Commontide

Preparation for Personal Prayer

Holy Spirit, breath of God and fire of love, I cannot pray without your aid: Kindle in me the fire of your love, and illumine me with your light; that with a steadfast will and holy thoughts I may approach the Father in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ my Lord, who reigns with you and the Father in eternal union. Amen.

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Commontide
Collect
Prayers

All Saints’ Day

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical Body of your Son: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting.  Amen.

BCP 2019, p. 622

Proper Preface

Preface of All Saints’

For in the multitude of your saints, you have surrounded us with so great a cloud of witnesses that we, rejoicing in their fellowship, may run with patience the race that is set before us, and, together with them, may receive the unfading crown of glory.

Provenance

Cranmer 1549

Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.

This prayer was written fresh by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer for the very first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, deliberately replacing the older Latin prayer's appeal to the saints as intercessors with a new petition rooted in St. Paul's vision of the church as Christ's mystical body. The text has passed nearly unchanged through four and a half centuries of Anglican prayer books, with "unspeakable" giving way to "ineffable" in 1979 when the older word had grown to suggest horror rather than transcendence.