collect/opening prayer reflection October 24 and week following [CofE Common Worship]
collect/opening prayer reflection October 24 and week following [NZPB/HKMA]
Once again Catholics and Episcopalians pray a translation of the same prayer this Sunday.
Catholics will pray:
Almighty and ever-living God,
strengthen our faith, hope, and love.
May we do with loving hearts what you ask of us and come to share the life you promise.
We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Anglicans will pray:
Almighty and everlasting God,
increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity;
and, that we may obtain what you promise,
make us love what you command;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Both are translations of:
Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, da nobis fidei, spei, et caritatis augmentum:
et ut mereamur assequi quod promittis, fac nos amare quod praecipis.
The reflection on this week’s collect/opening prayer is found here.
Not all Anglicans and not all Roman Catholics will be praying this prayer, certainly. But at this time I would encourage more to – and for others to join in.
Let us widen the circle that prays this prayer together this coming weekend and week.
Please add your own ideas, resources, hymns, prayers, etc. in the comments section.
I am not quite sure they are all that similar. The Anglican version owes more to St. Augustine than the Roman. Augustine prayed, Grant what You command and command what You will!
I am looking forward to seeing the new RC collects/opening prayers – I think they will be far closer than the current ones.
Bosco the problem is Catholics don’t want a literal, grammatically harsh translations, of the Latin. The 1998 translations were dynamic and inclusive vertically and horizontally. The Spirit of God is dynamic and living, Latin is dead. Catholic also will go from have 2 options for the opening prayer to 1. Universal shouldn’t dictate uniform.
Philip, is the 1998 translation available – especially online? Once one allows more than one Eucharistic Prayer there has been a shift from common prayer and uniformity has been nuanced.
Once one allows more than one Eucharistic Prayer there has been a shift from common prayer and uniformity has been nuanced.
The fact that the 1979 prayerbook that TEC, AC Mexico, and I think Central America, uses has a choice of eucharistic prayers, it is no longer common prayer? It is only common if we all pray the exact same prayer from 1662?
This is IMO, David, a big and complex discussion & I do not know who is actually working on this with depth. NZ, for a while also had a number of Eucharistic Prayers (as do most Anglican provinces), then there was a shift to being able to create your own, with some limitations, then there was a shift to being able to use any authorised anywhere in the Anglican Communion, and many have moved beyond that so that there can be a service with nothing originating within Anglicanism. Is this common prayer? If not – at which point did it stop? If it is – what is meant in calling this “common prayer”? The question also arises with, for example, the Daily Office. We have a number of Daily Offices authorised, and no requirement for clergy, even, to pray the office. Can what one does, then, be called “the Prayer of the Church”?
I think maybe one way forward is to make this the subject of a separate blog post.
I guess that I have never taken the idea of “common prayer” quite that literally. For me the idea of “common prayer” was the idea that we were sharing the common lections for the day and were hearing possibly a sermon based on those same lections. Plus those of us in the same province, or family of provinces*, were sharing the resources of the same prayerbook.
*I do not know if there are any other families of provinces, but the diocese of the AC Mexico and some of the dioceses of the AC Central American Region were former member dioceses of TEC and still use the 1979 BCP en Español.
I’ve put up a blog post, David, about this now.
“Almighty and everlasting God, give unto us the increase of faith, hope, and charity: and that we may obtain that which thou dost promise, make us to love that which thou dost command; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
In what way, I ask myself (and my daughter, a priest in England, agrees), is that language — less colloquial, more sonorous, and of a more effective rhythm — incomprehensible to a modern congregation? Not to mention the incomparable Collect for Trinity 21, which equals the finest sonnets in balance and precision, as well as echoing nearly 2,000 years of cursus.
I notice that many modern versions of collects and other prayers drop the relative clause after the invocation, and I honestly cannot understand why. Is a relative clause too difficult? Might we be underestimating modern congregations?
Thanks, Roger. Those who spend much time here will know of my passion for collects – and those that stand in the great Western tradition rather than a lot of the IMO more trite and often-theologically-less appropriate. I do not think that reworking them into contemporary language and imagery needs to be at a loss of their memorableness. I think the original understanding that “thee” and “thou” was the language of friendship and intimacy (it was how you addressed your mate, not the sovereign) is lost now. Relative clauses, like the subjunctive and “whom”, are dying now. “you who” sounds strange to our ears. Your accidental omission of the comma after “and” makes the collect difficult for many to read aloud sensibly. Just as some may underestimate contemporary congregations – might you overestimate contemporary people not yet in our congregations?