“Show
favour, O Lord, to your servants, and mercifully increase the gifts of your
grace, that, made fervent in faith, hope, and charity, they may be ever
watchful in keeping your commands. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who
lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever
and ever.” (Collect, 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time).
We are going
through the Mass, bit by bit, on Thursdays on this blog, to see how each ‘bit’
of the liturgy informs our way of life as disciples of Jesus Christ. We have
come now to the ‘Collect’ – not the
Opening Prayer as it was previously called. This prayer does not ‘open’
anything—the liturgy has been going on for awhile at this point, in case you
didn’t notice!
This prayer
concludes the Entrance rite, and does so by ‘collecting’ all we have done and
said and our whole movement of prayer and worship as a community into a single
short formulaic statement.
Collects
vary from week to week, and also are attuned to the liturgical seasons and
feasts of the year—in fact, a study of collects is a good liturgical catechesis
as to the meaning and import of this varied and rich tapestry in time that is
our yearly liturgical cycle. Since there is no one text that is ‘the Collect’,
I have here in this post, then, the Collect all of us will be hearing on this
Sunday.
The basic
structure of the Collect is to address God (well, of course) acknowledge some
attribute of his (in this case, his mercy), and from that ask Him for some
basic good (here, to be made fervent in the theological virtues, so that we may
be vigilant in keeping his commands).
This is
quite a pattern of Christian prayer, really. I am always baffled when I run
across something that is labelled a ‘prayer’ which upon close inspection is not
actually addressed to God, but is a meditation about God or some such thing.
Prayer is words addressed to God, OK Catholics? Are we clear on that?
And our
prayer is based on faith—on a firm conviction that God is certain
things—merciful, loving, all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing. And our prayers
should express that faith before we dive in boots and all asking for stuff. We
need to start by acknowledging what is
before we look to what is not. God
has given us so much, and is so much for us and in us.
Even if our
lives at any point or many points are full of trials and sufferings, we have
been blessed by the Lord in ways that are to many to enumerate. Jesus Christ…
the Holy Spirit… salvation… forgiveness… Eucharist… the Church… the Gospels…
Our Lady… the saints… do I need to go on? When we pray, we do need to at least
nod in the direction of everything God is and does for us before we dive into
our needs list.
But then we
do bring Him our needs. It is crucial to note, though, that the Collects of the
Mass generally do not ask God for too many temporal goods. We ask God here for
fervour and watchfulness. Other collects in recent weeks ask for holy joy, the
grace to reject what is contrary to Christ, reverence of his holy name, freedom
from darkness of error.
Not a lot of
prayers for wealth in there, or even bodily health (there is the occasional
Collect that does that), or any other physical good of this world. It is not
that we are never to pray for those things—St. Augustine laid down the
principle for us, very wisely, that if it is good to have something, it is good
to pray for that thing. It’s just… first things first, folks. It is wisdom,
truth, joy, fervour, watchfulness, grace, love, fidelity that make our lives
blessed, that secure us in the heart of Christ and bear us in that Heart into
the eternal Heart of the Trinity. Not temporal goods. We can be drowning in
every possible temporal good and go to Hell on their account. There is even a
Gospel passage or two to that effect.
So the form
of prayer of the Collect, and indeed all the various collects which are a true
treasure of our Western Christian patrimony, are a great school of prayer, a
teaching of how we are to pray and for what. Talk to God, start with a humble
and grateful acknowledging of his goodness and love, and primarily ask for the spiritual
goods that are the real prosperity of the Christian.
This is what
really ‘collects’ us, gathers all the scrambled, scattered, and tattered pieces
of our lives into a single act, a single exercise of our agency as Christians, and bears us in that collection into the Single
Act of God which is the action of the Mass extended into all of reality… and
that is where we are heading, of course, in this commentary.
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