While there is only one Collect listed in the Collect section for this Sunday, there are two Collects in use this Sunday–one for the Liturgy of the Palms and one for Holy Eucharist. My hope is that the Collect for the Liturgy of the Palms will serve as an orientation for our journey through Holy Week.
~ Sister Donna Ruth, AF
A Meditation on The Collect for The Liturgy of the Palms
Assist us mercifully with your help,
O Lord God of our salvation,
that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts,
whereby you have given us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(BCP 270)
Historical and theological introduction
While this Collect is not listed in the Collect section of our BCP (it would be on page 167 or page 219 if it were), its Aspiration sets the tone for The Liturgy of the Palms, which is in stark contrast to the tone of the Eucharistic readings for The Sunday of the Passion.[1] The celebratory tone of this part of this Sunday’s service is experienced through the use of palm branches (not merely fronds) or other greenery that can be waved in the procession, as well as the restoration of an outdoor procession.[2]
This Collect is based on the blessing over the people (super populum) on Monday in Holy Week from the 9th-century Gregorian Sacramentary and the late 11th-century Sarum Missal.[3] In the Gelasian Sacramentary, the Collect was prayed as the second Collect on the second Sunday before Ash Wednesday (Sexagesima Sunday).[4] Used in the 1928 BCP as the Collect for Wednesday in Holy Week, our 1979 BCP moved this Collect to The Liturgy of the Palms.[5]
The Preamble
The Preamble, “O Lord God of our salvation,” invites us to consider both the allusion to a myriad of biblical texts[6] and to ponder whether “Lord” refers to God’s name disclosed to God’s people (LORD), God’s sovereignty over all of creation, or both.
Addressing God as the “God of our salvation” is a not only a quotation of Psalm 65:5 and Psalm 68:19, 20, but is a common theme throughout Scripture. When considering the description of God as the “God of our salvation,” the idea of God’s “saving embrace” from the third prayer for mission in Morning Prayer (BCP 101) is helpful to me. Our salvation, which includes restoration to health and wholeness, is, at its heart, relational. Through God’s saving embrace, we are offered the grace to participate in the restoration of healthy relationships with God, our self, each other, our neighbors, and all of creation.
With the Preamble serving as a concise Preamble and Acknowledgment, the optional Acknowledgement is not present.
The Petition
The Petition, “Assist us mercifully with your help,” is both a statement of our need for God’s help and a request for that help. While we are dependent upon God for all that we are and do, the Aspiration focuses our request.
The Aspiration
The Aspiration, “that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby you have given us life and immortality,”[7] sets the tone for the Liturgy of the Palms portion of the service and provides us with instruction for what we are to do in response to this particular service, and the rest of the services of Holy Week.
The referent of “those mighty acts, whereby [God] has given us life and immortality” is the focus of Holy Week and Easter Sunday—Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection—but also includes his incarnation, life, ministry, and ascension.
Our instruction, to contemplate these things, could have been translated as “recollection,” was translated as “meditation” in the 1928 BCP, and then changed to “contemplation” for our present use.[8] What we are called to do is more than mere recollection or remembering these events in Jesus’ life; we need to engage more than memory – and the services of Holy Week, beginning with the Liturgy of the Palms, invites us into a fully embodied, corporate engagement with the historical events so that they provide meaning for us today.
Popular definitions of the terms “meditation” and “contemplation” obscure what we are asking God for grace to do. In this Collect, when we ask God for grace to contemplate these mighty acts of our salvation, we are not asking God to help us empty our minds.
What we translate as “meditation” and “contemplation” from the medieval Latin form of the Collect meant focused study and re-reading or re-playing the events in order to deeply engage the fullness of the events (meditation) and deeply experience the content of that study and rest in this experience in order to be transformed by it (contemplation). We are invited, through this Collect, to ponder deeply the mighty acts of our Triune God, especially the mighty acts done by and through the person of Jesus, through which the Father gives us life and immortality, and to let the Holy Spirit use our pondering of these events to transform us.
The reason that the events of Holy Week and Easter Day are important for our contemplation is that it is through these events that form the climax of the unfolding story of our redemption and the restoration of all things to God in Christ. Through our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection, we are given new life and eternal life (immortality).
The Pleading
The Pleading, “through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen” is not Trinitarian like the Pleadings of the Sunday Collects of the Church Year. Other notable instances of Pleadings that are Christocentric, not Trinitarian, are found in the Daily Office (BCP 56-8, 98-100, 107, 110-111, 123-125, 133-4), the Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families (BCP 127-140), the Great Litany (BCP 153), in the Ash Wednesday liturgy (BCP 269), and the Collects throughout the Liturgy of the Word of the Easter Vigil (BCP 288-291).
