The Collect for the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Show favor, O Lord, to Your servants and mercifully increase the gifts of Your grace, that, made fervent in hope, faith 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.

Show favor – We begin by asking for God's favor. How does God show His favor to us? First off, He created us! We live because He freely called us into existence and gave us a soul and a body. What's more, He preserves us in existence at every moment. We receive every breath we take from Him. But God doesn't stop there. He pours out His grace upon us constantly, loving us, guiding us, protecting us, even when we don't see it or realize it. So why are we asking for God's favor when He is always giving it to us? We are so weak and small and sinful that we always need more grace, and God wants us to ask for it because the more we ask, the more we understand how much we need it...and Him.

Your servants – God has adopted us as His children, but we must still serve Him. How? By choosing faith, hope, love, and obedience. By conforming our wills to His. By being open to His guidance. By trusting Him completely. By following Him at all times whether we feel like it or not. But no fear...God rewards His servants extremely well.

gifts of Your grace – Have you ever thought about the different types of grace that God pours out upon us? Here's what the Catechism has to say: “Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by His love. Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God's call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God's interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification” (#2000). Sanctifying grace is the divine presence dwelling in our souls. Actual graces are all the helps and nudges God gives us each and every day that guide us in His will and support us in temptations so we can resist sin.

fervent in hope, faith and charity – Are we fervent in hope, faith, and charity? Do we sincerely and consistently practice these virtues? Do we actively seek to grow in them? Do we fight against feelings and temptations that might diminish them? Do we ask God for His help to preserve and increase hope, faith, and charity in us?

watchful in keeping Your commands – It's easy to let down our guard. Just this once... No one will know. It's just a little thing. What does it matter? The more excuses we make, the more we become groggy in keeping God's commands and the easier it is to fall into more serious sins. So we are called to be watchful, to be awake, and to fight temptation with the constant help of God's grace.