Almighty God, You chose the virgin
Mary to be the mother of Your Son and made known through her Your gracious
regard for the poor and lowly and despised.
Grant that we may receive Your Word in humility and faith, and so be
made one with Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You
and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen. (Collect
for The Visitation)
On May 31st, the Christian Church will observe the Feast of the Visitation (which is counted among us as one of the “principle feasts of Christ”). The collect for this day has its origins in the earliest German Church order, the vernacular Mass of Theobald Schwartz in Strasbourg (1524 – see Reed, p. 562). Is there any collect whose central petition goes so to the heart of what our faith is all about? “Grant that we may receive Your Word in humility and faith, and so be made one with Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord.” To be made one with Christ through the reception of God’s Word (both audible and visible).
As that day the Blessed Virgin entered the house of Elizabeth, with the Eternal Word’s heart beating beneath her own heart in her blessed womb; as Elizabeth filled with the Holy Spirit cried out “Blessed is she who believed!”; as St. John the Baptist leaps in confession of Him whom he will serve as forerunner; as old Zechariah silently laughs in a corner at the ways of the God of Israel; so do we on the holy day of the Visitation rejoice that our God has visited us indeed. That He has taken on our flesh from the most holy Virgin. That He has come to us who could not reach Him in order that we might become one with Him, and find in Him the life that never ends.
To God be the Glory,
Pastor Ray
On May 31st, the Christian Church will observe the Feast of the Visitation (which is counted among us as one of the “principle feasts of Christ”). The collect for this day has its origins in the earliest German Church order, the vernacular Mass of Theobald Schwartz in Strasbourg (1524 – see Reed, p. 562). Is there any collect whose central petition goes so to the heart of what our faith is all about? “Grant that we may receive Your Word in humility and faith, and so be made one with Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord.” To be made one with Christ through the reception of God’s Word (both audible and visible).
As that day the Blessed Virgin entered the house of Elizabeth, with the Eternal Word’s heart beating beneath her own heart in her blessed womb; as Elizabeth filled with the Holy Spirit cried out “Blessed is she who believed!”; as St. John the Baptist leaps in confession of Him whom he will serve as forerunner; as old Zechariah silently laughs in a corner at the ways of the God of Israel; so do we on the holy day of the Visitation rejoice that our God has visited us indeed. That He has taken on our flesh from the most holy Virgin. That He has come to us who could not reach Him in order that we might become one with Him, and find in Him the life that never ends.
To God be the Glory,
Pastor Ray