Let us pray (in silence) [that we may rejoice in sharing in Christ’s resurrection]
pause
O God,
in Christ’s humiliation,
you stooped down,
and raised up the fallen world in the resurrection,
grant to your faithful people a holy joy,
so that those whom you have freed
may delight in you eternally;
through Jesus Christ
who is alive with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
The above is my reworking for my Book of Prayers in Common in which I seek to provide a set of collects with history and commentary. Usually my rendering follows a more formal equivalent translation of the original. In this case I thought that a dynamic equivalent was preferable in rendering the powerful images for our contemporary context.
This is an ancient collect that has been prayed on this Sunday for centuries. It has recently been moved, but I think, in the form above, it is a strong Easter-Season collect, better than many of the ones that have been written to replace it. It expresses, in collect-form, some of the ideas embodied in the Resurrection Icon.
You can find more on this collect here: Third Sunday of Easter.
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image: Christ Appears to the Disciples at the Table after the Resurrection – Panel from the Maesta Altarpiece of Siena 1308-1311 by Duccio, di Buoninsegna
