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
Collect
Collects

Christmas Day

Almighty God, you have given your only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and to be born this day of a pure virgin: Grant that we, who have been born again and made your children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you and the same Spirit be honor and glory, now and for ever.  Amen.

BCP 2019, p. 600

Proper Preface

Preface of Christmas

Because you gave Jesus Christ, your only Son, to be born for us; who, by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary his mother, was made truly man, yet without the stain of sin, that we might be cleansed from sin and given the right to become your children.

Provenance

Cranmer 1549

Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.

Thomas Cranmer wrote this collect in 1549 as an original English composition, not a translation from the Latin. Its governing idea mirrors the two births: as God's Son was born of a virgin, so believers have been "born again" as God's adopted children.