Collect for Eighth Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP)
Collect for Eighth Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer. Its petitions move from God's providential rule to moral purification: the Church asks that hurtful things be removed, profitable things given, and Christian life ordered under the same divine providence confessed in the collect's opening address.
Text of the Collect
O GOD, whose never-failing providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth; We humbly beseech thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things which are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The collect begins by naming God's "never-failing providence." This is not merely a general doctrine of creation. In the prayer's grammar, providence is the reason the Church may ask confidently for removal and gift: God orders heaven and earth, and therefore the faithful may ask him to order the conditions of their own obedience.
The two petitions are deliberately paired. "Put away from us all hurtful things" is negative and penitential; "give us those things which are profitable for us" is positive and formative. The prayer does not ask the worshipper to decide unaided what is helpful. It asks God, whose providence sees what human beings do not, to remove what damages Christian life and to give what truly serves it.
Historical Source
The collect stands in the Western collect tradition. Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere print the Latin original for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity in their source apparatus for the Trinity season:
Eighth. Deus, cujus providentia in sui dispositione non fallitur, te supplices exoramus, ut noxia cuncta submoveas, et omnia nobis profutura concedas.
The modern 1928 Common Prayer source index identifies the same collect as Sarum in origin and notes its 1662 variation:
The Eighth Sunday after Trinity
Sarum . Varied in 1662
"O God, whose never-failing providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth..."
This history explains both the collect's brevity and its strong theological compression. Cranmerian and later Prayer Book English expands the Latin contrast between "noxia" and "profutura" into the worshipping language of "hurtful things" and "things which are profitable for us."
Providence and the Shape of the Petition
The Prayer Book Society of Canada commentary on the lectionary reads the collect as a confession before it is a request:
Today's Collect is a confession of God's never-failing providence (that is, his all-seeing and all-knowing loving care for us), and of his gracious ordering of all things in heaven and earth.
That interpretation fits the collect's internal logic. The address to God supplies the doctrine; the petition supplies the response. The Church does not merely accept providence as an idea, but prays to be governed by it. "Hurtful" and "profitable" are therefore spiritual categories before they are circumstantial ones: something may be pleasant and yet hurtful, difficult and yet profitable.
The same commentary notes the collect's moral order:
In the Collect we ask that God may (a) put away from us all hurtful things, and (b) give us all things that are profitable. The order is always the same -- repenting of evil and then turning to the good.
Clause by clause, then, the collect teaches a practical doctrine of sanctification. God's providence "ordereth" all things; the worshipper asks to be disentangled from what would harm life in the Spirit; and the same worshipper asks to receive whatever God judges profitable for salvation, obedience, and perseverance.
Appointed Epistle
The appointed Epistle is Romans 8:12-17. In the 1928 BCP it begins with moral debt and ends with adoption and inheritance:
BRETHREN, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
The Epistle clarifies what the collect's "hurtful things" include. The flesh is not simply physical embodiment, but life governed away from God. Paul's alternative is not self-improvement by natural strength, but mortification "through the Spirit." The collect's first petition is thus not vague avoidance of trouble; it asks for God's providential help against those things that draw the baptized back into bondage.
The same passage also grounds the positive petition for what is "profitable":
For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
Charles Kingsley, preaching on this same appointed Epistle, sharply distinguishes true mortification from prudential restraint. He insists that the Spirit is the agent of real moral death to sin:
Through the Spirit. The Spirit of God and of Christ. Keep that in mind, for that is the only way, the right way, to mortify and kill in us these vices and passions, which, unless we kill them, will kill us.
The collect and Epistle therefore meet in a shared account of Christian agency. The believer must mortify the deeds of the body, but that mortification is requested as divine grace: God removes the hurtful and gives the profitable through Christ.
Appointed Gospel
The appointed Gospel is Matthew 7:15-21, Christ's warning about false prophets and fruit:
BEWARE of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.
