On this complicated Sunday people in many churches will observe in the Ordinary Form what we might call, for its absurdity, Ascension Thursday Sunday, the transferral of the biblically attested moment, 40 days after the Resurrection, of the Lord’s transit to heaven on a Thursday, with our humanity in an indestructible bond with His divinity. Nine days, not six, intervened between the Lord’s physical ascent and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. On the other hand, liturgically it should be the Seventh Sunday of Easter. On the other, other hand, in the Extraordinary Form Holy Church celebrates in her venerable, traditional calendar – logically and quite properly – the Sunday after the Ascension, because, well, that’s what it is. Transferring the feast to Sunday is a Bad Idea, because it weakens, rather than underscores, its importance and hence our Catholic identity. For Ascension in the Ordinary Form, Father can choose between two Collects: the first cobbled together for the Novus Ordo with material from St Leo the Great; and the other from the post-Tridentine Roman Missal and its antecedents. We’ve seen the first here before, so let’s have a look at the second: