Collect for First Sunday in Lent (1928 BCP)
Collect for First Sunday in Lent (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for "The First Sunday in Lent." It prays from Christ's own forty-day fast and temptation, asking that Lenten abstinence may serve obedience to the Holy Spirit rather than self-display or spiritual pride.
Text of the Collect
O LORD, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights; Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness, and true holiness, to thy honour and glory, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.
The prayer is addressed to the Lord Jesus Christ, whose fasting was "for our sake." That opening phrase prevents Lent from becoming a merely human exercise in resolve. The petition asks for grace to "use such abstinence"; abstinence is therefore an instrument under grace, not an achievement with merit in itself. Its intended fruit is that "our flesh being subdued to the Spirit," the faithful may obey God's motions in righteousness and true holiness.
Historical Source
New Every Morning's source catalogue identifies the collect as a 1549 Prayer Book collect:
1549
Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere give the reason for that judgment: the collect depends directly on the appointed Gospel for the day.
The collect of the first Sunday in Lent is also easily recognisable as modern (1549) from its direct dependence upon the Gospel.
They summarize the wider Lenten sequence in the same place:
They set before us the duty of self-denial, and teach us to withstand temptation by recounting Christ's victories over Satan.
The 1928 American book therefore preserves an English Reformation collect whose logic is not detached from the older Christian year. It places the first Lenten Sunday under Christ's victory in the wilderness and then asks for the disciplined obedience that follows from that victory.
Clause-by-Clause Reading
The phrase "who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights" points first to Christ, not to the worshipper's discipline. The Church does not ask God to approve a chosen fast; it asks for grace to receive Christ's fast as the pattern and ground of Christian abstinence. "Use such abstinence" is precise: abstinence is not an end, but a use, a means ordered to spiritual obedience.
Melville Scott makes this point directly:
We ask for grace to use abstinence, not as an end, as if it had any merit in itself, but as a means of self-control.
The next clause, "our flesh being subdued to the Spirit," uses Pauline moral language without despising the body. The body is disciplined because the person is to be governed by the Spirit. The prayer's goal is "righteousness, and true holiness," language that echoes the New Testament pattern in which grace trains actual obedience.
Scott again identifies obedience, rather than abstinence alone, as the end of the collect:
Not abstinence, but obedience, is the pathway to true holiness; but we need such abstinence as may make it easier to obey.
Appointed Epistle
The Epistle appointed for the day is 2 Corinthians 6:1-10. Its opening explains why Lenten discipline cannot be postponed:
WE then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain; (for he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation;)
The collect asks for grace to use abstinence; the Epistle warns against receiving grace "in vain." Paul then names a catalogue of ministerial hardships, including "watchings" and "fastings," so the Sunday proper connects fasting with faithful endurance rather than with private religious display. The Lenten call is immediate because "now is the day of salvation."
Scott reads this Epistle as an argument against wasting baptismal grace:
What we have to do is to see that this twofold grace be not received in vain, for received it has certainly been.
Appointed Gospel
The Gospel is St. Matthew 4:1-11, the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. The collect's "forty days and forty nights" comes directly from this reading:
THEN was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
Christ answers each temptation with Scripture, and the third answer discloses the end of all discipline:
Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
John Henry Blunt interprets Christ's temptation representatively, as the Second Adam's victory for those who are tempted:
The Gospel of the day sets forth the Lord Jesus perfecting His sympathy with our nature by undergoing temptation.
Blunt also reads the three temptations as comprehensive:
These three forms of temptation are comprehensive types of all that the Tempter has to offer--sensual temptations, the seductions of vanity and pride, and the desire to go beyond God's will.
The collect therefore prays for abstinence in the shadow of a particular Gospel. Christ's fast is not only an example of spiritual discipline; it is his victorious obedience as the representative Man. The Church's Lenten self-denial is a participation in that obedience by grace.
Prayer Book Fasting and Communion
The 1928 Holy Communion office gives the First Sunday in Lent a further pastoral role by requiring the long Communion exhortation on that day:
And Note, that the Exhortation shall be said on the First Sunday in Advent, the First Sunday in Lent, and Trinity Sunday.
