Commontide

For Guidance

O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment, and light rises up in darkness for the godly: Grant us, in all our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask what you would have us do, that the Spirit of wisdom may save us from all false choices; that in your light we may see light, and in your straight path we may not stumble; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Touch screen to pause

Skip to main content
Commontide
Collect
Prayers

All Saints’ Day

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical Body of your Son: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting.  Amen.

BCP 2019, p. 622

Proper Preface

Preface of All Saints’

For in the multitude of your saints, you have surrounded us with so great a cloud of witnesses that we, rejoicing in their fellowship, may run with patience the race that is set before us, and, together with them, may receive the unfading crown of glory.

Provenance

Cranmer 1549

Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.

This prayer was written fresh by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer for the very first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, deliberately replacing the older Latin prayer's appeal to the saints as intercessors with a new petition rooted in St. Paul's vision of the church as Christ's mystical body. The text has passed nearly unchanged through four and a half centuries of Anglican prayer books, with "unspeakable" giving way to "ineffable" in 1979 when the older word had grown to suggest horror rather than transcendence.