17 Sunday Ordinary Time Collect
This week we Lectio the Liturgy with the Collect for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time. I would almost guarantee that the next time you pray or go to church, you will see God in a new light.
O God, protector of those who hope in you, without whom nothing has firm foundation, nothing is holy, bestow in abundance your mercy upon us and grant that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may use the good things that pass in such a way as to hold fast even now to those that ever endure. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
When we think of God as our protector, we may usually imagine Him shielding us from all harm, but in the prayer this week, we get a new look into His role as protector. The prayer tells us that without Him nothing has firm foundation and nothing is holy.
In the Latin form of the prayer, for the word firm, we find the word validum which means efficacious. After we pray with this for a while, it will made sense, but it may be something we haven’t thought about before. Without God our words are just words, they are not efficacious, or effective, and our words spoken to God are not prayer. In His mercy, God not only makes our prayer effective, He makes the prayer of the mass efficacious. What we pray really happens.
The prayer also tells us that without God, nothing is holy. This truth sunk in as I sat in the pew during my holy hour. Without God, a church is just a building, the Bible is just another book, and an altar is just a table. Only God can change bread and wine into the holiest of gifts, the Body and Blood of Jesus.
How does this protect us? Perhaps we need to think of the protection of God as a coverer. He is watching out for us because through the abundance of his mercy, God makes our prayer have meaning, He makes things holy so that we can be holy.
The prayer tells us that God is also our ruler and guide. As ruler He leads us to right ways. These ways may not always be smooth and easy, but as guide, He is always with us.
Next we ask that we may use the good things that pass to hold fast to those that endure. Human nature has a tendency to love earthly things and it is easy to want more of it, but we need remember that these things will pass. These things are the things of which we are often reminded, “you can’t take it with you,” However, there are things that you can take with you.
In Matthew 6:19-20, Jesus tells us to not keep for ourselves treasurers on earth, but instead to lay up treasurers in heaven. St. Augustine tells how easy this can be when he wrote, “We ought to fix our treasure and our heart on that which will abide forever and not on something which will pass away.”
The things that will not pass away are things money cannot buy. They are things that we give away. We give away ourselves, we give our time, our love, and our forgiveness. When we share the gospel, or when we, like Jesus, endure insults, God keeps track of them all. The abundant mercy of our protector, ruler, and guide, has not only given efficacy to our actions, He made them holy.