Another Sunday, another Collect. Here is the prayer for the First Sunday after the Epiphany from the Order of Worship for the Reformed Church in the United States.
The prayer asks for grace so that we can know our duties and perform them. It is quite similar to today’s Collect from The Book of Common Prayer, though it is more rhetorically effective due to the replacement of the BCP’s “that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same” with the chiastic “”that they may both know what things they ought to do, and be strong also to do what they know.”
The First Sunday after the Epiphany
THE COLLECT
RECEIVE, O Lord, with compassionate kindness, the prayers of thy suppliant people, and bestow upon them plenteously the aids of thy heavenly grace; that they may both know what things they ought to do, and be strong also to do what they know; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
