Biographies of common prayer · Part 2 of 2
The Collect for Purity: hearts open before God
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.
— The Collect for Purity, The Book of Common Prayer (1662)[1]
Near the beginning of Holy Communion, before the readings and the approach to the Lord’s Table, the Church asks God to prepare the people who have gathered to worship him. A collect brings an acknowledgment of God and a petition for his gift together in a short prayer directed toward a particular end. Here, that end is love and praise. We ask God to act within us so that we may offer him the worship for which we have come.
The opening makes this a searching request. The God we address already knows our hearts, desires, and secrets. Whatever others can see of our participation, our inward life lies open before him. Yet the sentence moves beyond acknowledging that knowledge. We ask him to cleanse what he knows. What must God do within those who intend to love and worship him, and how do these received words help us ask for it?
The prayer had a long life before it acquired its familiar English form. Its Latin opening, Deus, cui omne cor patet—“God, to whom every heart lies open”—appears in a collection transmitted under Alcuin’s name and in the tenth-century Fulda sacramentary. Its original composer remains unidentified. In these witnesses, it belongs to a Mass asking for the grace of the Holy Spirit. Dependence on the Spirit is therefore part of the prayer’s medieval inheritance, expressed in both its words and its liturgical setting.[2]
In the Sarum use, the medieval form of worship associated with Salisbury, the prayer appears among the priest’s preparations for Mass. As he vests, the priest is directed to say Veni Creator Spiritus, a hymn invoking the Creator Spirit. The collect follows the hymn and accompanying versicles, before further preparations and the approach to the altar. Its request for inward cleansing continues the invocation that has already begun. The one who will minister at the altar needs the Spirit’s work within him.[3]
The prayer also entered English contemplative devotion before the Reformation. The Cloud of Unknowing, an anonymous fourteenth-century English work on contemplative prayer, opens with an adaptation asking for the cleansing of the individual’s heart so that the writer may love and praise God. Its presence there witnesses to a devotional life beyond this particular priestly preparation.[4]
In the first English Prayer Book of 1549, the priest says the collect after the Lord’s Prayer near the opening of Communion. The received English version is conventionally attributed to Thomas Cranmer; his contribution here is the translation and liturgical reception of an inherited prayer. Its wording continues substantially in the books of 1552 and 1662.[5]
The change in setting is consequential. Words encountered among the Sarum priest’s preparations now have a place in the public English Communion order. The Prayer Book still assigns the prayer to the priest, who voices a need shared with the congregation. The 1549 preface describes worship in an intelligible language as edifying the people’s hearts, spirits, and minds.[6] The earlier Latin plurals and use in a Mass for the Spirit’s grace already gave the prayer a shared character. In English common worship, the congregation can hear and join in this inherited petition, receiving the words of earlier Christians as its own prayer.
What, then, is the need they share? The opening gives us three closely related acknowledgments: all hearts are open, all desires known, and no secrets hidden. Each carries God’s knowledge further into the life from which worship proceeds. He knows what we desire as well as what we do, including what remains unspoken or imperfectly understood by us. The repetition of “all” gives the acknowledgment its reach. Everyone gathered in the church stands within it.
The language can be heard alongside Psalm 139:1–4[7]: “Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely” (NRSV). The psalm gives biblical expression to the divine knowledge the prayer acknowledges. God’s knowledge precedes our speech. When we begin to pray, we address the one who already knows the inward life our words express, and the things they leave unsaid.
The collect then turns upon a single imperative: “cleanse”. Until this point, we have acknowledged what is true of God’s relation to us. Now we ask him to act. Being known becomes the setting for willing dependence: the heart already open to his knowledge is brought before him for renewal. Our petition supplies no missing information. It gives voice to our need and asks for his help within the very life he knows.
This movement also clarifies what the opening does and does not say about desire. Every desire is known to God; the collect does not declare every desire evil. Nevertheless, the worshippers ask for cleansing because their inward life needs purification. Even the desire to worship may coexist with distraction, pride, or a wish to be thought faithful. Sincerity matters, but sincerity cannot by its own power make the heart pure. Our intention to offer worthy worship brings us to a need we cannot meet from our own resources.
In asking God to cleanse “the thoughts of our hearts”, we bring before him the inward life through which we attend, judge, intend, and love. The petition reaches beneath the correctness of the words we speak to the people we are becoming as we speak them.
The phrase “by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit” names how this cleansing comes. In the Sarum Latin, the corresponding words are per infusionem Sancti Spiritus, through the pouring in of the Holy Spirit. “Inspiration” invokes the Spirit’s action within those who pray. The Reformation Prayer Book continues the earlier Latin prayer’s emphasis on our dependence upon enabling grace.[8]
Psalm 51:10–12[9] gives a biblical companion to this petition: “Create in me a clean heart, O God”. The psalmist asks for inward renewal, God’s continuing presence and spirit, and the restoration of the joy of salvation. Cleansing opens toward renewed fellowship with God and the recovery of joy. Read alongside the collect, the psalm helps us hear the hope within the request for purification.
Later Anglican teaching helps us understand how deeply this dependence reaches. Article X[10] describes grace as going before us so that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that will. Even our willingness to ask for cleansing already belongs within the action of grace. God’s help precedes and accompanies our response.
