Collect for First Sunday after the Epiphany (1928 BCP)

Collect for First Sunday after the Epiphany (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for the first Sunday after "The Epiphany, or the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles." It asks God not only to hear the Church's prayer, but also to give the knowledge, grace, and power by which worshippers may do his will. In the 1928 propers, that petition is joined to Romans xii. 1-5 and St. Luke ii. 41-52, so the Sunday turns Epiphany manifestation toward obedient discernment: the Church beholds Christ's wisdom and offers body, mind, and common life to God.

Text of the Collect

O LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people who call upon thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The collect has three movements. First, it addresses God through mercy: the people "call upon thee," and ask that their prayers be received. Second, it asks for moral and spiritual discernment: "perceive and know what things they ought to do." Third, it refuses to leave knowledge as information alone, adding the petition for "grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same." The final phrase, "through Jesus Christ our Lord," keeps the prayer in the ordinary Prayer Book pattern of Christian mediation.

This means that the collect is not a general prayer for usefulness or religious energy. It asks for a healed relation between understanding and action. The Church prays that what is perceived and known may be fulfilled faithfully, because the same Lord who manifests himself in Epiphany also forms his people for obedience.

Appointed Epistle

The appointed Epistle is Romans xii. 1-5. Its opening verses explain why the collect joins knowledge to action: the renewed mind discerns the will of God, and the body is offered as a living sacrifice.

I BESEECH you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.

The verbal connection is close. The collect asks that God's people may "perceive and know" what they ought to do; Romans says the renewed mind may "prove" God's good, acceptable, and perfect will. The collect asks for "grace and power" to fulfill that duty; Romans describes the result as embodied worship, sober humility, and membership in one body in Christ. The prayer therefore gathers the Epistle into a petition for sanctification, not merely for private clarity.

Appointed Gospel

The appointed Gospel is St. Luke ii. 41-52, the finding of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple. In Epiphany season it is a manifestation of Christ's wisdom before Israel's teachers, and it gives the collect's discernment language a christological center.

And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.

Luke's narrative prevents the collect from becoming abstract. The one who teaches with astonishing understanding is also the obedient Son who returns to Nazareth and is subject to Mary and Joseph. The phrase "my Father's business" names the true direction of wisdom; the phrase "was subject unto them" shows that the Son's wisdom is not rebellion against creaturely duty. The collect's request for knowledge and power is therefore answered by looking to Christ himself: divine wisdom is manifested in filial obedience.

Prayer Book Continuity

The collect is inherited from the older English Prayer Book tradition. The Church of England's official 1662 text prints the same Sunday with the same collect, Epistle, and Gospel, though the collect has the older relative pronoun "which" where the 1928 American text has "who."

O Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to receive the prayers of thy people which call upon thee; and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

That continuity matters because the collect has long stood beside the same Pauline and Lucan readings. The 1928 American book does not invent a new theology for the Sunday; it receives an older pairing of prayer and lessons and places it after the Epiphany octave rubric. Its modest wording change from "which" to "who" clarifies the personal subject without altering the petition.

Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere describe the larger seasonal logic into which this Sunday fits:

From Christmas to Epiphany the design of the proper services is to set forth the humanity of our Saviour; and from Epiphany to Septuagesima to show the divine nature of the Son of Man by relating in the Gospels some of His first miracles.

For this collect, Procter and Frere's point is not merely chronological. Epiphanytide discloses who Christ is, and this first Sunday begins that disclosure with the wisdom of the Son in the temple. The collect then asks that the Church's own mind and will may be ordered under that manifested wisdom.

Anglican Interpretation

Anthony Sparrow gives an especially direct seventeenth-century interpretation of this Sunday. He treats the Sunday itself as a continuation of Epiphany manifestation, and he connects all three propers: Gospel, Epistle, and Collect.

