Collect for St. Luke (1928 BCP)

Collect for St. Luke (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed for Saint Luke the Evangelist on October 18 in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer. It remembers Luke as physician and evangelist, confesses Christ as the source of love and healing, and asks that the Church may manifest that same power and love for the healing of body and soul.

Text of the Collect

ALMIGHTY God, who didst inspire thy servant Saint Luke the Physician, to set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of thy Son; Manifest in thy Church the like power and love, to the healing of our bodies and our souls; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The collect has a deliberate sequence. It first attributes Luke's Gospel to divine inspiration, then identifies the Gospel's subject as the love and healing power of the Son, and finally asks that the Church may show—not merely discuss—that power and love. “Our bodies and our souls” should not be used to make a false division between physical care and salvation: the prayer asks the Church to receive from Christ a healing that addresses the whole person.

Appointed Epistle

The Epistle is 2 Timothy 4:5-15. It is not a general lesson about medicine. Rather, it sets Luke beside Paul at the end of Paul's ministry, joining the collect's “Saint Luke the Physician” to the costly work of an evangelist.

WATCH thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry. For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.

Paul’s brief personal notice gives the feast one of its clearest biblical contours. Luke’s faithfulness is shown in companionship with the apostle under pressure, not in a detached admiration for an idealized saint.

Only Luke is with me. Take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry.

John Keble reads this verse as a witness to Luke's steadfast companionship. His interpretation keeps the lesson from becoming a bare biographical notice: Luke's nearness to Paul belongs to a life ordered by the fear of God and the keeping of his commandments.

Only Luke, he says, is with me. Thus we see how constant their friendship is, which is founded on the fear of God, and keeping His commandments. It fails not, for it is builded on a rock, and that rock is Christ.

Keble does not turn Luke into an independent source of revelation; rather, he observes how the Epistle places Luke within the communion of saints, sustained by Christ. That is consonant with the collect: the Church asks for the “like power and love” only through the Son named at its close.

Appointed Gospel

The Gospel, St. Luke 10:1-7, gives the collect’s healing language a missionary setting. Christ sends disciples ahead of him, commands prayer for labourers, and makes their first spoken word a blessing of peace.

THE Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place, whither he himself would come. Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest.

The Church's petition to “manifest” Christ's power is thus not a claim that it possesses power by itself. The Gospel begins with Christ appointing and sending; the Church prays to the Lord of the harvest for labourers. Healing and mission both begin with his initiative.

And into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this house. And if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it; if not, it shall turn to you again.

Isaac Williams connects the appointed Gospel directly to the collect’s concern for body and soul. His sermon is especially useful because it treats the choice of this Gospel for the feast as a liturgical question, not simply as an isolated biblical passage.

This sending forth of disciples throughout all the world, by mercies to both body and soul to prepare the way for the coming of Christ, has this admonitory lesson for ourselves, that it invites us to look forward to that Advent to which, in the course of our Sacred Year, our faces are now turned.

Williams's interpretation guards the collect against a sentimental reading of healing. The healing prayed for is joined to proclamation, peace, mutual support in ministry, and preparation for Christ's coming.

Prayer Book History

The 1928 collect is not the wording retained by the English 1662 Prayer Book. The older English collect calls Luke an “Evangelist, and Physician of the soul” and asks that “the wholesome medicines of the doctrine delivered by him” may heal the soul. The contrast helps identify what is distinctive in the 1928 American form: it explicitly asks for the healing of bodies as well as souls and makes the Church's visible manifestation of Christ's love part of the petition.

ALMIGHTY God, who calledst Luke the Physician, whose praise is in the Gospel, to be an Evangelist, and Physician of the soul; May it please thee that, by the wholesome medicines of the doctrine delivered by him, all the diseases of our souls may be healed; through the merits of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The relation is one of continuity and revision, not opposition. Both forms name Luke the Physician, both locate healing in Christ, and both resist any separation of doctrine from the cure of the human person. The 1928 form, however, states its ecclesial consequence with particular force: the Church is to pray for “the like power and love,” and it prays for bodies and souls together.

Clause-by-Clause Reading

“Almighty God” begins with divine sovereignty, so that healing is received rather than controlled. “Who didst inspire thy servant Saint Luke the Physician” identifies Luke’s vocation as servant ministry and attributes his evangelistic witness to God’s inspiration. The Prayer Book’s appointed Epistle reinforces that vocation by placing him alongside Paul, who charges Timothy to “do the work of an evangelist.”

“To set forth in the Gospel the love and healing power of thy Son” makes Christ, not Luke, the collect’s theological center. Luke is honored because his Gospel bears witness to Christ. “Manifest in thy Church the like power and love” moves from remembrance to intercession. It asks that the Church's ministry be recognizable as a witness to its Lord, while avoiding the claim that the Church creates or owns divine power.

“To the healing of our bodies and our souls” retains the breadth of Christian care. It allows neither a reduction of the Gospel to bodily well-being nor a piety indifferent to bodily suffering. The Gospel’s mission of the seventy, with its prayer, peace, and dependence on Christ’s sending, supplies the liturgical context for that wholeness. The concluding “through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord” returns the whole petition to the mediator whose love and healing power the collect has named.

Use in Worship

In the 1928 BCP, the collect is appointed for Saint Luke the Evangelist on October 18 with 2 Timothy 4:5-15 and St. Luke 10:1-7. It may be used at Holy Communion and in the Daily Offices when the feast is observed according to the calendar and rubrics. It is also apt for prayer for those who care for the sick, for evangelists and missionaries, and for the Church’s witness of Christ’s compassionate power; its own grammar keeps those petitions within thanksgiving for Christ, dependence upon his sending, and prayer for the whole person.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
• Church Calendar (1928 BCP)
• Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
• Saints' Days in the 1928 BCP
• Saint Luke the Evangelist in Anglican Commemoration

External Links

• 1928 Common Prayer: The 1928 Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book
• EpiscopalNet: St. Luke Propers (1928 BCP)
• John Keble, “The Companion of the Saints”
• Isaac Williams, “Healing and Peace”
• Church of England: 1662 Saint Luke the Evangelist