Collect for Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP)
Collect for Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity. It asks for grace to withstand "the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil" and to follow God with pure hearts and minds. In the 1928 propers it is joined to 1 Corinthians i. 4-8 and St. Matthew xxii. 34-46: Saint Paul gives thanks for grace and confirmation unto the end, while the Gospel joins the two great commandments to Christ's question concerning the Son of David and David's Lord.
Text of the Collect
LORD, we beseech thee, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil; and with pure hearts and minds to follow thee, the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Place in Trinitytide
The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity continues the practical and moral course of Trinitytide. The collect does not treat temptation as vague uneasiness. It names the traditional threefold enemy of the Christian life: the world, the flesh, and the devil. Yet the petition is not merely defensive. The Church asks not only to withstand temptation, but to follow "the only God" with purified heart and mind.
Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere describe the inherited order of the Sundays after Trinity as a course in Christian virtue, with Epistles and Gospels often interpreting one another:
The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels for the Sundays after Trinity are taken in the order in which they stood in the Sarum Missal. The Epistles are a series of exhortations to the practice of Christian virtues, and form part of that dislocated series of readings taken in order from S. Paul's Epistles which has already been noticed. The Gospels are selected from the parables, miracles, and conversations of our Lord, and in many cases are meant to be illustrative of the teaching of the Epistle.
The collect's two movements therefore belong together. Grace enables resistance to false loves, and purity of heart and mind enables the soul to follow the God whom the Gospel commands the faithful to love with all heart, soul, and mind.
Appointed Epistle
The Epistle is 1 Corinthians i. 4-8. It begins with thanksgiving for grace already given in Jesus Christ. The collect asks for grace to withstand temptation because Christian perseverance is not self-sufficient:
I THANK my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ; that in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge; even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you.
The Epistle ends by looking toward the coming of Christ and the gift of being confirmed blameless unto the end. That final confirmation gives the collect its eschatological edge: the Christian asks for grace now in view of the day of the Lord.
So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Appointed Gospel
The Gospel is St. Matthew xxii. 34-46. The first part contains Christ's answer to the lawyer concerning the great commandment. Its wording is closely related to the Summary of the Law (1928 BCP) used in Holy Communion:
Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
The second part of the Gospel turns from the lawyer's test to Christ's own question. The Lord who commands total love of God also reveals that the Christ is more than David's son:
While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, saying, What think ye of Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool?
The Gospel closes with the silencing of Christ's opponents. The collect's prayer to follow "the only God" is therefore not generic moralism. It is ordered toward the God revealed by Christ, David's son and David's Lord.
If David then call him Lord, how is he his son? And no man was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.
Anglican Interpretation and Sources
The collect is substantially rooted in the older Western tradition, but the English Prayer Book form expands the inherited Latin into the familiar Anglican wording concerning the world, the flesh, and the devil. Procter and Frere print the Latin source:
Eighteenth. Da quaesumus, Domine, populo tuo diabolica vitare contagia, et te solum Deum pura mente sectari.
A modern source-origin table likewise identifies the collect as a 1662 English form based on Sarum:
The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity
1662 - Based on Sarum
"Lord, we beseech thee, grant thy people grace to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil..."
Blunt reads the collect, Epistle, and Gospel through three comprehensive formulae: the twofold love commandment, the threefold temptation, and the expectation of Christ's coming:
Two comprehensive Christian formulae are given in the Gospel and the Collect for this Sunday. That in the former sets forth the whole duty of the servant of Christ, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind," and "thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The formula of the English Collect is that familiar one of "the world, the flesh, and the devil," which represents all the temptations to which a Christian is liable.
Edward Meyrick Goulburn emphasizes that the English Prayer Book form is fuller than the earlier Latin and that later revision made the three spiritual enemies explicit:
This Collect, as it appears for the first time in the Sacramentary of Gelasius (494), was not nearly so full-bodied as our Reformers and Revisers between them have made it. For "pure heart," in the latter clause, Cranmer wrote "pure heart and mind," improving the rhythm, and adding to the sense.
