Christ the Lord is Risen Today!

A collect (short prayer) for Resurrection Sunday:

Almighty God, who, through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ, hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life, we humbly beseech thee, that, as by thy special grace preventing* us thou dost put into our minds good desires; so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

This is the Easter collect from John Wesley's Prayer Book: The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America. This is a facsimile (available from The Order of St. Luke) of the original Sunday Service Book, John Wesley's own revision of Anglicanism's Book of Common Prayer, which is the "grandaddy of Methodist liturgy" and the great link between our liturgy and that of the Medieval English church.

*"Preventing" here means "going before;" from the Latin "pre" ('before') and "veneo" ('to come').