Collect for Sunday Next Before Easter (1928 BCP)

Collect for Sunday Next Before Easter (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for "The Sunday next before Easter, commonly called Palm Sunday." It opens Holy Week by setting Christ's incarnation, cross, humility, patience, and resurrection before the Church as both saving gift and pattern of life. In the 1928 sequence it is appointed with Philippians 2:5-11 and St. Matthew 27:1-end, and its rubric carries the prayer through the first days of Holy Week until Good Friday.

Text of the Collect

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, to take upon him our flesh, and to suffer death upon the cross, that all mankind should follow the example of his great humility; Mercifully grant, that we may both follow the example of his patience, and also be made partakers of his resurrection; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The collect begins with God's action: the Father sends his Son "of thy tender love towards mankind." Holy Week therefore opens with divine charity rather than human religious achievement. The Son is sent "to take upon him our flesh" and "to suffer death upon the cross"; the prayer joins incarnation and Passion, so that Christ's humility is not merely moral example but the form of his saving obedience.

The second half of the collect asks that the congregation may "both follow the example of his patience" and "be made partakers of his resurrection." Those petitions must be held together. The Church is not asked to admire Christ's humility from a distance, nor to imitate him apart from grace. It asks to walk in his patience because it hopes to share in his risen life.

The following rubric gives the collect a special Holy Week role:

This Collect is to be said every day, after the Collect appointed for the day, until Good Friday.

This daily repetition makes the collect the opening interpretive prayer of Holy Week. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday each receive their own 1928 collects, yet this collect follows them until Good Friday, keeping Christ's humility, patience, and resurrection before the Church as the week advances toward the cross.

Historical Source

New Every Morning's source catalogue identifies the collect as part of the older Holy Week inheritance:

The principal collects of the Great Week — Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter Even — come down with very few changes from Sarum, with the addition in 1662 of a new Collect for Easter Even drawn from the Scottish Book of 1636.

The same source card names this collect's origin and day:

The Sunday next before Easter Sarum · Palm Sunday "Almighty and everlasting God, who, of thy tender love towards mankind, hast sent thy Son..."

The 1549 Prayer Book received substantially the same collect in Tudor English:

ALMIGHTIE and everlastynge God, whiche of thy tender love towarde man, haste sente our savior Jesus Christ, to take upon him oure fleshe, and to suffre death upon the crosse, that all mankynde shoulde folowe the example of his greate humilitie; mercifully graunte that we both folowe the example of his pacience, and be made partakers of his resurreccion; thoroughe the same Jesus Christ our lorde.

The 1928 American text therefore stands in broad continuity with the first English Prayer Book and the older Western use. Its special American feature is not a new doctrine of the day but the Prayer Book's received Holy Week arrangement: Palm Sunday opens the week with the collect, the Philippians hymn, and Matthew's Passion.

Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere describe the older Prayer Book pattern:

The Quadragesimal fast was closed by the Great Week or the Holy Week. It began on Palm Sunday, which was kept throughout Christendom by the Procession of Palms in commemoration of Christ's entry into Jerusalem. The whole week was observed with greater strictness and solemnity than the rest of Lent.

They also note the ordered use of the Passion narratives through the week:

This custom is retained in the Church of England by giving a special character to the daily services, in the appointment of Epistles and Gospels for each day, and thus collecting most of those portions of scripture which relate to the crucifixion of our blessed Saviour.

Appointed Epistle

The Epistle appointed with the collect is Philippians 2:5-11. It supplies the doctrinal center of the collect's language of humility, patience, and resurrection:

LET this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

The collect's "tender love" is therefore not sentimental. It is revealed in the Son's self-emptying, servant form, real humanity, and obedience unto the death of the cross. The petition to follow his patience is a petition that the same "mind" may be formed in the Church.

Melville Scott reads the Epistle in that way:

The physical sufferings of our Lord are the outward and visible sign of something yet more wonderful, and the torn body reveals to us the holy mind. That mind is to be ours, especially in its unspeakable humility.

Scott's comment prevents a narrow reading of the collect as moralism. The Church prays to follow Christ's patience because his outward suffering manifests the inward humility of the incarnate Son. The collect teaches imitation, but imitation begins with beholding Christ's mind and receiving grace.

