Two of my favourite prayers were prayed in yesterday morning's 8.30 am Holy Communion service at St. John's, Highfield, where I presided and preached. I would like to share them with you as oases of spiritual calm in a week of terrifying developments which our children and grandchildren may look back on as turning points in a world of (relative) peace heading towards World War III (Chinese navy firing exercises in the Tasman Sea; the White House vicious Trump-Vance ambush of Zelensky).
The Prayer of Humble Access [pp. 425-26]
We do not presume
to come to your holy table,
merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness,
but in your great mercy.
We are not worthy
even to gather the crumbs from under your table.
But you are the same Lord
whose nature is always to have mercy.
Grant us therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the body of your dear Son, Jesus Christ,
and to drink his blood,
that we may evermore dwell in him
and he in us.
Amen.
The Gate of Glory [pp.428-29]
Father of all,
we give you thanks and praise,
that when we were still far off
you met us in your Son and brought us home.
Dying and living,
he declared your love,
gave us grace
and opened the gate of glory.
May we who share Christ’s body
live his risen life;
we who drink his cup
bring life to others;
we whom the Spirit lights
give light to the world.
Keep us firm in the hope you have set before us,
so we and all your children shall be free,
and the whole earth live to praise your name.
POSTSCRIPT
In comments to last week's post, questions were raised about "stories behind" and "authorship" of specific prayers in A New Zealand Prayer Book [NZPB].
OTOH: some stories are known, circulated and authors identified. So Bosco Peters' contributed these notes:
"There's quite a bit of history & several stories about NZPB in my thesis - free online: liturgy.co.nz/you-can-read-my-thesis and there's also quite a few stories buried on my site (18 years worth!) - with an excellent search box."
"... One other point: the litany mentioned in the comments, "Let us be at peace within ourselves..." is The Rev. Jim Cotter's adaptation of the Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh’s Litany for peace: https://liturgy.co.nz/interbeing"
and Liz notes:
""Lord, it is night", I found the story of that (quite by chance) after a quick search to remind myself of the words - up came a link to Bosco's site so I went there - and also got the back story! Funny how things happen: https://liturgy.co.nz/lord-it-is-night"
The last is a brilliant story about the late Canon John WIlliamson, a priest of our Diocese of Christchurch.
To the links above we could add Brian Carrell's [my father's] memoir of his work on the then NZ Prayer Book Commission, Creating A New Zealand Prayer Book, which is available for sale as a hard copy from Theology House, or as a Kindle copy via Amazon.
OTOH: we could note that with the exception of some specific acknowledgments of external contributors to NZPB, the Commission sought to anonymise its internal contributors so that the book as a whole would be seen, received and used as a resource of the whole church, agreed to by the whole church, via General Synod, with no favoured prayers because individual authors were identified.
