kneel in wonder at heaven touching earth

Grant us the faith to know you and love you

Faith is a gift from God. In the Common Worship Baptism service, at the Presentation of the Candidates, the president, addressing the whole congregation, reminds us that, “Faith is the gift of God to his people.”

It’s through faith in God that we can know his love. Although God still loves each one of us, even when we don’t have faith in him (nothing can separate us from that): without faith we can’t really experience his love for ourselves. It would sound somewhat odd to say, “I don’t really believe you exist, but nevertheless, it’s good that you love me” — in fact, it sounds pretty daft! So we need the gift of faith to appreciate the gift of love.

God fully loves each and every one of us, as if we were the only ones too love. So much so, that he died on a cross for us. But without faith, we could not experience it. With faith, we can truly know it.

And that is quite simply, amazing!

True and humble king,
hailed by the crowd as Messiah:
grant us the faith to know you and love you,
that we may be found beside you
on the way of the cross,
which is the path of glory. Amen.

Additional Collect for Palm Sunday
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Collects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.