Empower our vocation


Let us pray (in silence) [for our vocations to join Christ's mission]

pause

Almighty God,
by your grace alone
we are accepted and called to your service;
strengthen us by your Holy Spirit
and empower our calling;

through Jesus Christ our Lord
who is alive with with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God now and for ever.
Amen.

NZPB p.620

Armitage Robinson translated collect of one of the September masses (no 976) from the Leonine Sacramentary as:

Remember, O Lord, what thou hast wrought in us
and not what we deserve;
and as thou hast called us to thy service,
make us worthy of our calling;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This prayer was included in the Prayer Book proposed 1928 in the Occasional Prayers under "Prayers that may be said after any of the former". And in the watershed Church of South India Book of Common Worship as the collect for Pentecost 2. That prayer is revised in NZPB (p.73) to end the Tuesday Evening Office as:

Remember, merciful God
what you have made of us and not what we deserve;
and as you have called us to your service,
make us worthy of our calling;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Amen.

As well as this contemporary version immediately above, the original prayer morphed and mutated via South Africa and ASB to

Almighty God,
by whose grace alone we are accepted
and called to your service:
strengthen us by your Holy Spirit
and make us worthy of our calling;
through Jesus Christ [your Son] our Lord,
[who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.]

[Now Common Worship Fifth Sunday before Lent]

The New Zealand revisers, unimpressed with the need to be "made worthy of our calling" lead us to pray instead not only to be strengthened "by your Holy Spirit" but also to have "Almighty God" "empower our calling". There is much benefit in reflecting on these ideas and changes. Alongside them, one might place words from the RC Eucharistic Prayer II: "We thank you for counting us worthy to stand in your presence and serve you." One also wonders why a more interesting, complementary title for God was not used by the NZ revisers (Living God, Faithful God, Compassionate God, are some that spring to mind).

Certainly the dynamic of this collect is not a self-centered sanctification, a holy selfishness that focuses on individual attainment of heaven or the avoidance of hell. Here is a much bigger vision that focuses not on me, but on God's compassionate love for all, for the world. The (ad)venture we are called into is God's rescue mission of all, of the world, and our privileged calling to join Jesus in this mission.

Alongside this one might remember the translation of the 17th century Latin hymn, O Deus ego amo te, translated by E. Caswall:

My God, I love Thee; not because
I hope for heaven thereby,
Nor yet because who love Thee not
Are lost eternally.

[Hymn 80 in The English Hymnal]
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