The Collect for the Twenty-Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

O God, Who manifest Your almighty power above all by pardoning and showing mercy, bestow, we pray, Your grace abundantly upon us and make those hastening to attain Your promises heirs to the treasures of heaven. 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.

Your almighty power – Do you ever stop to think how powerful God really is? There is no limit to His might. He is infinite in His abilities. Yet He acts in ways that are perfectly in tune with the nature of His creatures. He is never arbitrary. He never does something just because He can. He always acts for our good because He loves us and wants only the very best for us: our salvation.

pardoning and showing mercy – This is especially where God shows His almighty power. We should marvel at this. God's power is particularly manifest in forgiving us and giving us His mercy so that we may be with Him in Heaven forever. Just bask in that for a while.

bestow, we pray, Your grace abundantly upon us – We must ask God for His grace continually. He knows, of course, that we need it, but He wants us to ask so that we, too, are aware of our great need for His favor and assistance. Our prayer also helps us to open ourselves to God's grace.

hastening to attain Your promises – Are we eager to attain God's promises? Are we hastening toward our salvation? How much to we desire to be with God forever, to see Him face to face, to enter into intimacy with Him? Are we committed to obeying Him, to living the divine life as much as possible now, that we may live it fully one day in Heaven?

heirs to the treasures of heaven – Here is our ultimate goal: the treasures of Heaven. And what are these treasures? Nothing less than God Himself and His intimate love for all eternity. We are heirs in the Heir, sons and daughters in the Son, Jesus Christ, and in Heaven, we will share fully in the divine life. This is our treasure and our heritage, and our hearts must already be where our treasure lies.

The Collect for the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

O God, Who founded all the commands of Your sacred Law upon love of You and of our neighbor, grant that, by keeping Your precepts, we may merit to attain eternal life. 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.

Your sacred Law – Our culture tends to have a negative impression of law. Law is restrictive of our freedoms, some people proclaim. It prevents us from doing what we want when we want. But this isn't the intention of law (even though human law sometimes fails) and especially not of God's law. God's moral laws are designed to make us truly free, free to choose good, free to embrace truth, free to enjoy beauty, free to live up to the potential God has given us. Indeed, God's laws are not arbitrary. He created us and knows our nature perfectly, so He gives us exactly what we need when we need it to become the best human beings we can be. He gives us His sacred Law.

love of You and of our neighbor – Everything in that sacred Law is geared toward love of God and love of neighbor. God wants to draw us out of ourselves and into a self-giving communion with Him and with each other. He knows that because of our sinful weakness, we have a hard time entering into such a relationship on our own, so He helps us by giving us the moral law. That moral law assists us to understand how love can, should, and must be applied in the day-to-day circumstances of our lives.

by keeping your precepts – God knows how unsteady and frail we are, yet He still expects us to keep the precepts of His law. He doesn't leave us to try and fail on our own, though; He gives us His grace that we may obey Him. We must accept that grace and cooperate with it, but it is always there to support us, to help us overcome to temptation, to guide us toward correct decisions, and to make us better, more God-like human beings.

we may merit to attain eternal life – No, we do not earn our way to Heaven! The Catholic Church does not and has never taught that. Our salvation is due to God's grace, but we must accept that grace and live according to it. That is how we merit, through our cooperation. And Who gives us the grace to cooperate? God does! He thereby gives us the grace even to merit. The goal of all this, of keeping His commandments, of cooperating with His grace, of loving God and others, is, of course, eternal life, intimacy with God beginning now and fulfilled perfectly in Heaven.

The Collect for the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

 Look upon us, O God, Creator and ruler of all things, and, that we may feel the working of Your mercy, grant that we may serve You with all our heart. 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.

Look upon us, O God – When God turns His face toward us, we are illuminated by His glory. He fills us with His love and His light. Are we prepared to stand before God's gaze? He sees right into our minds, hearts, and souls. What will He see? No matter what He sees in us, God loves us anyway, and He wants us to repent of our sins and hand over our weaknesses to Him that He may fill us with His grace.

Creator and ruler of all things – These titles for God are so familiar to us that we seldom stop to think about them. Yet God created all things from nothing. Why? He wanted to share the great love that flows between the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, allowing that love to pour into creation. Indeed, God is not the watchmaker that some philosophers identify Him as, admitting that He created the universe but claiming that then He sat back and let it run on its own without any further intervention from its Maker. That, however, is far from true, for God rules the entire universe in His divine wisdom and providence.

we may feel the working of Your mercy – How do we feel God's mercy at work? There are so many ways of experiencing God's mercy. When we receive absolution in the sacrament of Confession, God reaches down through the priest to shower us in His mercy. When we receive the Eucharist, Jesus' presence, the fire of His love, burns up all our venial sins and strengthens us to fight against temptation. When we pray, God mercy calms and encourages our hearts.

grant that we may serve You with all our heart – Our ability to serve God is itself a gift from God. But we must cooperate and strive to serve and obey God with all our heart, not by half measures, not for our own benefits, but completely for love of Him.

The Collect for the Twenty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

O God, by Whom we are redeemed and receive adoption, look graciously upon Your beloved sons and daughters, that those who believe in Christ may receive true freedom and an everlasting inheritance. 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.

redeemed – This word is so familiar, we hear it so often, that it has lost its power. To redeem someone is to buy that person out of slavery. Jesus Christ bought us out of the slavery of sin and death, and He paid for us with His own blood.

receive adoption – From the beginning, God has made a series of covenants with His people. A covenant is a family bond created by swearing an oath. When God makes a covenant with us, He adopts us into His divine family, and in the New Covenant enacted by Jesus Christ, He gives us a share in His own divine life as He pours His sanctifying grace into our souls.

look graciously – The Greek word for “grace” is charis, and it literally means something like “leaning toward favorably” or “extending toward with a benefit.” So when God looks upon us graciously, He is leaning toward us, extending Himself to give us His favor, to provide us with His benefits.

Your beloved sons and daughters – Take a few minutes and reflect on the amazing fact that God loves you.

those who believe in Christ – What does it mean to believe in Christ? Is it merely accepting some facts about Him as being true? Is it holding to the proposition that He is the divine Son of God Who brings us salvation? Or is it something more? To truly believe in Christ, we must indeed hold fast to the truths revealed about Him, but we must also live those truths each and every day in obedience and love. As St. James says, “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (2:17). Faith that is not lived will not save.

true freedom – Freedom does not mean doing whatever we want. Far from it! True freedom is freedom to love and serve God. It means being free from sin that we may do what it right. It means being free from error that we may embrace the truth. It means being free from ugliness and boredom that we may appreciate beauty. True freedom is the freedom to begin living eternal life now and find its fulfillment in Heaven.

everlasting inheritance – We are members of God's covenant family and heirs with Christ. So what do we inherit? God! Our inheritance is God. In Heaven we will see Him face to face and, as St. Paul says, we will know as we are known (1 Cor 13:12). We will enjoy Him forever in the fullness of eternal life.