Saturday, July 25, 2020

The Collect for the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time


O God, protector of those who hope in You, without Whom nothing has firm foundation, nothing is holy, bestow in abundance Your mercy upon us and grant that, with You as our ruler and guide, we may use the good things that pass in such a way as to hold fast even now to those that ever endure. 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.

protector – None of us realizes exactly how much God protects us. We don't see all the times when He has prevented something horrible from happening. We don't know all the times when our prayers or someone else's prayers have contributed to avoidance of accidents or illnesses. We don't even catch a glimpse of how God is working in the background, guarding us and guiding us at all times. Instead, we tend to focus on complaining about the “bad things” that happen to us (that God uses for our good) rather than thanking Him for the good we experience and the bad He has already prevented.

hope in YouHow is your hope? Do you expect the very best from God? That's what He wants to give us. Yes, we have to cooperate, but even when we mess up, He forgives us when we repent and turn back to Him. If your hope is shaky, ask God to increase it today. He will.

nothing has firm foundation, nothing is holy – Without God, nothing would exist. Without God, we could do nothing at all. We could never become holy without His grace. He gives us all that we have and all that we are, and “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Do we thank Him?

bestow in abundance Your mercy God, pour down Your mercy upon us, please. We sin every day. We fail to follow Your will. We give in to our disordered emotions and desires. We turn away from You. Please forgive us, heal us, and draw us back to You.

our ruler and guideOur culture often tells us that we must be independent, that we must take charge of our own lives and do what we want, that we must resist guidance from others. Of course, in our current climate, the message has changed to obeying the government without question, trusting in “experts,” and fearing everything. We must reject both of these extremes and look to God as our ruler and guide. Only He can and will lead us through this life according to His will and bring us safely home to Heaven. We must remain faithful subjects of His kingdom.

use the good things that pass – God made this world to be lived in. There are good things all around us, things in which we take pleasure, and it's okay to use and enjoy these things, even though they will someday pass away.

in such a way as to hold fast even now to those that ever endure – But when we use and enjoy passing things, we must be careful not to abuse them or to put our entire focus on them. Instead, we must use them for the glory of God. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” Work for the glory of God. Play for the glory of God. Spend time with loved ones for the glory of God. Use all the gifts God has given you so that they help you grow closer to Him and progress on your journey to Heaven.

Sunday, July 19, 2020

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 servantsGod 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 graceHave 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 charityAre 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 commandsIt'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.

Saturday, July 11, 2020

The Collect for the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time


O God, Who show the light of Your truth to those who go astray, so that they may return to the right path, give all who for the faith they profess are accounted Christians the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ and to strive after all that does it honor. 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 the light of Your truthPontius Pilate once asked, cynically, “What is truth?” Jesus has the answer: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” When we ask God to show us the light of His truth, we are asking Him to show us Jesus, Who is revealed in Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, the sacraments, the Magisterium, and our own open hearts and minds. We are asking God to help us see and grasp a reality that is far beyond the material world. In fact, the spiritual depths of that reality are far beyond our human minds. Yet God illuminates us with the light of His truth, with the light of Jesus, and if we let it, that light will penetrate our hearts and minds and draw us ever closer to the Blessed Trinity.

those who go astray – At one point or other, these words can apply to all of us. We go astray by sin, and we need God's truth to help us repent and assure us that He is standing ready to forgive us. We go astray by neglect, and we need God's truth to inspire us to enter more deeply into faith, hope, and love. We go astray by error, and we need God's truth to convince us that we are wrong and show us what is right.

the right pathThis is the path straight to God, the path straight to Heaven, to face-to-face intimacy with our Lord for eternity. It is also the narrow way that Jesus speaks of, the way that we discover through God's gifts of faith, hope, love, and truth.

the faith they profess – We are Christians because we profess our faith in Christ. What is faith? The Catechism tells us that faith is both a human act in which “the human intellect and will co-operate with divine grace” (#155) and a theological virtue, a divine gift, “by which we believe in God and believe all that He has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because He is truth itself” (#1814). If God didn't give us the gift of faith, we would not be able to believe, but we have to accept and exercise that gift for our faith to grow and flourish.

the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ – We pray that God will give us the grace to say a firm “no” to anything that is contrary to Christ. Remember that, in Scripture, a name refers to the character of the one who bears it, so the name of Christ refers to Who He is, all of His traits and attributes. We need God's help to conform ourselves to Christ, to become more and more like Him, and to reject whatever might lead us away.

to strive after all that does it honor – How do we honor God? St. Irenaeus once wrote that “the glory of God is man fully alive.” We honor God, we give Him glory, when we strive to become fully alive, and we become fully alive only when we live in Him, when we give Him all that we have and all that we are.

Sunday, July 5, 2020

The Collect for the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time


This series of posts will focus on the collect of the Mass. Pronounced call-ect and also called “the opening prayer,” this little prayer can slip right by us if we aren't careful. But it “collects” all of our prayers, unites them with the special prayers and seasons of the Mass, and sends them all up to God as we focus our attention on our liturgical worship. It's important, then, that we take some time each week to listen more closely to and reflect on the collect, which we first hear on Sunday and again on non-feast days throughout the week.

Here is the collect for the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time:

O God, who in the abasement of your Son have raised up a fallen world, fill your faithful with holy joy, for on those you have rescued from slavery to sin you bestow eternal gladness. 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.

the abasement of your Son – Jesus Christ “emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness” (Phil 2:7). He became incarnate. He put aside the glory of His divinity (but not, of course, the reality of His divinity). He made Himself like us in all things except sin.

raised up a fallen world – Here is why Jesus emptied Himself: that through His sacrifice, the Father might raise up a world fallen in sin. We still live in a fallen world, but sin and death no longer have the final say.

holy joyAre we joyful people? Not just happy but really joyful, deep down in our souls, no matter what our external situation? Do we allow God to fill us with joy? Do we find our joy in what is holy?

rescued from slavery to sin – We no longer have to be slaves to sin. Jesus redeemed us when He died on the cross for us. He bought us back from slavery with His own blood. So why do we still sin? Whenever we're tempted, we should develop the habit of recalling the price of our redemption.

eternal gladness – This is our goal. If we remain in a state of grace, with God's presence dwelling in us, we will one day see Him face to face. We may need a little purification first, if we haven't scrubbed off the muck of the consequences of our sins in this life, but God wants us to be saved. He loves us, and He wants to give us the best of gifts: Himself for all eternity.

Saturday, July 4, 2020

Welcome Back!


Welcome back to the Catholic Scholar blog! I realize that I haven't written a new post for quite a long time, but there is a reason for my seeming negligence. For the last year or so, I have been working on my M.A. thesis at Signum University. It turned out to be a much larger project than I first anticipated, but I am happy to say that it is finished and defended.

My thesis, The Germanic Lord’s Prayer Texts: A Critical Edition and Commentary, ended up book length, but I have decided not to publish it in book form. Rather I've created a website to showcase the project:


If you are at all interested in the Lord's Prayer, you might want to check it out. I cover twenty-one texts in five ancient Germanic languages: Gothic, Old Saxon, Old High German, Old English, and Old Norse. For each text, I provide an introduction with historical and linguistic context, a semi-normalized edition of the text (from the original manuscript if possible), a modern English translation, and a detailed commentary.

If you're really interested and care to listen to me present my thesis, you can watch my Thesis Theater on Signum University's YouTube page:


Anyway, again, welcome back to the Catholic Scholar blog. I will try to update regularly with new posts and begin a couple new series that dig into the deep meanings of the Sunday collect prayers and the treasures of the Mass's Eucharistic prayers.

God bless!