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

Anointing of the Hands

The Ordination of a Priest — the Bishop anoints the hands of the new Priest with the Oil of Chrism

Grant, O Lord, to consecrate and sanctify these hands by this unction and by our blessing, that whatsoever they bless may be blessed, and whatsoever they consecrate may be consecrated and sanctified, in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Found in the Prayer Book

  • Ordination Of A PriestOrdination & Institution

Provenance

Romano-Germanic, c.950

Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.

This prayer is said by the bishop while anointing a new priest's palms with oil at ordination. It is genuinely old, going back roughly a thousand years to a Latin formula used across medieval Western Christendom, but it is new to Anglican prayer books: the Reformation-era English ordinals cut it out entirely, and it returned only in 2019, as an optional ceremony in the ACNA prayer book.