What Is a Collect? And Why It Still Matters Today

Written By Rev. Greg Williams

Did you know one of the most ancient and meaningful parts of our worship happens just a few minutes into the service? It’s called the Collect and it’s packed with depth, beauty, and centuries of tradition.

If you’ve been following the St. Barnabas Facebook page, you may have seen recent posts reflecting on the Sunday Collect. 


In the coming weeks and months, we will continue sharing these ancient prayers with reflections, practices, and prompts to help us slow down with each Collect, and let these ancient prayers meet us where we are.

Each week’s reflection will take a deeper look at the Collect and what it might say to us in our lives now. Each week will include some kind of suggested practice, journaling prompt, or other way to explore and live out the Collect.

You’re also invited to comment on each week’s Facebook post to share your comments, reflections, and feedback on the Collects too. The Holy Spirit has gifted all of us with wisdom and insight, and we’d love to hear what the Collect means to you or your response to the weekly reflection.

Our hope is that this social media series will help you carry Sunday with you into every day and to explore just how these profound prayers speak to our lives and our context today.

This blog post will provide some of the background information on the Collects and a few practical tips to help us all engage more deeply with this rich collection of prayers in our tradition.

Introducing the Collects 

Every Sunday just after our worship begins, we pray a short prayer called the Collect of the Day. It’s easy to miss. It isn’t long and it might sound a little formal. But these prayers are powerful in their meaning and in how they help us live out our faith today.

Each week the Collect is different. From week to week it might give us the theme of worship for that week, explore a theme of a season like Lent or Advent, or give us beautiful and poetic imagery for understanding otherwise mysterious aspects of our worship and faith lives.

Over the course of the year, the Collects offer a 360-degree view of walking with Jesus, from the hope of Advent to the joy of Easter and the ordinary ups and downs in between.

They are ancient wisdom. Followers of Jesus have been praying these Collects for centuries and some of our Collects have been prayed for almost 2000 years. 

And these ancient prayers still speak deep truths for our lives. They anchor us in community, give us words when we have none, and carry Sunday’s grace into the rest of the week.

Key Collect Facts

  • During our Holy Eucharist service, the Collect of the Day comes after the Opening Acclamation and just before the readings. 

  • The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) has a Collect for every Sunday and Holy Day throughout the year along with various other kinds of collects for special occasions and other contexts.

  • Many of these Collects are over 1000 years old with some translated verbatim from their original wording in the 6th or 7th centuries AD. Others are “only” about 500 years old and written for the very first edition of the Book of Common Prayer. 

  • Eventually, Christians came to understand these prayers as symbolically gathering—or collecting—the prayers of the entire community into a single united voice.

Every Sunday, when we say the Collect at St. Barnabas, we continue the tradition of offering these prayers as a sign of our community coming together and as a symbol of our unity in prayer and our common life together. These prayers collect us, our hearts, concerns, intentions, and requests into a shared prayer as we begin our worship of God. They also unite us to the generations of fellow Christians who have prayed them before us.


So What Is A Collect, Exactly?

The Transfiguration of our Lord

A Collect is a short structured prayer. It has three main parts: (1) an address to God that acknowledges who God is or what God has done (2) a petition or request that usually has something to do with what we acknowledged about God in part 1, and (3) a “doxology” or expression of praise to God that usually invokes the entire Holy Trinity.

Here’s an example. The Feast of the Transfiguration is next week, and its Collect follows the classic form.

“O God, who on the holy mount revealed to chosen witnesses your well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty; who with you, O Father, and you, O Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”


And here it is broken down by parts:
Part 1 - Address and acknowledgement: O God, who on the holy mount revealed to chosen witnesses your well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening:

Part 2 - Request: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty;

Part 3 - Praise: who with you, O Father, and you, O Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Why Do They Matter For Us?

Here are a few ways that the Collects matter for our lives today as we walk the Way of Love and follow Jesus Christ:

  • The Collects orient us to the season and theme of the day. Between the seasons, the various feast days, and other Sundays, the Collects give us a roadmap for a 365-day walk with Jesus Christ. 

  • As a whole, the Collects give voice to the full range of human spiritual experience—joy, sorrow, longing, gratitude, and everything in between. 

  • They can remind us of what we’ve forgotten, comfort us with familiar joys, offer hope in our struggles, provide fresh perspectives on blind spots that we don’t often stop to consider, and strengthen us for service in the world.

  • They can keep us grounded in the theology and rhythms of the church, of the community, and of the life of Jesus. 

  • They're ancient and they connect us with the Communion of Saints who have come before us and prayed these same holy words.

  • The Collects offer us words to pray when our own words fail us. In times of crisis, fear, or difficulty, the Collects can be a great resource.

How can I use the Collects in my daily life?

First, you’ll need to know how to find them!


Each Tuesday you’ll find the previous Sunday’s Collect posted on the St. Barnabas Facebook page. You can also check your bulletin for the Collect each week. 


You can also find the Collects for Sundays and Holy Days in your BCP or online. The Contemporary language Collects are on pages 211-261 in the Book of Common Prayer. You can also use the digital BCP at https://www.bcponline.org or the Episcopal Church Lectionary Calendar to check a specific Sunday’s Collect at https://www.episcopalchurch.org/lectionary/.

Practical Tips for Praying with Collects

Here are some practical tips for how Collects can support your life of prayer and faith journey. 

  • Pray the Collect from the previous Sunday throughout the week. This is the most traditional way, and is a common feature of Episcopal morning and evening prayer according to the BCP.

  • Use it as a journaling prompt. Read and reflect on the Collect each week and journal in response. You might reflect on words or phrases that stand out, or ask “What is this prayer saying to me? What is God calling me to in this Collect?” or a similar question that you can reflect on in your journal.

  • Pray it with others, before meetings, or with your family. Many of my seminary professors would start classes or meetings with a Collect from the Book of Common Prayer. The Collect from the previous Sunday or any Collect that fits the setting or moment can be a great prayer in a group. This is an especially good way to open or close a Bible study or other small group.

  • Memorize one. Perhaps during a season like Advent or Lent. If a particular Collect speaks to you throughout the year, memorizing it can give you a great prayer to fall back on in times of need or reflection. Memorizing one of the collects for a season can serve as a centering prayer throughout that season.

Collects as Models of Prayer

In the long run, the Collects can help us learn to pray in our own words.

The three part structure of a Collect is a great structure for our personal prayer lives. Praying collects regularly can empower you to pray in your own words more easily. 

Recall the three part structure of a Collect: (1) address and acknowledge something about God, (2) request related to your acknowledgment and (3) concluding with praise

 This structure can offer a way to pray if you’re not sure how. You can even develop your own Collects, in advance or off the top of your head, to help you voice your own prayers.

Closing Prayer

I hope you’ve enjoyed learning a bit about Collects and I hope you’ll follow along with our weekly Facebook posts. I’d like to close this blog post, fittingly, with a Collect.

Heavenly Father, in you we live and move and have our being:

We humbly pray you so to guide and govern us by your Holy Spirit,

that in all the cares and occupations of our life we may not forget you,

but may remember that we are ever walking in your sight;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

-Greg+


Attributions:

Rev. Greg Williams
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