Collect for At a Marriage (1928 BCP)

Collect for At a Marriage (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed for the celebration of Holy Communion in connection with the Solemnization of Matrimony in the American Book of Common Prayer of 1928. It asks God to look graciously upon a particular couple, to order their life by the kingdom and righteousness of God, and to give the grace whose blessings the prayer does not presume to define in advance.

Text of the Collect

O eternal God, we humbly beseech thee, favourably to behold these thy servants now (or about to be) joined in wedlock according to thy holy ordinance; and grant that they, seeking first thy kingdom and thy righteousness, may obtain the manifold blessings of thy grace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The collect begins with God, not with the couple. “Eternal” names the One before whom the marriage is made; “we humbly beseech” makes the petition the prayer of the worshipping congregation as well as of those to be married. “Favourably to behold” asks for divine mercy, not merely public approval. The parenthesis permits use shortly before as well as at the act of marriage, while “joined in wedlock according to thy holy ordinance” places the union under God’s ordering rather than private preference.

The prayer’s governing petition is deliberately taken from the teaching of Jesus: the couple are to seek God’s kingdom and righteousness. Thus its requested “manifold blessings” are gifts of grace for a Christian vocation, not a promise that marriage will be free of suffering or difficulty. Its Christological conclusion also keeps the petition within the Church’s prayer through Jesus Christ.

Appointed Scripture and the marriage office

The Epistle for the occasion supplies the collect’s most sustained account of love as a Christian discipline. Its language about husbands and wives must be read in the passage’s opening call to mutual submission “in the fear of God” and in the pattern of Christ’s self-giving love.

Submit yourselves one to another in the fear of God. … Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.

The collect’s phrase “thy holy ordinance” is likewise illuminated by the Gospel, which directs the congregation to creation and to Christ’s teaching about the unity of marriage.

Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

The collect does not replace the marriage rite; it gathers its theological logic into a single petition. The rite names marriage an estate instituted by God, signifies Christ’s union with the Church, and summons both persons to enter it reverently.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this company, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate, instituted of God, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church.

The collect’s “these thy servants” therefore matters: it prays for named people whom the Church has received before God and the assembled company. The kingdom petition gives the office’s public, covenantal commitments their proper end—faithfulness under Christ rather than self-enclosed fulfilment.

Liturgical setting and history

The 1928 book did not treat these readings as ornamental additions to a wedding. It provided a proper collect, epistle, and gospel for Communion at a marriage. E. Clowes Chorley, historian of the 1928 revision, identified this provision with the older eucharistic setting of Christian marriage.

A rubric in the First Prayer Book of Edward VI required that the “new married persons (the same day of their marriage) must receive the holy Communion.” The intent of that rubric is carried out in the new American Book by the provision of a Collect, Epistle and Gospel for the Solemnization of Matrimony, or what was known before the Reformation as a Nuptial Mass.

Chorley’s observation explains why the collect speaks in the plural “we” and why the propers place the couple’s vocation among Scripture, Communion, and the Church’s intercession. The text is concise, but its setting is ecclesial and eucharistic.

The collect as common prayer

The word “collect” is itself a useful guide to the form of the prayer. Anthony Sparrow’s early Anglican explanation describes the collect as the Church’s gathering and offering of the people’s petitions, completed by their Amen.

The Collects follow, which are thought by divers to be so called … because the Priest doth herein Collect the Devotions of the people, and offer them up to God. … [T]hey desired that themselves and their devotions should in the close be recommended to God by the Priest, they all joyning their assent and saying Amen to it.

On Sparrow’s account, this collect is not a private blessing appended to a ceremony. It is the congregation’s corporate request that God look upon the couple, give them the righteousness for which Christ teaches his disciples to seek, and grant grace adequate to their shared life.

Theological use

The collect holds together creation, discipleship, grace, and Christ. It neither treats marriage as a merely civil arrangement nor makes the married pair the source of its own holiness. The appointed Matthew passage grounds “holy ordinance” in the Creator’s work; Ephesians directs love toward Christ’s self-giving and the Church’s sanctification; and the collect itself asks that every good gift be received as grace. It is accordingly well suited to preparation for marriage, to Eucharistic celebration at a marriage, and to the Church’s continuing intercession for married persons.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
• Matrimony (1928 BCP)
• Holy Communion (1928 BCP)

External Links

• Society of Archbishop Justus: 1928 BCP Propers for Various Occasions
• E. Clowes Chorley on the 1928 marriage propers