Biographies of common prayer · Part 1 of 1
The collect for the Second Sunday in Advent: learning to hope
Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.
— The Second Sunday in Advent, The Book of Common Prayer (1662)
The familiar sequence of hearing, reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting gives memorable expression to the attention Christians owe to Scripture. Yet the sentence continues beyond these acts of attention. Its petition culminates in the hope of everlasting life. Why does a prayer about reading Scripture lead us there?
A collect is a short prayer in which the Church addresses God and asks for a particular gift. In the 1662 Communion service, the minister says this prayer on behalf of the gathered people before the appointed readings. Together, we ask God to make our reception of his Word fruitful. Following the whole sentence helps us see what kind of fruit we seek, and why this prayer belongs in Advent.[1]
The collect first appears in the English Prayer Book of 1549 and is usually attributed to Thomas Cranmer. It is a new English composition, retained in 1552 and transmitted with small changes into the familiar 1662 form.[2] The Epistle and Gospel appointed alongside it were already the readings for this Sunday in the medieval Sarum rite, the form of worship used widely in England before the Reformation.[3] The new prayer takes up the Epistle’s account of Scripture as a source of endurance, encouragement, and hope, turning it into the Church’s petition.
The first Prayer Book’s preface describes sustained reading in an intelligible language as a means of equipping the clergy to teach and helping the people grow in the knowledge and love of God. Cranmer’s earlier preface to the Great Bible, published in 1540, extends this concern beyond the service. Drawing on St John Chrysostom, he encourages ordinary Christians to read amid household and work, returning to difficult passages and seeking a curate’s or preacher’s help. The collect belongs within this pastoral concern for patient reading supported by others.[4]
Returning to the collect, we can see that the familiar verbs are held within two statements about God’s generosity. At the beginning, God has caused Scripture to be written for our learning. At the end, he has given us the hope of everlasting life in Jesus Christ. Between these gifts, we ask him to grant a fruitful reception. Our attention matters, but the entire sentence locates it within a relationship of dependence on God.
Hearing has an immediate place in this relationship. Before Scripture is something every worshiper can study independently, it is something the assembly receives together. A passage is read aloud, and people with different levels of education, confidence, and capacity listen to the same words. The petition can therefore be shared by someone who reads readily and by someone whose access to Scripture depends chiefly on hearing it. Reading continues and deepens this attention wherever it is possible, carrying what is heard into further consideration.
The remaining verbs give that consideration depth. To mark is to heed what we encounter; learning asks for understanding; inward digestion suggests that what has been received becomes part of the life of the recipient. The language is cumulative. It draws us beyond passing acquaintance toward a reception that engages memory, judgment, desire, and conduct. We need not make the verbs into a prescribed sequence of exercises to recognize the kind of attention they commend.
Nor does asking for this gift remove the difficulty of receiving it. A passage may remain obscure after a first reading. Familiar words may expose something in our conduct that we would prefer to leave unexamined. We may need a teacher’s explanation or the insight of another member of the congregation. The collect gives us a way to bring these limitations before God. Its governing verb is “Grant”: the Church asks for the capacity to receive faithfully what it has been given.
St Paul’s account of Scripture in the appointed Epistle, Romans 15:4–13[5], explains where this reception leads. The earlier writings were given so that “by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope” (NRSV). The collect turns that purpose into a petition: what Paul tells the Church Scripture is for, the Church asks God to bring about in its own life. Its “patience and comfort” express endurance and sustaining encouragement—the consolation that makes continued faithfulness possible when circumstances offer little reassurance.
Paul then shows how Scripture gives grounds for hope. Christ confirms God’s promises to Israel, and the Gentiles glorify God for his mercy. Paul gathers scriptural witnesses to their inclusion, culminating in Isaiah’s promise of the root of Jesse, in whom the Gentiles will hope. They can trust God because his mercy in Christ fulfills what Scripture promised. Those welcomed by Christ must therefore welcome one another, and Paul prays that they may abound in hope through the Holy Spirit. Read alongside the collect, this helps us hear its “we” and “us”: God’s faithfulness sustains a people learning to receive one another.
The Church also asks its teachers to practice that for which the whole congregation prays. In the Anglican Church in North America’s 2019 Ordinal, its rites of ordination, the bishop exhorts the candidate for priesthood to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Scriptures”.[6] These words direct the minister toward conduct shaped by Christ and care for the congregation. The charge acknowledges that the necessary will and ability come from God and directs the candidate to pray for the Holy Spirit’s help. The collect’s language thus helps express a public responsibility: those entrusted with teaching others must themselves receive and live by the Word.
The appointed Gospel gives this patient hope its Advent horizon. In Luke 21:25–33[7], Jesus speaks of distress and fear and of the Son of Man coming in power and glory. He tells his disciples to raise their heads because “your redemption is drawing near”. His words endure even as heaven and earth pass away. Beside this reading, the collect’s petition becomes especially fitting: we ask to be sustained by God’s Word as we await Christ’s coming and the redemption he has promised.
The hope of everlasting life has this same center. It is the hope of sharing in the life of the risen Christ, of our bodily resurrection and the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom. The Church’s worship, mutual care, and faithful service give present expression to this hope, whose fullness lies beyond our common life as we now know it and beyond death itself. We learn to welcome one another because Christ has welcomed us, while awaiting the life in which his redeeming work will be fully manifest.
There is therefore a particular force to “embrace and ever hold fast”. Embracing expresses a willing reception; holding fast extends that reception through time. We ask for the grace to continue in the hope we have received, through uncertainty, suffering, and the ordinary pressures that can draw our attention elsewhere. Returning to Scripture, we encounter again the witness to God’s faithfulness in Christ that gives us grounds to persevere.
When we pray the collect, we ask God to make what we hear part of the life we lead. Having heard Paul’s call to welcome one another, we may need to return to it with a particular strained relationship in mind, asking what Christ’s welcome requires of us there. Such reading may be uncomfortable, and acting upon it may take patience. We bring that need before the God whose faithfulness Scripture makes known, asking him to enable us to embrace and ever hold fast the hope of everlasting life given in our Savior Jesus Christ.
See the 1662 Communion order. The day’s collect is also used at Morning and Evening Prayer, ordinarily through the following week, subject to other appointments. Daily use throughout Advent belongs to the First Sunday’s collect. ↩︎
Joseph Ketley, ed., The Two Liturgies, A.D. 1549, and A.D. 1552 (1844), pp. 42, 239. Francis Procter, A History of the Book of Common Prayer (1855), p. 248, classifies it as a new collect formed from the Epistle. For the Cranmer attribution, see Derek Olsen, Inwardly Digest (2016), freely accessible extract, p. 7. ↩︎
A. Harford Pearson’s English translation, The Sarum Missal, in English (1868), p. 4, supplies the same readings alongside an earlier collect asking God to stir up the people’s hearts. ↩︎
Ketley, The Two Liturgies, pp. 17–19; Cranmer’s 1540 preface to the Great Bible, in a transcription with modernized spelling and explanatory glosses. ↩︎
Book of Common Prayer (2019), “Ordination of a Priest”, p. 489, the bishop’s exhortation before the examination. ↩︎