Prayers and Creeds
Posts in Comfortable Words tagged ‘Prayers and Creeds’
The final prayer of the Litany in the Book of Common Prayer.
This Collect was appointed as the closing prayer of the Litany in the English Book of Common Prayer of 1549. In later editions, it was added to Morning and Evening Prayer, and it was also attributed to St John Chrysostom (347-407), as it comes originally from the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, the holy communion service of the Eastern churches.
A short prayer from the opening of the communion service in the old Sarum missal.
This short prayer came near the start of the Sarum missal, the predominant Mediaeval communion service in England, just after a hymn to the Holy Ghost. It survived the cutting table of the Reformation and opened the communion service of the 1549 Prayer Book too, in an English translation of surpassing elegance and restraint.
Three prayers by much-loved novelist Jane Austen, who intended them for use by her family at evening time.
These three prayers were written by novelist Jane Austen (1775-1817) for family use, and preserved for posterity by her elder sister Cassandra. The first is displayed in abridged form in the parish church in Steventon where her father George Austen and later her brother James were Rector; it focuses on self-knowledge, and on thankfulness for comforts and blessings received.
Two short prayers by the twelfth-century Durham monk, one to the Virgin Mary and another to St Nicholas.
Reginald of Durham (?-?1190) tells us that the Virgin Mary appeared to St Godric and made him learn a prayer so that he could say it ‘whenever he was fearful of being overcome by pain, sorrow, or temptation.’ She promised her immediate help. The second stanza is found in ‘Flowers of History’ by Roger of Wendover (?-1236).
A short collection of prayers taken from the writings of Elfric, Abbot of Eynsham in the days of Ethelred the Unready.
Elfric (?955-?1010) was Abbot of Eynsham Abbey in Oxfordshire from 1005. He is one of the towering figures of the English Church in Anglo-Saxon times, sometimes even mentioned in the same breath as St Bede. The following prayers are taken from Benjamin Thorpe’s translation of Elfric’s Sermons, originally in Old English.
The Creed is a tissue of Biblical quotations first compiled in 325, and recited at every communion service to this day.
In 325, bishops assembled at Nicaea, near Constantinople, and compiled a declaration of faith. It was enlarged at Constantinople in 381, and fifty years later the world’s bishops gathered at Ephesus and agreed never to change one word of it. It is recited to this day at every service of holy communion, and was consequently known to the Anglo-Saxons as ‘the Mass Creed’.