Rector’s Reflections
Friday 21st March 2025
A Handy little Prayer: The Collect for the 2nd Sunday of Lent
We have now reached the end of the current series of reflections, based on the Collect for the 2nd Sunday of Lent as it is found in the Book of Common Prayer. We have seen that a Collect is a prayer used in public worship to gather together the prayers of the congregation and to express the theme of the service or the liturgical season. But there is no reason why we can not use them in our private prayers as well.
One of my readers has raised the question: why such prayers are called “collects”? The short answer is that no one quite knows. A popular etymology associates the word “Collect” with the idea of “collecting together” the prayers of the congregation, and there may well be something in this. The English word “collect” comes from the Latin word “collecta”. The word “collecta” has been used since the Early Middle Ages to refer to the “collecting” together of the prayers of the members of the congregation into a single prayer. It used to be argued that the Latin word “collecta” actually referred to the collecting together of the congregation itself, rather than the gathering together of their prayers, but this argument no longer finds favour among modern scholars.
Returning to the Collect for the 2nd Sunday in Lent, we have seen that it is based on the idea that human beings have two aspects to their nature: an “outward” aspect and an “inward” aspect. The “outward” aspect is traditionally referred to as our “body” and the “inward” aspect as our “soul”. Human beings are a combination of “body” and “soul”, and so it is entirely appropriate that we pray to God that He may “keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul” .
But do we really need God’s help at all? Might human beings be able to overcome their struggles and challenges on their own, using their own resources and without needing to turn to God? After all, human beings have evolved with enormous reserves of resilience and inventiveness. It is in the nature of human beings to solve problems, and the whole story of evolution has shown that human beings are particularly good at doing so. So why bother with asking for God’s help?
One argument would be that human beings need to work in partnership with God. Human beings are pretty amazing, but they have their limitations. They don’t know everything and they can’t do everything, so it is entirely natural that there will be times and situations when human beings will turn to God for a bit of extra help. So there’s nothing wrong about offering up a prayer to God for some extra help. Most of the time we can rely on our own resources, but there are always those occasions when we need some extra support.
However, there’s another argument, which takes a different view. This argument starts from a low view of human skill and ability. Human pride means that we like to think highly of our human skills and ingenuity. We like to think of ourselves as the Masters of the Universe. But how much do we really know? We may think that we are frightfully clever, but do we really understand ourselves and our world? And how strong are we? Human beings all have their limitations, and I am sure that we have all experienced times when we have felt completely overwhelmed. The stresses and strains of life have become so intense that we have become frozen, like the proverbial rabbit in the headlight. We may know what we should do, but we simply don’t have the strength or the headroom to do it.
The Collect for the 2nd Sunday in Lent takes this low view of our strength and ability as human beings: “Almighty God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves” . Note the word “no”. The prayer doesn’t even state that we have some power of ourselves to help ourselves. It states that we have “no” power at all. That’s right. No power at all. I wonder if you would agree? Or is it too extreme a statement?
Perhaps we might reflect on those times in our own lives when we have ignored God and decided to go our own way, following our own judgments. Has this spirit of independence led us into happiness and fulfilment, or has it has it brought us to difficult and painful places? Have we always known what is best for us? And have we always had the strength to do what we know we should do?
Whatever your answer to these questions, I think the Collect for the 2nd Sunday in Lent certainly provides us with much material for reflection and further prayer. And we can be re-assured that God is always ready to hear our prayers, regardless of whether or not we really think we need Him in our lives. I don’t think God really minds if we think we can do without Him. He loves us too much to mind what we might think of Him. After all, we are simply being human, and our humanity is itself a gift from God.