My daughter Mary Moerbe, at her blog Meet, Write, and Salutary, alerted me to a remarkable and potentially invaluable web resource: A Collection of Prayers: Christian Prayers, Ancient and Modern.
It’s a collection of some 1200 prayers, from every century and a wide range of Christian traditions. They are all in the public domain. They are suitable for private devotion and for public worship. (Pastors busy preparing for all of the worship services you have to plan for Lent and Holy Week: You’ll want to make use of this site!)
A project of Rev. Paul C. Stratman, of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the prayers, while wide-ranging, are vetted doctrinally. He comments:
The doctrinal standard for A Collection of Prayers is that of the confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Prayers are not confined to Lutheran sources, however. Some imprecision in doctrinal expression is allowed in some of the more poetic prayers as long as it does not obscure clear Scriptural teaching.
But this can be a service for non-Lutherans too, especially evangelicals who could benefit from medieval prayers, for example, without having to worry about imbibing Roman Catholic theology.
The prayers are updated into contemporary language in order to make them more usable for people today, but the original version is also given. Though the prayers are given in English, the original language is sometimes included. The source of each prayer is given, so that the collection can also have a scholarly use.
There is also a process for submitting your own prayers or other prayers that you think should be included.
The prayers may be accessed according to the era, the topic, the season of the church year, the liturgical function, and author or source. See for yourself. The links copied here from the site’s various indexes should work, so you can play around with it:
Prayers by Era:
Prayers by Content:
(Bold Items are tags, italic items are searches)
- angels, anxiety
- Biblical Prayers, Blessings and Benedictions, broken
- care, Celtic Prayer, children, Christian Prayer, Christian Rites, church, comfort, Communion, Confessions, Confessions and Absolutions, Cross, Commendation of the Dying
- darkness, death, Death and Dying, Death and Burial, defend, deliver, Deliverance, dying
- enlighten, evening, Evening Prayers, evil
- faith, faithful, fear, forgiveness
- gifts, give, glory, grace, gracious, guard, guide
- heart, healing, heaven, help, holy, holy spirit, holiness, honor, hope
- illness, Intercessions
- Jesus, joy
- kingdom, know, knowledge
- lead, life, light, live, Litanies, living, lord, Loricas, love
- merciful, mercy, minister, ministry, morning, Morning Prayers, mourning
- nation, night
- patience, peace, Petitions, power, praise, presence, preserve, promise, protect
- receive, redeemed, reign, remember, rest, righteousness, Rites
- salvation, save, savior, serve, shine, sick, sin, sleep, strength, sun
- Table Prayers and Graces, temptation, terrorism, thanks, trinity, trouble, trust, truth
- walk, watch, way, weather, will, wisdom, word, work , world
Prayers by Seasons of the Church Year:
- Advent
- Christmas
- New Year / Name of Jesus
- Feast of the Epiphany (January 6)
- Lent
- The Resurrection of Our Lord, Easter Day
- Sundays of Easter / Sundays after Easter
- The Good Shepherd (Misericordias Domini or Good Shepherd Sunday)
- Ascension
- Feast of Pentecost
- Trinity
- Ordinary Time (Sundays after Trinity / Pentecost)
- Holy Cross
- St. Michael and All Angels
- Reformation
- All Saints
- Last Judgment
- Last Sunday of the Church Year
- Thanksgiving Day
- Minor Festivals / Commemorations / Saints’ Days
- Occasions
Rites / Liturgies and Elements of Worship
- Blessings and Benedictions
- Canticles
- Commendation of the Dying
- Confessions
- Confessions and Absolutions
- The Common Service Book of the Lutheran Church (includes Occasional Services)
- Creeds
- Divine Service / Mass
- Litanies
- Mass / Divine Service
- Prayers from the Pomeranian Agenda (tagged), and collected in a single document
- The Saxon Agenda of 1540
- Suffrages and Itinerarium
Prayers by Source or Author
(not all sources or authors are listed in this index):
- Lancelot Andrewes, Antiphonary of Bangor, Ambrose of Milan, Anselm of Canterbury, Apostolic Constitutions, Augustine
- Bede the Venerable, Book of Cerne, Book of Common Prayer, Bright’s Ancient Collects, Johannes Bugenhagen
- Carmina Gadelica, Celtic, Common Service Book of the Lutheran Church
- Veit Dietrich
- Eastern Orthodox Church
- Gallican Sacramentary, Gelasian Sacramentary, Gregorian Sacramentary
- Thomas Ken
- Leonine Sacramentary, Wilhelm Löhe (see also Seed Grains of Prayer), Lorrha-Stowe Missal, Martin Luther
- Liturgy of Malabar, Philip Melanchthon, Mozarabic Rite
- Patrick, Pommersche Agende, Prayers Ancient and Modern
- Christina Rosetti
- Sarum Rite, Saxon Agenda of 1540, Seed Grains of Prayer, Paul C. Stratman
Bookmark this site! Use it to enrich your prayer life!
HT: Mary Moerbe, and read her discussion of the site.
Illustration: Albrecht Dürer, “Praying Hands” (1508) [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons
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