Proper 14: The Sunday closest to August 10

Dear Reader,

If you are in climes similar to mine, I pray this finds you and yours safe and as cool as possible. Perhaps a post on praying for rain is in order across the South and Texas!

This coming Sunday, my parish will be celebrating the Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin, or the Blessed Virgin Mary in Glory, or the Assumption. Historical hint: if a celebration has more than one name, we've usually bickered over it amongst ourselves at some point in Church history! Next week we will reflect on the collect for the Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin. Other upcoming topics include: "Why I love Ordinary Time," "Mass Intentions," and "Keeping the Office: Daily Prayer."

Proper 14: The Sunday closest to August 10 

Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

We cannot exist without God. Cranmer got it right here translating this collect, found in a few important earlier liturgy books. The essence of the Latin is as simple as that: sine te esse, "which cannot be." Cranmer translated this rightly in 1549, but sadly for the 1662 (still the "gold standard" for most Anglican provinces) the revisers softened it to "we who cannot do any thing that is good without thee."

Why did this happen? For one thing, the 1662 lands, generally speaking, more on the Reformed end of things than the 1549, which is more in line with earlier Catholic theology (not a value judgement, just an attempt to briefly describe the different ethos of each). The collect was altered, I suspect, to reinforce the Reformed doctrine of prevenient grace (which, incidentally, goes back to St. Augustine). This doctrine affirms that God's grace is working in the world in such a way that any good that anyone does, whether a believer or not, is the work of God. In short, it is true that we can do nothing good at all apart from God. I couldn't agree more wholeheartedly! But I think the change in 1662 was an unfortunate one.

The collect from 1549 (which is, roughly, the collect in the US 1979 book) is far deeper than the softened version from 1662 and in fact acknowledging that we cannot be without God subsumes the statement that we can do no good apart from God and says so much more as well! We cannot exist apart from God: we can do no good, we can have no relationships, we can't worship, we can't speak, we can't breathe, our hearts can't beat; we can experience nothing of human existence without God Himself. We are completely and totally dependent upon God for every moment of our existence.

I suspect that all too often, we think about God in the 1662 instead of 1549 mindset. We talk about Him as though He helps us to do good and be better. While this is true, it is not nearly as true as acknowledging that we cannot even exist without Him. It is easy to jump off from the 1662 collect and find yourself browsing in the self-help section of the book store! God is not in the business of sprucing us up; He makes us and we are His. Without him we cannot be.

If we only need God to help us do better, we owe Him a little, but if we need Him for every moment of our existence we owe Him nothing less than absolutely everything.

Blessings,

David+