Commontide

For the Acceptance of Prayer

Heavenly Father, you have promised to hear what we ask in the Name of your Son: Accept and fulfill our petitions, we pray, not as we ask in our ignorance, nor as we deserve in our sinfulness, but as you know and love us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Collects

A Collect for Aid Against Perils

Tuesday — Evening Prayer

Lighten our darkness, we beseech you, O Lord; and by your great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of your only Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Illumina, quaesumus, Domine, tenebras nostras: et totius huius noctis insidias tu a nobis repelle propitius.

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Original-language source · public domain

Provenance

Gelasian, c.750 / Cranmer 1549

Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.

One of the most enduring prayers in English, this evening collect asks God to scatter the dark and guard us through the night. Cranmer drew it from the closing prayer of medieval Compline, which itself descends from a Latin oration preserved in the Gelasian Sacramentary, and it has closed Evening Prayer in every English Prayer Book since 1549.