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.
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. It is now shared by Roman Catholics, Anglicans/Episcopalians, and others. You can read more here.
Other resources: textweek
Please add useful resources in the comments below.
For those who can count backwards, this Sunday rolls off the tongue as “Sexagesima”. In the NZ Lectionary booklet, this is the “5th Sunday in Ordinary Time”; last Sunday was the “4th Sunday of the Epiphany”, the change in counting is presented without any explanation. If this is the “5th Sunday in Ordinary Time”, there is, furthermore, no explanation what happened to the previous four Sundays in Ordinary Time.
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image: Christ in the Wilderness by Ivan Kramskoi
