Christian Worship

Each type of Festival and Fast has its distinctive colours - shown in Altar hangings, vestments, stole and even pulpit fall and book marks.  The colours thus announce the Church's Year and we try to follow them at St Andrew's.

These are the main colours and their meaning:-

 

 

 

After Trinity

Trinity to Advent: The Saints

The Beauty of Holiness

Advent

Advent, Christmas and Epiphany

Candlemas

Lent

Holy Week

Easter

Ascension and Pentecost

Trinity

 

Introduction to the Christian Year

Introduction and submissions
by Deaconess Mary Blackburn circa 2000

As Christians we live consciously in two worlds - in Time and in Eternity. This privilege, of course, exists for everyone, but some are unaware of the eternal dimension and others choose to ignore it. For those who believe in Christ, for instance, the significance of the Millennium lies in the action of the Eternal God in our world of space and time two thousand years ago, whilst for others it is no more than a chronological event.

Just as our everyday lives are governed, to a large extent, by the secular Calendar, so also our Christian lives in the world are guided and informed by the Church's Calendar. This is designed to keep us in touch year by year with the eternal Truths as revealed in Christ, and, through the acts of prayer and worship with which the Liturgical Year is associated, with the Ultimate Reality, God Himself, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The yearly round of commemorations has its origins in the early days of the Christian Church, influenced in part by the Jewish Calendar. The year moves around the two great Festivals of Easter and Christmas with their preparatory periods and dependent Feasts.

Recent decades have seen many changes on the Liturgical front resulting in the publication of the Alternative Service Book in 1980. Some parts of this have proved to be not altogether satisfactory, so in recent years the Liturgical Commission (with other bodies) has been working on a revision of the Calendar, Lectionary, and Collects. The result of their labours was published in 1997 when the intention was that for three years it would provide a second alternative to the Book of Common Prayer, after which from Advent 2000 it is expected to replace the ASB material.

The Revisers have reinstated the Calendar of the Book of Common Prayer in that the Year starts on Advent Sunday rather than on the 9th Sunday before Christmas, and that the Sundays after Trinity have been restored. They have sought to introduce language which is memorable, and to produce something which is in step with the usage of other Churches and with the wider Anglican Communion. . . something that will "unite the Church and allow people moving from place to place to find themselves sharing everywhere in a common tradition."

We hope to examine the significance of each Season as it comes along.

 

 

After Trinity

From Advent to Pentecost the observance of the Christian Year concentrates our thoughts and prayers on the actions of the eternal God in history, focusing on a particular “moment” in history concerned with the incarnate life of Christ. This might be termed our “basic theology”. This is what we believe about the God in whom we believe.

The remainder of the year is taken up with the application of that theology to the life and witness of the Christian Church, both as a Body and as individual members of that Body.

Belief and Conduct go hand in hand. “Be doers of the Word and not hearers only”, said St. James. Whilst it is vitally important that we should have the right beliefs and be well versed in the tenets of the Faith it is equally important that those beliefs should be translated into everyday terms and actions.

So, the second half of the year provides space for considering the role of the Church in the world bearing in mind what God has done for us in Christ, and in obedience to his command to make disciples of all nations. We are reminded of our duty every Sunday in the thanksgiving prayer after Communion when we ask God to send us out in the power of his Spirit to live and work to his praise and glory. Christianity extends beyond the Church porch into our homes, our neighbourhood, our workplace and further afield.

Proper Christian conduct is the fruit of life in Christ, not the root. By ourselves we can do nothing, as St. Paul was keen to emphasise “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us”. The ability to pursue what is good and right and true is the result of God’s grace working in those who are willing to let Him take over their lives, and who persevere in prayer and practice. The liturgical colour for this season, being green, suggests the idea of growth – growth in holiness, as we allow God to mould us more and more into the likeness of his Son.

The period under review is labelled “Ordinary Time” in the new Lectionary, where some freedom of use is allowed. The weekly themes found in the ASB have been dropped. Many of the best loved Prayer Book Collects have been used (in contemporary form) and an additional Post-Communion prayer introduced. Bible Sunday has been moved from the 2nd Sunday in Advent to the Last Sunday after Trinity. The four Sundays before Advent have been given a “distinctive flavour of their own”.

