The only survivor

This Sunday Collect must be a hardy little beast. It is, I think, the only Sunday Collect to have survived from the pre-Conciliar Missal into the same Sunday of the modern rite. So (except of course for the fact that the current ICEL version, soon to be shredded, disguises the Latin original) it will be used by the 1962 folk and by the Trautpeople - and, of course, by Anglicans who use the Collectarium included in the Book of Common Prayer.

Oh dear. A fly in the woodpile. Our own dear Anglican equivalent of Bugnini, "Bubbles" Stancliffe (perhaps in this ecumenical winter a gracious advance would be to refashion his name as "Buggles Stanini") found its elegant simplicity an offense. So you won't find it in Common Worship.

Here is the Prayer Book translation. The phrase "all the days of our life" slightly obscures the original "nostris temporibus" - "to our times". I suspect that the original alludes to the disorders of the declining Roman Empire; come to think of it, it would have fitted equally well the days when Cranmer and his gruesome cronies were sending their foreign mercenaries to slaughter the Anglican Catholic peasantry of England.

Almighty and everlasting God, who dost govern all things in heaven and earth: mercifully hear the supplications of thy people; and grant us thy peace all the days of our life.