Collect for Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP)

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Collect for Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity (1928 BCP) is the collect appointed in the 1928 American Book of Common Prayer for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity. It asks God, "our refuge and strength," to hear the Church's devout prayers and to grant effectual answers to faithful petitions. In the 1928 propers it stands with Philippians 3:17-21, Saint Paul's contrast between earthly-mindedness and heavenly citizenship, and Matthew 22:15-22, Christ's command to render to Caesar and to God what belongs to each.

Text of the Collect

O GOD, our refuge and strength, who art the author of all godliness; Be ready, we beseech thee, to hear the devout prayers of thy Church; and grant that those things which we ask faithfully we may obtain effectually; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

[1]

Clause-by-Clause Meaning

The collect begins by addressing God as "our refuge and strength." This phrase draws the Church into the language of Psalm 46: not an abstract divine attribute, but God as the protector to whom his people flee in danger. The collect is therefore both confident and dependent. It prays from within trouble, not from above it.

"Who art the author of all godliness" names the source of true devotion. The Church does not present its prayer as self-generated spiritual achievement. Its devout prayers are themselves gifts from God, who forms faith, repentance, reverence, and obedience in his people.

"Be ready ... to hear" asks for God's favorable presence toward the Church's prayers. The collect then narrows the petition: not everything devoutly asked is granted in the form requested, but what is asked "faithfully" may be obtained "effectually." The prayer therefore teaches the Church to ask in faith, according to God's will, through Jesus Christ.

Appointed Epistle

The Epistle appointed with the collect is Philippians 3:17-21. It contrasts faithful imitation with a way of life ruled by appetite, shame, and earthly-mindedness:

For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.

[2]

The collect's phrase "author of all godliness" is sharpened by this Epistle. Godliness is not vague respectability. It is a life whose pattern is the cross of Christ rather than earthly appetite. The Epistle then gives the positive side of the Christian life:

For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.

[3]

Read with the collect, the Epistle teaches why faithful prayer must be ordered toward God's kingdom. Christians ask as citizens of heaven, waiting for the Saviour who will finally conform them to his glory. Prayer is thus not a means for baptizing earthly-minded desire, but a school in which desire is brought under Christ.

Appointed Gospel

The Gospel is Matthew 22:15-22. The Pharisees and Herodians frame a political trap, but Christ exposes the temptation behind the question:

Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not? But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?

[4]

Christ's answer does not collapse the things of God into the things of Caesar. It makes obedience to God the frame within which civil obligation is rightly understood:

Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.

[5]

The collect's request for faithful and effectual prayer belongs naturally beside this Gospel. The Church asks God to hear its prayers because God, not civil power, is the author of godliness. At the same time, the Gospel prevents piety from becoming disorderly contempt for lawful earthly duties. Heavenly citizenship and earthly obedience must be held in their proper order.

Historical Source

The collect is inherited from the older Western liturgical tradition. Francis Procter and Walter Howard Frere print the Latin form in their historical notes on the Prayer Book collects:

Twenty-third. Deus, refugium nostrum et virtus, adesto piis ecclesiae tuae precibus, auctor ipse pietatis; et praesta ut quod fideliter petimus efficaciter consequamur.

[6]

Procter and Frere also identify this collect 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.

[7]

This history matters for interpretation. The prayer's compact English form is not a modern thematic summary but the received Anglican rendering of an older collect, preserved in the Prayer Book tradition and assigned to the late Trinitytide sequence.

Anglican Interpretation

Edward Meyrick Goulburn observes that the Latin behind "godliness" and "devout" makes the collect especially coherent. God hears the devotion he himself has authored:

The Latin is so worded as to suggest this most valuable truth, that God will and must be ready to hear the prayers which He Himself inspires, and puts into the minds of His people.

[8]

Goulburn then distinguishes between prayers God is ready to hear and prayers he grants according to faith and will. His distinction protects the collect from a mechanical reading:

God is ready to hear hundreds of prayers which He will not grant, which He could not grant consistently with the conditions He has laid down for Himself in administering the kingdoms of Nature, Providence, and Grace.

[9]

He also links the collect's opening words to Psalm 46 and to the Church's cry under chastening or distress:

We gather then that the prayers which are principally referred to in this Collect are prayers poured out by the Church when God's chastening is upon her,--cries of distress, when men are "pressed out of measure above strength, so that they despair even of life."

[10]

For Goulburn, "ask faithfully" means more than a general hope that God is benevolent. It means asking in faith, according to God's will:

To "ask faithfully" is to ask in faith. But the faith which is intended in these places must, I apprehend, be something more than a mere general persuasion that God will give us what it is best for us to have.

[11]

John Henry Blunt's annotated Prayer Book gives the appointed Epistle and Gospel a specifically ecclesial interpretation. He reads the Sunday as joining heavenly citizenship with rightly ordered earthly duty:

Our Lord is set forth in the Gospel of this Sunday as teaching that duties towards the civil power are part of our heavenly citizenship; St. Paul also, in the Epistle, referring to the true Christian life on earth as having already many things in common with the life of heaven.

[12]

Blunt warns that confusing Caesar's things and God's things has repeatedly harmed the Church's spiritual character:

The things of Caesar and the things of God were confused together by the Jews, and they ended by rejecting the Lord, and saying, "We have no king but Caesar."

[13]

The resulting Anglican reading is practical and theological. The Church prays to the God who authors devotion, learns from Philippians to live as citizens of heaven, and learns from Matthew not to confuse civil obligation with the worship and obedience owed to God.

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 in public anxiety, political confusion, or ecclesial weakness: it asks God to hear the Church, to purify what the Church asks, and to grant effectual answers through Christ.

Devotionally, the collect may be read with Psalm 46, Philippians 3, and Matthew 22. Psalm 46 gives the opening address its force; Philippians teaches heavenly-minded faith; and Matthew teaches the ordered distinction between civil duty and the higher claim of God.

See Also

External Links

References

  1. ↑ Collect for Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity, in The Book of Common Prayer (New York: The Church Pension Fund, 1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-third 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".
  2. ↑ Epistle for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity, Philippians 3:18-19, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity"; 1928 Common Prayer, "The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book".
  3. ↑ Epistle for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity, Philippians 3:20-21, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity"; 1928 Common Prayer, "The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book".
  4. ↑ Gospel for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 22:17-18, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity"; 1928 Common Prayer, "The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book".
  5. ↑ Gospel for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity, Matthew 22:21, Authorized Version text as appointed in The Book of Common Prayer (1928), Collects, Epistles, and Gospels, "The Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity"; 1928 Common Prayer, "The 1928 Book of Common Prayer: The Standard Book".
  6. ↑ 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-Third Sunday after Trinity; Internet Archive, "A New History of the Book of Common Prayer".
  7. ↑ 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".
  8. ↑ 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. 338, exposition of the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity; Internet Archive, "The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer".
  9. ↑ 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. 338-339, exposition of the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity; Internet Archive, "The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer".
  10. ↑ 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. 339, exposition of the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity; Internet Archive, "The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer".
  11. ↑ 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. 341, exposition of the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity; Internet Archive, "The Collects of the Book of Common Prayer".
  12. ↑ 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: Longmans, Green, and Co.; New York: 15 East 16th Street, 1892), p. 321, note on the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity; Internet Archive, "The annotated book of common prayer".
  13. ↑ 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: Longmans, Green, and Co.; New York: 15 East 16th Street, 1892), p. 321, note on the Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity; Internet Archive, "The annotated book of common prayer".
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