Commontide

For the Acceptance of Prayer

O Lord our God, accept the fervent prayers of your people; in the multitude of your mercies, look with compassion upon us and all who turn to you for help; for you are gracious, O lover of souls, and to you we give glory, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen.

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Commontide
Collect
Easter

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.