Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Epistle: Joel 2:12-17 Gospel: St Matthew 6:16-21

The initial address to God focuses on two important attributes, his sovereign, universal rule and his eternity of being. It recalls Psalm 90, "from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God". He is omnipotent. He is everlasting; his being has not limits, reaching from the past into the future and beyond.

The relative clause ("who hatest…") brings into remembrance the relation of the sovereign Lord to man, who though made in the image and after the likeness of God, has abused and spoiled that image. Nevertheless, though the noble capacities in man have been debased and depraved, God loves him, in Christ Jesus, with an everlasting love and is ready to forgive him all his sins when he turns from them in faith and penitence.

The petition is drawn from the penitential Psalm 51, "Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me… The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." The use of both "create" and "make" is to show in an emphatic and forcible way that there is in us nothing that God can use for his work of cleansing. He has to send his Spirit to create out of nothing the clean, new and contrite heart. Regeneration and sanctification are gifts of God.

Lamenting our sins worthily is not showing skill in confessing them so as to please God thereby. Rather, it is lamenting them in such a manner as to reveal that we are aware of how they are viewed by God and how their forgiveness by God required the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God at Calvary. Such lamenting bears fruit in true penitence and repentance and in lively faith.

Our wretchedness points not to our sins as such but to our sinfulness, our diseased nature, which is conveyed in the Prayer Book by the expression, "there is no health in us", that is in and of ourselves without the presence of the Holy Ghost. Before God we must always acknowledge our wretchedness for until the Day of Resurrection at the end of the age this is our human state.

We pray for clean hearts and full are free forgiveness and remission of sins. Remission points to the cancelling of debt - our sins of omission, of failures to keep God's holy law. Forgiveness points to the removal of offences - our sins of commission, the actual breaking of God's commandments.

And this rich prayer we offer daily until Good Friday to the Father through the One Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus, who is also Son of God incarnate.