Collect for First Sunday in Advent (1928 BCP)

Collect for First Sunday in Advent (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed for the opening Sunday of the Advent season in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer. In the 1928 order of Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, it stands at the head of the Christian year and gives Advent its governing petition: present grace to renounce darkness, readiness for Christ's first and second comings, and hope of resurrection life.

Text of the Collect

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

Liturgical Setting

The collect is printed immediately after the heading "ADVENT SEASON" and before the appointed Epistle from Romans xiii and Gospel from St. Matthew xxi. It is therefore not an isolated devotional prayer: the Prayer Book gives it as the first collect in the year's eucharistic proper cycle. The 1928 propers also direct its daily repetition through Advent:

This Collect is to be repeated every day, after the other Collects in Advent, until Christmas Day.

That rubric gives the First Sunday collect a season-shaping role. On the Second, Third, and Fourth Sundays in Advent, the day has its own collect, but the opening collect continues to sound after it. The repeated petition keeps the season's moral and eschatological frame before the congregation: grace now, Christ's humble visitation already given, Christ's glorious appearing still to come.

Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere identify both the sixteenth-century origin of the first two Advent collects and the liturgical reason for repeating the first collect:

The opening Collects of the collection exemplify this. Those for the first two Sundays in Advent were composed in 1549, and it is noticeable that they were formed from the Epistles of the Sundays: the same is observable about other Collects of that date. In consequence of this change only one was left of the series of Collects beginning 'Excita' which were characteristic of Advent in the Latin Books, namely at the Fourth Sunday. For the Third Sunday, which had not one of this series, as it was the Sunday after Embertide, and therefore exceptional, a new Collect was written in 1661 to supplant the translation of the meagre Latin Collect which had till then occupied the position. The direction for the repetition of the first Collect throughout Advent carries on in a simplified form the old system of saying Collects as 'memorials,' i.e. in a subsidiary position to the chief Collect of the day.

Clause by Clause

The collect begins, "ALMIGHTY God, give us grace." Its first word names divine omnipotence; its first petition asks for grace. The prayer's moral demand is therefore not self-improvement by natural strength. Advent readiness is requested from God before it is practiced by the Church.

"That we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light" comes directly from the appointed Epistle. The collect is not borrowing a decorative phrase from Scripture; it turns Romans xiii into the congregation's own prayer:

And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

The middle clause places the Church "now in the time of this mortal life." Advent is lived between the two comings of Christ. The Son has already come "to visit us in great humility," and therefore repentance is evangelical rather than merely fearful. The collect remembers the Incarnation while beginning the road toward Christmas.

The next clause looks forward: "that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal." The prayer's judgment language is creedal; it echoes the Church's confession that Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. Yet the petition is not simply for acquittal, but for resurrection into immortal life. Advent penitence is ordered toward hope.

The Gospel for the day explains why the season opens with Christ's royal entry rather than with the Nativity. The King comes meekly, but he is still the King:

Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass.

John Henry Blunt's Anglican commentary reads the day's Gospel and collect in precisely this double register of humility and glory:

The four Sundays in Advent set forth, by the Holy Scriptures appointed for them, the Majesty of our Lord's Person and Kingdom. Christmas is to represent before us the lowliness to which the Eternal God condescended to stoop in becoming Man: and we begin on that day the detailed observance of each great Act in the mystery of the Incarnation. Before coming to Bethlehem and seeing the Holy Child in the manger, we are bidden to look on the glory which belongs to Him; and, ere we look upon the Babe of the humble Virgin, to prepare our hearts and minds for the sight by dwelling on the keynote which sounds in our ears through Advent, "Behold, thy King cometh:" a meek and lowly Babe, but yet Divine.

Scripture and the Offices

The Communion proper is reinforced by the Daily Office. At Morning Prayer, the 1928 book appoints Advent opening sentences that move from repentance to preparation:

Repent ye, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. St. Matt. iii. 2. Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Isaiah xl. 3.

