The Collect for the Twenty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

God of might, giver of every good gift, put into our hearts the love of Your name, so that, by deepening our sense of reverence, You may nurture in us what is good and, by Your watchful care, keep safe what You have nurtured. 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.

God of might – God is all-powerful, yet He is also most gentle with His children. He created the universe. He set the planets in motion and determined the laws of nature. Yet He stoops down to each of us in love. He even becomes our food in the Holy Eucharist, giving Himself to us Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.

giver of every good gift – God gives us all we have and all we are. Everything that is good comes from Him. Yet are we grateful? Do we spend some of our prayer time thanking Him for His gifts to us? Or do we just keep asking for more? God wants us to ask Him for what we need and want, but we should also continually express our gratitude for what we already have.

put into our hearts the love of Your name – The ability to love God is a gift from God. Love, real love, self-sacrificing love that wills the absolute best for another and helps to achieve that best, is a theological virtue. As the Catechism says, love (or charity) is “the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for His own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God” (#1822). Here we pray that God put His love into our hearts so that we can love Him more. We need to open up and expand our hearts so we can receive more of that love. Remember that “name” in the Scriptures refers to the whole of a person, in this case God's Person, His character, and all of His marvelous attributes. When we love God's name, we love God.

deepening our sense of reverence – Do we ever just stand before God and be amazed? Do we ever gaze upon Him in our hearts and think, “Wow! Just wow!”? We should develop a deep reverence for God, and that reverence should extend into our churches and our lives so that we approach God at Mass and in the other sacraments and in prayer and in study with all the respect and awe He deserves.

You may nurture in us what is good – What has God nurtured in us? He has given us a share in His divine life. He has poured His sanctifying grace into our souls. He Himself dwells within us. He gives us grace to love, to believe, to hope, to pray, to receive the sacraments, to study, and to experience a taste of the joy of the Kingdom of God. If we cooperate with Him, we will grow ever closer to Him.

by Your watchful care – God cares for us at every moment of every day. He holds us in existence every second. If God were to forget about us for even an instant (not that He ever would), we would simply disappear. Yet God doesn't just watch us from a distance or remain uninvolved in our lives. He is constantly giving us grace to follow Him and protecting us from harm and working all things for our good.

keep safe what You have nurtured – We are weak and sinful, and we fall often. That's why we must pray for God's protection, that He keep safe His divine life within us, that He protect us from temptation and from harm, that He continually give us the grace to resist evil and embrace His love.

The Collect for the Twenty-First Week in Ordinary Time

O God, Who cause the minds of the faithful to unite in a single purpose, grant Your people to love what You command and to desire what You promise, that, amid the uncertainties of this world, our hearts may be fixed on that place where true gladness is found. 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.

unite in a single purpose – God causes our unity as His people, and He desires our unity as His people. We are the Body of Christ, the Bride of Christ. We partake in the same Eucharist. We live as God's family in the same covenant, sharing in His divine life. We must, then, embrace the unity that God desires for us and gives us. We must stand together in faith, hope, and love against the forces of the enemy and the temptations of this world that threaten to tear us apart. We must hold fast to God's commandments, to the moral law that guides us along the path of life. We much share one purpose: love of God and love of our neighbors for God's sake.

to love what You command – Do we truly love what God commands? Or do we merely sigh and tolerate it as a sacrifice of obedience? Yet God's commands are perfect for us. God, Who made our human nature and perfectly understands its frailty, gives us exactly what we need to grow in love and to grow closer to Him. Those are the purposes of the commandments, after all. They aren't some arbitrary orders that we must fulfill or else. They are perfectly suited to us and to our needs. We should love them as gifts from God, which they are.

to desire what You promise – Sometimes it seems that we desire everything but what we should. We desire money, fame, honor, possessions, all the things of this world. We chase after those. But our desire of God and the eternal life He promises to those Who follow Him fades into the background or even disappears. We must adjust our priorities so that our desire for God overwhelms all else.

the uncertainties of this world – The world is more uncertain than ever these days, and if we focus too much on the chaos, it will drive us crazy.

our hearts may be fixed on that place where true gladness is found – Here is the answer to the uncertainties of the world. We must fix our hearts, focus our attention, and place our trust in one place, the place where true gladness is found. That place, of course, is God. In the midst of all the trials, all the difficulties, all the suffering, all the craziness of life, we must keep our eyes and our minds and our hearts on God. No, it isn't easy. Distractions are everywhere. We get sidetracked. We get angry. We get upset. We lose our focus. But we must always return to God. We will find true happiness and peace only in Him. So how do we fix our hearts on God (and get them back on God when they stray)? We pray (a lot!). We go to Mass and receive Jesus in the Eucharist (more than once a week if possible). We read Scripture. We study about our faith. And most importantly, we ask God to help us like we're doing in this collect.

