The Collects for Advent are marvelous prayers, homilies if you will, on the faith and life of the Church. The Collects in the BCP teach us to know the power, the wisdom, the majesty, and mercy of God, and much of our duty both to God and to our neighbor. The doctrine taught therein about the person and work of Jesus Christ and the life of the Church is not just part of our collective memory … through the liturgical discipline and biblical content of the BCP's Collects the wisdom of the Fathers becomes part of our personal memory -- in taking these Collects to heart we do not live in the past … the past lives in us as a present and an eternal reality.
For Advent 1: Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty, to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.
The constituent parts of a Collect are –
the invocation … Almighty God
the recital of some doctrine or fact, the basis of the petition … Jesus shall come again in His glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead
the petition itself, rising upon this doctrine ... give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life
the aspiration …. that we may rise to life immortal (God inspires that we may aspire before we expire!)
the address: to the Father, through the Son on our behalf, by the Holy Spirit, … through Him who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever
This year especially we pray earnestly: O LORD, raise up (we pray thee) thy power, and come among us, and with great might succor us! (Collect for Advent 4)
JSH+