“Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”
-Collect for the Fifth Sunday in Lent
“We’re all three days away from being tabloid news, and most of us are on day two.” My former colleague regularly employed this quip to blunten the offense of his low anthropology. Many Christians who otherwise acknowledge the Fall and Original Sin recoil when told they have “no power in themselves to help themselves.” Yet that is the provocation of this collect: God “alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners.”
A softening of the initial offense might be to learn that this prayer was not composed by those obsessed with the doctrine of Total Depravity. This collect was originally a prayer for unity. Its opening line was “Almighty God, which dost make the minds of all faithful men to be of one will…” It was changed not during the Reformation nor under Puritanism, but following the English Civil War. After more than a century of religious conflict, the assemblers of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer altered its beginning. Despite decades of turmoil and strife, praying for unity wasn’t enough. They had to get to the root of the problem: their “unruly wills and affections.”
What if our oughts and wants overlapped? That’s what we’re praying for when we ask for the “grace to love what God commands and desire what we promises.” We’re not praying for behavior modification. We’re asking for a complete makeover. We’re not imagined as good people getting better, but as sinners in need of a heart transplant.
How do our affections change? Short answer, this is God’s work. He alone can reorder our loves. This is why we pray. We ask for what we do not have and cannot manufacture. With Augustine, we say, “Command what you will, but give what you command.”
That said, what can we do? Go to church. Find a parish where you’re not lectured, criticized, and told to “try harder,” but where you’re fed by Word, sacrament, and gracious community. Attend weekly, whether you feel like it or not. Feelings wax and wane, but when the Gospel gets in your ear like a song stuck in your head you might just find yourself falling in love.
May God keep us out of the newspapers. May he effect a heart transplant in us that brings our oughts and wants together.
And some days I'm just glad to be a "nobody" that the tabloids are not interested in .... Other days I'm happy that my oughts and wants overlap.
Love love this