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

The Fourth Sunday of Easter

O God, whose Son Jesus Christ is the Good Shepherd of your people: Grant that, when we hear his voice, we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads; who, with you and the Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

BCP 2019, p. 612

Proper Preface

Preface of Easter

But chiefly are we bound to praise you for the glorious resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the true Paschal Lamb, who was offered for us, and has taken away the sin of the world; who by his death has destroyed death, and by his rising to life again has won for us everlasting life.

Provenance

Shepherd, 1979

Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.

The prayer spoken on Good Shepherd Sunday in Anglican churches today was composed in the 1970s by Massey Hamilton Shepherd Jr., a priest and scholar who spent nearly thirty years on the commission that built the 1979 Episcopal prayer book. Drawing phrase by phrase from John 10, he shaped a petition that moves from hearing to knowing to following: a liturgical unfolding of discipleship in three steps.