Goulburn also comments on the change from "avoid the contagions" to "withstand the temptations." The revised English makes the petition plainer while preserving the moral seriousness of temptation:
"To withstand temptation" is a plainer and better phrase than "to avoid contagion." Still the word "avoid" (or "shun") may teach us a useful lesson. There are some temptations, chiefly those to impurity, which are best withstood, not by fighting, but by running away.
The final phrase, "the only God," exposes the idolatry behind temptation. Goulburn's exposition makes this explicit:
Doubtless there is an implication here that the objects of pursuit which the world, the flesh, and the devil propose, are idols or false gods. The world holds out pomps and vanities; the flesh pleasure; the devil position, influence, or pride of intellectual power. All these disappoint in the end; they break up and fail; they do not fill or satisfy the soul.
Use in Worship
In 1928 BCP use, this collect is said as the collect of the day for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity at Holy Communion and in the offices when that Sunday is appointed. It is especially suited for teaching temptation, perseverance, purity of heart and mind, the love of God and neighbor, and the confession of Christ as Lord. The prayer's pastoral force lies in its order: grace first, resistance to temptation next, then positive following after the only God.
See Also
- Book of Common Prayer (1928)
- Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
- Sundays after Trinity (1928 BCP)
- Trinitytide in the 1928 BCP
- Summary of the Law (1928 BCP)
- Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
External Links
- 1928 Common Prayer Standard Book PDF
- Procter and Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer
- Blunt, The Annotated Book of Common Prayer
- Goulburn, The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer
- Sources of the Seasonal Collects
References
- ↑ Collect for Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, in Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, Standard Book accepted in 1928), the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," exact prayer "Collect for Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity" under "The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity"; 1928 Common Prayer, "The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928". Complete collect compared word for word with the Society of Archbishop Justus transcription; OCR spacing artifacts were corrected from the Standard Book text.
- ↑ Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, with a Rationale of Its Offices, revised and rewritten edition (London: Macmillan and Co., 1907), p. 550, chapter XIII; scan/OCR, Internet Archive, "A New History of the Book of Common Prayer".
- ↑ Epistle for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, 1 Corinthians i. 4-6, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," "The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity"; Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer (1928), 1928 Common Prayer, "The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928".
- ↑ Epistle for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, 1 Corinthians i. 7-8, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," "The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity"; Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer (1928), 1928 Common Prayer, "The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928".
- ↑ Gospel for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, St. Matthew xxii. 36-40, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," "The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity"; Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer (1928), 1928 Common Prayer, "The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928".
- ↑ Gospel for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, St. Matthew xxii. 41-44, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," "The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity"; Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer (1928), 1928 Common Prayer, "The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928".
- ↑ Gospel for the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, St. Matthew xxii. 45-46, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," "The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity"; Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer (1928), 1928 Common Prayer, "The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928".
- ↑ Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, with a Rationale of Its Offices, revised and rewritten edition (London: Macmillan and Co., 1907), p. 553, Additional Note to chapter XIII; scan/OCR, Internet Archive, "A New History of the Book of Common Prayer". Latin ligatures normalized to ASCII.
- ↑ New Every Morning Anglican Fellowship, "Sources of the Seasonal Collects," section VIII, "The Sundays after Trinity"; 1928 Common Prayer, "Sources of the Seasonal Collects".
- ↑ Church of England; John Henry Blunt, ed., The Annotated Book of Common Prayer: Being an Historical, Ritual, and Theological Commentary on the Devotional System of the Church of England, new edition (London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895), p. 317, note on "The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity"; Internet Archive scan/OCR, Internet Archive, "The Annotated Book of Common Prayer". OCR spelling and line breaks normalized.
- ↑ Edward Meyrick Goulburn, The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer: An Exposition, Critical and Devotional, abridged from The Collects of the Day (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1883), pp. 316-317, exposition of the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity; scan/OCR, Internet Archive, "The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer". OCR spelling and line breaks normalized.
- ↑ Edward Meyrick Goulburn, The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer, abridged from The Collects of the Day (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1883), p. 317, exposition of the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity; scan/OCR, Internet Archive, "The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer". OCR spelling and line breaks normalized.
- ↑ Edward Meyrick Goulburn, The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer, abridged from The Collects of the Day (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1883), pp. 319-320, exposition of the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity; scan/OCR, Internet Archive, "The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer". OCR spelling and line breaks normalized.