For your consideration:
Holy Week is a busy liturgical week, full of rich theological texts. Letting the liturgy do its work in us to focus our attention on the mighty acts of Jesus, done on our behalf, is, in itself, hard work. How can the joyful contemplation of these mighty acts be used by the Holy Spirit to transform us?
While the Pleading is notably not Trinitarian, how do you understand the work of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit to be active in our salvation and in the salvific events that we will contemplate this week?
Assist us mercifully with your help,
O Lord God of our salvation,
that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts,
whereby you have given us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
—————————————————————————–
A Meditation on the Collect for the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday
Almighty and everliving God,
in your tender love for the human race
you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature,
and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility:
Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
(BCP 219)
Historical and theological introduction
This Collect, used since at least the 7th century, was modified by Thomas Cranmer for theological concerns.[9] The addition of “in your tender love toward man,” [10] which was updated in our 1979 BCP to “in your tender love for the human race,” clarifies the motive for God the Father’s sending of the Son. Marion Hatchett notes that Cranmer translated what could have been “grant that we merit both to have the teaching of his patience and a share in the resurrection” to “grant that we both follow the example of his patience, and be made partakers of his resurrection,”[11] providing a more active dimension to our participation in following Christ. The shift from the ancient Collect’s “follow the example of his patience” to “walk in the way of his suffering” was made for our 1979 BCP to make explicit that what was originally translated as “patience” includes both endurance and suffering.[12]
Cranmer’s revision to remove the term “merit” reflects the theological issues of his time period. That he changed the Petition from “merit both” to requests for empowerment to actively follow Christ’s example of patience and to be given a share in Christ’s resurrection (which is strictly a gift), provides an example of the tension that we experience in the Christian life. Some things we need grace to do and some things we need grace to receive and trust.
Hatchett also provides a quotation from Massey H. Shepherd, Jr., a key figure in the 1979 revision of our BCP, that is worth reprinting in full:
“This Collect is the nearest thing to a statement of the doctrine of the Atonement to be found in the Prayer Book, and it is significant that it associates [atonement] with Christ’s Incarnation no less than his Passion. Also, the stress upon the ‘humility’ of Christ in coming into the world for our redemption is noteworthy.”[13]
That our Anglican view of the atonement (that is, redemption; being reconciled to God) centers on the entirety of the Incarnation, not merely the Passion, is an important liturgical emphasis that connects us to the great tradition of the Church handed down through the centuries. Central to this atonement model is that the Son, fully divine, takes upon himself all that it means to be human (“to take upon him our nature”) so that, through his sharing of our nature, we are able to share in his resurrection. This view of atonement is also found in The Collect for the First Sunday of Advent, the third Collect for the Nativity of Our Lord: Christmas Day, and The Collect for the Second Sunday after Christmas Day. This understanding of how we are made right with God through the Incarnation is also hinted at in The Collect for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany and The Collect for Tuesday in Easter Week.
The Preamble
The Preamble, “Almighty and everliving God,” combines a typical attribution of God found in the Collects, “almighty,” with one that is used only once in the Collects for the Church Year, “everliving.” With the description of God as “almighty,” we have seen in other Collects that we should expect the Petition to ask God to do a mighty work on our behalf.
The description of God as everliving is found in the ancient hymn “O Gracious Light” (Phos hilaron) that we pray as part of our evening prayers (see The Order for Worship for the Evening (BCP 112), Evening Prayer (BCP 64, 118), and Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families: In the Early Evening (BCP 139)). In the nearly 20 additional uses of “everliving” found in the 1979 BCP, God is described as everliving in prayers used in Confirmation (BCP 310), Holy Eucharist (BCP 329, 339, 366), Marriage (BCP 425), Ordination (BCP 560), New Ministry (BCP 560), the Consecration of a Church (BCP 568), and in Collects for the Mission of the Church (816) and for the Parish (BCP 817). The use in “O Gracious Light” provides us with a means of daily participation in the application of the doctrine found in these other instances of “everliving God.”
In “O Gracious Light,” we are participating in the ancient and ongoing worship of God. While each of the other uses has a different specific request, the theme is the same: we ask God to do for us what God has done for the members of the church throughout the ages so that we are one church throughout time.
The Acknowledgement
The Acknowledgement, “in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility,” takes Philippians 2:5-11 , traditionally used on Palm Sunday, as its biblical foundation. [14] This is love worked out in full humility: taking on all that it means to be finite, including being able to die, in full solidarity with those who have rejected you so that they can experience your love (see John 1:1-18). Our atonement is through Jesus’ solidarity with us – he became what we are so that we might become like him.
