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
Prayer
Prayers

For Christ to Be Formed in Us

Lord Jesus, Master Carpenter of Nazareth, on the Cross through wood and nails you wrought our full salvation: Wield well your tools in this, your workshop, that we who come to you rough-hewn may be fashioned into a truer beauty by your hand; who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, world without end.  Amen.

BCP 2019, p. 668

Provenance

ACNA 2019

Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.

A short, vivid prayer that pictures Jesus as a carpenter still at work, the same hands once pierced by nails at Calvary now shaping us, "rough-hewn," into something beautiful. It first appears in this exact form in the Anglican Church in North America's 2019 Book of Common Prayer, though the carpenter image itself had already been prayed by Christians for decades.