Collect for Sexagesima Sunday (1928 BCP)

Collect for Sexagesima Sunday (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for "The Sunday called Sexagesima, or the second Sunday before Lent." It stands in the Prayer Book's Pre-Lenten Season between Septuagesima and Quinquagesima, and it is read with the appointed Epistle from 2 Corinthians 11 and the Gospel of the Sower from St. Luke 8.

Text of the Collect

O LORD God, who seest that we put not our trust in any thing that we do; Mercifully grant that by thy power we may be defended against all adversity; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The collect begins with God's sight: "who seest." Sexagesima does not ask God to notice human achievement, but confesses that God already sees the truth about it. The phrase "we put not our trust in any thing that we do" is not a denial that Christians must labour, repent, hear, and obey. It is a denial that any such work can become the ground of confidence before God. The petition then turns from human insufficiency to divine protection: "by thy power" the faithful may be defended "against all adversity."

Place in Pre-Lent

The 1928 BCP prints Sexagesima under the heading "PRE-LENTEN SEASON." A modern Anglican source catalogue identifies the inherited source of the appointment:

The three Sundays before Lent - their counting names taken from the Latin numerals for the seventieth, sixtieth, and fiftieth days before Easter - are all from the Sarum Use, with one exception in Quinquagesima, which is Cranmer's 1549.

Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere describe the broader aim of these Sundays before Lent. Their account explains why Sexagesima combines warning, effort, and humility:

The design of the services on these Sundays is to call us away from the joy of Christmas, in order to prepare ourselves for the fasting and humiliation of Lent; from the manner of Christ's coming into the world, to think of our sins, which were the cause of the sufferings of His life.

John Henry Blunt connects Sexagesima especially with St. Paul. In the old form of the collect, the Apostle of the Gentiles was mentioned directly; the English Prayer Book form replaced that phrase with trust in God's power:

On all three of the Sundays before Lent the Apostle St. Paul is set forth as an illustrious example of self-denial, zeal, and suffering for Christ's sake; and on Quinquagesima his noble words as to the valuelessness of all such discipline and zeal without love, set the true Christian seal upon asceticism in every degree.

Clause-by-Clause Reading

"O LORD God" gives the collect a sober address, and "who seest" places the whole prayer before divine judgement. The first clause refuses confidence "in any thing that we do." This is not quietism. The appointed Epistle displays strenuous apostolic labour, while the collect insists that such labour cannot be trusted in as merit. The second clause therefore asks that God's own power defend the Church against adversity: temptations, outward afflictions, spiritual pride, shallow hearing, and the choking cares named in the Gospel.

Melville Scott reads the collect as the meeting point of effort and humility:

This combines most harmoniously the two aspects of the Sunday, its exhortation to activity, and its warning against self-righteousness.

Scott's exposition also makes the collect's negative and positive movements explicit:

He may not trust "in anything that he does," though, like S. Paul, he is to do everything. It is hard for us not to trust in ourselves, just in proportion as we are really doing something; but even the labours of a S. Paul were not to be trusted in.

Appointed Epistle

The Epistle appointed with this collect is 2 Corinthians 11:19-31. Paul recounts labours, sufferings, and pastoral anxiety, and then refuses to glory in anything except infirmity:

In labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep;

The collect and Epistle interpret one another. Paul is not passive; he works, suffers, travels, teaches, and bears "the care of all the churches." Yet the force of the passage is not self-congratulation. It is the boast of weakness, placed under God's knowledge: "God ... knoweth that I lie not." Sexagesima therefore teaches that Christian labour is necessary, but trust belongs to God alone.

Scott draws exactly that connection between Paul's activity and humility:

So truly was S. Paul one who combined the fullest activity with the deepest humility. He trusted in Christ to do all for Him, in Him, and by Him; and Christ did it.

Appointed Gospel

The Gospel appointed with the collect is St. Luke 8:4-15, the parable of the Sower. Its interpretation names the seed plainly and warns against every way in which hearing may fail:

Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.

The Gospel's final description of good ground gives the positive answer to the collect's petition for defense:

But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.

The adversities named by implication in the collect appear in the parable: the devil taking away the word, trial withering shallow faith, and cares, riches, and pleasures choking the plant. The collect asks to be defended against these adversities by God's power, so that hearing may become patient fruitfulness.

L. R. Tarsitano's Anglican sermon on Sexagesima reads the Gospel in that same direction:

What must we do? We must seek from God "an honest and good heart," so that having heard the Word of God, we may keep it and bring forth fruit with patience (Luke 8:15).

Anglican Use

In the 1928 BCP, the collect appointed for a Sunday ordinarily supplies the principal collect for that Sunday and its week unless displaced by another provision. Sexagesima therefore forms the Church in a particular pre-Lenten habit: work without self-trust, hearing without presumption, and perseverance without confidence in human strength. The prayer is short, but its appointed readings make it severe and pastoral at once. It warns that religious labour can become self-righteousness, and that hearing can be lost through hardness, shallowness, or distraction; yet it teaches the congregation to ask for God's power precisely where human constancy fails.

See Also

• Book of Common Prayer (1928)
• Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
• Pre-Lent in the 1928 BCP
• Collect for Septuagesima Sunday (1928 BCP)
• Church Calendar (1928 BCP)
• Holy Communion (1928 BCP)

External Links

• 1928 Book of Common Prayer Standard Book PDF
• Lectionary Central: Sexagesima Sunday