TRINITY Sunday was certainly one of the last of our significant church festivals to be officially recognised. As late as 1334, Pope John XXII proclaimed it a feast in its own right. Until then, the day had been observed because the Octave of Pentecost. In England, nevertheless, there had been for a few years greater attention to at the present time than on the Continent — possibly due to its association with Thomas Becket, whose consecration had taken place on at the present time in 1162.
Almighty and everlasting God, you could have given us your servants grace,
by the confession of a real faith, to acknowledge the glory of the everlasting Trinity
and in the facility of the divine majesty to worship the Unity: keep us steadfast on this faith, that we may evermore be defended from all adversities . . .
Collect, Trinity Sunday, CW
Most of the Sunday collects conform to a trinitarian pattern. That is to say, they’re addressed by us to the Father, as manifest within the Son, and apprehended by us through the facility of the Spirit. The collect for Trinity Sunday breaks this rule. It places us, because it were, outside the lifetime of the Holy Trinity, looking in. We turn out to be observers of the mystery, not participants. Perhaps that’s the reason there was historically an awkwardness about dedicating a big day to the Holy Trinity when, within the lifetime of the Church, on daily basis and each act of Christian devotion is a celebration of the central mystery of our faith.
AFTER Trinity Sunday there follows a protracted period of “Ordinary Time”: 20 or more Sundays, depending on the date of Easter. The poem “After Trinity”, by John Meade Falkner (1858-1932), tells how the Church’s 12 months, dominated throughout the first five months by Christ’s redeeming work, turns now to the natural order of God’s creation:
We have done with dogma and divinity,
Easter and Whitsun past,
The long, long Sundays after Trinity
Are with us eventually;
The passionless Sundays after Trinity,
Neither feast-day nor fast. . .
Christmas comes with plenty,
Lent spreads out its pall,
But these are five and twenty,
The longest Sundays of all;
The placid Sundays after Trinity,
Wheat-harvest, fruit-harvest, Fall.
After harvest comes the flight of swallows, then autumn with the scent of gathered apples, and dew-laden webs festooned on brambles. And then it’s back to the start again:
An end of tombstone Latinity,
Stir up sober mirth,
Twenty-fifth after Trinity,
Kneel with the listening earth,
Behind the Advent trumpets
They are singing Emmanuel’s birth.
“Stir up sober mirth” is a reference to the BCP collect for the Sunday Next Before Advent, retained in Common Worship as as optional post-communion collect. “Stir up Sunday” is a reminder to fire up the mixture in preparation for the Christmas pudding. Cranmer translated the prayer from the Sarum Missal:
Stir up, O Lord, the wills of your faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of fine works, may by you be plenteously rewarded …
Post-communion, Sunday next before Advent, CW
FALKNER’s poem refers back to the wheat harvest and the crop of autumn fruits, hinting at nature’s seasons which run parallel with the Church’s calendar — the combination of sacred and secular, a consequence of the Incarnation. Plough Sunday in January; Rogation Days before Ascension Day, bidding a blessing on the crops; Lammas (loaf-mass) in August, in thanksgiving for our each day bread. To these ancient customs of our once rural population we will now add intercessions for industry, commerce, and education.
Common Worship provides us with a wealth of recent collects and liturgies to counterpoint the worship of our parish churches, each rural and concrete. It also provides us with 22 collects for the Sundays after Trinity, of which 14 are adapted from Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer. Some deserve particular attention.
God, which declarest thy almighty power, most chiefly in showing mercy and pity; Give unto us abundantly thy grace, that we, running to thy guarantees, could also be made partakers of thy heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christe our Lord.
Collect for Trinity 11, 1549 and 1552
Surprisingly for Cranmer, this shouldn’t be in any respect pleasing to the ear. It doesn’t flow. The 1662 revision replaced “Give unto us abundantly thy grace, that we, running to thy guarantees’” with the more elegant “Mercifully grant unto us such a measure or thy grace. that we, running the way in which of thy commandments … ”.
NINE of the 22 collects after Trinity are modern compositions. The one for Trinity 3, written by David Frost, is a very good example of up to date prayer-writing. It conforms to a practice that goes back to the eighth century and yet is comfortable to the trendy ear:
Almighty God, you could have broken the tyranny of sin and have sent the Spirit of your Son into our hearts whereby we call you Father: give us grace to dedicate our freedom to your service, that we and all creation could also be delivered to the fantastic liberty of the youngsters of God; through. . .
Collect, Trinity 3, CW
Like many good collects it resounds with biblical allusions. In this case, there are echoes of Galatians 4.6 (“God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’”) and Romans 8.21 (“that the creation itself will probably be let loose from its bondage to decay and can obtain the liberty of the glory of the youngsters of God”). The awkward starting (“Almighty God, you could have broken the tyranny of sin”) — which appears to be telling God what he must surely know — is the effect of complaints by some members of the General Synod who objected to relative clauses. Not every such objection, nevertheless, was upheld, as may be seen within the collect composed by David Silk, who based his prayer on 2 Corinthians 5.19:
Almighty God, who called your Church to bear witness that you simply were in Christ reconciling the world to yourself: help us to proclaim the excellent news of your love,
that each one who hear it might be drawn to you; through him who was lifted up on the cross and reigns with you within the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Collect, Trinity 13, CW
The Revd Adrian Leak is a retired Anglican priest, whose recent publications include The Golden Calves of Jeroboam and After the Order of Melchizedek.
