Collect for Quinquagesima Sunday (1928 BCP)
Collect for Quinquagesima Sunday (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for "The Sunday called Quinquagesima, or the Sunday next before Lent." It completes the Prayer Book's Pre-Lenten Season before Ash Wednesday, and it is read with the appointed Epistle from 1 Corinthians 13 and the Gospel from St. Luke 18, where Christ sets his face toward Jerusalem and gives sight to the blind man near Jericho.
Text of the Collect
O LORD, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth; Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee. Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.
The prayer turns the congregation from the disciplines of pre-Lent to the one virtue without which discipline becomes spiritually empty. Its address assumes that God has already taught the Church the lesson of charity. Its petition asks the Father to send the Holy Ghost and to pour that charity into human hearts. Its doctrinal force is therefore both moral and pneumatological: the Church is commanded to love, but the love for which it prays is the Spirit's gift, sought for the sake of the Son.
Place in Pre-Lent
Quinquagesima is the last of the three pre-Lenten Sundays. The 1928 BCP prints it after Septuagesima and Sexagesima, immediately before Ash Wednesday. A modern source catalogue distinguishes its origin from the two earlier pre-Lent collects:
1549 · Next Sunday before Lent
The same catalogue identifies the collect as Cranmer's composition for the first English Prayer Book, while Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere connect the whole pre-Lenten sequence with preparation for Lent. They summarize the Epistles and Gospels as commending:
charity and faith, as the necessary foundation for all religious actions.
John Henry Blunt makes the historical and theological point more directly: the present collect replaced an older Western collect associated with the Tuesday before Lent and was shaped by the Epistle:
Our present very beautiful Collect was substituted in 1549; it is formed on the basis of the Epistle.
Clause-by-Clause Reading
The opening words, "who hast taught us," point to divine instruction before human action. The collect does not treat charity as a natural temperament or social courtesy, but as truth taught by God. The next phrase, "all our doings without charity are nothing worth," closely follows the appointed Epistle. It judges even religious activity: speech, knowledge, almsgiving, sacrifice, and Lenten discipline have no saving worth if they are detached from charity.
Melville Scott reads Quinquagesima as the Church's final lesson before Lent:
a spirit of Christian love is the true spirit in which we should seek to spend this holy season.
The petition then asks, "Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity." The language is deliberately interior: charity must be poured "into our hearts," not merely attached to outward performance. The collect calls charity "the very bond of peace and of all virtues," so that peace, patience, courage, almsgiving, and self-denial are held together by love rather than by self-display. The severe clause, "without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee," makes charity a matter of spiritual life and death.
Scott's summary of the collect gathers these claims into one short account:
It is God's most excellent gift; it is the most central of all virtues.
Appointed Epistle
The Epistle appointed with this collect is 1 Corinthians 13:1-13. It supplies the collect's controlling phrase and tests every spiritual gift by charity:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
The Epistle does not lower doctrine, speech, faith, or sacrifice. It orders them. Prophecy, knowledge, mountain-moving faith, almsgiving, and bodily sacrifice are all named, but none is allowed to replace love. Quinquagesima therefore prevents pre-Lenten self-denial from becoming a technique of self-importance.
The close of the Epistle explains why the collect names charity as the bond of the virtues:
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
L. R. Tarsitano's sermon on Quinquagesima explains why the older English word "charity" is useful in this context:
the spiritual love of God is always directed away from the self
Appointed Gospel
The Gospel appointed with this collect is St. Luke 18:31-43. It begins with Christ's deliberate journey to Jerusalem:
Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.
The Gospel joins charity to the Passion. Christ's love is not vague benevolence; it is the road to betrayal, mockery, scourging, death, and resurrection. At the same time, the narrative does not hurry past the blind man. The Son of David stops, hears the cry for mercy, gives sight, and is followed with praise.
David Curry reads the Gospel as the beginning of Lent's pilgrimage with Christ:
Jesus wants us to go with him in the way of his sacrifice for us.
The blind man's prayer gives the collect's doctrine a concrete Gospel form:
Lord, that I may receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee.
Thus the collect, Epistle, and Gospel mutually interpret one another. Charity is the Spirit's gift; the Epistle names it the greatest of the abiding graces; the Gospel shows charity in Christ's road to the Cross and in his mercy to the blind. Quinquagesima therefore sends the Church into Lent with love as the measure of all fasting, prayer, study, and repentance.
Anglican Use
In the 1928 BCP, the collect appointed for a Sunday ordinarily gives the week its chief prayer. Quinquagesima is especially catechetical because it stands at Lent's threshold. It teaches that penitence is not harshness, discipline is not self-trust, and zeal is not charity. The Church prays for the Holy Ghost to pour love into the heart, so that the coming Lent may be lived as participation in Christ's sacrificial love rather than as religious achievement apart from him.
