We are here to help people love and worship God. We aim to be, and encourage others to become, committed and active disciples of Jesus,
who love God and worship him, who know the power of the Holy Spirit and who show God’s love in every part of their lives.
Almighty God,
give us grace to cast away the works of darkness
and to put on the armour of light,
now in the time of this mortal life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
that on the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Amen.
This prayer for Advent Sunday comes to the Church from the Prayer Book of 1662. It was an ancient prayer when Cramner wrote the BCP, and it is a prayer that is still widely used today.
For me it is a reminder of the hope of the Christian faith, and Advent is all about hope. There are four ‘traditional themes’ that we are encouraged to reflect on during Advent as we prepare to celebrate the feast of Christmas. These themes are Death, Judgement, Hell and Heaven.
They are sobering themes and not, at first sight, very hopeful. But what transforms them, what transforms Advent is that God in Christ has revealed to humankind His true face. The God who made us, the God to whom we are responsible and before whom we will all one day give an account of ourselves has shown Himself in Jesus Christ.
In Christ God has shared our human life. He knows the reality of our life with its joys and pains; God knows human love and heartbreak. He understands us. More than this in Jesus the One to whom we are accountable was born for us and has died for us. In Jesus we see that God is for us.
In life and in death and in eternity the Christlike God is with us, this is the reason for our hope this Advent and for the coming year.
May Christ bless us this Advent season as we prepare once again to celebrate His birth in Bethlehem.
St Mary's Church, Priory Road, Ecclesfield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S35 9XZ, United Kingdom
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