Collect for Fourth Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP)

Collect for Fourth Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for the Fourth Sunday after Trinity. It asks God, "the protector of all that trust" in him, to increase mercy, govern and guide the Church through temporal things, and keep his people from losing the things eternal. In the 1928 propers it stands with Romans viii.18-23, on present suffering and the redemption of the body, and St. Luke vi.36-42, on mercy, judgment, forgiveness, giving, and self-examination.

Text of the Collect

O GOD, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy; Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that, thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal. Grant this, O heavenly Father, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Prayer Book Setting

The Fourth Sunday after Trinity continues the early Trinitytide instruction in Christian life after Pentecost. The collect does not begin with human resolve. It begins with God as protector, confesses that apart from him "nothing is strong, nothing is holy," and then asks that mercy be increased before the Church is sent through the changing world.

The appointed Epistle gives the horizon of the collect's final petition. "Things temporal" include real suffering, creaturely bondage, and bodily groaning; "things eternal" are not abstraction, but the promised glory and redemption for which creation waits:

I RECKON that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.

The Epistle ends by naming the Christian's present possession and future hope together. The "firstfruits of the Spirit" are already given, but the body still waits for redemption. The collect's request for rule and guidance therefore belongs to pilgrims who are already touched by mercy but not yet at the end:

And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

Appointed Gospel

The Gospel is St. Luke vi.36-42. It gives the ethical shape of the mercy requested in the collect. The Church asks God to "increase and multiply" mercy upon her, and the Gospel immediately commands that received mercy become merciful practice toward others:

BE ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful. Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven: give, and it shall be given unto you.

The Gospel also guards the collect from vague piety. If God is asked to be "our ruler and guide," the disciple must receive correction before presuming to correct another. Divine guidance begins with the beam in one's own eye:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Clause by Clause

"O God, the protector of all that trust in thee" gives the collect its posture. Trust is not self-confidence; it is the creature's dependence on God's preserving care. The next clause, "without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy," explains why the prayer must ask for mercy rather than merely exhort the congregation to moral effort.

Edward Meyrick Goulburn reads this clause as joining strength and holiness:

The doctrine of this Collect is the doctrine of that sublime text: "They that wait upon the Lord" ... "shall renew their strength" ... Again, just observe the implication that holiness is moral strength.

"Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy" is the center from which the remaining petitions flow. The collect does not ask for isolated acts of divine help, but for mercy to be multiplied so that the Christian's passage through temporal life may be governed toward eternal life. Goulburn makes this a baptismal and persevering petition:

"Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy," -- that mercy which thou didst show us at our Baptism, when thou didst engraft us into the body of Christ, -- that mercy which was renewed at our Confirmation, in the bestowal upon us of the sevenfold gift of grace.

"Thou being our ruler and guide" gives the collect both outward and inward direction. God rules by providence, ordering the circumstances through which his people pass; he guides by Word and Spirit, teaching the conscience and will. Goulburn distinguishes the two movements:

A life lived under God's rule and guidance, -- "that thou being our ruler and guide." 1st., under His rule. The original word expresses the action of a helmsman in turning the rudder, or of a horseman in turning the rein.

The final petition, "so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal," is not contempt for the created order. It is a prayer for right passage through a world where even good temporal things can become hindrances if they are not received under God's rule and guidance. Goulburn's historical note is especially useful here because it explains the older Latin phrase:

The last clause runs thus in the Latin: -- "That we may so pass through temporal good things that we lose not eternal good things." The compilers of our Prayer Book have struck their pen through the word "good," and have thus generalized the aspiration of the Collect.

Historical Development

The collect is inherited from the older Western liturgical tradition and appears in the Sarum line behind the English Prayer Book. Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere print its Latin original in their note on the Sundays after Trinity:

Protector in te sperantium Deus, sine quo nihil est validum, nihil sanctum; multiplica super nos misericordiam tuam, ut te rectore, te duce, sic transeamus per bona temporalia ut non amittamus aeterna.

New Every Morning Anglican Fellowship's index of seasonal collect sources likewise identifies the Fourth Sunday after Trinity collect as Sarum in origin and notes that both Epistle and Gospel were present in 1549:

The Fourth Sunday after Trinity

The Church of England's 1662 text is substantially the same collect, with punctuation and conclusion differences from the American 1928 Standard Book. That continuity shows that the 1928 collect stands within the inherited Prayer Book sequence rather than as a new devotional composition:

O God, the protector of all that trust in thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us thy mercy; that, thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal: Grant this, O heavenly Father, for Jesus Christ's sake our Lord. Amen.

Theological Use

The collect teaches dependence, mercy, and holy passage. Dependence appears in the address to God as protector and in the confession that nothing is strong or holy apart from him. Mercy appears both as the Church's need and as the Gospel's command: those who ask mercy from the Father must be merciful, forgiving, and generous. Holy passage appears in the contrast between temporal things and eternal things, read with Romans viii as a prayer for perseverance amid suffering, bodily groaning, and hope.

For preaching and catechesis, the collect can be read in four movements. First, God protects those who trust him. Second, strength and holiness come only from him. Third, multiplied mercy forms merciful practice, as St. Luke vi commands. Fourth, God's rule and guidance carry the Church through the temporal order without losing the eternal inheritance promised in Christ.

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)

External Links

• 1928 Book of Common Prayer Standard Book PDF
• Church of England: The Fourth Sunday after Trinity
• Procter and Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, chapter XIII
• Goulburn, The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer
• Sources of the Seasonal Collects