The Cranmer Five-Step

How Cranmer’s Collect for Scripture Can Shape a Lifetime of Reading

As you may know, I’ve been writing a series on the prayers, phrases, and Collects of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer—the Anglican reformer whose words still echo in our worship today. His prayers are elegant, profound, and bold.

They do more than ask or petition God; they are formative. Powerful.

It’s been a joy to work through his contributions to the Book of Common Prayer. I’m eager to return to the series after a short break.

Today, please read this quick overview of a 5 part process to grow in your faith by the reading of Holy Scripture. And then, beginning next week, I have a short series within a series called “The Book That Built the World”. It is a brief series on the Bible and its lasting impact on Western civilization. (It will start on Tuesday, July 8th at 6 :12 AM.)

But before I take some time off, there’s one line I don’t want to rush past. It comes from the Collect for the Scriptures—a prayer that opens the lectionary readings in Morning Prayer and has prepared thousands of preachers to hear the Word before they proclaim it. It begins with this famous phrase:

“Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them…”

It’s a beautiful sentence. But it also asks a practical question:

How do we do the Cranmer Five-Step?

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Many people respect the Bible. Fewer read it. Even fewer let it read them.

So, how do we move from reverence to relationship? From a Bible on the shelf to a Bible in the heart and soul?

Photo by putu k on Unsplash

Cranmer gives us a framework—almost a staircase. And like all staircases, the only way up is one step at a time.

Hear. Read. Mark. Learn. Digest.

That’s not a checklist. It’s not even a reading plan, strictly speaking. It’s a way of life. A spiritual posture toward Scripture.

Each word opens a different door into engagement. Each invites a different part of you to come awake.

And the order matters.

Cranmer knew that if Scripture was to feed us, it needed to pass through our ears, eyes, minds, and hearts—until it became something more than ink and paper.

Let’s take the steps in turn. Slowly.

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Hear

Before we study the Bible, we must learn to hear it.

In the ancient world, most people didn’t own books. Scripture was heard aloud in community. Even today, when you hear the Bible read in church, it lands differently. It engages a different part of the brain. A different part of the soul.

Try reading Scripture aloud. Or better, ask someone else to read it to you. Listen with attention, as if you’ve never heard it before. You might be surprised what stands out when your ears are fully involved.