Appointed Gospel

The Gospel appointed with the collect is St. Matthew 27:1-end. It begins with counsel against Jesus, betrayal's aftermath, and delivery to Pilate:

WHEN the morning was come, all the chief priests and elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death: and when they had bound him, they led him away, and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor.

The Gospel then displays the patience for which the collect asks. Christ answers where truth requires, but he refuses to answer false accusation by anxious self-defence:

And when he was accused of the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing. Then said Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee? And he answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly.

Melville Scott explicitly links the Gospel's Passion narrative to the collect's petition:

The mind of Christ has been our study in the Epistle; the acts of Christ are before us in the Gospel. Our Church desires us to take pattern from both of these: we are to learn humility from His mind; patience, which is the outward manifestation of humility, from His actions.

The Gospel reaches the cross and the signs that follow Christ's death:

Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.

The collect asks that the faithful may be made "partakers of his resurrection," and Matthew's Gospel already turns from death toward that hope. The rending of the veil announces access to God; the opened graves anticipate resurrection; the centurion's confession shows the first fruit of Christ's patient victory.

Scott summarizes the Gospel's movement in those terms:

The last loud cry was not of agony, but of victory--"It is finished"; thus Christ endured to the end. Three tokens of victory at once followed.

Palm Sunday and the Passion

John Henry Blunt distinguishes the older palm observance from the Passion Gospel retained in the Prayer Book:

On this day the Church has always begun to set before God and men the Gospel account of the Passion of our Lord. In the Lectionary of St. Jerome, and in the ancient Missals of the Church of England, St. Matthew's narrative, or "The Passion according to St. Matthew," was fixed for the Gospel on Palm Sunday, that of St. Mark on Tuesday, that of St. Luke on Wednesday, and that of St. John on Good Friday.

Blunt also notes that the older palm ceremony was set aside in 1549, leaving the Passion-centered mass of the day as the Prayer Book proper:

This arises from the change made in 1549, when the service for the Benediction of the Palms was set aside (in which this characteristic of the day was fully commemorated), and only the Ancient Mass of the day (which was commemorative of the Passion) retained.

This history explains the Prayer Book title. The day is "commonly called Palm Sunday," but the 1928 collect and Gospel are directly Passion-centered. The palms are not denied; rather, the American Prayer Book proper makes the Church enter Holy Week by contemplating the humility, patience, suffering, and victorious death of Christ.

Theological Interpretation

Scott gives a concise interpretation of the collect itself:

A prayer that the Divine intention of the Passion may be realised in us.

He then identifies the collect's source in divine love:

This was the Father's "love," not His wrath; His "tender love," no mere name, but a yearning affection; His universal love, for He loved "mankind," the race. Nothing was needed to persuade God to love men, and the atonement was not the cause but the consequence of Love.

That reading is theologically important. The collect does not imagine an angry Father reluctantly appeased by a loving Son. It says that the Father, from tender love, sent the Son to take flesh and suffer death. The Passion reveals God's love and Christ's obedience together.

The collect's final petition reaches beyond Holy Week devotion. To follow Christ's patience is to be conformed to his cruciform life; to be made partakers of his resurrection is to receive the end toward which that conformity is ordered. The collect therefore holds together soteriology and sanctification: Christ suffers and rises for the Church, and the Church asks to follow and share in him.

Anglican Use

In Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Holy Communion, this collect gives Palm Sunday and the first days of Holy Week their basic prayer. It is suitable for preaching because its clauses map directly onto the appointed Epistle and Gospel: Philippians explains Christ's humility and obedience; Matthew displays his patience under betrayal, accusation, mockery, and death; the collect asks that the same Church that beholds these mysteries may follow his example and partake of his resurrection.

For catechesis, the collect can be taught through four movements. God acts from tender love. The Son truly takes flesh and suffers death on the cross. The faithful ask to follow his humility and patience. The promised end is participation in his resurrection, not admiration of suffering for its own sake.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
• Lent in the 1928 BCP
• Holy Week in the 1928 BCP
• Collect for Fifth Sunday in Lent (1928 BCP)
• Holy Communion (1928 BCP)

External Links

• 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Collects, Epistles and Gospels
• Lectionary Central: Palm Sunday
• J. H. Blunt's Commentary on Palm Sunday
• Melville Scott on Palm Sunday
• Sources of the Seasonal Collects
• Procter and Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, chapter XIII
• 1549 Book of Common Prayer: Lent