Collect for First Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP)
Collect for First Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for the first Sunday in the long Trinity season. It begins the post-Pentecost course by confessing human weakness and asking for "the help of thy grace," so that obedience to God's commandments may be pleasing to him "both in will and deed." In the 1928 propers it is joined to 1 St. John iv and St. Luke xvi: the Church prays for grace to do good, hears that love begins in God's own prior love, and is warned by the rich man and Lazarus that loveless prosperity is spiritually deadly.
Text of the Collect
O GOD, the strength of all those who put their trust in thee; Mercifully accept our prayers; and because, through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping thy commandments we may please thee, both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Place in Trinitytide
The collect stands immediately after Trinity Sunday. The doctrinal feast has confessed the Holy Trinity; the next Sunday turns that confession into dependent Christian practice. "O God, the strength of all those who put their trust in thee" addresses God not first as an examiner of conduct, but as the strength of believers. "Through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no good thing without thee" denies spiritual self-sufficiency. The petition "grant us the help of thy grace" then names the only way obedience becomes pleasing to God: grace repairs the will and orders the deed.
Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere describe the Prayer Book ordering of the Trinity season as practical moral instruction rooted in inherited Western propers:
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.
On this Sunday, that pattern is especially plain. The collect asks that God's grace make commandment-keeping possible. The Epistle defines love as the fruit of God's prior love. The Gospel shows a man whose prosperity left him without mercy toward the poor man at his gate.
Appointed Epistle
The Epistle is 1 St. John iv. 7-21. It does not treat love as sentiment or natural friendliness. Love is "of God," is manifested in the sending of the Son, and is proved by love of the brother who can be seen:
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
This explains the collect's phrase "both in will and deed." The will is not made pleasing to God by mere inward aspiration, and the deed is not Christian merely because it is outwardly useful. The Epistle joins inward abiding and visible charity: "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us." The prayer therefore asks God to heal the root and the fruit together.
If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.
Appointed Gospel
The Gospel is St. Luke xvi. 19-31, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. It gives the Sunday a pastoral edge. The collect asks for grace to please God in deed; the Gospel shows that neglect of mercy is not a small omission but a revelation of the heart.
There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day: and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table.
The conclusion also answers the rich man's request for a miraculous warning. The appointed Gospel directs hearers back to the ordinary public witness of Scripture: "Moses and the prophets." Within the Prayer Book order, that is not a bare appeal to private reading, but Scripture proclaimed in the Church's common prayer.
Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
Anglican Interpretation
John Henry Blunt's annotated Prayer Book commentary reads the Sundays before Trinity and the Sundays after Trinity as two related parts of the Christian year: doctrine first, then the practical life that rests on that doctrine.
The Sundays and other Festivals from Advent to Trinity form one system of dogmatic illustrations of Christianity: Prayer and the words of Holy Scripture all combining to present the memorial of primary truths before God in acts of worship, and before man as words of instruction. The Sundays after Trinity may be regarded as a system illustrating the practical life of Christianity, founded on the truths previously represented, and guided by the example of our Blessed Lord.
Blunt then applies that pattern to the exact Epistle and Gospel for this day. His reading supports the article's central point: the collect's doctrine of grace is ordered toward real charity.
The love of God and the love of man are -- one may almost say, of course -- the first subject selected for the Eucharistic Scriptures in this system, as shewn in St. John's wonderful definition of love, and in the historical parable of the rich man and Lazarus. In the Epistle St. John shews that God's own love for mankind is the source and spring of all love towards Him, and that all true love towards Him is shewn by the evidence of charity.
The collect is therefore not a generic moral prayer. It is an Anglican summary of sanctification after Pentecost: trust in God, confession of mortal weakness, prayer for grace, and obedience that reaches both intention and act. In classical Anglican terms, it avoids Pelagian confidence in unaided nature and avoids a merely verbal faith. The Christian can do good only with God; with that help, God's commandments become the shape of a life that pleases him.
Use in Worship
In 1928 BCP use, this collect is said as the collect of the day for the First Sunday after Trinity at Holy Communion and in the offices when that Sunday is appointed. It is especially useful for catechesis at the beginning of Trinitytide. The first clause teaches confidence in God as strength; the middle clause teaches dependence on grace; the final petition teaches that obedience is not merely external compliance but the pleasing of God in "will and deed." Its Epistle and Gospel keep the lesson concrete: love begins in God's gift of the Son and is tested at the gate where Lazarus lies.
See Also
- Book of Common Prayer (1928)
- Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
- Sundays after Trinity (1928 BCP)
- Trinitytide in the 1928 BCP
- Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
References
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," exact prayer "Collect for First Sunday after Trinity" under "The First Sunday after Trinity," p. 188; 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928. Complete collect 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, revised and rewritten edition (London: Macmillan and Co., 1907), p. 550, chapter XIII; Internet Archive scan/OCR, A new history of the Book of common prayer, with a rationale of its offices.
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The First Sunday after Trinity," Epistle, 1 St. John iv. 7, p. 188; 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928.
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The First Sunday after Trinity," Epistle, 1 St. John iv. 20-21, p. 188; 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928.
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The First Sunday after Trinity," Gospel, St. Luke xvi. 19, p. 189; 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928. Capitalization from the drop-cap source was regularized.
- ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The First Sunday after Trinity," Gospel, St. Luke xvi. 29-31, p. 189; 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928.
- ↑ 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. 304, note on "The First Sunday after Trinity"; Internet Archive scan/OCR, The annotated book of common prayer. OCR spellings "tlie" and line-break hyphenation were normalized.
- ↑ Church of England; John Henry Blunt, ed., The Annotated Book of Common Prayer, new edition (London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895), p. 304, note on "The First Sunday after Trinity"; Internet Archive scan/OCR, The annotated book of common prayer. OCR spellings "Jolin," "tlie," and "siu" were corrected from context and the received text.