Opening Prayer Series: Collect for 2nd Sunday of Year B

  Before I reflect on the Collect (Opening Prayer), I wish to advise my readers that today onwards, I will use the new English Translation of the Mass.  However, for the purpose of the Blog, I will still refer to it as the Opening Prayer Series, but refer to it as the Collect.
If you wish to appreciate more fully the purpose and structure of the Collect, please refer to my post: Collect of the Epiphany of Our Lord on 8 January 2012.


The Collect for the 2nd Sunday of Year B reads as follows:

Let us pray,

Almighty and ever-living God,

who governs all things,

both in Heaven and on earth,

mercifully hear the pleading of Your people,

and bestow Your peace on our times.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son,

who lives and reigns with You  in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God for ever and ever.

In making this prayer tangible, the following reflection questions emerged:

1. How can I appreciate the majesty of God this coming week?
2. What reply would I give to someone who asks " If God governs all things both in Heaven and on earth, why does He allow suffering"?
3. What areas of my life do I need to surrender to God's governance?
4. What do I mercifully plead  for?
5. What areas of my life need Your gift of peace?
6. How can I strengthen my relationship with God the Father, Son and Spirit this coming week?

It seems to me that there are three aspects of today's Gospel.Firstly, we need to be introduced to Jesus, just as John the Baptist pointed out Jesus to his followers 'Look, there is the lamb of God".

Just as we meet another person, the next step requires choice and action.  Do we want to get to know this person?  If so, then how will we get to know this person?  Remember to choice not to get know someone is also a choice and it requires an action too.  

However, Jesus is not just anyone.  When we have been introduced to Jesus, we need to make a positive decision to get to know Him and follow it up with action. This is the second aspect.  

Let us listen carefully to see what today's Gospel according to St John tells us the disciples did.

• The disciples followed Jesus.
• They asked ''where do you live?
• They followed Him again when they did not get a direct answer to find out more.
• They stayed with Him the rest of that day. 
  

Finally, the third aspect is, like any relationship, we do not want to keep our best friends to ourselves. When a couple for example are engaged, they want to tell the world (albeit their world) that they are in love.  We too need to be in love with Jesus and we need to want to share Him with others. This is the third aspect. This may be called evangelisation, but in essence it is bringing others to Christ ( like John the Baptist) and as required helping them get to know Him.  Then it is their responsibility through the bounty of God, to make the choice and take the action to get to know Him. 

How to evangelise is a huge topic, but first we must start with ourselves because we cannot introduce Jesus to others if we do not know and love Him ourselves.  Let us make the choice to really to get to know and love Jesus this coming year and if it is His will, bring others to Him also.