Run Forth to Meet Your Christ with Righteous Deeds at His Coming

Collect

The Mass Collect powerfully captures the active, intentional preparation central to the Advent season as we eagerly await Christ's coming.

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.

Run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming

Run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming.

This urgent call rings out to us in this Advent. It is a call to wake up, to cast off aimless works, and to actively prepare.

The righteousness it speaks of is not mere duty or obligation. It springs from love…its like preparing for the arrival of someone we love. What deeds might delight our Lord when he comes? What gifts prepare room for Him to dwell intimacy with us?

The saints modeled this active anticipation. St. John the Baptist prepared religiously in the wilderness through fasting and bold prophetic preaching aimed toward repentance. St. Joseph hurried to register in Bethlehem at the edict of Caesar Augustus, making straight the way for the Nativity through his obedience.

We too are urged to intentional deeds that give shape to our longing. The Collect suggests alleyways for our efforts—the corridor of righteousness that leads to compassion, truth, justice, temperance, and courage.

Yet under all our striving lies a deeper truth - that righteousness is perfected in only One. Our efforts depend entirely on the merit of Jesus Christ, in whom we place our desperate trust. Without his grace, our most well-intentioned deeds would be filthy rags. But by his Spirit alive in us, our feeble efforts are made sacred.

So let us run! Not to earn anything, but because we have already been given everything in Christ. We run empowered by grace, with robes of righteousness not our own. We run to greet Love himself at the finish line. Come, Lord Jesus! Your children are hurrying to meet you.

Let Us Pray

Lord Jesus, as we set out on this Advent journey, May our eyes remain fixed on You alone. When worries or desires pull us, whisper gently that only You will last.

When busyness threatens to bury us, lift our gaze to higher, truer things unseen. Should doubt or fear seek to hold us captive, free us to dream boldly of Your coming Kingdom.

In all the passing, fleeting things, Lord Jesus, point us to what is eternal and cannot fade. Reorient our hearts by the power of your Spirit to love as You have loved us, wholly and without end.

Come dwell more fully within so that your life shines out in our words, deeds and days ahead. We welcome You, we wait for You, we watch for You, O Emmanuel, our enduring Hope, now and forever.

Amen.