What is Grace For?
A reflection on the Collect for Proper 23: The Sunday closest to October 12
Today’s Collect of the Day1 is Proper 23 (The Sunday closest to October 12):
Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow us, that we may continually be given to good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Last Sunday’s collect was on the longer side, and today’s has to be one of the most compact, efficient collects in the Book of Common Prayer.
God is simply named as “Lord,” without the quality or action of God that usually accompanies the name. The petition is simply that God’s grace would be with us always, going before us and following after us—surrounding us, as it were. The hoped-for result of God’s grace surrounding us is that we would “continually be given to good works.” That’s it. I really like a short, punchy prayer like this.
God’s grace and our works
I notice the connection in this collect between God’s grace and our good works. I’ve written before about how grace and effort work together, and I think it’s one of the most misunderstood (and therefore unpracticed) dynamics of the spiritual life.
We can’t do any good works without grace, but grace doesn’t automatically produce good works in us. You cannot do it alone, but it will not be done for you. We are called to actively participate in the life God shares with us, not passively receive it.
“Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” Paul wrote to the church in Philippi, “for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Phil 2:12-13).
“For by grace you have been saved through faith,” Paul also wrote to the church in Ephesus, and the result is that we have been “created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Eph 2:8, 10).
“God’s divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life,” Peter writes, and then says “For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith…” (2 Pet 1:3, 5).
“Grace has been given mystically to those who have been baptized into Christ,” says St. Mark the Ascetic, “and it becomes active within them to the extent that they actively observe the commandments. Grace never ceases to help us secretly; but to do good—as far as lies in our power—depends on us.”
So we pray for God’s grace to surround us completely, precisely so that we can be continually given over to good works. I’m reminded of this section of an old Irish prayer attributed to St. Patrick:
Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
Every Sunday I reflect on the “Collect of the Day” from the Book of Common Prayer. A collect is a simple form of prayer designed to “collect” the longings of God’s people and distill them into a succinct, theologically robust request. The Book of Common Prayer has a wide variety of collects for all kinds of circumstances and needs, and assigns a specific collect to be prayed on each Sunday of the liturgical year, and then at Morning and Evening Prayer throughout the following week—the “Collect of the Day.”