The Gospel gives a public and ecclesial edge to the collect. "Hurtful things" are not limited to private temptations; they include false teaching, false profession, and religious speech that does not bear obedient fruit. The collect's doctrine of providence therefore guards discernment: the Church asks God to remove what would deceive, corrupt, or hinder the fruit of obedience.
Kingsley reads the Gospel's "fruit" as the real effect of teaching upon life:
His fruit is what you gather from him; and what you gather from him is, not merely the notions and doctrines which he puts into your head, but the way of life in which he makes you live.
Read beside the collect, the Gospel makes "profitable" concrete. What God gives is not merely safer circumstance, but teaching, discipline, and grace that lead to good fruit. What God removes is whatever would leave the lips saying "Lord, Lord" while the life refuses the Father's will.
Liturgical and Theological Use
In the 1928 BCP the collect is prayed within the Communion propers and may also shape the offices and devotional prayer of the week according to the Prayer Book's ordinary use of the collect of the day. Its theology is especially suited to Trinitytide, when the Church repeatedly prays for grace to live what has been confessed in the great feasts from Advent through Trinity Sunday.
The collect's structure is also pastoral. It allows worshippers to pray when they do not yet know which circumstances are truly profitable. It teaches them to entrust that judgment to God, while still asking actively for purification, deliverance, and growth. Its appointed Epistle gives the inward pattern: life through the Spirit rather than bondage to the flesh. Its appointed Gospel gives the outward test: good fruit rather than empty profession.
See Also
- Book of Common Prayer (1928)
- Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
- Church Calendar (1928 BCP)
- Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
External Links
- 1928 Common Prayer Standard Book PDF
- Society of Archbishop Justus: 1928 BCP Propers PDF
- Procter and Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, chapter XIII
- Common Prayer commentary for Trinity 8
References
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The 1928 Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, Standard Book accepted in 1928), "Collect for Eighth Sunday after Trinity," in "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," p. 199; verified against the 1928 Common Prayer Standard Book PDF, page label Sec2:ccv, and compared word for word with the Society of Archbishop Justus transcription.
- ↑ 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), Additional Note to chapter XIII, p. 553, "The following are the originals of the Collects for the Sundays after Trinity"; Project Canterbury transcription by Charles Wohlers.
- ↑ New Every Morning Anglican Fellowship, "Sources of the Seasonal Collects," section V, Trinitytide, "The Eighth Sunday after Trinity"; Sources of the Seasonal Collects.
- ↑ Prayer Book Society of Canada, Common Prayer: A Commentary on the Prayer Book Lectionary, vol. 4, Trinity Sunday to the Twelfth Sunday After Trinity (Charlottetown, PEI: St. Peter Publications, n.d.), pp. 119-120, excerpt for "The Eighth Sunday after Trinity"; Lectionary Central transcription, reprinted with permission of the publisher.
- ↑ Prayer Book Society of Canada, Common Prayer: A Commentary on the Prayer Book Lectionary, vol. 4, Trinity Sunday to the Twelfth Sunday After Trinity (Charlottetown, PEI: St. Peter Publications, n.d.), pp. 119-120, excerpt for "The Eighth Sunday after Trinity"; Lectionary Central transcription, reprinted with permission of the publisher.
- ↑ 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 Epistle. Romans viii. 12." for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, in "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," p. 200; 1928 Common Prayer Standard Book PDF, page label Sec2:ccvi.
- ↑ 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 Epistle. Romans viii. 12." for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, in "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," p. 200; 1928 Common Prayer Standard Book PDF, page label Sec2:ccvi.
- ↑ Charles Kingsley, Town and Country Sermons, Sermon XXIII, "The Flesh and the Spirit," for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, on Romans viii. 12; Project Gutenberg eBook #11536, released March 10, 2004.
- ↑ 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 Gospel. St. Matthew vii. 15." for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, in "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," p. 200; 1928 Common Prayer Standard Book PDF, page label Sec2:ccvi.
- ↑ Charles Kingsley, Town and Country Sermons, Sermon XIII, "False Prophets," for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity, on Matthew vii. 16; Project Gutenberg eBook #11536, released March 10, 2004.