The Collect for the First Week of Advent

Grant Your faithful, we pray, almighty God, the resolve to run forth to meet Your Christ with righteous deeds at His coming, so that, gathered at His right hand, they may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Your faithful – We are God's faithful. Think for a moment about what that means. Faith is both a divine gift and a human act. Our faith comes from God. It is a theological virtue, infused into our souls. But it is also our response to that gift. We must accept, embrace, apply, and develop the faith God has given us. Then we will truly merit to be called His faithful.

the resolve to run forth to meet Your Christ – Here is the first request we make in this collect. We ask God for resolve, for a firm determination, a set purpose, a solid intention. We need God's help with this as much as with everything else. We are weak. We waver. We make plans and have great ideas but then fail to carry them out. That's why we need God to strengthen our resolve. Our resolve to do what? To run to meet Jesus! To be ready when He comes for us. This may happen at the end of time, if such occurs during our lifetime, but it will certainly happen when we die. Advent helps us prepare the way for Christ in our hearts that we will be ready to run into His arms whenever He calls us home.

with righteous deeds – Of course, there is no way we can ever earn our salvation. We are saved by God's grace alone. Yet we have a responsibility to cooperate with that grace, and that means obeying our Lord when He tells us to love other people and express our love for them in good works. When Jesus calls us to Him, we bring these works along with us as our gift to Him.

gathered at His right hand – These words suggest the judgment scene from Matthew 25. We want to be among those at Jesus' right hand, in the place of His favor. How do we get there? We have faith in Him, and we live out our faith by obeying Him and caring for the needs of others.

may be worthy to possess the heavenly Kingdom – Jesus is the one Who makes us worthy by His grace and love, expressed to the max in His life, passion, death, and resurrection. But again, we must accept His love and grace and live them out in our lives. Then we will be ready to go home to the kingdom of Heaven. We will be ready to receive our inheritance, the place God has prepared for us from eternity, that we may live in His loving presence forever.

The Collect for Christ the King Sunday

Almighty ever-living God, Whose will is to restore all things in Your beloved Son, the King of the universe, grant, we pray, that the whole creation, set free from slavery, may render Your Majesty service and ceaselessly proclaim Your praise. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Whose will is to restore all things in Your beloved Son – You are already being restored in Christ. When you were baptized, you sacramentally entered into His death and rose with Him in His resurrection. You received His sanctifying grace, God's indwelling presence in your very soul. Even when you sin and weaken or even destroy your relationship with God, He restores that relationship when you turn back to Him, repenting and confessing your sins. Someday, at the end of time, God will fully restore all things in Christ. He will raise up our bodies and join them to our resurrected souls, and He will recreate a new Heaven and a new earth to be our home forever.

the King of the universe – Jesus Christ is King of all, of every time and every place, of all peoples, of the entire universe. What's more, He wants to be the King of your heart. Will you let Him?

the whole creation, set free from slavery – In Romans 8:19-23, St. Paul writes, “For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now; and not only that, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.” When the first human beings sinned, creation fell along with them. This is why there are things like natural disasters and diseases. Now creation awaits its own restoration to freedom at the Second Coming of Christ, groaning with us as we wait for the final incorporation of all things into God. Of course, we have already been set free from slavery to sin and death, but we must choose to accept and live out our freedom.

may render Your Majesty service – We are called to serve God, to place our lives in His hands and obey His will, to love Him with all our hearts and to love our neighbor in Him. How well do we serve our loving Lord?

ceaselessly proclaim Your praise – We are also called to worship God. Indeed, this is part of our service to Him. We must proclaim how wonderful, how amazing, how utterly marvelous He is, and we must mean it with our whole hearts. We must break out in streams of gratitude for what God has done for us and of adoration simply for Who He is. We limited, weak human beings can never love God as much as He loves us (for He loves us infinitely), but we must at least make the effort to love Him as much as we can and to praise Him without end, for when we do that, we begin to live Heaven right now.

The Collect for the Thirty-Third Week in Ordinary Time

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. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

the constant gladness of being devoted to You – Are we devoted to God with constant gladness? Are we content in His presence, thankful to be able to pray to Him and worship Him? We don't normally think about our devotion to God in these terms. Devotion may seem like something solemn and serious, and indeed it is. But it is also a source of joy. God wants us to be glad in Him, to take delight in His love, to be cheerful in our prayer, and to find our pleasure in Him above all.

full and lasting happiness to serve with constancy – The things of this world will never make us truly and fully happy. We might enjoy them and take some satisfaction in them, but this kind of “happiness” quickly fades. Our real happiness, the happiness that will remain no matter what our situation, lies in God. Only in loving and serving Him, constantly and with all our hearts, do we find true, full, and lasting happiness.

the Author of all that is good – God has created all that is good, and all that He has created is good. If this is true, we may wonder why we suffer and why there is evil in the world. First off, God did not create evil. He is not the author of evil. Evil is a deprivation of good or a corruption of something good like blindness is the deprivation of sight or an infection is a corruption of healthy skin. We bring about and choose evil by our own free will, and God permits it because He gave us that free will to start with. He does not violate our freedom to choose. But, thanks be to God, He can and does bring good even out of the evil we get ourselves into.

The Collect for the Thirty-Second Week in Ordinary Time

Almighty and merciful God, graciously keep from us all adversity, so that, unhindered in mind and body alike, we may pursue in freedom of heart the things that are Yours. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

graciously keep from us all adversity – From a purely human point of view, we might be inclined to complain that God has not been doing a very good job of keeping us from adversity this year. We seem to be attacked by hardships on all sides, floundering in difficulties, unable to live as we normally do. We ask ourselves what God is doing with all this and why He is not preventing it when we are praying so much and so hard. Well, for one thing, God's view of the situation is so much better than ours. He sees the big picture, the infinite picture, and we must trust that when He allows adversities (as we label them), He does so only for our ultimate good. Yes, this is hard to accept in the midst of them. But later, when we look back, we will understand. We may have to get to Heaven to really understand, but God will show us these things from His point of view, and we will see clearly. Further, we have to be careful how we define adversity. True adversity is what separates us from God, namely, sin. We certainly can and should pray that God preserve us from hardships, but we absolutely must pray that God preserve us from sin.

unhindered in mind and body alike – What hinders us in mind and body? We may think of various illnesses, pain, sadness, and depression. We might reflect on how our bodies and minds often feel weak and tired. We may even consider how much we have to struggle just to get through the day sometimes in the craziness of this world. But what hinders us most in both mind and body is sin. Sin weakens our will and our intellect. The more we choose to do wrong, the easier it is to do so again and the more we try to rationalize our actions. Sin can weaken our bodies, too, when we chose unhealthy or dangerous actions. So when we pray here that our minds and bodies may be unhindered, we are again first and foremost asking God to keep us from sin.

we may pursue in freedom of heart – Freedom of heart is freedom to love to God and to obey God. It is freedom from slavery to sin and death. This is real, true freedom.

the things that are Yours – God's love, God's will, God's life. These are what we pursue in freedom of heart. We long to bask in God's presence for all eternity, glowing with His love, safe in His arms.