“Bestow in Abundance Your Mercy Upon Us”

We are at the Seventeenth Week of Ordinary Time on the Roman liturgical calendar. These weeks of Summer and Autumn that follow Pentecost continue to help us to remember the gift of the Holy Spirit that empowers us to live in Christ, already in “newness of life” even as we journey toward the fullness of eternal life.

In this week’s Collect Prayer, we profess once again our total dependence on God our Father - indeed the dependence of all things on His sustenance. We ask Him to “grant that…we may use the good things that pass” according to His wisdom, so that through them we may hold fast “even now” to that which endures, which brings the true fulfillment of every circumstance and aspiration of our hearts.

We ask the Lord to give us the wise use of the things of this world and the holding fast to our destiny, to draw forth, empower, and sustain our adherence to Him in that very freedom which is also His gift. All we are, all we hope for, is founded upon and cries out continually for His presence, His goodness, His love - for the “bestow[al] in abundance” of “[His] mercy upon us.”