Collect for Thanksgiving Day (1928 BCP)

Collect for Thanksgiving Day (1928 BCP) is the appointed prayer for Thanksgiving Day in the American 1928 Book of Common Prayer. It makes thanksgiving a confession of God's providence: the fruits of the earth are received as the Father's bounty, and the Church asks that their continuance may serve God's glory as well as human comfort.

Text of the Collect

O MOST merciful Father, who hast blessed the labours of the husbandman in the returns of the fruits of the earth; We give thee humble and hearty thanks for this thy bounty; beseeching thee to continue thy loving-kindness to us, that our land may still yield her increase, to thy glory and our comfort; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The address, “most merciful Father,” makes the prayer filial before it is agricultural or civic. “The labours of the husbandman” does not deny work, skill, or the ordinary means by which food is produced; it gives thanks because their fruitful outcome is God's bounty. The final request turns gratitude into dependence: the Church asks for continued loving-kindness, and measures an increase of the land by “thy glory and our comfort,” not by acquisition alone. The phrase “through Jesus Christ our Lord” keeps every material gift within Christian thanksgiving rather than treating it as a self-contained possession.

The Appointed Psalmody

The 1928 proper replaces the ordinary Venite at Morning Prayer with selected verses of Psalm 147. Its first movement joins praise for creation to God's gathering and healing of his people.

O PRAISE the Lord, for it is a good thing to sing praises unto our God; * yea, a joyful and pleasant thing it is to be thankful.
The Lord doth build up Jerusalem, * and gather together the outcasts of Israel.
He healeth those that are broken in heart, * and giveth medicine to heal their sickness.
O sing unto the Lord with thanksgiving; * sing praises upon the harp unto our God:
Who covereth the heaven with clouds, and prepareth rain for the earth; * and maketh the grass to grow upon the mountains, and herb for the use of men.

This is an important guard against reducing the day to private abundance. The God who prepares rain and grass is also the God who gathers the outcasts and heals the broken-hearted. The collect's “our land” is therefore prayed within the worship of a people whose gratitude must be answerable to mercy.

Epistle and Gospel

The Epistle is James 1:16-27. It grounds the collect's language of bounty in the unchanging generosity of the “Father of lights,” and then tests thankful religion by its fruit.

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.

James's “firstfruits” gives the harvest imagery a theological horizon. Created gifts descend from God, but the apostle also names the new birth by the word of truth. Thanksgiving is consequently not only recognition of provision; it is a response formed by God's gracious action.

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

The collect asks for “our comfort,” but the Epistle prevents that comfort from becoming indifference. Gratitude receives God's gifts humbly and is expressed in care for people exposed to affliction.

The Gospel, Matthew 6:25-34, reads the needs of food and clothing through the Father's care. It does not make work or bread unreal; it forbids anxious life from becoming the ruling purpose.

Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than food, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Be not therefore anxious for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.

The connection with the collect is exact: it asks for the land's increase, while the Gospel teaches that the increase is neither the object of ultimate trust nor a warrant for anxiety. The Father knows bodily need; the Church therefore gives thanks and seeks his kingdom first.

American Prayer Book Context

Thanksgiving Day has a distinct American Prayer Book history. E. Clowes Chorley, Historiographer of the Protestant Episcopal Church, records that the 1785 proposed American book supplied a form for the fruits of the earth, to be used on the first Thursday in November or on a day appointed by civil authority.

Then followed “A Form of Prayer and Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the Fruits of the Earth” which was appointed to be used on the first Thursday in November, or on another day appointed by the Civil Authority.

Chorley also explains a key point about the 1928 revision: an older, separate Thanksgiving service was omitted, but its material did not simply disappear. This helps explain why the 1928 book places Thanksgiving Day's collect, appointed Psalmody, Epistle, and Gospel together among the propers instead of presenting the day as only an occasional civil office.

Three services found in the previous Prayer Book are omitted entirely from the new--The “Forms of Prayer To Be Used at Sea”; The “Form of Prayer for the Visitation of Prisoners” and “A Form of Prayer and Thanksgiving to Almighty God” used at the service on Thanksgiving Day. While the latter disappears as a separate service its component parts are found elsewhere in the new Prayer Book.

Bayard Hale Jones offers a complementary liturgical interpretation. He distinguishes Thanksgiving Day and Rogation Days as the Prayer Book's intentionally agricultural observances, rather than relics of a pagan seasonal cult.

But we also have two deliberately agricultural occasions for appropriate prayers for seedtime and harvest, namely the Rogation Days and Thanksgiving Day. These both originated within the Church and owe nothing to pagan influences.

That interpretation clarifies the collect's scope. It is a Christian prayer over the actual gifts and vulnerabilities of agricultural life, not a ritual affirmation of nature as divine. Its praise is offered to the merciful Father, its petition is made through Jesus Christ, and its appointed readings train thanksgiving toward trust, obedience, and care for the afflicted.

Use in Worship

On Thanksgiving Day the 1928 BCP appoints this collect with the Psalm 147 substitute for the Venite, James 1:16-27, and Matthew 6:25-34. At Holy Communion the collect and lessons frame the day; at Morning Prayer the altered invitatory psalmody makes the same thanksgiving audible in the Daily Office. In either setting, the collect serves well as a short rule for devotion: name God's bounty, ask for continued loving-kindness, and receive ordinary provision in a manner ordered to God's glory and the neighbour's good.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• Thanksgiving Day Proper (1928 BCP)
• Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
• Rogation Days (1928 BCP)
• Morning Prayer (1928 BCP)
• Thanksgiving Day (American Book of Common Prayer)

External Links

• 1928 Common Prayer: Standard Book PDF
• Society of Archbishop Justus: Thanksgiving Day propers
• E. Clowes Chorley, The New American Prayer Book, chapter III
• Bayard Hale Jones, Dynamic Redemption