Collect for Fourth Sunday after Easter (1928 BCP)

Collect for Fourth Sunday after Easter (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for the Fourth Sunday after Easter. It asks God to order disordered wills and affections, so that the faithful may love what he commands, desire what he promises, and keep their hearts fixed where true joys are found while the world changes around them.

Text of the Collect

O ALMIGHTY God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men; Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The collect is a prayer for rightly ordered desire. It does not assume that Christian people can simply command their own wills into holiness. God alone can order the unruly will and the divided affections. The petition then becomes positive: the Church asks to love what God commands and to desire what God promises, so that the heart's stability may be found not in the world's conditions but in the true joys promised by God.

The prayer is especially apt in Eastertide. The risen Christ is not merely admired as victor; he redirects what the faithful love, seek, and expect. The collect therefore joins moral conversion to eschatological hope: Christian obedience is possible because God fixes the heart where lasting joy is actually found.

Liturgical Setting

The Fourth Sunday after Easter comes in the Easter-to-Ascension sequence, after the "little while" Gospel of the Third Sunday and before Rogation Sunday. Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere describe the shape of this period:

The joyful commemoration of our Saviour's resurrection, and the promise of the Comforter, are the principal subjects of the Gospels from Easter to Ascension Day; while the Epistles exhort to the practice of those duties which are answerable to the Christian profession.

That summary fits this Sunday closely. The Epistle from James teaches meek reception of the engrafted word and restraint of wrath. The Gospel from John 16 turns toward the departure of Christ and the coming of the Comforter, the Spirit of truth. The collect stands between those readings: God must order the heart inwardly if the people are to receive the word meekly and be guided by the Spirit into truth.

Clause-by-Clause Meaning

"O Almighty God" addresses the Father as the one whose power reaches the will, not only outward circumstance. The collect's problem is not mere confusion or bad planning, but "unruly wills and affections."

"Who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men" names divine grace as the only sufficient remedy. Human affections are not self-ordering. Sin disorders both choice and desire, so the prayer asks God to bring the inner person under his own order.

"Grant unto thy people" makes the petition ecclesial. The collect is not a private technique for emotional control; it is the Church's common prayer that God's people may be formed together in holy desire.

"That they may love the thing which thou commandest" asks for more than outward compliance. The will is healed when God's command becomes beloved rather than merely endured.

"And desire that which thou dost promise" turns the imagination toward hope. The promises of God are not remote religious ideas; they are meant to become the object of Christian longing.

"That so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world" places the prayer amid instability. The collect is realistic about the world's mutability, but it does not teach escape from the world. It asks for a fixed heart within change.

"Our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found" gives the end of the whole prayer. True joy is not located in the shifting world, nor in the untutored self, but where God commands, promises, and finally gives himself.

Appointed Epistle

The Epistle is James 1:17-21. It opens with God's changeless goodness:

EVERY good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

The Epistle explains why the collect can speak of true joys amid change. The world has "sundry and manifold changes," but the Father of lights has "no variableness." The faithful are begotten by his will through the word of truth. The fixed heart is therefore not stoic detachment; it is a heart anchored in the changeless giver of every good and perfect gift.

James then turns from gift and new birth to the disciplined reception of the word:

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.

This is the collect's petition in apostolic form. Unruly wills are seen in speech, wrath, filthiness, and excess of evil. Ordered affections are seen in swift hearing, restraint, meekness, and the reception of the engrafted word. The prayer for God to order the will is therefore not abstract: James shows what reordered desire looks like in the congregation's ordinary conduct.

Appointed Gospel

The Gospel is John 16:5-15, part of Christ's farewell discourse. It begins with sorrow at his departure and the promise of the Comforter:

JESUS said unto his disciples, Now I go my way to him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart. Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.

The collect's "changes of the world" include the disciples' experience of Christ's going away. Their hearts are filled with sorrow because they do not yet understand how his departure serves their good. The Gospel therefore deepens the collect: the heart can be fixed where true joys are found because Christ sends the Comforter from the Father.

Christ then describes the Spirit's work of conviction, guidance, and glorification of the Son:

And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.

The Spirit's ministry answers the collect's request. Unruly wills are reproved by truth; affections are reordered by the judgment of the world and its prince; the faithful are guided into truth they could not bear by themselves. This is not a merely inward or psychological ordering. It is the work of the Holy Ghost in the Church, making the risen and ascended Christ known.

The Gospel concludes by showing that the Spirit's guidance is Christ-centered:

He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you.

The true joys of the collect are therefore Trinitarian. The Father has all things; the Son receives what is the Father's; the Spirit takes what is Christ's and shows it to the disciples. The heart is fixed where joy is found when it is drawn into this divine economy of gift, truth, and glory.

Historical and Anglican Interpretation

The 1662 English Prayer Book appoints the same collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the Fourth Sunday after Easter:

O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men; Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise; that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This continuity matters because the 1928 collect is an American reception of the classical Anglican Sunday propers. The wording is not a modern devotional paraphrase. It is inherited Anglican prayer, held in common with the older English Prayer Book tradition.

Procter and Frere identify the Latin source for the Fourth Sunday after Easter collect among the old service books:

Fourth. 'Deus qui fidelium mentes unius efficis voluntatis: da populis tuis id amare quod praecipis, id desiderare quod promittis, ut inter mundanas varietates ibi nostra fixa sint corda, ubi vera sunt gaudia.'

John Henry Blunt's annotated Prayer Book prints the same Latin original under the Fourth Sunday after Easter and locates it in the older sacramentary tradition:

Deus, Qui fidelium mentes unius efficis voluntatis, da populis Tuis id amare quod praecipis, id desiderare quod promittis, ut inter mundanas varietates ibi nostra fixa sint corda ubi vera sunt gaudia.

The Latin makes the structure of the English collect especially clear. The older prayer asks God to make the minds of the faithful of one will, then asks that God's people may love what he commands and desire what he promises. The 1928 English text expands the anthropology by naming "unruly wills and affections of sinful men," but it preserves the inherited movement: divine ordering, holy love, promised joy, and steadfastness amid worldly variety.

Anglican Theological Use

For catechesis, this collect is a concise doctrine of sanctified desire. It teaches that grace does not merely pardon disordered loves; it reorders them. The Christian life is not simply doing commanded things under pressure, but learning to love the commandment and desire the promise.

For preaching, the Epistle gives the practical test: hearing, speech, wrath, moral cleansing, and meek reception of the word. The Gospel gives the theological ground: Christ's departure is expedient because the Comforter comes to reprove, guide, and glorify the Son.

For devotion, the collect is a prayer for steadiness. It can be prayed whenever outward change exposes inward disorder. Its answer is not denial of change, but a heart fixed where true joys are to be found: in the Father's good gifts, the Son's glorification, and the Spirit's guidance into truth.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
• Church Calendar (1928 BCP)
• Eastertide in the 1928 BCP
• Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
• Collect for Third Sunday after Easter (1928 BCP)
• Collect for Fifth Sunday after Easter (1928 BCP)
• Whitsuntide in the 1928 BCP

External Links

• EpiscopalNet: 4th Sunday after Easter Propers (1928 BCP)
• The 1928 Book of Common Prayer Standard Book PDF
• The Fourth Sunday after Easter - The Church of England
• Procter and Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, Internet Archive text
• Blunt, The Annotated Book of Common Prayer