The Divine Service – Hymnary, p. 62:4-9
The Entrance
The Entrance concludes with the Salutation and the Collect.
The Salutation is a greeting of the ancient church. One says, “The Lord be with you,” and the other replies, “And with your spirit.” Sometimes it is modernized as “The Lord be with you,” “And also with you.”
At this place in the liturgy, however, the former expression is more meaningful. The one who is greeting us is the called servant of the word, who is commanded to feed God’s people with His gifts. (Acts 20:28 – …Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood.) He greets the people of God with the prayer that God come to dwell with them, which He will do through word and sacrament. The people respond that God will also be with the spirit of the man who is to bring God’s gift to the people, so that He will do it faithfully.
Then follows the Collect for the Day. A Collect is a prayer that collects one or more petitions that reflect one theme. In this case it is the theme of the day. The Collect is a “Proper,” that is, as part of the service that changes from Sunday to Sunday according to the church year. Look at the collect for today, the 20th Sunday after Pentecost:
“O God, whose almighty power is made known chiefly in showing mercy and pity, grand us the fullness of your grace that we may be partakers of your heavenly treasures; through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”
A quick look at the collects will reveal that they express the hopeless circumstances in which we sinners find ourselves and the mercy and pity of God in saving us.
This prayer reflecting the day’s theme concludes The Entrance and leads into God’s giving of His gifts in The Service of the Word.