In the prayer of the faithful we pray for the needs of the Church, public authorities and the salvation of the world, for those who are oppressed, and for the local community. These prayers are also know as the general intercessions. They are meant to be general in style although sometimes we do add specific requests. A prayer for the sick becomes more specific when we add names of our parishioners or names of our loved ones to the prayer. Our prayers for the poor and oppressed sometimes take on the face of those in our sister parish in Haiti. Sometimes people request to pray for the end to abortions and we need to expand that thought to a prayer for the respect of all life from conception to natural death so as to encompass issues like the death penalty and euthanasia. Each and every week we do add a moment of silence to allow all present to ask for their personal prayers to be heard by our loving and compassionate God. The priest closes the Liturgy of the Word with the collect style prayer after the petitions. Remember that the collect style prayer is one that collects all of our prayers together and is voiced by the priest