The Collect for the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time

O God, Who have prepared for those who love You good things which no eye can see, fill our hearts, we pray, with the warmth of Your love, so that, loving You in all things and above all things, we may attain Your promises, which surpass every human desire. 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.

those who love You – Why do we find it so hard to love God as we should? Perhaps we don't know Him. Perhaps He seems distant to us. Perhaps we don't understand how wonderful He is or how perfect or how merciful. Perhaps we don't realize how much He loves us. Yes, God loves us more than we can imagine. How can we respond to that kind of love with anything less than all our love?

prepared...good things which no eye can see – In 1 Corinthians 2:9, Paul remarks, “But, as it is written, 'What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him.'” Yet, he continues, “these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God” (2:10). Right now we see “in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face” (13:12). Right now we know in part. We cannot see God or Heaven. But “then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (13:12). We walk by faith now, but someday we will see God face to face.

fill our hearts, we pray, with the warmth of Your love – God's love can indeed warm us from the inside out. We should pray to feel that warmth, to feel His love. Even if He doesn't give us that grace right now (for good reasons of His own), we should pray for greater faith that we can be sure of His love and for greater hope that we can trust Him to bring us home to Heaven and for greater love that we can love others as He loves us.

loving You in all things and above all things – God must take first place in our lives. Always. Everyone else and everything else must be loved in Him and for His sake. This does not mean we love others less. In fact, loving them in God, we love them more, for He loves them in us.

we may attain Your promises – What does God promise? Our salvation. Eternal life. His perfect love. Himself. What more could we want?

surpass every human desire – God has so much more in store for us than we can ever imagine. Right now, we are caught up in time and in our limited human perspective. We can't escape those, but God is infinitely greater, and He will fulfill every one of our hopes and then keep right on going. He will surpass our wildest dreams, for He will give us Himself.

The Collect for the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Almighty ever-living God, Whom, taught by the Holy Spirit, we dare to call our Father, bring, we pray, to perfection in our hearts the spirit of adoption as Your sons and daughters, that we may merit to enter into the inheritance which You have promised. 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.

Almighty ever-living God – Do you ever stop to reflect on how awesome God is? Indeed, He is awesome in the true sense of the word: He evokes awe and wonder when we think about Him. The marvelous old Baltimore Catechism #3 tells us, “When we say God is 'infinitely perfect' we mean there is no limit or bounds to His perfection; for He possesses all good qualities in the highest possible degree and He alone is 'infinitely perfect.'” God is all-powerful, all-present, all-knowing, all-loving, and eternal. Now that is truly awesome.

taught by the Holy Spirit – Jesus promised that “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you” (John 14:26). If we open our minds and hearts, the Holy Spirit will guide us to truth. This isn't to say that we shouldn't study our faith through classes, discussions, books, etc. We should! But we should always do so with a receptivity to the Holy Spirit.

we dare to call our Father – “God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!'” (Galatians 4:6). “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ...” (Romans 8:15-17). God has made a covenant with us. A covenant creates a family bond that makes us God's children, so we can (with the help of the Holy Spirit within us) dare to call God “Father.”

perfection in our hearts – In the language of the Scriptures, perfection refers to completeness, to everything being in its proper order. Only God can bring this about in our hearts, but we must cooperate and let Him.

the spirit of adoption as Your sons and daughters – We are God's children now, made His adopted sons and daughters through the covenant. Therefore, we must act like God's children. We must imitate our Father and our elder Brother, Christ. We must always remember the divine family to which we belong.

we may merit to enter into the inheritance which You have promised – We will never earn Heaven. God's grace alone can bring us to our inheritance, eternal life with Him. But we must cooperate with that grace. We must obey God's commands and repent when we fail. We must pray and love and hope and believe. In all of these, God allows us to merit for ourselves, to share in the merits of Christ, to work out our salvation (Philippians 2:12). God even gives us the grace to merit, but He expects us to do it! He expects us to embrace His promise, to make it our own, to desire it, and to strive toward our final destination, our home in Heaven.

The Collect for the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Draw near to Your servants, O Lord, and answer their prayers with unceasing kindness, that, for those who glory in You as their Creator and guide, You may restore what You have created and keep safe what You have restored. 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.

Draw near – God is always close to us. He is closer to us than we are to ourselves. When we are in a state of grace, He dwells within our very souls. So why do we ask Him to draw near? We're praying to be able to feel His presence, to know that He is with us. We're beseeching Him for the grace to experience His nearness.

Your servants – In Greek, the word pais means both child and servant. We are God's children by adoption, but we are also His servants. This isn't a bad thing! In fact, serving God should be a joy for us, for when we embrace His will and obey Him with love, we will find true happiness.

unceasing kindness – Have you ever thought about how kind God is? We don't normally identify kindness as one of His characteristics, do we? We think about His omniscience, His omnipotence, and His omnipresence. We remember His mercy and justice. But do we think about His kindness? God is perfectly kind. The modern English word “kind” comes from the Old English gecynde, which actually means “natural” or “innate” and refers to the feelings that family members are to have for one another. Kindness is indeed an element of God's nature, and He has made us His family through His covenant.

glory in You as their Creator and guide – When we glory in God, we allow His glory to wash over us, to enter us, to fill us with His light and love. We glory in God as our Creator. He made us. Everything we are and everything we have comes from Him. He didn't have to create us, but He wanted to share His goodness and love. We also glory in God as our guide. His will is perfect, and He leads us perfectly...if we let Him.

You may restore what You have created – God created us for intimacy with Him. Our first parents lost that intimacy with the first sin. They lost the sanctifying grace within their souls. But God restores that grace to us in Baptism and restores it again in Confession if we lose it through serious sin. He also refreshes that grace when we reach out to Him in prayer, acts of love, and the sacraments.

keep safe what You have restored – Do we trust God to help us stay in His grace? He will. We just have to ask Him. When temptation strikes, we must pray. When we sin, we must repent and turn to Him. God is in this for the long haul. He desires our salvation more than we do. He wants us with Him for all eternity. He will keep us safe...if we let Him.