Collect for Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP)

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Collect for Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity. It asks that God's grace may "prevent and follow us" and make the faithful continually given to good works. In the 1928 propers it is joined to Ephesians iv. 1-6 and St. Luke xiv. 1-11: the Epistle exhorts Christians to walk worthily in humility and unity, while the Gospel joins Christ's healing mercy on the sabbath to his teaching on taking the lowest place.

Text of the Collect

LORD, we pray thee that thy grace may always prevent and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

[1]

Place in Trinitytide

The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity belongs to the Prayer Book's long course of practical Christian instruction after Pentecost. Its collect uses the older sense of "prevent": grace goes before the faithful, follows after them, and keeps their obedience from being treated as self-originating. Good works are therefore not opposed to grace. They are the fruit of grace surrounding and sustaining the Christian life.

Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere describe the broad order of the Sundays after Trinity as a sequence of moral and pastoral formation:

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.

[2]

For this Sunday, that pattern is especially compact. The collect prays for grace that begins, accompanies, and completes holy action. The Epistle names humility, meekness, longsuffering, charity, and ecclesial unity as the form of a worthy walk. The Gospel shows Christ setting a bound man free and teaching that exaltation comes through humility.

Appointed Epistle

The Epistle is Ephesians iv. 1-6. It begins with Paul's captivity but turns immediately to Christian vocation. The worthy walk is not pride in religious achievement, but lowliness, meekness, patience, and love:

I THEREFORE, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

[3]

The Epistle then gives the unity for which the worthy walk exists. The collect's petition that grace make Christians "continually" given to good works is therefore ecclesial as well as moral: grace orders the faithful into one body, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father.

There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

[4]

Appointed Gospel

The Gospel is St. Luke xiv. 1-11. Christ enters the house of a chief Pharisee, heals the man with dropsy, and confronts the lawyers and Pharisees with the question of mercy on the sabbath:

And, behold, there was a certain man before him which had the dropsy. And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day? And they held their peace. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go.

[5]

The Gospel continues with a parable addressed to those choosing places of honor. Its teaching harmonizes with the Epistle's lowliness and with the collect's dependence on preventing and following grace:

When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest seat; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him; and he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest place.

[6]

The close of the Gospel states the rule plainly. The grace prayed for in the collect forms a life that does not seize the highest place, but receives honor as gift:

But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest place; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee. For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

[7]

Anglican Interpretation

Blunt prints the Latin source of the collect, preserving the old Western form behind the English Prayer Book text:

Tua nos, Domine, quaesumus, gratia semper et praeveniat et sequatur; ac bonis operibus jugiter praestet esse intentos.

[8]

Blunt reads the Epistle and Gospel together through the paradox of freedom through humble service. Paul's imprisonment, Christ's healing of the man with dropsy, the release of the ox or ass from the pit, and the command to take the lowest room all point in the same direction:

The idea of the Epistle and Gospel for this Sunday appears to be that of gaining liberty and victory through becoming the humble servants of Christ. St. Paul writes out of his prison, "I the prisoner of the Lord," as he writes in another place, "Remember my bonds:" and one who was in the bonds of an infirmity was brought to Christ, "and He took him, and healed him, and let him go," setting him free from his disease on the instant.

[9]

Blunt then extends the same reading to the one body and one faith of the Epistle. Christian limitation is not spiritual narrowness but the road into true freedom under Christ:

This principle is of a restrictive character: bringing the world out of a free worship of many gods to the worship of One; limiting it to one faith, and to one only means of initiation into the family of the one God. The idea conveyed is one of a bondage to rule and law which leaves no room for invention or wild developement and speculation.

[10]

The collect is therefore not a bare request for moral improvement. It prays for prevenient and following grace, so that the Christian life may be both active in good works and humble in receiving them as God's gift. The Epistle gives that life its ecclesial shape; the Gospel gives it the pattern of Christ's mercy and humility.

Use in Worship

In 1928 BCP use, this collect is said as the collect of the day for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity at Holy Communion and in the offices when that Sunday is appointed. It is especially suited for teaching the relation of grace and good works: grace goes before, accompanies, and completes the obedience it commands. Its appointed Epistle teaches unity in humility, and its Gospel shows healing mercy joined to the promise that "he that humbleth himself shall be exalted."

See Also

References

  1. ↑ 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, exact prayer "Collect for Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity" under "The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity"; 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; rendered PDF pages 62-63 also visually checked.
  2. ↑ 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.
  3. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity," Epistle, Ephesians iv. 1-3, 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928. Punctuation follows the PDF text where the transcription omits a semicolon after "love."
  4. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity," Epistle, Ephesians iv. 4-6, 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928.
  5. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity," Gospel, St. Luke xiv. 2-4, 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928. Punctuation follows the PDF text.
  6. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity," Gospel, St. Luke xiv. 8-9, 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928.
  7. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity," Gospel, St. Luke xiv. 10-11, 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928.
  8. ↑ 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. 316, Latin source under "The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity"; Internet Archive scan/OCR, The annotated book of common prayer. Ligatures and OCR artifacts were normalized to ASCII.
  9. ↑ 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. 316, note on "The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity"; Internet Archive scan/OCR, The annotated book of common prayer. OCR spellings were normalized.
  10. ↑ Church of England; John Henry Blunt, ed., The Annotated Book of Common Prayer, new edition (London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1895), pp. 316-317, note on "The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity"; Internet Archive scan/OCR, The annotated book of common prayer. Spelling retained except where OCR spacing was corrected.
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