Collect for At the Burial of the Dead (1928 BCP)

Collect for At the Burial of the Dead (1928 BCP) is the first collect appointed for the burial propers in the American Book of Common Prayer of 1928. It does not deny grief. Rather, it places the congregation's grief in the hope of Christ, joining the Church “in paradise and on earth” and asking that the living may follow the faithful departed into God's joy.

Text of the Collect

O ETERNAL Lord God, who holdest all souls in life; Vouchsafe, we beseech thee, to thy whole Church in paradise and on earth, thy light and thy peace; and grant that we, following the good examples of those who have served thee here and are now at rest, may at the last enter with them into thine unending joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The address, “O eternal Lord God,” begins with God rather than with death. “Who holdest all souls in life” confesses God's preserving power; it is not a definition of the intermediate state. The petition then ranges over the one Church, “in paradise and on earth,” asking God for light and peace. Its final movement is ethical and eschatological: the departed are remembered as examples of service, and those praying ask to enter, through Christ, the same unending joy.

The appointed Scripture

The collect stands with a particular Epistle and Gospel. The Epistle makes Christian mourning intelligible only by the death and resurrection of Jesus:

I WOULD not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

Thus “those who have served thee here and are now at rest” are not proposed as a rival ground of hope. Their rest is named within the Church's confession that God will bring those who sleep in Jesus. The phrase “following the good examples” therefore concerns the fruit of faith in this life, while the requested joy remains God's gift through Christ.

The Gospel supplies the collect's “at the last” with Jesus' own promise:

And this is the will of him that sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.

The collect is consequently a resurrection prayer. “Light and peace” and “unending joy” do not replace the body's future resurrection; they are prayed in the horizon of the Son's promise to raise his people on the last day.

Church, saints, and hope

The collect's reference to the Church in paradise and on earth belongs beside the Burial Office's thanksgiving for faithful Christians who have completed their course:

ALMIGHTY God, with whom do live the spirits of those who depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity; We give thee hearty thanks for the good examples of all those thy servants, who, having finished their course in faith, do now rest from their labours.

This neighboring prayer helps explain the collect's grammar. The Church gives thanks to God for the examples of the departed; it does not treat them as independent saviours. The prayer asks that those still on pilgrimage may be joined with them only “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Its language therefore holds together communion in the Church, the continuing care of God, and the final hope of resurrection.

The 1928 revision also made the pastoral scope of the rite less absolute than the older exclusionary rubric:

It is to be noted that this Office is appropriate to be used only for the faithful departed in Christ, provided that in any other case the Minister may, at his discretion, use such part of this Office, or such devotions taken from other parts of this Book, as may be fitting.

That discretion should not be used to turn the collect into a general theory of every person's final state. It marks the rite as a Christian service of hope, while allowing pastoral judgment in cases not directly covered by its normal use.

Revision and historical interpretation

E. Clowes Chorley, historiographer of the Protestant Episcopal Church, located the 1928 burial prayers within a significant American Prayer Book development:

This also goes back to the English Book of 1549, but it is the first time in the history of the American Prayer Books that prayers for the departed have been recognized. Others appear in the new Burial Office where their use is permissive.

Chorley's observation is historical rather than a license to detach the 1928 book from its theological frame. The collect's prayer for the whole Church and its appeal to the examples of the departed are set inside the same appointed readings that proclaim Christ's resurrection and his keeping of those given him by the Father.

H. Henry Spoer similarly described the wider recovery of older pastoral forms in the 1928 American revision:

In 1928 the American Branch of the Church restored, in some degree, that which had been removed from the Service of the Visitation of the Sick in earlier days. A Litany for the Dying is now followed by the Lord's Prayer, with a Collect, an Absolution, a Commendation, and a “Commendatory Prayer when the Soul is Departed,” as well as “Anointing or Laying on of Hands,” if the “sick person shall in humble faith desire” it, thus restoring the office into closer accordance with the ancient forms.

Spoer's account supplies a useful historical context: the collect belongs to a Prayer Book in which care for the dying, commendation of the departed, and burial were deliberately treated as connected pastoral acts. Yet its own wording remains disciplined: it asks God for light and peace, remembers faithful service, and directs every petition to the Father through Jesus Christ.

Use in worship

The collect is printed among the propers “At the Burial of the Dead,” with an alternative collect, 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 as Epistle, and John 6:37–40 as Gospel. It may therefore be read with the service's central movement from bereavement to resurrection hope, rather than being lifted from that setting as a vague consolation. In private devotion it can teach the same pattern: commend the departed to God, give thanks for faithful examples, and pray for grace to serve Christ until the final joy he promises.

See also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
• Church Calendar (1928 BCP)
• Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
• Burial of the Dead in the Book of Common Prayer

External Links

• The 1928 Book of Common Prayer facsimile
• The Order for the Burial of the Dead (1928 BCP)