Commontide

For the Acceptance of Prayer

O Lord our God, accept the fervent prayers of your people; in the multitude of your mercies, look with compassion upon us and all who turn to you for help; for you are gracious, O lover of souls, and to you we give glory, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen.

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Commontide
Collect
Collects

Ash Wednesday

O Lord our God, grant us grace to desire you with our whole heart: that desiring you, we may seek you; and that seeking you, we may find you; and that finding you, we may love you; and that loving you, we may hate those sins from which you have delivered us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Found in the Prayer Book

  • Ash WednesdayLent & Holy Week

Provenance

Anselm (attrib.); ACNA 2019

Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.

A short, climbing prayer: desire leads to seeking, seeking to finding, finding to loving, and loving to hating the sins we've been freed from. Anglican devotion has long carried it under the name of St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109); it entered an actual prayer book for the first time in the ACNA's 2019 Book of Common Prayer, as the concluding collect of Ash Wednesday.