The prayers at the end of each blog are from The Book of Common Prayer (BCP 2004). 365Project on the alphabet furnished a golden opportunity to take a picture of the book that is always on my desk, beside my bed, in the car and which guides our private prayers and public worship week by week in Saint Nicholas'.
In 1997 the Synod of the Church of Ireland asked the Liturgical Advisory Committee to prepare a new edition of the BCP. Earlier publications were 1878 and 1926, so it was time to include some contemporary material in addition to those services that had been handed down through the centuries.
The preface to the 2004 edition (shown in the photograph) concludes with this paragraph:
This book therefore leaves its compilers' hands with the hope and prayer that it will prove to be a worthy instrument by which to proclaim the Church's praise of God in the generation to come. It is of course only by God's gift that his faithful people 'do him true and laudable service', but we pray also that this book will have the capacity to draw God's people in our time to a fresh experience of the beauty of holiness.Let your merciful ears, O Lord,
be open to the prayers of your humble servants;
and that they may obtain their petitions,
make them to ask such things as shall please you;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
Book of Common Prayer
Collect of the Tenth Sunday after Trinity.
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