Comfortable Words › Almighty God, Unto Whom All Hearts Be Open

From the circle of Hendrick Bloemaert (1601/1602–1672), via the Centraal Museum, Holland, and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain. Source

St Peter at Prayer, from the circle of Hendrick Bloemaert (1601/1602–1672).

About this picture …

St Peter at Prayer, from the circle of Dutch artist Hendrick Bloemaert (1601/1602–1672). This prayer opened the Sarum Use of the Roman communion service, that is, a local variation on the Roman liturgy associated with Salisbury. At one time there were several such variant ‘Uses’, including Durham and York, but the Counter Reformation abolished them. The English reformers also abolished them, substituting the severely pared down Book of Common Prayer in 1549. As an English translation the Prayer Book was masterly, and nineteenth-century scholars who revived interest in the Sarum Use borrowed from it gratefully.

Almighty God, Unto Whom All Hearts Be Open

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.

A Collect.

ALMIGHTY God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Translated from the Latin of the Sarum Use of the Roman Missal by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the Prayer Book of 1549.

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