December 4, 2015
(This post by Paulist Fr. Ron Franco first appeared at City Father.)
In P.D. James’ dystopian novel, The Children of Men (1992), a group that meets in an old church as its cover calls itself the “Cranmer Club,” and claims to be devoted to studying The Book of Common Prayer.
“Is it?” is the response. “So what do you do when the State Security Police ask you to recite the collect for the First Sunday in Advent?”
(The Children of Men was eventually also made into a movie in 2006, but I can’t recall whether that episode also made it into the film version.)
Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), Henry VIII’s and Edward VI’s Archbishop of Canterbury (1533-1555) did enormous and terrible damage to both the indissolubility of marriage and the unity of the Church, but he also gave us the literary treasure that is The Book of Common Prayer. And, for the First Sunday of Advent, the BCP has this justly famous collect:
Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty, to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.
In the Prayer Book, so important is this collect – inspired by Advent Sunday’s traditional Epistle (Romans 13:8-14) – that it is immediately followed by a wonderful rubric requiring it to be repeated with the other collects every day during Advent! (At least in my limited experience in England 10 years ago, this wonderful practice of multiple collects – or, as we used to call them. “commemorations” – is still alive and well in the C of E liturgy.)
Discarded or not, the old Christmas Eve collect would be a good daily prayer for Advent, as would the current 1st Sunday prayer, and – maybe best of all – Cranmer’s Advent collect!
(The photo above shows the Advent wreath at Immaculate Conception Church in Knoxville, TN.)