Collect

Collect, a short form of prayer, peculiar to the liturgies of the Western Church. It consists of a single sentence, conveying one main petition, which is based on an attribute ascribed to God in the opening invocation, and closing with an ascription of praise or a pleading of the merits of Christ. Thus much for the structure of these prayers, which, whether in Latin or English, may be described, alike from their noble rhythmic harmony and from their pathos and devout simple earnestness, as models of liturgical petitions; the etymology of their name is more difficult to determine, beyond the fact that it is from the Latin colligere, 'to collect.' According to some, the prayer was so called because, as in the English Prayer-book, it collects or condenses the teachings of the epistle and gospel for the day; but this explanation applies only to the class of special collects. According to others, the term implies that the prayer collects and sums up all the previous petitions, or gathers and offers up in one comprehensive form all the spoken and unspoken petitions of the people. Both these derivations are open to serious objections, and neither has any historical basis; the most probable view is that which traces the name to the collecta, or assembly of the people for divine service, at which certain prayers (orationes ad collectam) were said, distinct from the later prayers of the mass (orationes ad missam). Of the collects used in the liturgy of the Church of England, some, including most of those for saints' days—since the old collects were mainly prayers for the saints' intercession—were composed at the Reformation, or even later; but most, taken from the old Roman Missal, are derived from the Sacramentaries of Popes Leo, Gelasius, and Gregory (5th and 6th centuries). The remoter source of the weekly collects Freeman finds in the hymns of the Eastern Church, founded on the gospels, of which these collects would thus be the 'very quintessence.' In the English Prayer-book, for every Sunday there is a proper collect, with corresponding epistle and gospel; and this collect stands for every day in the following week, except in the case of festivals and their eves or vigils, which have collects of their own. Good Friday alone has three collects; and during Advent and Lent the collect for the first day of the season is repeated after the collect for the week.