Description
A Prayer for All Seasons contains the collects from the Book of Common Prayer. Starting with the collects for Morning Prayer, followed by those for Evening Prayer, and continuing with those for, Christmas, Easter, and other seasons and feasts, and for Saints’ Days, and concludes with those for Holy Communion. While the prayers themselves date back to the times of Popes Leo I, Gelasius, and Gregory the Great, the wording of the collects was largely written by the sixteenth-century liturgical genius and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the main author of the Book of Common Prayer.
The wonderful collects in the book are framed by early-twentieth-century wood engravings by Blanche McManus which augment and enhance the beauty of the language. Time and faith have hallowed the Book of Common Prayer as one of the supreme achievements of the English language with its splendour.
In addition to a Foreword by the former Prince of Wales, Prince Charles, the book contains an introduction by Ian Curteis, and an Afterword by The Right Reverend Richard Chartres, former Bishop of London.
Contents
Foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales
Introduction by Ian Curteis
An analysis of the Collects by Canon H.J. Burgess
The Origin and Essential Characteristics of the Collects
The Structure and Content of the Collects
The Teaching of the Collects
The Origin or Authorship of each Collect
The Collects
Morning Prayer
Evening Prayer
Advent
Christmas
Epiphany
Lent
Good Friday
Easter Day
Ascension Day
Whit Sunday
Trinity Sunday
Saints’ Days
The Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion
Afterword by the Bishop of London
Endorsements and Reviews
This slim and beautiful book reminds us that the Collects are, in their original form, both holy and beautiful. They have a transcendent spiritual radiance that can hardly fail to appeal. Choir Schools Today, No. 16, 2002
Tastefully presented… This is a volume to possess, and to use regularly in the home. We suggest it should form part of daily family prayers. English Churchman
Essays on the origin and essential characteristics of the collects, their structure and contents, their teachings, the origin or authorship of each (…) What more can one say, except buy it? The Anglican Catholic, Spring 1999
They express our deepest thoughts and desires in our relationship with God, yet with such economy of language and such clarity of meaning that their very simplicity masks the skill of their composition. Faith and Worship, No. 47 1999, W.A. Bull
Sumptuous little volume. The Independent
