The Opening Prayer is a changeable element in the Liturgy. There are different ones for every Sunday, for the weekdays of the major seasons: Lent, Easter, Advent. Christmas, as well as for the many feast days which occur in the course of the year.

It is begun by the priest’s invitation to the people: “Let us pray”. This invitation is not to listen to and pray the prayer which follows but to spend a little time in silence placing ourselves before God in prayer. The priest then brings all these prayers before the Father in the words of the Opening Prayer. This prayer is also called the Collect for the reason that the priest, so to speak, ‘collects’ all these prayers of the people and brings them before God.

There ought to be enough time – but not too much – after the ‘Let us pray’ for everyone to personally place themselves before God, before the Collect is prayed.

The Prayer itself has a particular structure. It begins by addressing the Father, followed by the petition at the core of the prayer and then concludes by stating that we make this prayer through Christ our Lord. This is the constant shape of Christian prayer: To the Father, through, with and in Christ, by the power of and in the union of the Holy Spirit.

It is worth pondering these prayers as there is a treasury of Christian prayer contained in them. Many of them go back many centuries and have been adapted somewhat as time has gone along.

The Opening Prayer, along with the Prayer of the Gifts and the Prayer after Communion, are one of the specific characteristics of the Roman Liturgy. They are not found in the other Christian Liturgical Traditions such as the Greek and Russian Liturgies.

These three prayers have been in use since at least the fifth century, even though not all of the prayers we are using today go back to that time.

By Frank O’Loughlin