Collect for Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP)

From AnglicanWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Collect for Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity. It asks God to absolve his people from their offences and to deliver them from the bondage of sins committed through human frailty. In the 1928 propers it stands with Colossians 1:3-12, Saint Paul's prayer that the Church be filled with spiritual knowledge and fruitful obedience, and Matthew 9:18-26, Christ's healing of the woman with the issue of blood and raising of the ruler's daughter.

Text of the Collect

O LORD, we beseech thee, absolve thy people from their offences; that through thy bountiful goodness we may all be delivered from the bands of those sins, which by our frailty we have committed. Grant this, O heavenly Father, for the sake of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and Saviour. Amen.

[1]

Clause-by-Clause Meaning

The collect begins, "O LORD, we beseech thee, absolve thy people from their offences." It is not merely a request that sin be ignored. To be absolved is to be released by God's own sentence of pardon, so that the burdened conscience may be restored to filial confidence before the heavenly Father.

"Through thy bountiful goodness" locates the whole petition in divine mercy. The prayer does not plead the moral strength of the worshippers. It asks for deliverance because God's goodness is abundant and undeserved.

"From the bands of those sins" gives the collect its central image. Sin is not only guilt; it is bondage. The prayer asks that pardon should issue in liberty, so that the absolved people of God may serve him freely.

"Which by our frailty we have committed" is realistic without being evasive. The collect does not excuse sin by naming human weakness, but it confesses that fallen human frailty regularly bears evil fruit and therefore needs God's absolving mercy.

The conclusion, "for the sake of Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord and Saviour," gives the ground of the petition. The Church asks the Father for absolution and release through the saving work of Christ, not as a detached moral aspiration.

Appointed Epistle

The Epistle is Colossians 1:3-12. It begins with thanksgiving for faith, love, and hope already present in the Church:

We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints, for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven.

[2]

The collect's petition for absolution should be read with this thanksgiving. The people who ask to be released from the bands of sin are not imagined as strangers to grace, but as the baptized Church in whom faith, love, hope, and gospel fruit already exist by God's mercy.

Paul then prays for continuing growth in knowledge, obedience, patience, and thanksgiving:

For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work.

[3]

This explains the moral shape of absolution in the collect. The Church seeks release from sin's bands so that it may "walk worthy of the Lord." Forgiveness and fruitful obedience belong together: pardon is not an end in itself, but the beginning of restored service.

Appointed Gospel

The Gospel is Matthew 9:18-26. It places the collect's language of release beside two concrete signs of Christ's saving power:

Behold, there came a certain ruler, and worshipped him, saying, My daughter is even now dead: but come and lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live.

[4]

The ruler's prayer is bold because it trusts Christ's power over death. Read with the collect, his petition shows that human frailty is not the final word. The people who have committed sins through frailty ask the same Christ to bring life where sin has bound and weakened them.

The second miracle turns on hidden faith and Christ's public word of comfort:

If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole. But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole.

[5]

The collect asks for absolution and deliverance; the Gospel shows Christ healing one who has been bound by long affliction. His word, "Daughter, be of good comfort," also resonates with the collect's address to the "heavenly Father." The release sought in the collect is therefore personal, paternal, and Christ-given.

Historical Source

Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere identify the older Latin form behind this collect:

Twenty-fourth. Absolve, quaesumus, Domine, tuorum delicta populorum; et a peccatorum nostrorum nexibus quae pro nostra fragilitate contraximus tua benignitate liberemur.

[6]

This Latin background clarifies why the English collect speaks of "bands." The word behind it, nexus, carries the sense of a binding obligation or chain. The Prayer Book translation therefore preserves a strong image: sin both indebts and imprisons, and God's goodness releases.

The article therefore treats the prayer not as a modern devotional paraphrase, but as an inherited collect received through the Western liturgical tradition and retained in the American 1928 Book.

Anglican Interpretation

Edward Meyrick Goulburn reads the collect as one of the closing prayers of the Christian year, asking for pardon at the end of a season of work and responsibility:

God's sentence of acquittal for past offences, and the fresh spring of holy energy which the will makes after receiving that sentence; these are the two thoughts.

