Almighty God, our heavenly Father, you set the solitary in families: We commend to your continual care the homes in which your people dwell. Put far from them every root of bitterness, the desire of vainglory, and the pride of life. Fill them with faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, and true godliness. Knit together in constant affection those who, in holy matrimony, have been made one flesh; turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the hearts of children to their parents; and so enkindle fervent charity among us all, that we may evermore be joined to one another with bonds of loving-kindness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.
This prayer for the homes where God's people live first appears in the American prayer book of 1928, among that book's newly added Additional Prayers. The Episcopal Church's 1979 revision carried it forward almost unchanged, and it was the Anglican Church in North America's 2019 Book of Common Prayer that modernized the language into contemporary English, which is the text Commontide uses.