laudable Practice

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 Third Collect at Matins, for Grace. As with the Second Collect at Matins, Shepherd notes its antiquity and provenance: "The substance of this Collect was borrowed from an ancient form in the Eastern church". In other words, to pray this collect day by day at Matins is to place ourselves alongside the great Churches of the East. Shepherd focuses on the divine titles invoked at the opening of the collect, "our heavenly Father, Almighty and everlasting God", reflecting upon these as grounding our daily prayer and reliance upon grace in the nature of God. Yet again, it is a commentary which brings us to recognise the theological richness and depths of words prayed each day. Grace being so essential to our happiness, we address ourselves to the inexhaustible fountain of grace, to him who is more ready to...

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, for Peace, at Mattins. Shepherd provides a pithy introduction to the collect: This Collect, copied with some little variation from a form in the Sacramentary of Gregory, is not more remarkable for its antiquity, than for its piety and comprehensive brevity. Having noted the antiquity of the collect - reminding us how its place in Matins draws us into an ancient Christian prayer - Shepherd then provides a beautiful reflection on the collect's meaning: The title of this prayer is a Collect for peace. Peace is the happiness of the earth, and a type of heaven. All earthly blessings are nothing without it, and in it all heavenly blessings are comprehended. Peace was the first legacy bequeathed to the world, through our blessed Redeemer, and peace was the last bequest of our dying Lord to his disciples. ...

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 consider his commentary on the collects for Sundays and feast days. Quoting from the Catholic humanist Cassander, Shepherd notes the antiquity of this form of prayer: "the ancient church first called these prayers Collects, from their being used when the people were come together, and collected in religious assemblies". This emphasis on the antiquity of the collects is significant in light of how Shepherd organised the Sunday and feast day collects into three groups.  There are those - 14 in total - "taken from ancient models, but considerably altered and improved by our Reformers, and the Reviewers of the Liturgy". Amongst these, however, is the replacement for the pre-Reformation Breviary collect for the Annunciation, which had referred to her intercession. It was replaced with a collect from the Gregorian Sa...