Collect for Third Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP)

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Collect for Third Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for the Third Sunday after Trinity. It asks God mercifully to hear the Church, to sustain the God-given desire to pray, and to defend and comfort his people in "all dangers and adversities." In the 1928 propers it stands with 1 St. Peter v.5-11, on humility, vigilance, and suffering under God's mighty hand, and St. Luke xv.1-10, Christ's parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin.

Text of the Collect

O LORD, we beseech thee mercifully to hear us; and grant that we, to whom thou hast given an hearty desire to pray, may, by thy mighty aid, be defended and comforted in all dangers and adversities; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

[1]

Prayer Book Setting

The Third Sunday after Trinity belongs to the early Trinitytide sequence, where the collects and lessons press the post-Pentecost life of the Church into humility, charity, vigilance, and perseverance. The collect's first movement is not explanation but petition: "O Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to hear us." The prayer assumes danger, but it begins with God's mercy and with God's hearing of the Church's supplication.

Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere describe the broader post-Trinity pattern as an inherited series of 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]

That pattern matters here. The Epistle speaks of humility under "the mighty hand of God" and of the adversary who seeks to devour. The Gospel shows the Shepherd seeking the lost and heaven rejoicing over repentance. The collect gathers both into prayer: the Church asks to be heard, defended, and comforted because humility, vigilance, repentance, and perseverance are not self-made achievements.

Clause by Clause

The address "O LORD" is followed by the plea "mercifully to hear us." The collect is not merely a request for improved devotional feeling. It is a deprecation, a prayer made under the pressure of dangers and adversities. Edward Meyrick Goulburn explains the opening in relation to the Latin background and the appointed Epistle:

Deprecation means prayer against evils which are hanging over our heads, and which we foresee as contingencies not unlikely to arise. The five petitions in the earlier part of the Litany beginning with "from," are deprecations. The Epistle warns us that our "adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour" and bids us "humble" ourselves "under the mighty hand of God." This Collect is the humble "deprecation," by which we endeavor to put in practice the Apostle's holy precept.

[3]

"To whom thou hast given an hearty desire to pray" makes prayer itself a grace. The congregation does pray, but it confesses that the desire to pray has first been given by God. The clause therefore answers pride before the Epistle is even read: a humble Church does not boast in its own devotion, but receives even supplication as God's gift.

Goulburn presses that point directly:

Observe that the "hearty desire to pray" must be "given" by God; the impulse under which we are driven to approach Him comes from Himself.

[4]

The phrase "by thy mighty aid" connects the collect to the Epistle's "mighty hand of God." The Church asks not merely for inward calm but for divine action: to be defended where dangers threaten and comforted where adversities press upon the heart. "Defended" names God's protection; "comforted" names the inward consolation by which that protection is known and trusted.

Goulburn notes that the final 1662 wording expanded the older ending and made the twofold petition explicit:

"Dangers," of course, correspond to "defended"; and "adversities" to "comforted"; the prayer is, that in all dangers which threaten, God would defend us, and in all adversities which beset, He would comfort us.

[5]

Appointed Epistle

The Epistle is 1 St. Peter v.5-11. It begins with subjection and humility, then gives the theological reason: God resists pride and gives grace to the humble. The collect's "hearty desire to pray" belongs precisely here, because prayer begins by taking one's place under God's mighty hand.

ALL of you be subject one to another, and. be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.

[6]

The Epistle then names the danger. The Christian life is not sentimentalized. The adversary is active, affliction is shared by the brethren in the world, and resistance must be steadfast in faith. The collect's petition for defence is therefore not vague fearfulness but apostolic realism.

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour: whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world.

[7]

The Epistle ends with grace after suffering: God "make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you." That ending interprets "comforted" in the collect. Comfort is not escape from all suffering; it is God's strengthening of those whom he has called to eternal glory by Christ Jesus.

Appointed Gospel

The Gospel is St. Luke xv.1-10. It begins with publicans and sinners drawing near, and with religious murmuring against Christ's reception of sinners. The collect asks God mercifully to hear those who pray; the Gospel shows that divine mercy is not reluctant.

THEN drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.

[8]

The first parable answers the murmuring by revealing the Shepherd's joy. The lost one is sought until found, carried home, and made the occasion of rejoicing. The collect's "dangers and adversities" can therefore be read pastorally as well as morally: the sinner's danger is not met by contempt, but by the seeking mercy of Christ.

What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and. go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing.

[9]

The Gospel's final sentence gives the theological note of the whole passage. Repentance is not humiliation without hope; it is the occasion of heavenly joy. This keeps the collect from being read as a merely defensive prayer. The defended and comforted Church is also the repentant Church, sought by Christ and made glad in mercy.

Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.

