Let us pray (in silence) [that our hope in God may influence us daily]
Pause
Keep the household of your church, O God, [or Keep the whānau of…]
safe in your tender compassion,
so that we who entrust ourselves totally to your heavenly grace
may always be defended by your protection;
through Jesus Christ
who is alive with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
This is part of my reworking collects, in my Book of Prayers in Common, with history and commentary.
Here is my commentary for this collect for Ordinary 5 or read below.
Resources beyond this site:
Textweek
Resourcing Preaching Down Under
Girardian Reflection on the Lectionary
Commentary on the Collect
This prayer is sourced in the Hadrianum (sacramentary given by Hadrian I to Charlemagne in 785-786) where it is a prayer over the people at the end of the Eucharist on Saturday in the second week of Lent. It is in the Gelasian sacramentary (collect for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany), in Benedict of Aniane’s supplement to the Hadrianum (810-815 – where it is also the collect for the 5th Sunday after Epiphany). Alcuin placed it there also. Both traditions were preserved through the Sarum rite and Missale Romanum 1962.
Familiam tuam, quaesumus Domine, continua pietate custodi: ut quae in sola spe gratiae caelestis innititur, tua semper protectione muniatur. Per Dominum …
Cranmer translated this for the Book of Common Prayer 1549 as
LORD, we beseche thee to kepe thy Churche and housholde continually in thy true religion; that they whiche do leane onlye upon hope of thy heavenly grace may evermore bee defended by thy mightie power; through Christ our lorde.
It remained in that Epiphany 5 place in different editions of Books of Common Prayer into the 1928 revision, and after that is prayed on Epiphany 5 in many others that continue that tradition.
The 1549 BCP also would have people repeat the collect if there was a 6th Sunday after Epiphany: “The vi sonday (if there be so many) shall have the same psalme, Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, that was upon the v.” [The word “psalme” was only in the 1549 version of the rubric]. Since the 1552 BCP, after “The xxv Sondaye” (and later after the “Sunday next before Advent”) the following rubric was added: “If there be any mo Sondayes before Advent Sondaie, to supply the same shalbe taken the service of some of those Sondayes, that were omitted betwene Thepiphany and Septuagesima.” This means this collect became part of the “wandering Sundays”, sometimes repeated before Lent, sometimes appearing at the end of the church year. A similar practice was followed since medieval times. The Roman Missal provided for twenty-four Sundays after Pentecost, directing that, if there were more, the propers from Epiphany 3-6 be used. In 1662 a new collect was added (probably by Bishop Cosin) for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany.
Roman Catholics continued the placement, as effectively the fifth Sunday after Epiphany, after Vatican II. That Sunday was now termed the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time. One could be forgiven for not recognising the collect in the ICEL 1973 translation:
Father,
watch over your family
and keep us safe in your care,
for all our hope is in you.
The 2011 RC translation has it as:
Keep your family safe, O Lord, with unfailing care,
that, relying solely on the hope of heavenly grace,
they may be defended always by your protection.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ,…
Familiam – this is not the “nuclear family” image that many would associate with the English word “family”. For many, also, their experience of “family” does not have the positive image intended by the word. The Latin is much more the extended family that would have included slaves, for example. Cranmer, in his agility both with Latin and English, rendered it as “thy Churche and housholde”. In Aotearoa New Zealand “whānau” is a word commonly used even in English sentences to express this concept of “familiam“.
continua – ongoing
pietate – usually refers to our duty; “piety” can indicate fulfilling the duties of religion; here it refers to God’s duty (I have taken this as “tender compassion”)
custodi – preserve, watch, protect, defend
quae in sola spe gratiae caelestis innititur – that relies upon the sole hope of heavenly grace/favour (can be seen as a purpose, rather than a result)
innititur – leans or rests upon or trusts or support one’s self by something/one
semper – for ever
protectione – by protection
muniatur – building a defensive wall (subjunctive; ie. contemporaneous and incomplete)
The whānau/household of the church is “we who entrust ourselves totally to God’s heavenly grace”. Totally! God is the only place we lean for all our hope. And God’s hope affects us not solely in the future (though it does there), God’s hope strengthens us now.
Confusion in NZ Anglicanism
In the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia, this coming Sunday is suddenly the “5th Sunday in Ordinary Time”. If this is the “5th Sunday in Ordinary Time”, there is no explanation what happened to the previous four Sundays in Ordinary Time.
I previously thought that it is a (newish) formulary (agreed doctrine/practice) of our Church that, “Ordinary time is the period after the Feast of the Presentation of Christ until Shrove Tuesday, and from the day after the Feast of Pentecost until the day before the First Sunday of Advent.” But this quote is from ‘Notes on the Calendar 2024’. A previous version of this (2002/2004) is listed as being a document “received” by General Synod Te Hinota Whanui. “Received” is the lowest, if unclear, status in our Church – certainly not agreed, like a formulary is.
Ordinary Time only begins after Candlemas (which, being the Anglican Church of Or, “The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple is celebrated either on 2 February OR on the Sunday falling between 28 January and 3 February.” This year, 2 February was a Sunday – making life easier for us here!
What is happening in our Church is a constant chaotic conflation, a continual patching of one piece onto another (warned against by someone in Luke 5:36!) The Church of England or The Episcopal Church (as just two examples) think through to a systematic, logical way of covering this time of year. NZ Anglicanism is taking mother CofE’s rediscovery of an Epiphany Season ending at Candlemas (appropriate for the Northern Hemisphere bleak mid-winter) and patches it onto Romanophilia for Ordinary Time…. so that the Church of England’s “Ordinary Time” {as per Liturgical Precedence (updated 2014)} beginning after Candlemas suddenly leaps 4 Sundays in NZ Anglicanism to catch up with Roman Catholicism! [CofE, at this point, starts counting backwards to Lent while TEC continues counting Sundays from Epiphany – both logical, whereas NZ’s is not].
I am not in favour of our NZ’ Formularies’s’ confused, confusing, and conflicting approach to begin Ordinary Time with “The 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time”. I am fine with the majority Christian position which starts Ordinary Time with the Baptism of Christ on the Sunday which falls between 7 and 13 January. That way, we have happily been counting up to this coming 5th Sunday.
Celebrate Candlemas on February 2 by all means – but think twice (or more!) about Sundayising it [What next: move Ash Wednesday to Sunday? Move Christmas to Sunday?]. If your community Sundayised Candlemas, you will end up never reading Luke 4:21-30 nor the great 1 Corinthians 13 nor other significant texts at a Sunday Eucharist…
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