Trinity to Advent: The Saints

The Revisers have given the closing weeks of the Christian Year a special significance of their own, though stopping short of creating a new season. Sundays after Trinity finish at the end of October, the last of these being set aside as Bible Sunday. All Saints Day (November 1st), now given more prominence as one of the nine Principal Feasts, becomes the pivotal point (like Candlemas earlier in the year) of the change. The four Sundays in November are designated “Sundays before Advent” the last one bearing the title “Christ the King”, a new observance in the Church of England. The emphasis during these weeks is on the Kingdom, making it “a time to celebrate and reflect upon the reign of Christ in earth and heaven”.

The Revision Committee felt that the familiar and well-loved “Stir-up ..” Collect belonging to the Sunday next before Advent should not be left out, and has therefore included it as the Post Communion prayer for that day.

In the course of the year the Calendar provides many opportunities to celebrate the lives of the Saints, who have been “the chosen vessels” of God’s grace, and “lights of the world in their several generations”. (Canon Treanor has already written about some of them in past magazine issues). Principal amongst these are the Apostles and Evangelists whose days are observed as festivals; other Saints and notable figures may be observed on the Lesser Festivals, and yet others may have a day of commemoration. Since the Anglican tradition does not have a procedure for canonization it is left to the Liturgical Commission, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to decide who shall be included in any new Calendar. The 1980 Revision broke new ground in including a number of uncanonized heroes of the faith, and these have been kept in the present list, together with some of those left out in 1980 and some modern day martyrs.

On All Saint’s Day we remember all those unknown by name who have responded to God’s call, and having served Christ faithfully in their day now belong to that “great cloud of witnesses” by which we are surrounded.

The term “Saint”, of course, rightly belongs to all the Baptized, although many Christians nowadays seem unwilling to acknowledge this name for themselves, apparently confining the term to moral integrity. St. Paul used the word quite naturally when referring to the members of the Churches he had founded.

I have been greatly encouraged in my Christian pilgrimage by the example of the Saints set before us on their particular days throughout the year. Giving thanks for them and studying their lives helps us to see what the human personality is capable of when under God’s rule and with His grace. We pray that “rejoicing in their fellowship and following their good examples” we may share with them in God’s eternal Kingdom.

The Beauty of Holiness

The Christian year is primarily a vehicle which aids us in that most important of human activities, the worship of God. God has “made us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him” (St. Augustine)

Christian worship springs out of God’s revelation of Himself in Scripture, the focal point of which is the life, death, and resurrection of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. The God who has created all things and sustains them from moment to moment is worthy of all praise and honour from us, his creatures, whom He has redeemed and renewed.

There could be no Calendar of any sort were it not for the orderliness of God’s creation. Days, months and years (and Millennia) are determined by the movements of the planets: times and seasons are not man-made but man’s acceptance of God’s way of ordering His Creation. (The wonderful precision of God’s creative power enables us, for instance, to land a man on the moon).

As far as the Liturgical Calendar is concerned the regularity of the Special Days and Seasons ensures that there is an ordered pattern to our worship year by year.  This, together with the set forms of worship, makes for a certain stability necessary for growth in holiness. The Calendar is realistic and comprehensive in including all that goes to make up life as revealed by the life of Jesus. It has its heights and depths, its Feasts and Fasts, its joyous and solemn seasons, as well as the ‘level’ stretches which give time for assimilation. The faithful observance of these requires a certain amount of discipline and an ability to share in both the joy and the suffering involved in following Christ. Many Christians have a “Rule of Life” which helps them to ensure that the Christian duties of prayer and service are not haphazard, but have a regularity and pattern to them.

Much of the stress of modern life is caused by the lack of order and discipline in people’s lives. God’s Order relates to both the physical and the moral spheres; ignoring or flouting His laws inevitably brings chaos and disaster.

Lord,
                        “take from our souls the strain and stress
                        and let our ordered lives confess
                        the beauty of Thy peace.”     Amen

Advent

Every special occasion in life, if it is to fulfil expectations, has to be preceded by a time of preparation and planning, involving much thought and work.

