Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent:
Create and make in us new and contrite hearts,
that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
(BCP 217, 264)
“This Collect, with the corresponding Psalm and Lessons, also serves for the weekdays which follow, except as otherwise appointed.” (BCP 217)
Historical and theological introduction:
New for the 1549 BCP, this Collect marked a shift in the spiritual focus of the season of Lent for Anglicans.[1] Rather than focusing on Lent as a season of fasting, this Collect draws us to a more nuanced and expansive engagement of spiritual formation. This Collect calls us to the deep realization that the world has lulled us into practices that are counter to the Good News of the Gospel in Jesus Christ and that the remedy to this is penitence.
Penitence has three components: confessing sins, seeking to make restitution when possible, and intending to amend one’s life (Catechism, “Prayer and Worship,” BCP 856). So, while fasting focuses on not doing something (often going without a luxury or pleasure for the season), penitence offers the opportunity for a season of intense spiritual growth through examination of conscience and seeking to better align our common life with the will of God.
From the 1662 English BCP until our 1979 BCP, this Collect was said daily during Lent.[2] In the 1979 BCP, the rubric “This Collect is to be said every day in Lent, after the collect appointed for the day, until Palm Sunday” (BCP 1928, 124) was replaced with the rubric, “This Collect, with the corresponding Psalm and Lessons, also serves for the weekdays which follow, except as otherwise appointed” (BCP 217), shortening the required use of this Collect from the entire Lenten season to just Ash Wednesday through the Saturday after Ash Wednesday.
The Preamble
The Preamble, “Almighty and everlasting God” brings two of God’s attributes into view: God’s omnipotence and God’s eternality. By beginning the Collect with these two attributes, we are invited to listen for what work of power we are asking God to do on our behalf and why God’s eternal nature matters in this request. A third statement about who God is to us is also found in the Aspiration: “The God of all mercy.”
The Acknowledgement
The Acknowledgement, “you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent” is also two-fold and brings additional aspects of God’s character and God’s disposition toward creation into view.
First, God does not hate what God has created. God declared the created world and all that is in it good (Genesis 1) and has compassion on all that God has made (Psalm 145:9). Since God created everything that is (John 1:3), there is no part of creation that is outside of God’s tender care. As our Catechism summarizes, “the universe is good … it is the work of a single loving God who creates, sustains, and directs it” (Catechism, “God the Father,” BCP 846).
Second, from this general statement about God’s loving disposition toward all that God has created, we focus in on our specific need and our particular situation. “[S]in is the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation,” (Catechism, “Sin and Redemption,” BCP 848). God is merciful and forgives those who confess their sins, seek to make things right as much as they can, and work on changing their lives (Psalm 86:5, 1 John 1:9).
God is “the God of all mercy,” which we proclaim in the Aspiration, and because of this character of God, we can have confidence in the outcome of a penitent response to our sinfulness.
The Petition
The Petition, “Create and make in us new and contrite hearts” is the mighty work of salvation that we ask of God in the Collect. The inspiration for this Petition is Psalm 51 (see especially verses 10 and 17), which has traditionally been used for this day.[3] New and contrite hearts are necessary to begin and complete the work of penitence. New hearts that are able to see the world through a more godly perspective are better able to see our own complicity in sin, which leads to contrition. Contrition, the disposition of sorrow over our sins, is the beginning of reconciliation and transformation.
The Aspiration
The Aspiration, “that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you … perfect remission and forgiveness,” provides us with a normative emotional response: sorrow over our sins is appropriate, as is acknowledging our distressed state of being. This work of being transformed by God’s grace is costly … we are called to lament, to acknowledge our complicity in sin—both personal and corporate, things done and things left undone (BCP 79, 127, 116, 360), and to be willing to be changed. The grace that we seek is for “perfect remission and forgiveness,” which is something that only God can give.
The Aspiration requests both remission and forgiveness, covering both our debts and our offenses.[4]
The Pleading
The Pleading, “through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen,” makes clear that our ability to lament worthily, acknowledge our role in the current situation of ourselves as human persons and all of creation, to be penitent, and to receive new and contrite hearts, is all through the work of the Holy Trinity.
For your consideration:
What does “worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness” mean to you and how does it fit into penitence? What do we as a parish, as a diocese, as part of the church, and as a nation, need to lament? In what ways are we in a state of wretchedness?
How might focusing on the three-fold movement of penitence rather than merely fasting change our Lenten practice as a parish?
Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent:
Create and make in us new and contrite hearts,
that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
© 2021 Donna Hawk-Reinhard, revised in 2022 and 2023; edited by Kate McCormick
[1] The original Collect from which the 1549 BCP’s Collect shifted is at least as old as the 7th-century Gregorian Sacramentary. The Collect in the Gelasian Sacramentary and the Sarum Missal follow this same emphasis. Marion J. Hatchett, Commentary on the American Prayer Book, (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 173.
[2] Hatchett, 173.
[3] Hatchett, 173.
[4] Hatchett, 173.