Commontide
Proper 18
O Lord God, grant your people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and with pure hearts and minds to follow you, the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
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Original-language source · public domain
BCP 2019, p. 619
Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.
An ancient prayer in use for well over a thousand years, confronting the three classic enemies of the Christian life: the pressures of the world, bodily desire, and the devil himself. Cranmer brought it into the first English prayer book in 1549 with that tripartite shape already intact; the 1662 revisers sharpened it by changing a single word, asking God's people not merely to "avoid" temptation but to "withstand" it.