From Christmas to Epiphany, holy Churches design, is, to set forth Christs Humanity, to make Christ manifest in the flesh, which the offices do, as we have seen; but from Epiphany to Septuagesima, especially in the four next Sundays after Epiphany, she endeavours to manifest his glory and Divinity, by recounting some of his first miracles, and manifestations of his Deity, so that each Sunday is in this respect a kind of Epiphany.

Sparrow then narrows the point to the First Sunday after Epiphany:

The Gospel of this day mentions Christs manifestation to the Doctors of the Jews, astonishing all his hearers with his miraculous answers. The Epistle exhorts us to make a spiritual use of the wisemens mysterious offerings, especially of Myrrhe; which signifies very rightly the mortifying of the flesh, and the offering of our bodies as an holy Sacrifice to God by Christ. The Collect prayes for grace to enable us thereunto.

Sparrow's reading is useful because it shows that the collect's "grace and power" is not detached from the day's readings. The Gospel manifests Christ's wisdom; the Epistle calls the Church to offer bodily life to God; the collect prays for the grace needed to make that offering real. In classical Anglican use, the collect is therefore both doctrinal and pastoral: it teaches the shape of obedience while asking God to give what he commands.

David Curry, writing for the Prayer Book Society of Canada, makes the same point in broader lectionary terms. The ordering of lessons is not incidental, because the public reading of Scripture expresses doctrine:

That the scriptures should be read publicly, regularly, and orderly -- publicly, as an act of worship, in principle, of the whole church; regularly, as on a daily and continuing basis; and orderly, as according to an appointed schedule of readings -- are all expressions of the church's teaching or doctrine about scripture and about the church's own life. Equally so, the principles upon which the reading of scripture is ordered are necessarily matters of doctrine.

Curry applies that principle specifically to Epiphany:

The Prayer Book design of the Epiphany season is to manifest the glory and set forth the divinity of Christ through an ordered sequence, comprising first, divine wisdom, and second, divine power (cf. the collect for the First Sunday after Epiphany, Cdn. BCP, 1962, p. 123). The manifestation of divine wisdom -- Christ teaching in the Temple of Jerusalem (Epiphany I) -- precedes the manifestations of divine power: Christ turning water into wine at the Wedding of Cana (Epiphany II); Christ healing the leper (Epiphany III); Christ stilling the sea-storm by his words (Epiphany IV); Christ gathering in the wheat and tares of the world for judgement (Epiphany V); and Christ in the glory of his second coming (Epiphany VI).

This gives the collect a precise place in Epiphany theology. The Epiphany feast manifests Christ to the Gentiles; the First Sunday after the Epiphany manifests him in the temple as the Son who knows and does the Father's business. The collect then asks that the Church may share, by grace, in a fitting human response: to know what ought to be done and to fulfill it faithfully.

Theological Summary

The collect's theology can be summarized clause by clause.

"Mercifully to receive the prayers" assumes that prayer itself depends on God's mercy. The people call, but God receives. "Perceive and know" joins spiritual sight to moral knowledge, echoing Romans xii's renewed mind and Luke ii's disclosure of Christ's understanding. "What things they ought to do" makes the petition practical rather than speculative. "Grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same" confesses that obedience requires divine aid from beginning to end.

In worship, the collect is used at Holy Communion with the appointed Epistle and Gospel, and as the collect of the day in the Prayer Book's weekly rhythm. Its strongest use is therefore not as an isolated devotional sentence, but as a concise prayer over the whole Sunday proper: Christ is manifested in wisdom, his people are called to transformed service, and the Church asks for the mercy, knowledge, grace, and power by which duty becomes faithful obedience.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
• Church Calendar (1928 BCP)
• Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
• Epiphany in the 1928 BCP
• Collect for Epiphany (1928 BCP)
• Collect of the Day

External Links

• The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Collects, Epistles and Gospels
• The First Sunday after the Epiphany in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer
• Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, chapter XIII
• Anthony Sparrow, A Rationale upon the Book of Common Prayer: Epiphany
• David Curry, "Doctrinal Instrument of Salvation: The Use of Scripture in the Prayer Book Lectionary"