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.

The Collect for the Solemnity of All Saints

Almighty ever-living God, by Whose gift we venerate in one celebration the merits of all the Saints, bestow on us, we pray, through the prayers of so many intercessors, an abundance of the reconciliation with You for which we earnestly long. 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.

by Whose gift – This Solemnity of All Saints is truly a gift from God. The saints themselves are a gift from God. He gives them to us for our comfort, help, and example, and He allows us to rejoice in and celebrate our relationship with them. Why, then, should we turn our backs on God's gifts?

venerate in one celebration the merits of all the Saints – Catholics never worship the saints. Rather, we venerate them. We recognize them as God's intimate friends and our role models and intercessors. We praise them for their love, and we acknowledge their merits. No, they did not earn their way to Heaven, but they did accept and cooperate with God's grace and are now enjoying their reward, eternal life with God.

through the prayers of so many intercessors – We pray for each other here on earth, gladly and often with great vigor. So why shouldn't the saints, whose love is much stronger than ours and who have a front row seat to God, pray for us? Indeed, we ask the saints for their prayers, imploring them to join their prayers to ours, for they see God face to face and love us more than ever.

an abundance of the reconciliation with You for which we earnestly long – We falter in our relationship with God every day. We sin. We fall short of His expectations. We need His mercy and forgiveness, an abundance of reconciliation with Him, every day. The saints pray for us that we may repent of our sins and turn back to God's grace. After all, they want us to be in Heaven with them for all eternity.

The Collect for the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

Almighty ever-living God, increase our faith, hope and charity, and make us love what You command, so that we may merit what You promise. 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.

increase our faith, hope and charity – Faith, hope, and charity are the three theological virtues, which are “infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as His children and of meriting eternal life” (CCC #1813). God gives us the gift of faith that we may believe in Him and all He has revealed. Faith combines with hope, “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness” and trust Christ's promise that these great gifts will be ours through God's grace and our open cooperation (CCC #1817). Charity, self-giving love, allows us to “love God above all things for His own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God” (CCC #1822). With charity, we live out our faith and hope and immerse ourselves in God's infinite love for us.

make us love what You command – Do we love God's commands? Or do we see them as burdensome nuisances that get in the way of our freedom? Actually, God's commands are perfectly designed to give us true freedom. God knows us better than we know ourselves, and His commands fit our nature perfectly. God is never arbitrary. He never commands us to do something just because He says so. He always has a reason, and that reason is to draw us closer to Him. God's commands free us from sin so that we may be truly free to do good and to love God and to know Him better and better. This is why we should love His commands.

so that we may merit what You promise – We do not earn our way to Heaven! The Catholic Church never has, does not now, and never will teach that we earn eternal life. God gives it to us by His grace, which we accept in faith and live out in love. But as we believe, hope, and love, God allows us to merit, to deserve and be worthy of what He has promised and what He gives us. We don't even do this on our own, although we do cooperate, for God gives us the grace even to merit and to grow in His love.

The Collect for the Twenty-Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

Almighty ever-living God, grant that we may always conform our will to Yours and serve Your majesty in sincerity of heart. 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.

grant that we may always conform our will to Yours – This is an easy prayer to pray and a difficult calling to live. God's will is perfect. He knows us better than we know ourselves, and He sees infinitely farther in space and time then we do. We must be humble enough to recognize this and say “yes” to whatever God is doing or permitting in our lives, whether we understand it or not. As St. Paul says in Romans 8:28, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.” That said, though, we need God's grace to help us conform our will to His because we tend to rebel and complain and try to go our own way. This is why we pray as we do today, that our hearts open to grace and that grace moves our wills to join as one with His.

serve Your majesty – God created us to love and serve Him. Period. That is the whole purpose of our life, and it should be our highest joy. Yet it is so easy to get distracted by the things of this world. They tend to take priority over our service to God when they are actually given to us that we may use them to serve God.

in sincerity of heart – We humans are plagued by mixed motives. We love God and want to serve Him and please Him and conform ourselves to His will, but then we falter. We turn selfish. We want to be recognized and honored by others so that we feel better about ourselves. We fail to become transparent and allow God's light to shine through us. Rather, we block the light with our own desires and intentions. This is why we need to pray for sincerity of heart. Sincerity refers to a freedom from deceit and a truth in intention. We can never deceive God, but we must stop deceiving ourselves and allow God to purify our motives and our service with His grace and love.