Gospel Acclamation: First Sunday in Advent

Show us Lord, Your love; and grant us Your salvation.

As we begin the season of Advent, a season of waiting, reflection, and repentance, today's Gospel acclamation offers us a prayer that we can use throughout our Advent meditations.

As we ask our Lord to show us His love and grant us His salvation, we should open our hearts to receive both that love and that salvation. We should also remember that God wants to shower us in His love. In fact, He does so at every moment just by keeping us in existence. He does that because He loves us.

What's more, in 1 Timothy 2:4, we read that God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” We can be certain, then, that God will give us every bit of grace we need to be saved. He wants us home in Heaven with Him for all eternity.

Let us pray, then, throughout this Advent, that we can open our eyes to see God's love, our minds to know it, and our hearts to experience it. And let us pray that we will embrace the salvation that our Lord so lovingly holds out to us and prepare our souls for a full immersion in His love in Heaven.

Gospel Acclamation: The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is to come!

Jesus is the ultimate Davidic king, the fulfillment of the covenant oath God swore to David that a king would arise from his line, a king who would reign forever. The Davidic kingdom would return in more glory than David himself could ever imagine, for it would be the Kingdom of God.

This is what we proclaim in today's Gospel acclamation on Christ the King Sunday. Jesus comes in the name of the Lord, for He is the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Son of God, one with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He comes to unite us to the Trinity through grace and through the indwelling presence of God in our souls.

So we proclaim Him blessed as He blesses us, and we proclaim the kingdom of God that has come, is coming, and will come definitively at the end of time.

Gospel Acclamation: Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.

As we approach the end of the liturgical year, the Church invites us to reflect on the last things. We are encouraged to think about our own death and judgment, which are inevitable and may come unexpectedly. We are asked to meditate on the end of the world, which is also inevitable, and no one knows when it will arrive.

Therefore, we must be prepared. We must live in such as way as to be ready to go at a moment's notice whenever our Lord comes for us, whether that be our own death or the end times. This means constant prayer, reception of the sacraments, especially confession and the Eucharist, and a longing for God's will, no matter what it may be.

This acclamation also invites us to face the future with confidence. We are to stand up and raise our heads. We are to look forward with eagerness to the coming of our Lord, for He brings our redemption with Him. This is a very good thing, and we should be longing for our Lord to come, watching and waiting with attention and joy and love.

Gospel Acclamation: Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Jesus Christ is the firstborn of the dead; to Him be glory and power, forever and ever.

Today's Gospel Acclamation is prime example of praise. Jesus is the firstborn of the dead. He is risen from the dead. He lives and will always live. And He will bring us to eternal life and resurrection with Him.

What does it mean to give Jesus glory and power? He has those already. We cannot add anything to them. Yet we can and must recognize and admit Jesus' glory and power. We must acknowledge His divinity and open ourselves to His work in our minds, hearts, and lives. We must embrace Him in His glory and power. We must tell others of that glory and power in our words and in our lives.

How often do our prayers turn to praise? Are we too busy asking God for what we want? As important as petitions are, we should always strive to begin and end our prayers with praise and expressions of love for God, Who has surrounded us with His love. Today's acclamation can provide an example and a starting point for our own praise as we turn our minds to how wonderful our God really is.