After the Gloria, the priest says, “Let us pray,” and then pauses briefly. We should not let this moment pass us by. This is an opportunity for us to gather all of our prayers together and present them to God, offering them to Him as part of the sacrifice of the Mass. We cannot consciously think of everything in this short pause, of course, but we should at least envision ourselves lifting up our prayers and our hearts to God.
The priest then prays the Collect, or opening prayer. The Collect is written for the liturgical season, solemnity, feast, or saint's day, and we hear a different Collect every Sunday. This little prayer goes by quickly, and we can miss it if we aren't paying close attention. That's why it's important to read and reflect on the Collect outside of Mass. These are beautiful little prayers that capture the spirit of the liturgy and have a lot of depth to them. They are actually something we can return to all week in our personal prayer.
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