St. Augustine’s Day

Many years ago I came upon an odd little book, a prayer book compiled in the 1880s by one S. M. Hopkins of Auburn Theological Seminary. Apparently he didn’t like any existing prayer book and so decided to assemble his own. I don’t think anything in the book is original, but, maddeningly, he does not provide the sources for all of his entries; he just says at the beginning that “The sources from which the following forms have been mostly derived are the Greek Liturgies, the Sacramentaries of Gelasius, Leo and Gregory, the Mozarabic Missal, the Monumenta Liturgica from the sixth to the tenth centuries, the Prymer of the Sarum use, and, to some extent, more modern sources.”

Thanks a lot.

One of the prayers he includes is a beautiful prayer to commemorate the feast of St. Augustine, which is today: 28 August. Here it is:

Almighty and most glorious Lord, who dispensest Thy gifts to men as Thou wilt, and callest Thy servants with a holy calling according to Thy purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus our Lord before the foundation of the world; we praise Thee for all those whom Thou hast been pleased to raise up, in all the ages, for the defence of Thy truth, and the upbuilding of Thy kingdom on earth; for Thy holy apostles, for the white-robed martyrs, and confessors of Thy Name, for the Christian fathers and doctors of the Church, who being dead yet speak; and we beseech Thee that we, being compassed about with so great & cloud of witnesses, may lay aside every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset us, and run with patience the race that is set before us, till we arrive by Thy grace at that blessed rest and reward, which awaiteth all Thy faithful servants, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Alas, I haven’t been able to discover where this prayer comes from, perhaps thanks to my ignorance of the Mozarabic Missal and the Monumenta Liturgica. Hopkins’s whole book may be found here.