In the Advent season we are given time, space and opportunity to prepare, not only for the yearly celebration of Christ’s first Coming but also for that Day when He will come again to judge the living and the dead. The Christian Year, therefore, begins, paradoxically, by reminding us of the "End Things". Keeping Advent helps us to view our Christian pilgrimage against the vast backcloth of Eternity, and of the loving purposes of the God "who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty". The mystery of Faith proclaimed in the Eucharist – "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again" – keeps this perspective alive in our consciousness all the year round, of course, but the period of Advent is set aside in order that our thoughts and prayers may be concentrated more fully on some of the "Big Issues" – traditionally Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell.

The readings from Scripture take us back to the Jewish hopes (and fears) about the "Day of the Lord", and the coming of the Messiah expressed through the great Prophets, and on to the New Testament predictions and current beliefs about the Final Days, as well as the hopes and expectations of the early Church as she waited for the return of her Lord. This return (the Parousia) was expected to take place during the lifetime of those who wrote about it. Two thousand years later we still await the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ to gather his faithful ones into His Kingdom at the end of the Age.

What, then, is our role in the present Age as we contemplate the mystery of our God who has come, and who will come again? The prophetic utterances and the predictions of the Second Coming all contain a note of warning for the people of God; they are to keep awake, to watch and pray, and to be ready always for the time when God will act and invade His world in the way He chooses . . . . or in Bishop Ken’s words, to live each day as if ‘twere our last. The Day will come "like a thief in the night"; "of that day and that hour no-one knows except the Father". The message seems clear. There is an urgency about it which seems to have been lost with the passage of time. "Now is the day of salvation", writes St. Paul . . . "let us therefore cast away the works of darkness and put on the armour of light."

The themes of Advent remind us each year that we are accountable beings; accountable to God for all we think and say and do. They also revive our sense of responsibility as members of the Church to live lives worthy of Christ, so that when He comes again He will not find us "sleeping in sin, but active in service and joyful in praise".

 

 

 

Advent, Christmas and Epiphany

During the last eight days of Advent the readings, prayers and antiphons turn our thoughts from the Second Coming of Christ to the preparation to celebrate His First Coming. This change of emphasis gives us the opportunity to enter into the hopes and expectations of the Jewish people as they awaited their Messiah, and to review our own hopes and beliefs about the Christ-child who was destined both to fulfil and to exceed those expectations. It is a time to consider some of the wonderful truths which will be set before us in the Gospel and in the hymns and carols we shall sing - so profound yet so simple – describing an event which cannot be thoroughly understood by our unaided intellect, at which a child may yet wonder. It is a time for self-examination and repentance in the light of God’s all consuming love.

The Christmas season, as far as the Liturgical Year is concerned, begins on Christmas Day and continues for twelve days until Epiphany ... and beyond. The new Calendar keeps the celebratory period for forty days until Candlemas on February 2nd. The Sundays following Christmas Day are called the Sundays of Christmas rather than after Christmas in an effort to recapture this time as belonging to the observance of the Nativity. (One of the occasions which makes me sad is when I am asked the day after Christmas Day if I’ve had a good Christmas as if it is all over by then, when, really, it is only just beginning!)

Christmas is one of the major Christian Festivals which has caught the popular imagination, and it is not easy to extricate ourselves from the secular celebrations, but the challenge remains for the Church to be herself, and resist the temptation to ‘swim with the tide’. At the heart of our celebrations is the One who though he was rich, yet for our sakes became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich* - that is, rich in the things that really matter, the virtues and graces which God alone can give. The habits of over-indulgence which seem to be part of the contemporary Christmas scene, seem to me to be quite out of keeping with the nature of the events we are remembering and cannot be effective for good in the world. Would not our celebration have more meaning if the generosity of giving was directed not primarily to those who already have enough and to spare, but to the poor and those in real need in today’s world.

The Epiphany ushers in a time when we look at the ways in which the glory of Jesus was revealed to the world with special reference to the visit of the Wise Men, the Baptism of Jesus, and the first miracle at Cana when water was turned into wine. The new Calendar ensures that the Epiphany season will not be shortened even when Easter is early, but will continue throughout January until the Feast of the Presentation. The celebration of the Baptism of Jesus is a new Festival in the Church of England and is to be kept on the first Sunday of Epiphany. Towards the end of Epiphany there is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity leading up to The Conversion of St. Paul.