[10]

Historical Development

The collect is an old Western prayer received into the English Prayer Book tradition. New Every Morning Anglican Fellowship's index of seasonal collect sources identifies the Third Sunday after Trinity collect as Sarum in origin and notes that the Gospel was already present in 1549:

The Third Sunday after Trinity

[11]

John Henry Blunt's annotated Prayer Book prints the Latin source alongside the English collect. His apparatus gives the Latin petition in compressed form:

Deprecationem nostram quaesumus, Domine, benignus exaudi; et quibus supplicandi praestas affectum, tribue defensionis auxilium.

[12]

The Church of England's 1662 text is substantially the same collect, with only small punctuation and capitalization differences from the American 1928 form. That continuity shows that the 1928 American use is not an isolated devotional composition but part of the inherited Prayer Book sequence:

O Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to hear us; and grant that we, to whom thou hast given an hearty desire to pray, may by thy mighty aid be defended and comforted in all dangers and adversities; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

[13]

Theological Use

The collect teaches humility without despair. The congregation comes before God as needy, threatened, and unable even to generate prayer apart from grace. Yet the prayer is full of confidence: the God who gives the desire to pray is also able to defend and comfort. In parish catechesis, the clauses can be read as a short grammar of Christian dependence: mercy hears; grace gives desire; mighty aid defends; divine comfort sustains in adversity; all is asked through Jesus Christ.

The appointed Epistle and Gospel prevent two opposite mistakes. The Epistle prevents a merely consoling reading of the collect by requiring humility, sobriety, vigilance, and resistance to evil. The Gospel prevents a merely anxious reading by showing the mercy of Christ toward sinners and the joy of heaven over repentance. Together they make the collect a Trinitytide prayer for penitent confidence: the Church is humbled under God's mighty hand, defended against danger, comforted in adversity, and sought by the Shepherd who rejoices to recover the lost.

See Also

External Links

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 Third Sunday after Trinity" under "The Third Sunday after Trinity"; PDF page index 52 / displayed PDF page 53 in the 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; URL verified HTTP 200.
  2. ↑ Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer, with a Rationale of Its Offices, revised and rewritten edition (London: Macmillan and Co., 1907), p. 550, chapter XIII, "Collects, Epistles, and Gospels"; Internet Archive scan/OCR, A new history of the Book of common prayer, with a rationale of its offices. URL verified HTTP 200.
  3. ↑ Edward Meyrick Goulburn, The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer: An Exposition, Critical and Devotional, abridged from The Collects of the Day (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1883), pp. 250-251, exposition of the Third Sunday after Trinity; scan/OCR, Internet Archive, The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer. OCR hyphenation and spacing normalized. URL verified HTTP 200.
  4. ↑ Edward Meyrick Goulburn, The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer: An Exposition, Critical and Devotional, abridged from The Collects of the Day (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1883), p. 251, exposition of the Third Sunday after Trinity; scan/OCR, Internet Archive, The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer.
  5. ↑ Edward Meyrick Goulburn, The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer: An Exposition, Critical and Devotional, abridged from The Collects of the Day (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1883), p. 252, exposition of the Third Sunday after Trinity; scan/OCR, Internet Archive, The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer.
  6. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," "The Third Sunday after Trinity," Epistle, 1 St. Peter v.5-7; 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928. The transcription's intrusive period after "and" was retained as a noted source artifact rather than silently treated as biblical punctuation.
  7. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," "The Third Sunday after Trinity," Epistle, 1 St. Peter v.8-9; 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 Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," "The Third Sunday after Trinity," Gospel, St. Luke xv.1-2; 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928.
  9. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," "The Third Sunday after Trinity," Gospel, St. Luke xv.4-5; 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928. the transcription artifact after "and" was preserved in the source note.
  10. ↑ Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book accepted in 1928, "The Collects, Epistles, and Gospels," "The Third Sunday after Trinity," Gospel, St. Luke xv.10; 1928 Common Prayer facsimile, The Book of Common Prayer: Standard Book of 1928.
  11. ↑ New Every Morning Anglican Fellowship, "Sources of the Seasonal Collects," section V, "Trinitytide"; Sources of the Seasonal Collects. The card for "The Third Sunday after Trinity" identifies the source as "Sarum" and gives the incipit "O Lord, we beseech thee mercifully to hear us; and grant that we, to whom thou hast given an hearty desire to pray..." URL verified HTTP 200.
  12. ↑ 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. 306, note on "The Third Sunday after Trinity"; scan/OCR, Internet Archive, The Annotated Book of Common Prayer. OCR ligatures and misread letters normalized against the printed Latin context. URL verified HTTP 200.
  13. ↑ Church of England, The Book of Common Prayer (1662; Cambridge University Press, 2006 online edition), "The Third Sunday after Trinity," "The Collect"; official Church of England text, Church of England, "The Third Sunday after Trinity". URL verified HTTP 200.
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