Collect for Fifth Sunday in Lent (1928 BCP)

Collect for Fifth Sunday in Lent (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for "The Fifth Sunday in Lent," which the 1928 propers also identify as "commonly called Passion Sunday." It asks Almighty God mercifully to look upon his people, and to govern and preserve them "both in body and soul." In the 1928 sequence it opens Passiontide within Lent and is joined to Hebrews 9:11-15 and St. John 8:46-end, so the day turns from Lenten discipline toward Christ's priesthood, blood, eternal redemption, and divine identity.

Text of the Collect

WE beseech thee, Almighty God, mercifully to look upon thy people; that by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The collect begins with petition rather than exposition: "We beseech thee." Passion Sunday is therefore not introduced as a devotional mood but as the Church's corporate plea before Almighty God. The first request is that God would "mercifully" look upon his people. The day will set forth the blood and priesthood of Christ, and the collect teaches the congregation to stand under that mercy.

The main petition is "that by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore." Government and preservation are joined. The prayer asks not only for rescue from danger, but for God's rule over his people. The phrase "both in body and soul" makes the petition whole-person language: Passiontide does not concern the inward life alone, nor outward endurance alone, but the redeemed person under divine mercy.

Historical Source

New Every Morning's source catalogue identifies the collect as part of the older Lenten inheritance:

The Fifth Sunday in Lent Sarum · Passion Sunday "We beseech thee, Almighty God, mercifully to look upon thy people..."

Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere explain how this Sunday functions in the old Lenten series:

The fifth is called Passion Sunday, because the commemoration of our Lord's Passion then begins: the Epistle speaks of him as our High Priest, sprinkling his own blood for us; the Gospel relates to one of those conversations with the unbelieving Jews, in which He endured the contradiction of sinners.

The English Prayer Book received this collect before the 1662 settlement. The 1549 Justus synopsis prints the older spelling:

WE beseche thee, almyghtie God, mercifullye to looke upon thy people; that by thy greate goodnesse they may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soule; through Jesus Christe our Lorde.

The official Church of England text of the 1662 Prayer Book preserves the same substance:

We beseech thee, Almighty God, mercifully to look upon thy people; that by thy great goodness they may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The 1928 American text is therefore a received Anglican form standing in continuity with the older English and Sarum pattern. Its language is more general than the appointed Epistle and Gospel, but the context of Passion Sunday fills out its meaning.

Clause-by-Clause Theology

"Mercifully to look upon thy people" is covenantal and penitential. The congregation is called "thy people," not because it has mastered Lent, but because it belongs to God through mercy. The appointed Epistle will ground that belonging in Christ's once-for-all priestly offering.

"By thy great goodness" names the source of the requested help. The collect does not ask God to respond to the people's worthiness; it asks him to act from his own goodness. This is why Passion Sunday can speak with intensity about sin, conscience, and blood without collapsing into despair.

"Governed and preserved evermore" asks for more than pardon understood as acquittal alone. God is asked to rule and keep his people. Melville Scott connects the collect's petition to the people's status in Christ's atonement:

The Jewish people were the people of God in virtue of their annual atonement; we in virtue of the Atonement of Christ. We may, therefore, pray as such for the perfect government of God.

"Both in body and soul" is especially important near Holy Week. The Passion of Christ is bodily suffering, priestly sacrifice, and spiritual redemption. The collect therefore refuses to divide the Christian person. It asks that the same God who purges the conscience also preserve the body, and that the same Lord who will suffer in the flesh rule the soul.

Appointed Epistle

The Epistle appointed for the Fifth Sunday in Lent is Hebrews 9:11-15. It begins with Christ's priesthood and entrance into the holy place:

CHRIST being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.

This passage gives the Passiontide weight behind the collect's appeal for mercy. The people are governed and preserved through Jesus Christ because he is not merely an example of endurance. He is the High Priest who enters "by his own blood" and obtains "eternal redemption."

Scott describes the doctrinal character of the Sunday in explicitly atoning terms:

PASSION Sunday, or the Sunday of the Atonement, contains the doctrine of Christ's sacrifice and priesthood.

The Epistle then turns that priestly work toward the conscience and living service:

How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

The collect's government and preservation are therefore not passive security. Christ purges the conscience "to serve the living God." Passiontide obedience flows from atonement, not from self-invented religious effort.

Scott makes the same connection between Christ's sacrifice and living service:

If the lower sacrifice could take away ceremonial uncleanness, how much shall be done by Christ's sacrifice offered in perfect unity with the Spirit of God? In union with such a willing sacrifice we can rise from dead works to the living personal service of a personal God.

The Epistle concludes by naming Christ as mediator of the new testament and giver of the promised inheritance. That covenantal conclusion explains why the collect can call the congregation "thy people" and why the prayer is made "through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Appointed Gospel

The Gospel appointed for the day is St. John 8:46-end. It gives Passion Sunday the open contradiction that Procter and Frere describe. Christ declares his truth, his filial honour, and the life-giving power of his word:

Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.

The collect asks God to preserve his people "evermore." In the Gospel, preservation is not reduced to the avoidance of temporal suffering. Christ promises life that death cannot finally overthrow, even as hostility against him rises.

The Gospel reaches its central claim in Christ's words about Abraham:

Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad. Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.

John Henry Blunt reads the Gospel in relation to the divine name:

The conduct of the Jews shows that they recognized in our Lord's words an assumption of the incommunicable Name, and in that assumption a proclamation that He is God.

Blunt's observation clarifies the collect's final phrase, "through Jesus Christ our Lord." The Lord through whom the Church prays is the one who speaks with divine authority and is rejected for it. Passion Sunday therefore joins Christ's priestly self-offering in Hebrews to his divine identity in John.

Scott also connects the Gospel with the Epistle's doctrine of priesthood:

From the work of Christ in the Atoning Sacrifice we pass by a most instructive transition to the doctrine of the Person of Christ as declared by Himself, and of His fitness to be our High Priest.

The Gospel ends with attempted violence: "Then took they up stones to cast at him." The collect's petition for preservation should be heard with that ending in view. God's preservation is not sentimental insulation from the Passion, but faithful keeping through Christ, whose hour is drawing near.

Anglican Use

In Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Holy Communion, this collect marks the Church's entrance into Passiontide. It gives worshippers a concise prayer for mercy, rule, and preservation just as the propers begin to dwell more directly on Christ's suffering and atoning work.

For preaching and catechesis, the main connections are direct. The collect asks God to look mercifully on his people; Hebrews explains that the people are constituted and cleansed by Christ's own blood; John shows that the suffering Christ is also the eternal Son who can say, "Before Abraham was, I am." The prayer therefore forms a Passiontide spirituality of dependence: governed by God's goodness, preserved in body and soul, and brought to living service through the High Priest who offered himself without spot to God.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
• Lent in the 1928 BCP
• Holy Week in the 1928 BCP
• Collect for Fourth Sunday in Lent (1928 BCP)
• Collect for Sunday Next Before Easter (1928 BCP)
• Holy Communion (1928 BCP)

External Links

• 1928 Book of Common Prayer Standard Book PDF
• Lectionary Central: Passion Sunday
• J. H. Blunt's Commentary on Passion Sunday
• Melville Scott on Passion Sunday
• Sources of the Seasonal Collects
• Procter and Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, chapter XIII
• 1549 Book of Common Prayer: Lent
• 1662 Book of Common Prayer: The Fifth Sunday in Lent