The Collect for the Twenty-Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

May Your grace, O Lord, we pray, at all times go before us and follow after and make us always determined to carry out good works. 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 grace – God's grace is divine power in action in our lives. Sanctifying grace fills us with the divine presence. Actual grace guides and helps us along the path of God; it gives us the direction and strength we need to do God's will. Sacramental grace is poured out upon us in the sacraments, which communicate and strengthen sanctifying grace and provide actual graces according to the nature of the sacrament. We must, of course, be properly disposed to receive grace, and we must cooperate with God's grace.

go before us – We can do nothing without God's grace. His grace saves us from sin and death. His grace gives us the ability to believe, to hope, to love, and to accept the salvation He offers. His grace gives us the ability to pray, to do good works, and to respond to God according to His will. Yet we must always cooperate with God's grace, and our free will comes into play here, for we are free to reject God's grace as well as accept and embrace it.

follow after – Aren't we lucky that God's grace also follows after us? We make horrible messes of our lives sometimes. We sin. We fall. We turn our backs on God. But God's grace still pursues us, poking our consciences, nudging us back toward Him. When we do turn back to God and repent and confess our sins, He is right there waiting for us, filling us with His forgiveness and His grace.

make us always determined to carry out good works – We human beings tend to want to be independent, to do things on our own. But when we rely on our own strength and our own shaky motives, we often fail to do good to others. In fact, we tend to do more harm than good. That's why we need to ask God to guide us, first to give us the desire and determination to do good things out of love and second to give us the ability to accomplish them and then to attribute them all to His glory.