The prayer’s development and use offer a concrete example of Anglican catholicity. The Prayer Book receives words formed in the worship and devotion of the medieval Church and carries their emphasis on enabling grace into English common prayer. As priest and people make this petition, they share with earlier generations a dependence upon the Spirit that continues through changes of language and liturgical setting.
“That we may” gives this cleansing its purpose: “perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name”. The prayer’s final clauses direct our attention toward the love and praise that will grow from a renewed heart.
“Perfectly love” is a demanding petition. The collect seeks fullness in our love of God, and its grammar places that fullness among the gifts we ask him to make possible. We can hear its purpose alongside Jesus’ command to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind (Matthew 22:34–40[11]). Such love engages the whole person. It reaches into the loyalties that govern our choices and the desires that occupy our attention. Jesus places the command to love our neighbor beside it, giving this devotion a claim upon our dealings with others, including those we find difficult to love.
We ask for this fullness while acknowledging the incompleteness of our present love. Our attention may be divided, and our willingness to love a neighbor may falter when it becomes costly. The collect brings these divided loves within the scope of its petition. We can ask God to renew the very desires and commitments that fall short of the love we seek. Within Communion, our need for cleansing becomes part of our approach to God as we gather to hear his Word and receive his gifts.
To “magnify” God’s Name is to praise and honor his greatness. Our praise acknowledges the greatness that is already his. “Worthily” asks that our response be fitting to the God we address, with the inward person brought into agreement with the words offered. The worshipper preoccupied with being thought faithful can ask for cleansing of that desire, so that concern for God’s honor increasingly shapes both the words spoken and the intention behind them. The collect joins praise to love: as we grow in love of God, we seek to give him the honor he deserves. The Spirit’s cleansing enables us to offer that praise with attention and integrity.
The conclusion, “through Christ our Lord”, gathers the petition into the Church’s approach to God through his Son. The prayer addresses God, asks for cleansing by the Holy Spirit, and seeks this gift through Christ. Its movement is Trinitarian, and the conclusion gives the whole request its Christian ground. Those whose hearts are known and whose worship needs renewal approach God through the Lord in whom they receive his grace.
Consider someone who arrives with attention divided and little felt desire to pray. The collect gives that person a petition to make alongside those whose attention and affections are more readily engaged. Each asks for cleansing by the same Spirit. The person whose feelings are faint can begin with the need named by the prayer, bringing that very condition before God. No convincing emotional state has to be manufactured before the request can be made.
Here the collect gives a particular answer to the familiar charge that liturgical worship is dry or unfeeling. Its received words put the inward life of worship at the beginning of the Church’s common approach to God. The form itself gives worshippers a way to ask for the renewal of that life.
Feeling belongs within the life we ask God to renew. Love and praise can engage affection deeply, while reaching into attention, judgment, obedience, and the whole course of life. However, emotional intensity alone cannot establish the faithfulness of worship, and familiar words can be spoken carelessly. The collect calls for active participation in its petition: we ask God to work within us, consenting to the renewal toward which the words lead.
The prayer we receive joins our worship to that of earlier generations who have brought their hearts before God in these words. Priest and people share the need it names, and each congregation makes the inherited petition its own. We can ask for God’s work when our attention falters, when affection is faint, and when the desire to worship is itself something we need him to strengthen. Through Christ, we ask him to cleanse our hearts and enable us to offer the love and praise for which we have gathered.
The opening follows the reproduction of the 1762 Baskerville printing of the 1662 Communion order. Long s, line breaks, and display typography are normalized. The rubric directs the priest to say the Lord’s Prayer and this collect, with the people kneeling. ↩︎
Liber sacramentorum, transmitted under Alcuin’s name, Patrologia Latina 101, col. 446B, under Missa de gratia sancti Spiritus postulanda; Sacramentarium Fuldense saeculi X (1912), p. 203, no. 1790, under Missa ad postulandam Spiritus Sancti gratiam. Both place the prayer in a Mass asking for the grace of the Holy Spirit. ↩︎
Sarum Ordinary, Latin text, opening vesting rubric, hymn, versicles, and prayer. The transcription’s introduction identifies its sources as William Maskell’s The Ancient Liturgy of the Church of England, 2nd ed. (1846), Procter and Frere’s A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, and Peter Goldsmith Medd’s A Priest to the Altar, 5th ed. (1910). ↩︎
The Cloud of Unknowing, “Prayer on the Prologue”, in Evelyn Underhill’s edition. See also her introduction for the work’s authorship and contemplative setting. ↩︎
Compare the openings of the 1549 Communion order, the 1552 Communion order, and the 1662 order. The consequential language is substantially continuous across these witnesses, allowing for spelling, punctuation, and typography. ↩︎
1549 Prayer Book preface, especially its discussion of language understood by the people and its concluding direction concerning English public worship. The later Article XXIV[12] gives doctrinal expression to the requirement that public prayer be intelligible to the congregation. ↩︎
The phrase per infusionem Sancti Spiritus occurs in both the printed Alcuin text and the Sarum Ordinary cited above. Literally “through the pouring in of the Holy Spirit”, it emphasizes the Spirit’s inward work of cleansing, continued in the English petition for “inspiration”. ↩︎
Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion
Article X. Of Free-Will
The condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith, and calling upon God: Wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.
Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion
Article XXIV. Of speaking in the Congregation in such a tongue as the people understandeth
It is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the custom of the Primitive Church, to have publick Prayer in the Church, or to minister the Sacraments in a tongue not understanded of the people.