'The collects are much-neglected springs of living water,' wrote the great Dom Cabrol in 1920. The General Instruction on the Roman Missal tells us that these Opening Prayers gather and summarize all the prayers of the faithful. But what of their history, their form, their vocabulary, their role?

In Appreciating the Collect, scholars from four continents introduce the established textual critical apparatus of Rome's Sant'Anselmo Pontifical Institute of Liturgy, and apply this methodology to specific collects of the 2002 Roman Missal.

Their insights into the history, structure, grammar and vocabulary of the Collect is offered as a service to the whole Church, not only to bishops, academics, and those charged with the onerous task of translation of texts into local languages, but to all who wish to make the words of the Church's prayer their own, and appreciate the Collect.