At Evening Prayer, the Advent sentence gives the same season a watchful, eschatological edge:

Watch ye, for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cock-crowing, or in the morning: lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.

Read together, the collect, Epistle, Gospel, and Office sentences show the 1928 BCP's Advent pattern. Repentance is not separated from Christology; watchfulness is not separated from grace; the hope of the last day is not separated from the Son's first coming in humility.

Historical and Theological Interpretation

The collect belongs to the Prayer Book's own Reformation-era English composition rather than to the older Latin collect tradition. Percy Dearmer, writing for Anglican readers on the material of the Prayer Book, lists the First Sunday in Advent among the collects specially written for the 1549 Prayer Book:

The Collect of the Day is generally, as we have seen, an ancient Latin prayer translated from the Sarum Missal by Cranmer or another. Most are from the Communion Service of S. Leo (c. 450), or of Gelasius (c. 480), or of S. Gregory (c. 580). But nineteen [6/7] (including the First and Second Sundays in Advent, Christmas Day, Quinquagesima Sunday, and the First and Second Sundays after Easter) were specially written for the Prayer Book of 1549; and three, as we have seen, were added when our Prayer Book took its present form in 1662.

Procter and Frere place the collect inside the larger doctrinal half of the Christian year, beginning with Advent and moving through the saving acts of Christ:

The Collects, Epistles and Gospels are, with some exceptions, the same that had been appointed in the ancient use of the English Church. They form two series, which may be distinguished as doctrinal and practical. The ecclesiastical year is divided into two parts. The first, from Advent to Trinity, is designed to commemorate the life of Christ on earth; and the several particulars of his life are celebrated in their order,-His incarnation, nativity, circumcision, manifestation to the Gentiles; His doctrine and miracles, His baptism, fasting, and temptation; His agony, His cross, His death, His burial, His resurrection, His ascension; and the mission of the Holy Ghost.

That historical context matters for interpreting the collect. It is not a free-standing meditation on winter darkness or a generic prayer for seasonal preparation. It is a Reformation Prayer Book collect formed from Romans xiii, placed at the head of Advent, repeated through the season, and joined to Matthew xxi's confession of the coming King.

Blunt also connects the First Sunday with both Advents of Christ:

Lifting up our eyes to the Holy Child, we behold Him from afar, and "knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep," we hear the cry, "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh," to His Church in a first Advent of Humiliation and Grace, and a second Advent of Glory and Judgement.

Theologically, the collect's clauses move in a single arc. God gives grace; the Church casts away darkness and puts on light; the present mortal life is interpreted by Christ's humble visitation; the last day is interpreted by Christ's majestic return; judgment is faced in hope of resurrection; and the whole prayer is offered through the living and reigning Son with the Father and the Holy Ghost. That arc is classical Anglican prayer at its most compressed: scriptural language, creedal eschatology, moral conversion, and doxological ending in one public petition.

Use in Worship and Catechesis

In worship, the collect is said as the appointed collect of the First Sunday in Advent and then repeated daily with the other Advent collects until Christmas Day. At Holy Communion (1928 BCP), its force is sharpened by the Romans Epistle and Matthew Gospel. In the Daily Office, the Advent sentences call the same congregation to repent, prepare, and watch.

In catechesis, the collect can be taught by four short questions. What must be cast away? The works of darkness. What must be put on? The armour of light. Why now? Because the Son has visited in humility and will return in majesty. What is the promised end? That the faithful may rise to the life immortal.

See Also

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

External Links

• The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Collects, Epistles and Gospels
• The 1928 Book of Common Prayer at the Society of Archbishop Justus
• Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, chapter XIII
• Percy Dearmer, The Prayer Book: What It Is
• John Henry Blunt, ed., The Annotated Book of Common Prayer
• Earlier American Prayer Book collects, epistles, and gospels