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

Good Friday

Almighty God, we beseech you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the Cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Respice, quaesumus, Domine, super hanc familiam tuam: pro qua Dominus noster Iesus Christus non dubitavit manibus tradi nocentium, et crucis subire tormentum.

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Original-language source

BCP 2019, p. 608

Found in the Prayer Book

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

  • Collects of the Christian Year
  • Good FridayLent & Holy Week

Provenance

Gregorian/Hadrianum, c.8th cent.

Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.

One of the oldest prayers in the Anglican liturgy, this Good Friday collect traces to a Latin text used at Holy Wednesday Mass in the medieval Roman-Sarum rite. Thomas Cranmer translated it in 1549 and moved it to Good Friday, where it has remained ever since; its central image of the Church as God's "family" for whom Christ was handed over is drawn directly from the early-medieval Latin.