Commontide
Almighty God, we give you humble thanks for graciously preserving, through the pain and peril of childbirth, your servant N., who now desires to offer her praises and thanksgivings to you. Grant, we ask you, most merciful Father, that she, with your help, may faithfully live according to your will in this life, and may also partake in the everlasting glory of the life to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.
This prayer of thanksgiving for a mother's safe delivery reaches back to the medieval English Sarum Manual, a priest's handbook in use before the Reformation. Thomas Cranmer translated the Sarum rite into English for the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, and the prayer carried through every Anglican prayer book to the present; the ACNA 2019 wording descends directly from the 1928 American revision, which first added the phrase about the mother desiring to offer her praises and thanksgivings.