Commontide
Morning & Evening Prayer
Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, desires not the death of sinners, but that they may turn from their wickedness and live. He has empowered and commanded his ministers to pronounce to his people, being penitent, the absolution and remission of their sins. He pardons and absolves all who truly repent and genuinely believe his holy Gospel. For this reason, we beseech him to grant us true repentance and his Holy Spirit, that our present deeds may please him, the rest of our lives may be pure and holy, and that at the last we may come to his eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Every Daily Office in the Anglican tradition begins with an act of confession and closes with the minister's declaration that God "desires not the death of sinners, but that they may turn from their wickedness and live." Those words paraphrase Ezekiel 18:23, one of the most pastorally charged sentences in the Hebrew prophets. Cranmer wove that Ezekiel theme with elements from a German Reformed archbishop's liturgy and the medieval Sarum rite to produce this absolution in 1552, where it has stood, almost unchanged, at the gateway of Morning and Evening Prayer ever since.