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.