Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Collect for Wednesday


This is the collect* for Wednesday of Holy Week taken from the Book of Common Prayer:

O Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his back to the smiters and hid not his face from shame: Grant us grace to take joyfully the sufferings of the present time, in full assurance of the glory that shall be revealed; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

* Collect: From the Latin word collecta, meaning "assembly." The word is normally used to refer to the prayer near the beginning of the Eucharist that precedes the lessons. The collect was supposedly designed to "collect" the thoughts of the lessons and bind the thoughts together, back in the days when only one lesson and a Gospel were read. A collect is actually any short prayer that contains an invocation, a petition, and a pleading in Christ's Name (in that order).
(You can find more Episcopalian/Anglican terms at http://www.holycross.net/anonline.htm)

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