Prayer of Humble Access

The Prayer of Humble Access is a prayer said before receiving Holy Communion in the Book of Common Prayer tradition, in which the communicants confess their unworthiness to approach Christ's table and rest their hope on his mercy. It is among the best-known prayers of the Anglican liturgy, and it has been retained, in differing positions, in successive prayer books from the sixteenth century to the present.

The text

The prayer in the form given in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer reads:

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

History

The prayer first appeared in the Order of the Communion of 1548, an English devotion prepared under Thomas Cranmer to be inserted into the Latin Mass. The Order was not a complete communion service: the Mass was to continue as before up to the priest's communion, at which point the priest turned to the people and there followed, in English, an exhortation, a general confession, an absolution, the "comfortable words" from Scripture, and the prayer that became the Prayer of Humble Access, before the communion of the laity in both kinds. It was, in this form, a preparation for worthy reception.

The prayer was retained in the Book of Common Prayer (1549), where it stood in a similar place, after the canon and before the communion. In the revision of 1552, Cranmer moved it to a new position: it now followed the proper preface and the Sanctus, and came before the Prayer of Consecration. It retained this position in the books of 1559 and 1662. In the 1662 book it stands immediately after the Sanctus and before the Prayer of Consecration, and the rubric directs the priest to say it kneeling, in the name of all who are to receive the communion. In some later revisions the prayer was moved again, nearer to the administration of the sacrament itself; in the American book of 1928, for example, it was placed immediately before the ministration of the elements.

The name

The prayer is commonly known as the Prayer of Humble Access. The name seems to be borrowed from the heading placed above the prayer in the Scottish Book of Common Prayer of 1637, and it well describes the prayer's character: an approach to the Lord's table made in humility, on the ground of mercy rather than of merit. In the English books the prayer itself is given no title, and the familiar name is a later, conventional one.

Interpretation

The prayer's best-known phrase, the crumbs under the Table, echoes the reply of the Syrophoenician woman in the Gospel: in Mark 7:28, with Matthew 15:27 giving the parallel account, she answers Christ that even the dogs under the table eat of the children's crumbs. The allusion places the communicant in her position: an outsider with no claim of right, pleading only the greatness of the mercy that overflows beyond its first recipients.

The prayer holds together two movements. The first is confession: those who come do not presume to come trusting in their own righteousness, and judge themselves not worthy even to gather up the crumbs. The second is confidence: the Lord whose property is always to have mercy is asked to grant that, by eating the flesh of Christ and drinking his blood, the communicants' sinful bodies may be made clean and their souls washed, so that they may dwell in him and he in them. Commentators on the prayer book have accordingly treated the prayer both as a preparation for communion and as a compact statement of the prayer book's teaching on how the sacrament is received: humbly, in faith, and for cleansing and union with Christ.

References

• Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, Macmillan, 1901.
• Brian Cummings (ed.), The Book of Common Prayer: The Texts of 1549, 1559, and 1662, Oxford University Press, 2011.