Collect

The collect (/ˈkɒlɛkt/ KOL-ekt) is a short general prayer of a particular structure used in Christian liturgy.

Collects appear in the liturgies of Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Methodist, and Lutheran churches, among others (in those of eastern Christianity the Greek term [déesis] synapté is often used instead of the Latin term [oratio] collecta, both having the same meaning).

The word comes from Latin collecta, the term used in Rome in the 5th century and the 10th, although in the Tridentine version of the Roman Missal the more generic term oratio (prayer) was used instead.

The Latin word collecta meant the gathering of the people together and may have been applied to this prayer as said before the procession to the church in which Mass was celebrated. It may also have been used to mean a prayer that collected into one the prayers of the individual members of the congregation.

A collect generally has five parts:

In some contemporary liturgical texts, this structure has been obscured by sentence constructions that depart from the Latin flowing style of a single sentence.

Initially, only one collect was said at Mass, but the Tridentine version of the Roman Missal allowed and often prescribed the use of more than one collect, all but the first being recited under a single conclusion. This custom, which began north of the Alps, had reached Rome by about the 12th century.

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