An extraordinary collect for an extraordinary feast!

The Very Reverend Andrew J. Hayler / March 25, 2026

The Collect for The Annunciation

Pour your grace into our hearts, O Lord, that we who have known the incarnation of your Son Jesus Christ, announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his Cross and passion be brought to the glory of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

An extraordinary collect for an extraordinary feast!

The Collect of the Day for the Feast of the Annunciation was like many of the old collects retained at the reformation from the Gelasian Sacramentary (probably a 5^th Century Catholic prayer book).

But it breaks the rules! It doesn’t follow the usual five-fold form of collects which are supposed to begin by addressing God, and telling us about what he has done for us. It begins with a bidding: “Pour you grace into our hearts…”

We know well the story of the Annunciation from the first chapter of the Gospel according to Luke. The moment when the Angel Gabriel comes to Mary, and with her “yes” to God (the Father and sender of the angel) and the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, the incarnation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ comes to be – a Trinitarian moment if ever there was one. This moment is made possible because God first choses us, he chose Mary who we call “most highly favored lady”. God had given her all the grace she needed in order to respond to His vocation for her – to be the mother of God Incarnate (the Theotokos).

But Incarnation on its own is not enough!

If we switch over to the Fourth Gospel, with the help of Archbishop William Temple, we might see that most famous of verses from the Prologue as consonant with the Lukan story, and for that matter, enshrined in the Nicene Creed: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. But when discussing Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus, Temple suggests that the fourteenth and fifteenth (and sixteenth) verses of chapter three are of greater consequence. They tell us the why! “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

This wonderful collect makes that same leap for us, connecting the first moment of the Incarnation in the womb of the virgin with the reason for it; so that we who believe, may “by his Cross and passion be brought to the glory of his resurrection.” And for that, we begin to pray passionately, as if with cries and groaning we cannot put into words (there’s the Holy Spirit – God’s agent of Grace - at work again) we plead for God’s grace.

I learned to pray this collect at seminary. It completes the recitation of the Angelus prayer which we prayed every day along with the ringing of Michael Bell before Morning and Evening Prayer, and at lunchtime. It helps us call to mind the whole movement of God towards us and for us. And it reminds us that His grace always goes before us, and that the only way for us to share in Jesus’ resurrection is by sharing in is Passion – what could be more appropriate for a feast that so often falls within Passiontide itself; something worth recalling every day.

Andrew++