This week we Lectio the Liturgy with the Collect for the First Sunday 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, God, for ever and ever.

Often in the opening prayers, or the Collects, we are asking God to grant. What we need to remember is that when we ask God to grant, we are giving him permission to do what we request.  In the prayer today, when we ask for the resolve, we are asking for the strength of will. It is how we choose to act. That means we now must step out and move because our action in the prayer is running forth to meet Christ at his coming.

I was imagining what it would be like for Jesus to be coming. Literally. I wondered what would happen if you or I were out shopping and saw Jesus coming towards us, about a half a block away. Would we meander about, thinking that we would meet up with Him soon, or would we take off in a run to meet Him?

When we get to Him, what are we carrying? All we have are righteous deeds. Righteous, or iustis in Latin, can be thought of as a right relationship. Our prayer implies that our deeds uphold the value of the person in everyone we meet. We treat others like He would treat them.

While it is easy to imagine literally running toward God, it is also possible that our mode of movement towards Him is accomplished by carrying out the righteous deeds that He places before us. These righteous deeds are acts that carry eternal value. They are even those unlikely chance meetings, all pre-arranged by His plan.

Because of the diligence we have in gathering righteous deeds for Him, we, the faithful, are gathered at His right hand. Notice that we ARE gathered. Yes, we are also gathered at His right hand in eternity, and that is one thing that is so amazing about our Faith. So many things we live and have been given are both now and not yet. We can experience the joys of eternal life, both now and not yet. We are seated at His right hand, both now and not yet. 

As I meditated on this prayer, though, one question lingered, “Who are the faithful?” We may consider the “faithful” to be the people who are praying with us. We may even consider the faithful to be everyone who is at mass this weekend around the world. Both of those are correct. 

Technically, the faithful is defined as all the baptized. However, being faithful is not a passive position. The Catechism of the Catholic Church 871 states, “The Christian faithful are those who, inasmuch as they have been incorporated in Christ through Baptism, have been constituted as the people of God; for this reason, since they have become sharers in Christ's priestly, prophetic, and royal office in their own manner, they are called to exercise the mission which God has entrusted to the Church to fulfill in the world, in accord with the condition proper to each one.”

Read that again: The faithful are called to exercise God’s mission that He entrusted to the Church to fulfill in the world. We are called to be priest, prophet, and king, to go out, to be like Christ to others. Why? Because while the prayers of the Mass include prayers for the world around us, the mass is only efficacious for the faithful.

You and I, the faithful, who receive the graces of the Mass and strength of Jesus in the Eucharist, are called to go out to accomplish the righteous deeds that God has planned for us. One deed leads to the next and each one leads us closer and closer to Jesus, who has come, both now and not yet.