Introduction to Opening Prayer Series

OPENING PRAYER SERIES: 

The Mass: Opening Prayer Series Icon.

 

INTRODUCTION

How do you reconnect with your Sunday Mass during the week?  My aim of this weekly Opening Prayer Series is to reconnect with Sunday Mass, so as to make it a daily experience. This series is about discovering and enhancing our faith together by daily reflecting and making alive in a tangible way the Opening Prayer.

I hope that you will find it uplifting and beneficial to your faith journey. 

 

You might be wondering 'what is the Opening Prayer of the Mass'? Understanding the structure of the Opening Prayer may be helpful before we launch deeper into this series.

 

At the end of the Introductory Rite of the Mass is the Opening Prayer or Collect.The priest invites us to pray silently for a moment, and then, in our name, expresses the theme of the day’s celebration and petitions to God the Father through the mediation of Christ in the Holy Spirit.

STRUCTURE OF THE OPENING PRAYER ( COLLECT)

 

In other words, he ‘collects’ or gathers up all the prayers on our behalf and offers them to God. He reads it from the Book of the Chair. The unfolding of this opening prayer is as follows:

 

• An invitation to prayer: ‘Let us pray’,

 

•    A time of silence: a time to present our intentions to God.
•   The invocation: these can be varied but they all address God in some form- for
     example- Father, Eternal Father, Lord, God of mercy and power, Father of love.
•    The anamnesis or thanksgiving:
•    The request: Give.
•    The affirmation of the mediation of Christ: ‘Through Christ our Lord’.
•     Our response: ‘Amen’.

 As we commence a new liturgical year, what  will YOUR new year spiritual resolution be?

 

I hope the Opening Prayer series will add to your spiritual nourishment