Like a beacon of light during the dark Winter months the forty days between Christmas Day and Candlemas may serve to illuminate our minds and warm our hearts by giving us a deeper understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation. They bring us face to face with the awe-inspiring humility of God, the Son, who ‘emptied’ Himself and became like one of us, apart from sin, in order that we might be able to share in the life of His Divinity.
* 2 Corinthians 8 v. 9

Candlemas

The month of February begins with the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, the event celebrated being found in St. Luke’s infancy narratives in chapter 2 of his Gospel. This marks the culmination of the Christmas/Epiphany season, whilst at the same time foreshadowing the solemn season which is to come. So it has a bitter-sweet flavour about it. In the new Calendar it is designated one of the nine Principal Feasts of the Christian Year, being a Feast of our Lord, and a key moment in the Liturgical cycle.

Mary and Joseph, in obedience to the Jewish Law, came to the Temple 40 days after his birth for two ceremonies; firstly to present the first-born son to the Lord, and secondly for the mother’s purification. In the Temple at that time was the aged Simeon, a "righteous and devout" Jew, looking for "the consolation of Israel" who, recognising Jesus, took him up in his arms and said his Nunc Dimittis. Now that he had seen "his salvation" he was happy to die. But he also spoke prophetic words about the inevitable results of Christ’s coming into the world, and the sufferings to come, both for the Son and for his mother .... Jesus will be "a sign that is rejected", and a sword will pierce his mother’s soul too.

The Presentation is a very ancient Feast with a wealth of meaning attached to it. There are four names by which it is known – As well as The Presentation of Christ, and The Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary it is popularly known as Candlemas from the use of candles in the ceremonies of the day, and also in the Eastern Church "The Meeting", i.e. the meeting of Christ with Simeon. We may be able to think of many memorable "meetings" that have taken place in the course of history, but this meeting has a special significance of its own. Simeon, representing all that is good in Judaism, the Old Covenant, and Jesus, himself the New Covenant, and in the words of Simeon, the "light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel." Little could Simeon have known at the time that his words would reverberate down the centuries in the Nunc Dimittis. Something else that we can learn from Simeon (and also Anna, the prophetess) is that as the result of his life of prayer and devotion he was in the right place at the right time, and was able to recognise in the infant Jesus the longed-for Messiah. A reminder to us of the necessity of faithfulness in prayer and worship if we are to perceive correctly the signs of the times and the hand of the Lord in our daily encounters.

The rest of the month is taken up by "Sundays before Lent" – a new name for the weeks preceding Ash Wednesday, and which take the place of the "Sundays before Easter" in the ASB. The number of these will vary (from 1 to 5) according to the date of Easter, and they are designated as non-seasonal weeks in which the local Churches are given room to develop their own themes, although Collects and Readings are provided.

Lent

Lent is a solemn season in which the Church prepares herself for the celebration of the death and resurrection of her Lord. It has its origins in the preparation of catechumens for Baptism at Easter, and of the excommunicated for restoration to the Church’s fellowship. The liturgical colour is purple or unbleached linen, symbolising the mood of penitence and seriousness with which the season is observed. Like life itself, the Christian Year has its ups and downs, its peaks and valleys. Through the frailty of our nature we tend to prefer the Festive seasons to the solemn ones, but this makes our response to God’s love one-sided, incomplete and unreal. Jesus himself, as MAN, "learnt obedience through the things which he suffered". He was free to do as He liked, he could have avoided all unpleasant, difficult and dangerous moments but He chose rather to do the Father’s will at all times . . . "and how am I straitened until it is accomplished".

Depending on one’s conception of what it is about we may either look forward to Lent or groan at its approach! It is not a negative observance, as some would think, but a positive and dynamic period which by its nature must include acts of self-denial and discipline. If Jesus, the sinless One, needed a period of discipline before setting out on His mission, how much more we sinners? If undertaken in the right spirit the keeping of Lent is a time of growth – of growth in holiness and conformity to God’s will. The benefits are not for ourselves alone but for the Body of Christ to which we belong, and in which each individual member has a duty to the whole Body to grow in faith and devotion, so that the Church’s witness in the world may be more effective.

