by Julian Mann, TCW
THE Collect for today, Advent Sunday, in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer teems with soul-saving biblical truth:
‘Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and for ever.’
The opening petition derives from the Apostle Paul’s exhortation to the Christian church in 1st century Rome:
‘The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof’ (Romans 13v12-14 – King James Version).
This Anglican Collect beautifully links the Christian’s spiritual battle against sin, the world and the devil in ‘this mortal life’ to the Incarnation when God’s divine Son Jesus Christ ‘came to visit us in great humility’. The prologue to John’s Gospel, a regular feature at Christmas carol services, describes how almighty God became human in his divine Son Jesus Christ. The Apostle John calls Christ the Word of God because he fully reveals the nature of the almighty Creator of heaven and earth. The ‘us’ and the ‘we’ here refer to the Apostles of the Jewish Messiah, the original eye-witness of his sinless life, teaching, miracles, sin-bearing death, resurrection and ascension into heaven: