Collect for Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP)
Collect for Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity. It asks God to keep "thy household the Church" in continual godliness, to protect it from adversities, and to make it "devoutly given" to good works. In the 1928 propers it stands with Philippians 1:3-11, Saint Paul's prayer that love may abound and bear "the fruits of righteousness," and Matthew 18:21-35, Christ's parable of the unforgiving servant.
Text of the Collect
LORD, we beseech thee to keep thy household the Church in continual godliness; that through thy protection it may be free from all adversities, and devoutly given to serve thee in good works, to the glory of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Clause-by-Clause Meaning
The collect begins with the Church as a household. "Household" makes the prayer corporate rather than merely private: the petition is for God's family, servants, and people gathered under Christ's rule. It therefore fits Trinitytide, where the Prayer Book repeatedly teaches the life of grace in the Church after Pentecost.
"In continual godliness" names the Church's need for a kept and sustained life before God. The prayer does not assume that the Church preserves itself by institutional strength, public respectability, or inherited custom. It asks the Lord to keep his own household in the worship, faith, and obedience that belong to him.
"Through thy protection" turns the request outward toward danger. The Church asks to be "free from all adversities," but not in order to become idle or self-protective. The last clause gives the purpose of protection: the Church is to be "devoutly given to serve thee in good works." The prayer's movement is therefore grace, protection, service, and doxology: God keeps; God protects; the Church serves; God's Name is glorified.
Appointed Epistle
The Epistle appointed with the collect is Philippians 1:3-11. Its final petition gives the collect's "good works" a Pauline shape. The Church is not protected from adversity for comfort alone, but so that love may become discerning, sincere, and fruitful:
And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; that ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ.
The Epistle then connects good works directly to Christ and to the glory of God. That is the same order as the collect: the Church serves God in good works "to the glory of thy Name," because righteousness is received and borne "by Jesus Christ."
Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.
Read beside the collect, Philippians keeps "continual godliness" from becoming vague religious respectability. Godliness is love disciplined by knowledge and judgment, sincerity before the day of Christ, and fruitfulness that gives glory to God.
Appointed Gospel
The Gospel is Matthew 18:21-35, the parable of the unforgiving servant. It begins with Peter's question about forgiveness and Christ's answer:
Peter said unto Jesus, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.
The parable explains why the collect asks for God's protection and good works together. The servant is protected by mercy, but refuses to become merciful. He receives compassion and then refuses compassion:
Then the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt.
The end of the Gospel makes the moral demand explicit. The Church cannot pray to be God's household while despising the mercy by which that household exists:
So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.
The collect's "good works" therefore include the costly work of forgiveness. The Church is kept in godliness not by abstract virtue, but by receiving God's fatherly mercy and showing mercy within the household.
Historical Source
The collect is not a new American composition. Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere print the older Latin form among the ancient collects for the Sundays after Trinity:
Twenty-second. Familiam tuam, quaesumus, Domine, continua pietate custodi; ut a cunctis adversitatibus te protegente sit libera, et in bonis actibus tuo nomini sit devota.
Procter and Frere also note that this collect was among the additional collects supplied for non-communicating days in the first English Prayer Book:
Additional Collects to be said "when there is no Communion":--our present Collects for the 5th, 12th, 16th, 17th, 21st, 22nd, and 23rd Sundays after Trinity.
The Church of England's 1662 Book of Common Prayer preserves the same collect and the same appointed Epistle and Gospel, showing the continuity of this proper in the classical Anglican lectionary:
Lord, we beseech thee to keep thy household the Church in continual godliness; that through thy protection it may be free from all adversities, and devoutly given to serve thee in good works, to the glory of thy name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Anglican Interpretation
Edward Meyrick Goulburn's nineteenth-century exposition is useful because it links the collect to both appointed readings. He first explains why "household" is a strong rendering of the Latin familia:
"Household" is an admirably-chosen word to express the Latin "familia." God's household is an establishment consisting of children and servants, but having this point of distinction from earthly households, that the children and servants are the same people.
Goulburn then argues that the Latin phrase behind "continual godliness" also carries the sense of God's continual pity or fatherly compassion. This reading makes the connection with the Gospel especially close:
A beautiful harmony exists between the Collect, as it stands in the original, and the Gospel. "Keep thy household the Church with thy continual fatherly compassion."
His interpretation of "adversities" is also theological rather than merely circumstantial. The Church is not promised escape from every earthly trial, but preservation from what would hinder its growth in grace:
First, the Church's safety--"that through thy protection it may be free from all adversities" (not from earthly trials and troubles, but from all influences adverse to its growth in grace, from all drawbacks in its heavenly course).
Finally, Goulburn explicitly connects the collect's good works to the appointed Epistle:
St. Paul prays in the Epistle of the Day for the Philippians, that they "may be filled with the fruits of righteousness" (not with its blossoms and leaves only--but with its fruits), "which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God."
The resulting interpretation is pastoral and ecclesial. The Church asks for God's keeping mercy; that mercy frees it from adversities that would damage its vocation; and the fruit of that protection is not self-preservation but forgiveness, love, and good works to the glory of God's Name.
Use in Worship and Devotion
In the 1928 BCP, this collect functions as the Collect of the Day at Holy Communion and as the weekly collect where the Sunday proper is used in the Daily Office. It is especially suited to prayer for parishes, dioceses, and households under pressure: it asks not merely that the Church survive, but that it remain godly, protected by God, fruitful in good works, and reconciled by mercy.
The collect may also be read devotionally alongside the Lord's Prayer, where Christians ask forgiveness "as we forgive those who trespass against us," and alongside the Prayer Book's Communion exhortations, where communicants are called to repentance, charity, and reconciliation before receiving the Sacrament.
See Also
- Book of Common Prayer (1928)
- Collects Epistles and Gospels (1928 BCP)
- Church Calendar (1928 BCP)
- Holy Communion (1928 BCP)
- Sundays after Trinity
- Daily Office (1928 BCP)
External Links
- 1928 Common Prayer: The 1928 Book of Common Prayer, Standard Book
- Church of England: The Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity
- Internet Archive: Procter and Frere, A New History of the Book of Common Prayer
- Wikimedia Commons: Goulburn, The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer
References
- ↑ Collect for Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, in The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity"; wording compared word for word with the Society of Archbishop Justus transcription. See also Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, The Book of Common Prayer (1928), 1928 Common Prayer, "The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book".
- ↑ Epistle for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, Philippians 1:9-10, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity"; 1928 Common Prayer, "The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book".
- ↑ Epistle for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, Philippians 1:11, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity"; 1928 Common Prayer, "The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book".
- ↑ Gospel for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 18:21-22, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity"; 1928 Common Prayer, "The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book".
- ↑ Gospel for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 18:27, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity"; 1928 Common Prayer, "The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book".
- ↑ Gospel for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 18:35, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity"; 1928 Common Prayer, "The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book".
- ↑ 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. 552, "Additional Note" to chapter 13, Latin collect for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity; Internet Archive, "A New History of the Book of Common Prayer".
- ↑ 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), pp. 266-267, summary of additions in the 1549 Prayer Book; Internet Archive, "A New History of the Book of Common Prayer".
- ↑ Church of England, The Book of Common Prayer: The Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, Cambridge University Press 2006 edition of the 1662 BCP text as published by the Church of England, "The Collect," in The Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity.
- ↑ 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. 334, exposition of the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity; Wikimedia Commons scan, "The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer".
- ↑ 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. 335, exposition of the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity; Wikimedia Commons scan, "The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer".
- ↑ 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. 336, exposition of the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity; Wikimedia Commons scan, "The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer".
- ↑ 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. 336-337, exposition of the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity; Wikimedia Commons scan, "The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer".