Well, Lent II’s collect is on failure, and I failed to get a post out in Lent III or IV, but as I said last week, I plan to catch up.

I’ve given the collects for Lent I and II the tags ‘fasting’ and ‘failure’. The word that springs to mind with the collect for Lent III is frailty.

This collect is marked by a kind of pleading style – I’m never quite sure how to translate ‘beseech’ into more colloquial English. ‘Beg’ seems too harsh, as though God’s grace has to be wrung out of him. ‘Ask’ is too weak. ‘Implore’ is barely more common than beseech. In any case, this collect is presenting God with an urgent request.

That’s also seen in the fact that we are expressing before God our hearty (i.e. heartfelt) desires. This is a prayer that assumes a context of pouring out our hearts before God. Zahl and Barbee point out that the reference to the heart picks up on the ‘new and contrite hearts’ we ask for day and night during Lent. We are, to some degree, simultaneously asking for and offering to God the broken, contrite heart of Psalm 51.

But the thing we ask God to do in this collect is protect us, to be our defence. This was actually the core request in Lent II as well. It’s an acknowledgment of our vulnerability.

I’m given to understand – once again from Zahl and Barbee, that these collects originate from the turbulent years of the late 6th century. The ‘enemies’ in mind, then, may have been literal invaders at that time. It links in with a Lenten theme that I have scarcely mentioned thus far: our mortality. We may think that we stand in less immediate mortal danger than the inhabitants of 6th century Rome (though the international scene is extremely unstable at present) but this collect serves as a gentle reminder that if we do enjoy relative peace at present, that is by the grace of God.

Perhaps today most readers will more readily think of the enemies of our souls. Again, Lent reminds us how vulnerable we are. So often in our fight with sin, we are alive to the pressures of the flesh and the world, but forget the temptation of the devil. Every day we have cause to pray ‘deliver us from the evil one’.

With Good Friday rapidly approaching (granted, much closer than it was during Lent III) this collect helps me appreciate more elements of what Christ achieved on the cross. But I suppose that should probably wait until next week…