“Beyond Words” The First Sunday of Advent

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Monsignor James P. Moroney introduces to us the Collect for the First Sunday of Advent (from the new English translation of the Roman Missal, Third Typical Edition).

The last part of the introductory rites is the Collect prayer, or what is commonly referred to as the opening prayer. In the early Church, this prayer probably served to gather the assembly for worship, but now it serves to collect or focus the assembly’s prayer at the beginning of the liturgy.

The Collect is a carefully constructed prayer and can be broken down into several parts: the priest’s invitation to prayer, “Let us pray;” a brief period of silence for private prayer and recalling one’s own intention; the prayer itself (containing praise of God, a petition, and the hoped outcome for the petition); a concluding doxology, “Through Christ our Lord;” and the people’s response, “Amen.”

All of the Collect prayers have been retranslated in a way that more accurately captures their original structure and meaning in Latin. Obviously, some of the literary devices such as rhyme and word play, among others, will not shine through as they do in the Latin, and some of the sentences are long and complex. However, the words matter; the words articulate the truths of the Christian faith. The words shape and form us as a believing community, and the words contribute to the unity of the Church across the world.