GATHERING OUR PRAYERS TOGETHER:
60 Reflections on the Anglican Collects
Edited by Lee Gatiss
Church Society. 251 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978 1 739 516 000
A MONTH WITH THE MESSIAH:
Reflections on Handel’s Masterpiece
Edited by Lee Gatiss
Church Society. 258 pages. £14.99
ISBN 978 1 068 570 506
Whilst enjoying Lee Gatiss’ informative, self-effacing, historically informed and accessible introduction to Gathering Our Prayers Together, I was surprised to read that ‘some have criticised the Collects as being too brief, even terse, to warm the affections’.
And yet, as a teenager at boarding school, the phrase that comforted me in chapel during Evensong, the words that stuck with me for another six years before becoming a Christian, were those from the last Collect said at evening prayer: ‘Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee O Lord, and by thy great mercy, defend us from all perils and dangers of this night…’ Comfort indeed for a mind prone to fearful thinking during wakeful hours.
