Collect for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity

Latin Collect
ECCLESIAM tuam, Domine, miseratio continuata mundet et muniat; et quia sine te non potest salva consistere, tuo semper munere gubernetur. Per Jesum Christum.

[My translation: May continual mercy cleanse and defend Thy Church, O Lord; and, because without Thee She cannot continue safe, may She always be directed by Thy grace. Through Jesus Christ.]

Prayer book of 1549
LORD, we beseche thee, let thy continual pitie clense and defende thy congregacion; and, because it cannot continue in safetie without thy succoure, preserve it evermore by thy helpe and goodnes; through Jesus Christ our Lorde.

Reflection
Again, we see Archbishop Cranmer tidying up the Latin so that its sense may be rendered more naturally in English, The sentiments are, as we have often found throughout the year, in accord with Pre-Reformation thinking. In effect what Cranmer does to the language is what we pray will happen to the Church when we pray this collect.

There are times when we feel that our lives don't quite make sense, and translating our perceptions to other people is difficult, nigh on impossible. We simply cannot communicate our pain and suffering in a way that does justice to how we feel. We know that our lives need sorting out; we also have faith that God will sort out our lives for us; however, we find out that our lives just don't get sorted out in the way we anticipate, Somehow our own lives get tangled up in translation in the world.

The mercy of God is that our lives do get cleaned up and sorted out. It is He who rids us of the lasting consequences of our sinfulness, though that sinfulness still does knot up our existence in Time. We can still trust in Him for direction even when we cannot see where we are going. We need to be full of faith and feel for His guiding grace that will draw His Church into the daylight.