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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Commontide
Prayer
Death & the Departed

The Burial of the Dead — The Commendation

Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant N. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

Found in the Prayer Book

This prayer appears in more than one place in the 2019 Book of Common Prayer.

  • Ministry To The Dying · as “A Commendatory Prayer”Ministry to the Sick & Dying
  • Burial Of The Dead · as “Into your hands, O merciful Savior”The Burial of the Dead

Provenance

Cosin, c. 1627

Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.

Spoken over the body at burial, this commendation entrusts the deceased to Christ the Good Shepherd as "a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming." Its distinctive form traces to Caroline bishop John Cosin's private devotions of 1627 and entered the prayer-book tradition through the 1928 American BCP, which restored prayers for the dead absent since 1552; it has remained through every later US revision to ACNA 2019.