What is a collect

One short prayer that gathers the day. It has a shape, and once you see the shape you cannot unsee it.

The collect is the short prayer that closes the Gathering and opens the Liturgy of the Word. There is one appointed for every Sunday and feast, and it is the single most day-specific text in the service — the readings change, but the collect is about this Sunday in a way nothing else is.

Where the name comes from

It collects — it gathers the prayers of the people into one voice before the readings begin. The silence the priest keeps before saying it is not a pause for effect; it is the part being collected.

The shape

Classical collects have five movements, and once you have seen them you will find them everywhere:

1. Address — Almighty God,
2. Relative clause, saying something true about God that the petition depends on — who alone can order the unruly wills and affections of sinful members,
3. Petition — grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest,
4. Purpose — that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found;
5. Doxology — through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Not every collect has all five, and the modern-language ones sit more loosely to the pattern. But the great Cranmerian collects are built exactly this way, and most of them are translations of prayers already old when he found them.

Which collect, and where to find it

Common Worship appoints a collect for every Sunday, principal feast and festival, in both contemporary and traditional language. Many parishes also use the Post Communion prayer appointed for the same day, which is chosen to answer the collect.

Questions

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