See Also
- Book of Common Prayer (1928)
- Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
- Pre-Lent in the 1928 BCP
- Collect for Septuagesima Sunday (1928 BCP)
- Collect for Sexagesima Sunday (1928 BCP)
- Church Calendar (1928 BCP)
- Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
References
- ↑ Collect for Quinquagesima Sunday, 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," Pre-Lenten Season, "The Sunday called Quinquagesima, or the Sunday next before Lent," p. 122 in the 1930 Standard Book facsimile of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer; Society of Archbishop Justus PDF: 1928 Standard Book PDF. The wording was compared word for word with the local source file
sources/justuspropers/ReadingsA.htm, lines 1251-1261, and checked against local PDF extractiontmp/revision-research/collect-for-quinquagesima-sunday/1928-standard-quinquagesima-pypdf.txt, lines 13-23. - ↑ New Every Morning, "Sources of the Seasonal Collects," section III, "The Pre-Lent Sundays," card for "The Sunday called Quinquagesima"; Sources of the Seasonal Collects. Quotation checked against local research copy
tmp/revision-research/collect-for-quinquagesima-sunday/sources-of-seasonal-collects.html, lines 512-513. - ↑ Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, revised edition (London: Macmillan, 1902), chapter 13, "Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," "The Sundays before Lent"; Society of Archbishop Justus transcription: A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, chapter 13. Quotation checked against local research copy
tmp/revision-research/collect-for-quinquagesima-sunday/procter-frere-ch13.html, lines 397-406. - ↑ John Henry Blunt, ed., The Annotated Book of Common Prayer (London: Rivingtons, 1884), commentary on Quinquagesima, transcribed at Lectionary Central: Blunt's Commentary. Quotation checked against local research copy
tmp/revision-research/collect-for-quinquagesima-sunday/blunt.html, lines 68-76. - ↑ 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), "Quinquagesima. Love."; Lectionary Central transcription: Scott's Commentary. Quotation checked against local research copy
tmp/revision-research/collect-for-quinquagesima-sunday/melville-scott.html, lines 58-62. - ↑ Melville Scott, The Harmony of the Collects, Epistles, and Gospels (London: S.P.C.K., 1902), "Quinquagesima. Love."; Scott's Commentary. Quotation checked against local research copy
tmp/revision-research/collect-for-quinquagesima-sunday/melville-scott.html, lines 114-118. - ↑ 1 Corinthians 13:1, appointed as the Epistle for Quinquagesima 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," pp. 122-123 in the 1930 Standard Book facsimile; 1928 Standard Book PDF. Quotation compared with
sources/justuspropers/ReadingsA.htm, lines 1263-1266, and with local PDF extraction lines 24-28. - ↑ 1 Corinthians 13:13, appointed as the Epistle for Quinquagesima in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," p. 123 in the 1930 Standard Book facsimile; 1928 Standard Book PDF. Quotation compared with
sources/justuspropers/ReadingsA.htm, lines 1281-1284, and with local PDF extraction lines 50-56. - ↑ L. R. Tarsitano, "Charity," sermon for Quinquagesima at Saint Andrew's Church, Savannah, March 5, 2000, transcribed at Lectionary Central: Charity. Quotation checked against local research copy
tmp/revision-research/collect-for-quinquagesima-sunday/tarsitano.html, lines 128-135. - ↑ St. Luke 18:31, appointed as the Gospel for Quinquagesima 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," p. 123 in the 1930 Standard Book facsimile; 1928 Standard Book PDF. Quotation compared with
sources/justuspropers/ReadingsA.htm, lines 1286-1290, and with local PDF extraction lines 57-62. - ↑ David Curry, "The Sunday called Quinquagesima," sermon at Christ Church, Windsor, Nova Scotia, 2004, transcribed at Lectionary Central: Quinquagesima. Quotation checked against local research copy
tmp/revision-research/collect-for-quinquagesima-sunday/curry.html, lines 215-220. - ↑ St. Luke 18:41-42, appointed as the Gospel for Quinquagesima in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," p. 124 in the 1930 Standard Book facsimile; 1928 Standard Book PDF. Quotation compared with
sources/justuspropers/ReadingsA.htm, lines 1301-1304, correcting the local OCR punctuation in lines 1298 and 1301 against local PDF extractiontmp/revision-research/collect-for-quinquagesima-sunday/1928-standard-book-quinquagesima-pypdf.txt, lines 74, 78, and 85-86.