Commontide
O God, you forgive when we deserve punishment, and in your wrath you remember mercy: We humbly ask you, of your goodness, to comfort all prisoners. Give them a right understanding of themselves, and of your promises, that trusting wholly in your mercy, they may not place their confidence anywhere but in you. Relieve the distressed; deliver the innocent; bring the guilty to repentance; and as you alone bring light out of darkness, and good out of evil, grant that by the power of your Holy Spirit they may be set free from the chains of sin, and brought to newness of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
BCP 2019, p. 664
Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.
This prayer for those in prison mixes two ages: its opening and closing lines come from a Church of Ireland rite written in 1711, while its distinctive middle is a later American recomposition, fixed by the 1928 prayer book. The 1979 book dropped it; the ACNA's 2019 book recovered the older wording and lightly modernized its language.