Today’s Collect is, to my mind, one of the most beautiful of the whole liturgical year. What are “those things of which our conscience is afraid”? They have to do I think, with the bitter relics left behind by our sins, even when these sins have been forgiven. Long after a sin has been washed away in the pure water of sacramental absolution, the ghost of that sin lingers to haunt us and to taunt us with shameful memories, with fits of anxiety and remorse. The Collect we pray today makes us ask God to put away “those things of which our conscience is afraid,” the things that paralyze us in prayer, the things that prevent us from being bold and confident in prayer.
COLLECT
Almighty and everlasting God,
who in the abundance of your fatherly love exceed all that we desire or deserve,
pour out your mercy upon us,
putting away those things of which our conscience is afraid,
and bestowing those which we are not worthy to ask.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and

This morning I came upon this marvelous translation of the traditional Collect for the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary and simply had to share it. The translator was John, Marquess of Bute, and the text is found in Volume II of The Roman Breviary Reformed By Order of the Most Holy Oecumenical Council of Trent (William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London, 1879), p. 708.
O God, Whose Only–begotten Son,
by living, dying, and rising again,
hath purchased everlasting joy for us,
mercifully grant that by calling these things to mind
in the Blessed Virgin Mary’s most holy Garden–of–Roses,
we may learn better both to follow what they set forth,
and to strive after what they promise.
Through the Same our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son,
Who liveth and reigneth with Thee,
in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.