The Feast of the Annunciation on the 25th March gives us a prime example of someone who was ready to do God’s will at whatever cost. Mary’s "Be it unto me according to your will" opened the door, as it were, to God’s entry into the world in the Person of His Son, and we are eternally grateful for her response.

The season of Lent is all about the relation between freedom and responsibility, justice and mercy, death and resurrection, as ordered in God’s kingdom. In a secular society where the gift of freedom is being exercised without the restraining hand of God’s moral law, it is essential for Christians to pray for wisdom to penetrate these mysteries, for the love of our Lord and Saviour.

"O Saviour of the world, who by Thy cross and precious blood has redeemed us;
Save us, and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord."

Holy Week

In Holy Week, the most solemn period of the Christian Year, the Church calls to mind the last days in the life of Jesus of Nazareth leading up to his crucifixion, death and burial. It is a time when we try to “suffer” with him in his Passion that we may “rise”, by his grace and mercy, to new life in him.

There can be no real sharing in the Easter joy without our Lenten preparation and Passiontide vigil. A truth so well expressed in one of the Lenten Collects in which we pray that as Jesus “went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified”, so we, “walking in the way of the Cross may find it none other than the way of life and peace” (Lent 3)

In the past there has been some confusion as to which Sunday is “Passion” Sunday. The new Calendar keeps the title “5th Sunday in Lent” but with a note that Passiontide begins at this point.

Maundy Thursday marks an occasion of vital importance in the life and history of the Christian Church. Before he died it was necessary for Jesus to leave with his followers something by which to remember him in the years to come and which would sustain the Body of believers with the life he was to lay down the next day for the salvation of the world. The basic rite instituted at the Last Supper has been the Christian Church’s life blood throughout the centuries of her existence. The Holy Communion or Eucharist is a sure and certain means of “showing forth the Lord’s death till he come” and of sharing in the benefits of his death and resurrection. But it demands of us Christians a willingness to embrace the full implications of the Christian life. “He who eats the bread and drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilt of desecrating the body and blood of the Lord” wrote St. Paul.

The word ‘Maundy’, derived from the Latin ‘mandatum novum’, reminds us of yet another vital element of the Christian faith. After Jesus had washed the disciples’ feet he gave them a new Commandment, recorded by St John in chapter 13, verse 34. “A new Commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another”. On this day, in Cathedrals up and down the land, oils are blessed to be distributed to the parishes for use in the Church’s ministry of healing.

The events of Good Friday mark the final “battle” between good and evil, to which the Church bears witness in her Liturgy and Processions. In a fallen world we see things in shades of grey rather than black and white, leading us to the conclusion that a compromise is the only way to deal with some situations. I cannot think of any instance in the Gospels where Jesus made a compromise, and in this final scene there could be no thought of such a course. Jesus, the perfectly Good, could not make a pact with the “prince of this world” representing all that is evil. His irrevocable decision had already been made in the Garden of Gethsemane: rather than lose his integrity, deny his essential nature, break faith with the Father, he chose to take upon himself the whole weight of the world’s sin(including my sins and yours) surrendering himself out of pure love to an agonising death on a Cross, thereby cancelling the power of sin and opening up the way of salvation to all who believe in him:-

“O, who am I, that for my sake
My Lord should take frail flesh and die?”

Would it not be wonderful and a sign of our devotion and thankfulness if every Christian could cease from their normal occupations and relaxations on this day (or at least for a few hours) in order to “stand at the foot of the Cross” in contemplation of this great mystery, allowing God to deepen our penitence, increase our love, and shed more light on this unique and dramatic event – a turning point in world history?

On Holy Saturday (Easter Eve) there is a significant pause for quiet reflection as we remember Jesus, dead and buried, lying in the tomb awaiting the Father’s next move, yet still active, according to St Peter in “going to preach to the spirits in prison“ (of necessity on Easter Eve the Churches are full of feverish activity as the faithful make them as beautiful as possible for the burst of celebration on the next day!)

Easter Day brings a reversal of man’s judgement on the Son of God. God Himself gives his approval to the work of His Beloved Son by raising him from the dead, who is alive for evermore.

Thine be the glory, risen, conquering Son
Endless is the victory thou o’er death hast won”

The Easter season lasts for 50 days from Easter to Pentecost.

