Collect for All Saints' Day (1928 BCP)
Collect for All Saints' Day (1928 BCP) is the appointed prayer for All Saints' Day (November 1) in the American 1928 Book of Common Prayer. It asks God to form his people in the one Body of Christ, to grant grace for a life that follows the saints' holiness, and finally to bring them to the joy prepared for those who love him. The prayer is therefore addressed to God through Christ; it commemorates the saints without addressing them.
Text of the Collect
O ALMIGHTY God, who hast knit together thine elect in one communion and fellowship, in the mystical body of thy Son Christ our Lord; Grant us grace so to follow thy blessed Saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those unspeakable joys which thou hast prepared for those who unfeignedly love thee; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The collect is appointed not only on the feast but, by the rubric immediately following it, “daily throughout the Octave.” Its first clause names the Church's unity as God's work: he has “knit together” the elect. “Communion and fellowship” are consequently not a merely voluntary association, and “mystical body” does not mean a private spiritual feeling; the body is Christ's and its unity is received in him.
The communion in Christ
There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
This Pauline account supplies the collect's grammar. The prayer moves from the Father, through the Son, to a people made one in the Spirit; its “one communion and fellowship” is grounded in the one Lord, faith, and baptism rather than in similarity of temperament or achievement.
The Prayer Book's Eucharistic thanksgiving gives a closely related definition of the Body for which the collect prays:
We most heartily thank thee, for that thou dost feed us, in these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ; and dost assure us thereby of thy favour and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, the blessed company of all faithful people.
That language keeps All Saints' Day within the Prayer Book's doctrine of the Church and sacramental life. F. Burgess similarly explains the phrase in the collect as equivalent to “thine elect,” while the post-communion prayer makes its meaning “the blessed company of all faithful people.”[4]
The saints before the throne
The appointed Epistle makes the collect's promised “unspeakable joys” concrete, not vague. John sees the redeemed as a multitude no human being can count, worshipping the Lamb.
After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.
The collect's final clause also echoes the conclusion of that reading: God prepares joy for those who truly love him, and the Lamb leads his people to life. The saints are not a rival object of salvation or worship; Revelation's multitude gives salvation and praise to God and the Lamb.
These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple.
Following their holy life
“Follow thy blessed Saints” is immediately qualified: the collect asks for grace to follow them “in all virtuous and godly living.” It does not ask Christians to reproduce every circumstance of a saint's life. The appointed Gospel gives the pattern in Christ's own beatitudes—poverty of spirit, mercy, purity, peacemaking, endurance in persecution, and hope in God's reward.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peace-makers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for their's is the kingdom of heaven.
The collect accordingly preserves the order of grace and response. God grants grace; Christians are enabled to follow in virtuous and godly living; the end for which they hope is God's prepared joy. The phrase “unfeignedly love thee” recalls the New Testament's description of divine filial love:
Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.
Anglican interpretation and history
The collect first appeared in the 1549 English Prayer Book; it was not simply inherited as a translation of the older Latin collect. A. G. Mortimer drew attention to its deliberate pairing of “thine elect” and “thy blessed Saints,” reading the prayer as a distinctive Anglican witness concerning the faithful departed. His conclusion is an interpretation, not an additional rubric, but it rightly observes the collect's careful terms:
The Collect for All Saints' Day recognizes two classes, the Elect, who are “knit together in one communion and fellowship in [the] mystical Body of Christ,” and the Blessed Saints; and as this collect is not, like so many others in our Prayer Book, a mere translation of an older one, but was written for the first Prayer Book of Edward VI in 1549, the putting of the Blessed Saints in a class by themselves evidently shows the mind of our Church.
Anthony Sparrow's account of the collect as a liturgical form also explains why this short prayer gathers the feast's doctrine and petition rather than merely describing it:
The Priest doth herein Collect the Devotions of the people, and offer them up to God.
Thus the congregation does not merely admire a distant company of holy persons. In the collect it asks the Father, through Christ, for the grace to share their faithfulness now and their promised joy hereafter.
Use in worship
All Saints' Day’s collect, Epistle (Revelation 7:2–17), and Gospel (Matthew 5:1–12) should be read together. The readings locate sanctity in the Lamb's redemption and in Christ's teaching; the collect turns those texts into the Church's corporate prayer. Its octave rubric also allows the feast's themes—baptismal incorporation, Christian holiness, persevering hope, and the worship of God and the Lamb—to shape the Church's daily prayer through the week.
See Also
- Book of Common Prayer (1928)
- Collects, Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
- Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
- Church Calendar (1928 BCP)
- All Saints' Day in Anglican Worship
External Links
- 1928 Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book
- A. G. Mortimer, The Blessed Saints and the Holy Dead
- Anthony Sparrow, A Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer
References
- ↑ Collect for All Saints' Day; Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, “All Saints’ Day” [November 1], p. 256, under “The Collect,” with the following octave rubric; 1928 Common Prayer, “The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book”. Complete text compared word for word with the Society of Archbishop Justus transcription; its asterisked “through” annotation was corrected by the scanned Standard Book to “through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord.”
- ↑ Ephesians 4:4–6, Authorized Version.
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, “The Thanksgiving,” p. 83; 1928 Common Prayer, “The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book”.
- ↑ F. Burgess, “Mystical,” in Charles Neil and J. M. Willoughby, eds., A Dictionary of the Book of Common Prayer, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1913, entry “Mystical”; Project Canterbury scan.
- ↑ Revelation 7:9–10, Authorized Version; appointed as the Epistle for All Saints' Day in Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, pp. 256–257; 1928 Common Prayer, “The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book”.
- ↑ Revelation 7:14–15, Authorized Version; appointed Epistle for All Saints' Day, The Book of Common Prayer (1928), p. 257; 1928 Common Prayer, “The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book”.
- ↑ Matthew 5:7–10, Authorized Version; appointed Gospel for All Saints' Day in Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, p. 257; 1928 Common Prayer, “The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book”.
- ↑ 1 John 3:2–3, Authorized Version.
- ↑ A. G. Mortimer, The Blessed Saints and the Holy Dead, New York: Guild of All Souls, 1894, pp. 1–2; Project Canterbury transcription.
- ↑ Anthony Sparrow, A Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, London: 1672, “The Collects”; Project Canterbury transcription.