Collect & First Reading

A Prayer in Four Parts

“Let us pray…” After the Gloria, the priest sings or says this invitation to pray. As the General Instruction of the Roman Missal describes, “Next the Priest calls upon the people to pray and everybody, together with the Priest, observes a brief silence so that they may become aware of being in God’s presence and may call to mind their intentions. Then the priest pronounces the prayer usually called the ‘Collect’ and through which the character of the celebration finds expression” (GIRM, no. 54). Charles Belmonte notes it is “called the Collect because it sums up and gathers together all the intentions of the day’s sacrifice” (Understanding the Mass, p. 65).

According to Belmonte, the Collect has a standard structure of four parts: an invocation to God, the grounds on which we base our confidence (or a reference to the feast of the day), a petition, and a conclusion (see p. 66). For example, we see these four parts in this Collect from the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time: “O God [invocation], who teach us that you abide in hearts that are just and true [grounds for confidence], grant that we may be so fashioned by your grace as to become a dwelling pleasing to you [petition]. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever [conclusion].”

Praying Together

During the Collect and other prayers in the Mass, the priest extends his hands and arms outward in what is called the “orans” position, which means a position of prayer. This position was used by our Jewish ancestors and adapted for Christian prayer. With a historical note from the early Christian writer Tertullian, Belmonte observes that Christians adjusted how the hands are held “so as to resemble those of the Lord on the cross” (p. 65). During the Mass, the priest uses this gesture to indicate that we are all praying together; he is collecting all our prayers and offering them up to the Father.

At the end of this prayer, the people respond by saying, “Amen.” As Fr. Guy Oury teaches us, this Hebrew word means “so be it, without question.” He continues, “The Amen is the people’s stamp of approval on what has just been said in their name. It is a Yes to the priest as having spoken the prayer” (The Mass, p. 57). The meaning and function of this simple response invite the congregation to respond boldly with a confident “Amen” in affirmation of this prayer in their name.

Preparing for Prayer

How should we pray during the Collect? Does the Collect seem to happen so quickly that you miss the words? That brief moment of silence before the prayer is an important one when each person can offer personal intentions to be joined with what the priest is about to pray. Here is a great moment to share interiorly any specific prayers you would like to offer along with the spoken prayers of the Mass. It is also an opportunity to prepare ourselves to listen attentively to the words of the Collect as an overview or summary of the main emphases of the prayers for that particular Mass. Perhaps we could see it as an invitation for how Jesus might teach us in the Mass. We might benefit greatly from reading over the words of the Collect before the Mass. If you have never done it, I would invite you to read through the words a couple of times and ask the Lord to prepare your mind and heart for what is to come. This mentality also prepares us to listen to the Liturgy of the Word, God’s word spoken to His people.

The First Reading

After spending some time reflecting on the Liturgy of the Word as a whole, this week we begin looking more closely at each part, beginning with the First Reading. We might hear the lector proclaim, “A reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. In the days of Ahaz, king of Judah, son of Jotham, son of Uzziah, Rezin, king of Aram, and Pekah, king of Israel, son of Remaliah…” (Isaiah 7:1-9). With all these names, which many of us may not even know how to pronounce, we might wonder: Why do we use the Old Testament at Mass, anyway?

A Witness to God’s Faithfulness

As we said earlier, the First Reading at Mass is generally from the Old Testament. When we hear the stories of the Old Testament, we hear about how God called and began to form his people. If you are familiar with the Old Testament, you know there are times of faithfulness and falling away. There are prophets, judges, and other leaders that help call the people back to faithfulness. There are times where God is clearly directly involved and times where he seems to be more in the background. We learn about God’s faithfulness, even in the midst of our unfaithfulness. I am often struck by that faithfulness of God: we know we don’t deserve it, and yet there he is, consistently loving, forgiving, leading, providing, and protecting, doing all the things that good fathers do for their beloved children. Hopefully, as we hear those words each week, they remind us we can always go to our loving God and Father.

As we reflected before, generally when we talk about the Old Testament, we talk about a preparation. Through Moses, the prophets, and other writers, God was preparing his people (and us) to receive the truth about Jesus—that he truly is the Messiah who came to set us free from sin and death so that we might live with the Father forever. The Old and New Testament work together: the Old prepares for the New, and the New tells us what we’ve been waiting for, namely, Jesus Christ (cf. Dei Verbum, no. 15).

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The Family of God

But why do we need all those names? The whole Bible, even parts we don’t understand or that don’t seem helpful, is part of God’s precious word to his people. Charles Belmonte reminds us that, just as every particle of the Body of Christ is precious, so too is every word (and name) of the Bible. Sometimes the readings may seem “obscure” to us because we don’t understand the ancient cultures of the Middle East. Sometimes they just mildly hint at one of the great mysteries of God and their importance can be easily overlooked. Sometimes we stumble over the names or we don’t understand the poetic language. “Nevertheless, we can be sure that if we do our best, the Holy Spirit will give us enough capacity to grasp whatever we may need for our sanctification and mission in life. And even if what we have read [or heard] does not stay in our memory, the Word of God has purified and nourished our souls” (Understanding the Mass, p. 85)

We might think that the names aren’t that important, but what they show us is a continuous string of people who are in relationship with God, an ongoing family which the Lord is building over time. Just like we remember the names of our grandparents and great-grandparents because they are part of our family tree, so too do we remember the names of these people who in some way had (and still have) an important part to play in God’s family tree. As the Church teaches, “Christians should accept with veneration these writings which give expression to a lively sense of God, which are a storehouse of sublime teaching on God and of sound wisdom on human life, as well as a wonderful treasury of prayers; in them, too, the mystery of our salvation is present in a hidden way” (Dei Verbum, no. 15).

One of my favorite things about the Old Testament is that God teaches us little by little. There is always a story to go with what we hear; there is always a bit-by-bit explanation for what God is trying to tell us. The Old Testament isn’t just strange names and long stories with some songs and poetry mixed in. It is God speaking to us and saying gradually, “Come a little closer… Please get to know me… You will find happiness in me… I want to take care of you… I will send the Messiah to save you… I am your loving Father.”

Source: EucharisticRevival.org