten our darkness.” It asks God to defend the faithful through the night and locates that request within the mercy of God and the mediation of Christ. In the 1662 prayer book it is the third collect at Evening Prayer, following the Collect of the Day and the Collect for Peace. Its place near the close of the office gives the service a movement from psalmody, Scripture, creed, and praise toward intercession, rest, and trust. Because the collect is brief and memorable, it has also been used devotionally outside the public office, especially in communities shaped by classical Anglican prayer.
Liturgical use
In the 1662 Order for Evening Prayer, the collect is appointed after the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the versicles and responses. The rubric introduces three collects: the first of the day, the second for peace, and the third for aid against all perils. It further directs that the second and third collects are to be said daily at Evening Prayer without alteration.[1] This makes the prayer part of the ordinary structure of the Daily Office, rather than a seasonal proper or an occasional devotion.
The collect may be said in a plain spoken office, sung in Choral Evensong, or incorporated into family and private prayer. In traditional-language services it normally retains its compact sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cadence. Later Anglican prayer books have treated the collect in different ways. Some retain it as a fixed or optional evening collect, while others provide related prayers for protection at night. The 1979 American Book of Common Prayer, for example, includes a collect under the title “A Collect for Aid against Perils” in Evening Prayer: Rite One.[2]
Theological themes
The collect joins two ordinary human experiences: the coming of darkness and the need for divine protection. Darkness is first the literal darkness of night, but the prayer's language also carries spiritual associations of fear, ignorance, temptation, and mortality. The request is not that night itself be abolished, but that God would illumine and defend those who pray. In this respect the collect belongs naturally at the end of Evening Prayer, when the church entrusts the hours of sleep and vulnerability to God.
The prayer is also characteristic of Anglican collect form. It is concise, direct, and corporate: the petition is made in the first person plural, not as an isolated private request. Its theology is neither speculative nor ornate. It addresses God as the one whose mercy protects the faithful, and it grounds the petition “for the love” of the Son, Jesus Christ. The collect therefore combines an appeal for bodily safety with confidence in the saving work and intercession of Christ.
Within Anglicanism, this pattern reflects a wider prayer-book habit of holding together doctrine and devotion. The collect teaches by repeated use. Those who say it daily are formed to acknowledge dependence, to resist superstition about the night, and to interpret ordinary fear in the light of divine mercy.
Historical background
The collect appears in the first English Book of Common Prayer of 1549 within the order for Matins and Evensong, where the simplified English offices gathered elements from older Western patterns of daily prayer.[3] Its continued presence in later prayer books, including the 1662 standard, illustrates the way Anglican reform preserved many inherited forms while translating and reorganizing them for common use in English.
The collect's emphasis on protection during the night has affinities with the older tradition of Compline, the final office of the day in Western Christian worship. Anglican Evening Prayer did not simply reproduce the medieval office system, but it carried forward some of its pastoral concerns: thanksgiving for the day, prayer for peace, confession of faith, and entrusting the night to God. Over time, the Collect for Aid against Perils became one of the most recognizable prayers associated with Evensong and traditional evening devotion.
Its survival across centuries also reflects the durability of the prayer-book style. The collect is short enough for regular use, concrete enough for ordinary worshippers, and theologically dense enough to serve as a summary of Christian trust at the close of the day.