Last week, the 2023 Lectionary booklet and the 2020 so-called A New Zealand Prayer Book gave the collect as
God of all power and might,
the author and giver of all good things,
graft in our hearts the love of your name,
increase in us all goodness,
and of your great mercy
keep us in the same;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
In fact, our actually agreed A New Zealand Prayer Book He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa (last printed in 2005) has an extra line in it (“… increase in us true religion, nourish in us all goodness…”)
God of all power and might,
A New Zealand Prayer Book He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa page 610 – my reflection
the author and giver of all good things,
graft in our hearts the love of your name,
increase in us true religion,
nourish in us all goodness,
and of your great mercy
keep us in the same;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
There’s several notes about this:
Some might say that the collect has been improved in the 2020 Draft – they may not like “true religion” as an image. That’s fine – there’s a process for changing our agreed formularies.
I would highlight that in this Anglican Church of Or you are allowed to source your collect from anywhere, including making one up, including not even having a collect at the Eucharist. You may have a string of any number of collects in a row. Many of the little prayers in the Prayer Book are called “collects”, but they are simply nice little prayers – not really following the collect structure, etc. You can add a trinitarian ending or not – which means the congregation is often not sure when their “Amen” will come. But, although they were not drafted to be said by more than one voice, you can have the congregation all say it together from a sheet, book, or power-point. In other words, in our Anglican Church of Or, nothing has significantly changed by the alteration noted above in the Draft 2020 Prayer Book!
In preparation for this blog post, I also noticed a collect that is in our agreed formularies but not in the Draft 2020 Prayer Book. I previously found five collects that have been removed – so, so far, that is six removed and one altered. The one to add to the list of removed collects is:
Almighty God,
A New Zealand Prayer Book He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa page 598
you show to those who are in error
the light of your truth
that they may return into the way of righteousness;
may we and all who have been admitted
into the fellowship of Christ’s religion
reject those things which are contrary
to our profession
and follow all that is agreeable to it;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Is there still a paper on liturgy, or specifically Anglican liturgy, being offered anywhere in our Church, in our land? Maybe for those who are training to be ordained? If so – is this a topic someone might like to do some further work on? In the 1989 agreed NZ Prayer Book, we lost some treasured collects from our Anglican heritage. Can we have a full record of how many more we are losing should General Synod Te Hinota Whanui pass the Draft 2020 Prayer Book as formularies of our Church and it replaces (as already in the minds of so many) the last agreed printed book (of 2005)?
Some other posts on the 2020 Draft NZ Prayer Book
1) how this book, in many ways, is maybe the book many might have hoped for in 1989,
2) how this book bears the same title as the 1989 book but has quite a different status,
3) I began looking in detail at some of the changes in the book from previous books which bore the same title, and
4) showed how the new Prayer Book defied General Synod Te Hinota Whanuia.
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I will never understand how the establishment (even in North America) hates what actually draws people like me toward the church and her traditions. I don’t need more of what the world already tells and sells me. I do need true religion: to care for widows and orphans in their distress and keep myself unstained by the world in its various unhealthy ways. The allusion is meant to point me to something better.
This one you quote is one of my favourite Collects. Asking God to graft true religion into our hearts is a way of admitting we can’t do it ourselves. Frederick Barbee and Paul Zahl (in their book, The Collects of Thomas Cranmer. 1999. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, p83), say this Cillect is full of verbs of grand askings. We ask God for what we cannot do by our own agency. And if there is ‘true religion’ then we acknowledge the existence of false religion.
They say, “False religion disappoints, causes outrageous reactions, fails to heal and give hope to lost people, and in a thousand ways maps out the way to God such that a person ends up either in [depression] or on a titanic pinnacle of earth born self-righteousness.”
False religion makes us feel true religion is unattainable or else that we have attained it by our own purity and following Scripture or right doctrine, in a better way than another person.
A reminder that we need ‘true religion’ to be grafted into our hearts because such gardening is beyond our abilities, is the exact prescription for the Anglican Church right now. We don’t need false religion leaving us despondent or alienated. Nor do we need a sect of self righteous puritans who elevate themselves above ‘the sinners’, due to their self defined orthodoxy. We need an overwhelming love for others, that manifests itself in the expression of acceptance, inclusion, and embrace; the sort of love the Jesus tradition demonstrates in the Gospels.
The book you quote, Peter, is a gem. I hope that the reflections I provide week by week are building on such a historical, theological, devotional approach. Blessings.
Bosco, what has the Church of Or done to the notorious Good Friday collect? I don’t have a NZ prayer book of any vintage to hand. I’m sure it can’t have survived in anything like its original form, if at all!
An interesting question, Ian. I’ve checked: the 7 agreed (formulary) collects for Good Friday (NZPB 1989-2005) have been reduced to 2 in the 2020 edition of the same name. Here are the seven agreed collects:
And here are the 2 in the 2020 book:
Blessings.