[7]

Goulburn's reading is helpful because it holds pardon and new obedience together. The collect does not move from guilt to passivity. It asks for acquittal so that a new spring of holy energy may follow.

He also explains that the collect petitions God himself to pronounce peace in the conscience:

It is God, and God in the First Person, ... who is here called upon to absolve.

[8]

This guards the collect from being reduced to a merely human declaration. The absolving word may be ministerially announced in the Church, but the collect asks God to release his people by his own mercy in Christ.

Goulburn further distinguishes absolution from the practical liberty that follows it:

Pray, acquit me, that I may be released and walk abroad at liberty once more.

[9]

The "bands" in the collect are therefore both forensic and moral. The sinner needs acquittal before God and liberation for renewed service.

John Henry Blunt applies the Gospel to the collect's language of bondage and release:

This Sunday offers another illustration of the faith of man co-operating with the will and power of Almighty God.

[10]

Blunt then reads the Gospel miracles devotionally through the collect:

The expressive phrase, "the bands of those sins, which by our frailty we have committed," has a double reference.

[11]

That double reference helps explain why Matthew 9 is appointed with this collect. The Gospel's bodily healings are not a distraction from the collect's penitential language. They show, in visible form, Christ's power to loose what sin and death have bound.

Use in Worship and Devotion

In the 1928 BCP, this collect functions as the Collect of the Day at Holy Communion and as the weekly collect where the Sunday proper is used in the Daily Office. It is especially suited to the late Trinitytide movement toward Advent: the Church looks back over sins committed through frailty, asks for God's absolving mercy, and looks forward to renewed obedience in Christ.

Devotionally, the collect may be prayed with Colossians 1 and Matthew 9. Colossians teaches what released Christian life looks like: spiritual understanding, fruitful good works, patience, joyfulness, and thanksgiving. Matthew 9 teaches where release is found: in Christ's word, touch, and life-giving authority.

See Also

External Links

References

  1. ↑ Collect for Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity, in The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity"; Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer (1928), 1928 Common Prayer, "The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book".
  2. ↑ Epistle for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity, Colossians 1:3-5, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity"; checked against the Standard Book PDF. 1928 Common Prayer, "The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book".
  3. ↑ Epistle for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity, Colossians 1:9-10, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity"; 1928 Common Prayer, "The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book".
  4. ↑ Gospel for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 9:18, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity"; 1928 Common Prayer, "The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book".
  5. ↑ Gospel for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 9:21-22, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity"; 1928 Common Prayer, "The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book".
  6. ↑ Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, with a Rationale of Its Offices, revised and rewritten edition (London: Macmillan and Co., 1907), p. 552, "Additional Note" to chapter 13, Latin collect for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity; Internet Archive, "A New History of the Book of Common Prayer".
  7. ↑ Edward Meyrick Goulburn, The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer: An Exposition, Critical and Devotional, abridged from The Collects of the Day (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1883), p. 342, exposition of the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity; Internet Archive, "The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer".
  8. ↑ Edward Meyrick Goulburn, The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer: An Exposition, Critical and Devotional, abridged from The Collects of the Day (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1883), p. 343, exposition of the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity; Internet Archive, "The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer".
  9. ↑ Edward Meyrick Goulburn, The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer: An Exposition, Critical and Devotional, abridged from The Collects of the Day (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1883), pp. 344-345, exposition of the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity; Internet Archive, "The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer".
  10. ↑ John Henry Blunt, ed., The Annotated Book of Common Prayer: Being an Historical, Ritual, and Theological Commentary on the Devotional System of the Church of England, new edition (London: Longmans, Green, and Co.; New York: 15 East 16th Street, 1892), p. 322, note on the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity; Internet Archive, "The annotated book of common prayer".
  11. ↑ John Henry Blunt, ed., The Annotated Book of Common Prayer: Being an Historical, Ritual, and Theological Commentary on the Devotional System of the Church of England, new edition (London: Longmans, Green, and Co.; New York: 15 East 16th Street, 1892), p. 322, note on the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity; Internet Archive, "The annotated book of common prayer".
Retrieved from "https://www.anglicanwiki.org/index.php?title=Collect_for_Twenty-Fourth_Sunday_after_Trinity_(1928_BCP)&oldid=3205"