A Tour through the Mass!

The Opening Prayer of the Mass

These prayers are the original element of the Introductory Rites. The first evidence for them is in the fifth century. At that time, the priest said straight after the entrance song or psalm: ‘Let us Pray’ and after a period of silence, this prayer was prayed.

The phrase ‘Let us pray’ does not refer to the prayer said by the priest, but is intended to be followed by a short time of silence during which the people quietly place their own prayers before the Lord. The opening prayer then explicitly places the prayers of the people before God. So, the time of silence – though often neglected – is important, it is part of the liturgy. This opening prayer is often called the ‘Collect’, that is it is the prayer in which all the prayers of the people are ‘collected’ are placed before God. We must remember that the liturgy is indeed the liturgy of the whole People of God, and this silence is an expression of that.

There are many of these opening prayers. There is one for every Sunday of the year, for the weekdays of Lent and Easter and of Advent and Christmastime. There are then others for the many feasts of the church’s year, and for particular intentions.

All of these prayers are made ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord’; this is expressed in a few different formulae but they all make the point that our payer is never just our prayer; our prayer is always made through and with Jesus Christ our Lord. We go to the Father ‘through him and with him and in him’.
As with all our prayer in the liturgy, we conclude by saying ‘Amen’. This word means something like ‘we stand behind that’, ‘we are in solidarity with that’. So, by saying that word after a prayer, we are affirming the prayer and making it our own.

By Fr Frank O’Loughlin