Commontide
Eternal God, who made this most holy night to shine with the brightness of your one true light: sanctify this new fire, we pray, and so set us aflame with the fire of your love, that with pure hearts and kindled affections we may attain to the radiance of your heavenly glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.
This prayer, said over the newly kindled fire at the start of the Easter Vigil, descends from a medieval Latin blessing used at Salisbury Cathedral and across the pre-Reformation Western Church. English prayer books did not carry it at all until 1979; the wording in today's ACNA Book of Common Prayer (2019) is a fresh, poetic recasting of that older translation, not a translation from Latin.