Commontide
The Holy Eucharist — Celebrant and People together may say
We do not presume to come to this your table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your abundant and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table; but you are the same Lord whose character is always to have mercy. Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.
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Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.
Thomas Cranmer composed this prayer for the 1548 Order of Communion, drawing on a medieval devotion of the Ambrosian tradition, the Liturgy of St. Basil, the image of the Canaanite woman asking for crumbs (Mark 7), and Aquinas's teaching that Christ's body and blood nourish both body and soul. It has appeared in every English Prayer Book since 1548; ACNA 2019 restores the full historic text after a 1979 American revision dropped the body-and-soul clause.