Commontide
Proper 16
Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
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Original-language source · public domain
BCP 2019, p. 619
Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.
An early medieval Latin prayer from the Gelasian tradition, carried unchanged through the Sarum rite into the first English prayer book in 1549. Its compressed claim, that the Church cannot stand without divine help, is the whole theology of the prayer.