Cranmer advanced our doctrinal statement about God by clarifying the motive for the Incarnation of the Son with his inclusion of the allusion to Luke 1:78-9 (part of The Song of Zechariah, Benedictus Dominus Deus, from Morning Prayer, BCP 123, translated as “tender compassion” in Rite II, BCP 93. See the note below for additional references). This tender compassion for humanity tightly focuses God’s love for all that God has created (see The Collect for Ash Wednesday) on the source of all of creation’s suffering: human sin (see Romans 8:18-21).
The Petition
The Petition, “Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection,” combines three theological ideas in a compact statement. We begin with a statement of who God is (merciful and mighty). We continue with describing what it means to follow Jesus; to follow Jesus means giving up our lives as the world would offer us so that we live according to God’s way, which is life, Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:25. Finally, we add our understanding of what salvation entails: sharing in Christ’s suffering is how we share in his resurrection, i.e., share in eternal life and peace (2 Timothy 2:11, see also Romans 8:18-25 and A Collect for Fridays in Morning Prayer, BCP 99).
Asking to be granted grace to walk in the way of Jesus’ suffering is a hard prayer—but it is not prayed in isolation. We pray this prayer as we enter Holy Week, in which we liturgically walk with Jesus through his passion. But Holy Saturday, as we wait and watch over the tomb, is not the end of Jesus’ life story—just as Jesus told his disciples that he would suffer and die, he also told them that he would rise on the third day (Matthew 20:18-19). So too, when we ask to be granted grace to walk in the way of suffering as those who follow Jesus, we trust that we are also walking in the way of life and will share in Jesus’ resurrection—Easter follows Holy Saturday!
The Pleading
The Pleading, “through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen,”recalls for us and for God that we ask to be made like Jesus who became what we are (he shared in all that it means to be human). The One who suffered on our behalf knows what human suffering is from first-hand experience and he has taken this knowledge with him into the Holy Trinity. We make our pleading to our compassionate God who, through the person of Jesus, knows what human suffering entails and, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, suffers with us while working eternal life and peace into us.
For your consideration:
How does the phrase “in your tender love for the human race” affect how you pray for us, as the Church, to be given grace to walk in the way of Jesus’ suffering?
What has suffering through humbling yourself to walk with those who are suffering looked like in your life? What did you set aside in order to be compassionate? How did you experience God’s compassion?
What has suffering through humbling ourselves to walk with those who are suffering looked like in our life as a parish? What did we set aside in order to be compassionate? How have we experienced God’s compassion and life as a result of this suffering?
What do you think walking in the way of Jesus’ suffering might look like for us in the coming year? How might we remind each other that Jesus’ resurrection is being applied to us so that we are able to be compassionate?
Note: This theme of God’s tender mercy or compassion is also found in Noonday Prayer (BCP 107), A Collect for Fridays in Evening Prayer, Rite I (BCP 69), Holy Eucharist Rite I (BCP 334, 341), The Burial of the Dead: Rite Two (BCP 504), and the Consecration of a Church (BCP 572).
Almighty and everliving God,
in your tender love for the human race
you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature,
and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility:
Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
[1] Marion Hatchett notes that the Sarum form of this Sunday’s service made this sharp turn in tone and is the pattern for our present use. Marion J. Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book, (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 224.
[2] Hatchett, 225
[3] Hatchett, 226
[4] Hatchett, 226
[5] Hatchett, 177 and 226.
[6] Addressing God as the God of our salvation is frequently used in the Psalms (for examples, see Psalm 38:22, 35:3, 68:19, 65:5, 79:9, 85:4, 25:5, 27:9, 88:1) as well in other Old Testament texts, such as Micah 7:7, Exodus 15:2, and Isaiah 12:2).
[7] Marion Hatchett notes that a more literal translation of the original Collect would have provided better continuity with the Collect for the second Sunday after Christmas: “Assist us, God of our salvation, and grant that we come joyfully to the recollection of the benefits by which you have restored to us dignity.” Hatchett, 226.
[8] Hatchett, 226.
[9] The Collect is found in both the Gelasian and the Gregorian Sacramentaries. Marion J. Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book, (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 176.
[10] Hatchett, 176.
[11] Hatchett, 176.
[12] Paul V. Marshall, Prayer Book Parallels (New York: Church Publishing, 1990), II.89.
[13] Hatchett, 176, quoting Shepherd.
[14] Hatchett, 176.
© 2021 and 2023 Donna Hawk-Reinhard, edited by Kate McCormick
Want to know more about the Collect format or the underlying spiritual formation goal of this series of meditations? You can find that information here.