Grant us, we pray, O Lord our God, the constant gladness of being devoted to you, for it is full and lasting happiness to serve with constancy the author of all that is good.
This moving collect prayer for the Thirty-third Sunday of the Year reminds us that serving God is our joy. We may have thought in the past that surrendering our will would entail unbearable hardship. We come to discover that choosing to obey and to serve grants joy and freedom. Jesus said, "I have not come to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me." Pleasing the Father was Jesus' delight. May it be ours as well.
