This evening I went to Vespers at Incarnation Monastery here in Berkeley. On Mondays this community has a very simple evening prayer liturgy that includes an extended time of silent meditation. This was my third time there and every time I’ve been glad I’ve gone.
I was surprised and delighted when the officiant read the collect for the day. Since this wasn’t a feast day, it was the same as the collect for this past Sunday–and I realized it was the same collect we use this week in the Episcopal Church. Here’s the Roman Catholic version:
O God, protector of those who hope in you, without whom nothing has firm foundation, nothing is holy, bestow in abundance your mercy upon us and grant that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may use the good things that pass in such a way as to hold fast even now to those that ever endure. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
And here’s the version in the Episcopal Prayer Book:
O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
According to Marion Hatchett, this collect comes from the supplement to the Gregorian Sacramentary that was compiled around 790 under Charlemagne. It was revised by Thomas Cranmer and then revised again for the 1979 Prayer Book. I have to admit I find our version more prayable; here as elsewhere, the new Roman Catholic translation from the Latin leans heavily toward literality at the expense of prosody. I’m grateful for the prose gifts of Cranmer and for the fact that the 1979 revisers modernized his language without losing its limpidity. But far beyond all that, I’m charmed to find our two churches praying this collect in common this week. After 500 years of liturgical reshuffling, it doesn’t happen that often.