That exhortation asks communicants to examine themselves before receiving the Sacrament:
DEARLY beloved in the Lord, ye who mind to come to the holy Communion of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ, must consider how Saint Paul exhorteth all persons diligently to try and examine themselves.
Percy Dearmer uses the collect to show that Prayer Book fasting belongs to ordinary Anglican discipline, not merely to a party label:
Fasting is often mentioned in the New Testament. Our Lord fasted, and we pray on the First Sunday in Lent that we may use "such abstinence."
In the 1928 BCP, then, the First Sunday in Lent joins abstinence, self-examination, and Communion. Bodily discipline is not separated from sacramental repentance; the same Sunday that prays for the flesh to be subdued to the Spirit also calls communicants to sober examination before receiving the Body and Blood of Christ.
Anglican Use
For worship and catechesis, this collect gives the opening Sunday of Lent a Christological center. Its first claim is that the Lord fasted "for our sake"; its first petition is for grace; its practical request is abstinence ordered to obedience; and its final end is God's honour and glory. It is therefore useful for teaching Lent as participation in Christ's victory, not as religious self-reliance.
See Also
- Book of Common Prayer (1928)
- Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
- Lent in the 1928 BCP
- A Penitential Office for Ash Wednesday (1928 BCP)
- Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
- Collect for Ash Wednesday (1928 BCP)
- Collect for Second Sunday in Lent (1928 BCP)
References
- ↑ Collect for First Sunday in Lent, in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," Lenten Season, "The First Sunday in Lent"; Society of Archbishop Justus PDF: 1928 Standard Book PDF. The complete collect was compared word for word with the Society of Archbishop Justus transcription.
- ↑ New Every Morning, "Sources of the Seasonal Collects," section IV, "Lent," card for "The First Sunday in Lent"; Sources of the Seasonal Collects.
- ↑ Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, revised edition (London: Macmillan, 1902), chapter 13, "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels; and the Lessons," section on Lent; Society of Archbishop Justus transcription: A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, chapter 13.
- ↑ Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, revised edition (London: Macmillan, 1902), chapter 13, Lent section; A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, chapter 13.
- ↑ Melville Scott, The Harmony of the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels: A Devotional Exposition of the Continuous Teaching of the Church Throughout the Year (London: S.P.C.K., 1902), "The First Sunday in Lent"; Lectionary Central transcription: Melville Scott, The First Sunday in Lent.
- ↑ Melville Scott, The Harmony of the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The First Sunday in Lent"; Melville Scott, The First Sunday in Lent.
- ↑ 2 Corinthians 6:1-2, appointed as the Epistle for the First Sunday in Lent in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," Lenten Season, "The First Sunday in Lent"; 1928 Standard Book PDF. The transcription OCR error "I have heard three" was corrected to "I have heard thee."
- ↑ Melville Scott, The Harmony of the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The First Sunday in Lent," Epistle section; Melville Scott, The First Sunday in Lent.
- ↑ St. Matthew 4:1-2, appointed as the Gospel for the First Sunday in Lent in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," Lenten Season, "The First Sunday in Lent"; 1928 Standard Book PDF.
- ↑ St. Matthew 4:10, appointed Gospel for the First Sunday in Lent in the 1928 BCP; 1928 Standard Book PDF. The transcription OCR error "fail down" was corrected to "fall down."
- ↑ John Henry Blunt, ed., The Annotated Book of Common Prayer (London: Rivingtons, 1884), commentary on "First Sunday in Lent," transcribed at Lectionary Central: J. H. Blunt's Commentary.
- ↑ John Henry Blunt, ed., The Annotated Book of Common Prayer (London: Rivingtons, 1884), commentary on "First Sunday in Lent"; J. H. Blunt's Commentary.
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Order for the Administration of the Lord's Supper, or Holy Communion," rubric before the Exhortations; Society of Archbishop Justus transcription: Holy Communion.
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, Holy Communion exhortation appointed to be said on the First Sunday in Lent; Holy Communion.
- ↑ Percy Dearmer, The Prayer Book: What It Is (London: Oxford University Press, 1907), pp. 26-27, section "Evasion"; Project Canterbury transcription: The Prayer Book: What It Is.