'To comfort and compose us': on the Second Collect at Evensong

Continuing with extracts from John Shepherd's A Critical and Practical Elucidation of the Morning and Evening Prayer of the Church of England (1796), we turn to the Second Collect at Evening Prayer. As with the second and third collects at Matins, Shepherd notes the antiquity of this collect, "translated, with little change, from a prayer in the sacramentary of Gregory the Great". Again we note how each day at Cranmerian Morning and Evening Prayer we pray in ancient words, offered by churches over centuries.

While accepting the similarity with the Second Collect for Peace at Matins, Shepherd points to how the Second Collect at Evensong - "The second for Peace" - is particularly suited to the evening hour, after the day's labour, with the hours of darkness before us, the passing of another day marking the passage of our mortal lives:

This collect has the same title with the second for morning prayer; "A collect for peace." And though the petitions of each vary more in expression than in meaning, yet we may observe this distinction: in the morning, we pray more particularly for external peace, for security against those troubles, to which our intercourse with the world, may expose us. Here, in the evening, we pray rather for internal peace, that peace which the world cannot give, to comfort and compose us, that we may spend our lives in all Godly quietness and tranquility. Assured of the inseparable connection that exists, between virtuous principles and genuine peace of mind, we address God, as the author of all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works.

The evocative phrase "to comfort and compose us" beautifully captures what it is that we seek in the Second Collect at Evensong; that, amidst the trials and tribulations of this world, the peace of God may enfold us and indwell us, that we "may pass our time in rest and quietness".

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