The Collect of the Day

Today we continue our walk through the Anglican Standard Text by examining the Collect of the Day.

The Collect of the Day
The Celebrant says to the People
                    The Lord be with you.
People           And with your spirit.
Celebrant       Let us pray.
The Celebrant prays the Collect.
People           Amen.



The ancient salutation of “The Lord be with you” marks this as a beginning of a new section of the liturgy with a shift in emphasis. We move from a time of gathering and praise into a time focused on a biblical theme. This theme is brought out by the Collect of the Day and the scriptures prescribed by the lectionary.
Just like the Collect for Purity the Collect of the Day sums up the prayers of the community and follows a four fold pattern.  

1. Invocation: God is addressed
   
2. Meditation: Some attribute or activity of God is described
   
3. Petition: Grace or blessing is asked for
   
4. Doxology: A sentence of praise to The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit
   

 
The Collect of the Day offers worshipers a guide post for where our worship is heading. It orients us to where we are in the Church Calendar. It reminds us that we journey with Jesus even in the way that we think about time. Each prayer is carefully worded to bring to mind pertinent seasonal themes.
The Collect of the Day is also connected to our Sunday Lessons. The prayer finds a theme that runs through these readings as a way to connect our prayer life to what it is we hear from the Bible. The lessons from the Bible inform how we pray in our collect. On days of special observance such as saints days or feast days The Collect of the Day introduces the theme of the day.  One scholar described the Collect of the Day as the red dot that says “you are here” on the map of a vast shopping mall. We can find our way through the lessons that are read that day by listening carefully to the Collect of the Day.
The order of The Collect of the Day prayers has been slightly modified within the church year to match up with the theme of the Sunday readings. The Prayer Book committee has also restored to use some of the original Collects written by Thomas Cranmer. The assembled list of Daily Collects for the Prayer Book will sound very familiar to those from Holy Trinity.
I pray that as you hear the Collect of the Day this Sunday that God would reveal to you His heart in the Scriptures!

God’s peace,

Fr. Paul