Collect for Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP)

From AnglicanWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Collect for Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity. It asks that God's "continual pity" cleanse and defend the Church, because the Church cannot continue safely without divine succour. In the 1928 propers it is joined to Ephesians iii. 13-21 and St. Luke vii. 11-17: Saint Paul prays that the Church may be strengthened and filled with the fulness of God, and the Gospel shows Christ's compassion in raising the widow's son at Nain.

Text of the Collect

O LORD, we beseech thee, let thy continual pity cleanse and defend thy Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without thy succour, preserve it evermore by thy help and goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

[1]

Place in Trinitytide

The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity stands in the long practical course after Pentecost. Its collect is ecclesial before it is individual: the petition is not first "cleanse me" but "cleanse and defend thy Church." The collect also names the Church's dependence without embarrassment. The Church is not preserved by institutional continuity alone; it "cannot continue in safety" without God's succour.

Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere describe the broad order of the Sundays after Trinity as inherited moral and pastoral instruction:

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]

The appointed texts make that pattern unusually direct. The collect asks that the Church be cleansed, defended, and preserved. The Epistle prays for inward strengthening by the Spirit and for the indwelling of Christ. The Gospel shows the Lord's pity not as sentiment but as saving action at the gate of death.

Appointed Epistle

The Epistle is Ephesians iii. 13-21. It begins with Paul's tribulations and immediately turns into intercession for the Church. The collect's corporate petition is therefore matched by an apostolic prayer for the whole household named by the Father:

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man.

[3]

The collect's "cleanse and defend" is not merely defensive. Paul prays for fullness: Christ dwelling in the heart, love as root and ground, and knowledge of a love beyond knowledge. Divine pity cleanses by bringing the Church into the life and love of God.

That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.

[4]

The doxology at the end of the Epistle also explains why the collect can pray with confidence. The Church asks to be preserved by divine help and goodness because God is able to work beyond human asking.

Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.

[5]

Appointed Gospel

The Gospel is St. Luke vii. 11-17, the raising of the widow's son at Nain. The collect asks for "continual pity"; the Gospel gives the phrase flesh and blood. Christ sees the bereaved widow and has compassion:

Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.

[6]

The Gospel does not leave pity as sympathy alone. Christ touches the bier, commands the young man to arise, and restores him to his mother. The collect's verbs "cleanse," "defend," and "preserve" should therefore be heard as active saving verbs, grounded in the compassion of the Lord.

And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother.

[7]

The people's response joins fear and praise: "God hath visited his people." That phrase gives the collect its pastoral center. The Church is preserved by the God who visits his people in Christ, not by an abstract benevolence.

And there came a fear on all: and they glorified God, saying, That a great prophet is risen up among us; and, That God hath visited his people.

[8]

Anglican Interpretation

Blunt reads the collect, Epistle, and Gospel as mutually interpretive: Christ's compassion in the Gospel, the Father's pity in the collect, and Paul's intercession in the Epistle all belong together.

The compassion of Christ is illustrated by the Gospel of this Sunday, which is that narrating the restoration to life of the widow's son; the pity of the Father is besought for the Church; and the earnest prayer of St. Paul in the Epistle exemplifies the spirit in which such a prayer should be offered, as well as the nature of the blessings to be prayed for.

[9]

Blunt also prints the Latin source, showing the collect's old Western form and its close continuity with the 1928 English prayer:

Ecclesiam Tuam, quaesumus, Domine, miseratio continuata mundet et muniat; et quia sine Te non potest salva consistere, Tuo semper munere gubernetur.

[10]

Dowden notes one small but significant Prayer Book revision touching this collect. The older English form used "congregation"; the revised form uses "Church," a broader and more ecclesial term:

Among the minor verbal changes made in 1661 were the substitution generally of "who" for the already archaic "which," when referring to a person ... "Church" substituted for "congregation" (e.g., Collect for the sixteenth Sunday after Trinity), which word had already come to be used all but exclusively for persons meeting in some particular building for divine worship.

[11]

The collect is therefore a concentrated prayer for the Church under the mercy of God: cleansing, defense, preservation, help, and goodness. Its Gospel keeps that ecclesiology pastoral. The Church that asks to be cleansed and defended is the Church visited by Christ's compassion, and the Church that prays Paul's prayer for inward strengthening, love, and fullness.

Use in Worship

In 1928 BCP use, this collect is said as the collect of the day for the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity at Holy Communion and in the offices when that Sunday is appointed. It is especially suited for teaching the Church's dependence on divine mercy: the Church is cleansed by God's pity, defended by God's help, and preserved by God's goodness. Its appointed Epistle teaches the inward strengthening for which the Church prays; its Gospel shows the compassion of Christ answering death with life.

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, "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," exact prayer "Collect for Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity" under "The Sixteenth 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 page index 61 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 Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity," Epistle, Ephesians iii. 13, 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928.
  4. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity," Epistle, Ephesians iii. 17-19, 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 Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity," Epistle, Ephesians iii. 20-21, 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928.
  6. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity," Gospel, St. Luke vii. 11, 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 Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity," Gospel, St. Luke vii. 14-15, 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928.
  8. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity," Gospel, St. Luke vii. 16, 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928.
  9. ↑ 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, note on "The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity"; Internet Archive scan/OCR, The annotated book of common prayer. OCR spellings "tlic" and "ofl'ered" 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), p. 315, Latin source under "The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity"; Internet Archive scan/OCR, The annotated book of common prayer. Ligatures and OCR artifacts were normalized to ASCII.
  11. ↑ John Dowden, The Workmanship of the Prayer Book in Its Literary and Liturgical Aspects (London: Methuen & Co., 1899), pp. 132-133, discussion of 1661 verbal changes; Google Books scan, The Workmanship of the Prayer Book. OCR replacement marks were removed.
Retrieved from "https://www.anglicanwiki.org/index.php?title=Collect_for_Sixteenth_Sunday_after_Trinity_(1928_BCP)&oldid=3169"