Today I want to offer what you could call ‘A Tale of Two Collects.’
First, what is a collect?
Very simply put it is a short prayer that ‘collects’, or brings
together, intentions into a single, focused petition.
Collects are assigned for each Sunday, high days and holy days
throughout the year.
At the Eucharist the collect concludes the opening of the liturgy
before we sit to hear the readings.
At Matins and Evensong, the collect is one of the concluding prayers of
the Office.
So, the first of the two collects I want to reflect on tonight is the
collect appointed for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity in the Book of
Common Prayer, which is today.
It has been sung this evening.
It is beautifully pithy, and is a translation by Thomas Cranmer of an
early Roman collect from a ancient source, the Gregorian Sacramentary.
Here’s the text:
Lord, we pray thee that thy grace may always prevent and follow
us, and make us continually to be given to all good works; through Jesus Christ
our Lord. Amen.
It has a cause of some confusion to many due to a change in how we use
a word.
To ask that God’s grace may always prevent and follow us, sounds odd, until we learn that prevent is
not meant in the way we use it now.
If we prevent something, we stop it happening, we put an
obstacle in the way, so what is God’s grace preventing us from doing the good
works we pray to be able to do?
Well, that’s not what it’s saying.
Latin scholars will spot this.
‘Pre-vent’ is an English word that comes pretty much straight
from the Latin meaning ’to go before’, pre-venire.
So, we’re actually praying that God’s grace goes before us,
and well as follow us, so it’s wrap-around grace, that free gift of all that
enables us to glorify him in all things.
It actually gives us a beautiful balance of God’s grace, a
free unmerited gift to us, and our response to that grace which is to be shown in
the concrete actions of life, the capacity to do good, as opposed, to bad
works.
The second collect today is in the Common Worship prayer book.
There are no linguistic tricks, but equally beautiful riches:
Almighty God,
you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you:
pour your love into our hearts and draw us to yourself,
and so bring us at last to your heavenly city
where we shall see you face to face;
through
Jesus Christ our Lord.
This collect is relatively new to the Anglican tradition, but is actually
an ancient prayer.
It is a prayer of St Augustine of Hippo, one of the great early Church
Fathers, to whom we owe so much, from his famous book Confessions.
Confessions is not about indiscretions that need to be
confessed, but there is certainly some of that, but primarily a confession of
faith.
This collect, this prayer, gets to the heart of Augustine’s predicament
and to the experience of many people throughout the ages.
It is a sentiment that the new Pope, himself an Augustinian, has picked
up on in this prayer.
Let’s take a look at it.
Almighty
God,
you have made us for
yourself,
Augustine sets out the frame
of meaning for human existence: we don’t exist for ourselves, we don’t exist
for other people, we exist for God.
The Westminster Confession of put
it like this, ‘Why did God create humankind’ but to ‘glorify God and enjoy him
forever.’
That is our purpose, and that
is God’s grace preventing – going before – us.
We are made, fashioned us of
the dust of the earth, in God’s image and likeness, to glorify our Creator and
enjoy him forever.
What a beautiful vision, until
human restlessness is brought into the picture.
This restlessness is so
terribly of now: an ongoing itch that can never be scratched, the ache that
will never be relieved, the hunger that is never really satisfied.
Only God’s grace, preventing
us and following us, will be able to draw us back to him, who is the source of tranquillity
and peace.
As Augustine says:
our hearts are
restless till they find their rest in you:
Wow! Doesn’t that express something
deep within us today.
Rest is not found gazing into the
screen of a smartphone, or a bit of ‘me time’, or overindulging in a whole host
of things.
Our existential restlessness is
relieved by love going before us, and following us, into God’s presence:
pour your love into
our hearts and draw us to yourself,
Pour
your love: God’s love fills up the
depleted wellsprings of our hearts, that by our own merits, without God’s grace
run dry.
This re-forms, refashions, renews
us, into a human being who lets go, who no longer resists being drawn into presence
of the One for whom we are made.
This draws us into what the
Fathers, and the Anglican Divines of earlier centuries call, the Beatific
Vision, the vision of blessedness, the vision of God, hence the prayer continues:
and
so bring us at last to your heavenly city
where we shall see you
face to face;
In these two collects we have found our beginning and our end, the Alpha
and Omega, the purpose of our creation and our final consummation in God’s presence,
a presence that by grace has prevented – gone before – us and followed us.
On earth may we be given to all good works; in the heavenly city may we
gaze gloriously on the face of the Beloved; and in both may we seek only that
his kingdom and his will be done.
Amen.
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