Easter

It has been said that the Resurrection of Jesus is the “Amen” of the Father to the “It is finished” of the Son. When Jesus uttered that cry from the Cross it was a cry not of defeat but of achievement. He had finished the work the Father had given him to do. He could now commend his Spirit into the Father’s hands as a faithful Son. God accepts his offering and at the appointed time raised him from the dead and exalted him to His right hand on high.

There is, so I was taught, and so I believe, indisputable evidence for the resurrection of Jesus (body and soul). This is to be found in (1) the finding of the tomb empty, (2) the appearances of the Risen Lord to his disciples and close followers, and (3) the existence of the Christian Church where lives are changed and made new by virtue of the Lord’s death and resurrection. Every true baptism is a death to sin and a rising to new life.

One can imagine the ripple of excitement and unbelief which went round Jerusalem on the first Easter Day as the followers of Jesus gradually came to terms with what had happened; how the stupendous truth began to dawn on their bemused minds, and how that truth was further substantiated by the appearances of Jesus in his risen body over the next few weeks until it emerged, after Pentecost, as an unassailable belief.

Jesus knew that his small band of followers were to be the ones who would be sent out into the world to announce the Good News of his saving work, in obedience to his command to “make disciples of all nations”. It was therefore essential that they be thoroughly convinced of the truth of his death and resurrection. By his appearances in his risen body, and his teaching during this period, he laid the foundation of a firm faith, as well as the knowledge of his continual presence with them, even when, after the Ascension, they would no longer be able to see him.

In his risen body Jesus is the same yet not the same. He was recognisable, though not easily, by familiar actions and words, and by the Stigmata. He was flesh and blood yet could appear and vanish at will. It would seem that he was fitted for both the earthly and the heavenly spheres at this stage. This is a mystery we can but marvel at.

In “Common Worship” the Easter celebration covers the period from Easter Day to Pentecost. The Paschal character of this time is maintained throughout the Season, thus emphasising along with every Sunday of the year, the supreme importance of the Resurrection to the life of the Church and through the Church to the life of the world.

Jesus said to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

Ascension and Pentecost

According to St. Luke, forty days after the Resurrection the risen Jesus made his final appearance to his gathered disciples. Having given them some further teaching on the Kingdom, he instructed them not to leave Jerusalem but to “wait for the promise of the Father” – the gift of the Spirit – which would empower them to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth. Then “he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight”.

I have heard many sermons on the Ascension in which the preacher has tried to explain it away, or tell us what it is not! But to my mind this event is a simple visual aid to demonstrate the significance of what was happening. Extraordinary, yes, but not needing to be explained away.

There is not room here to give a full theology of Ascension (even if I could!) but I find that the hymn “Hail the day that sees him rise glorious to his native skies …” does express in memorable words the essential truths of this great day.

Before he died Jesus had made it clear to his disciples that it was necessary for him to go away. Otherwise the “Counsellor” would not be sent to them. After the resurrection the disciples had several weeks in which to assimilate the meaning of the remarkable event they had witnessed and to get used to the idea that Jesus would always be with them even when they were not blessed by an appearance. Now the time had finally arrived for Christ to return to the Father in order that the Holy Spirit may be released.

The disciples, after the Ascension “returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the Temple praising God” (Luke 24:52). The ten days between Ascension and Pentecost mark a special period of time. For the disciples it was a time of waiting, a time of obedience and expectancy, a necessary time preparing them as a group to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. It was important, therefore, for them to stick together as they waited and prayed.

It is a salutary reminder to us who live in an age when things must happen instantly and one new invention follows close on the heels of another leaving no time for assimilation, that God’s activity is not rushed but takes place at the appointed time when the ground is prepared.

On the day of Pentecost the promised gift was given in a spectacular way and with spectacular results, turning timid disciples into bold preachers and bringing into being the Christian Church. From this foundation event the Church has been built up and has spread throughout the world carrying the message of salvation, although not always blameless herself, transforming lives, reforming institutions, caring for the needy and permeating society with Christian values.

Each generation enters into the labours of those who have gone before, inheriting the blessings and privileges of belonging to this “wonderful and sacred mystery”. Our part is to co-operate with God in the continuing life of the Church by responding to the Holy Spirit’s presence and promptings in living the Godly life and spreading the Good News, always seeking those “things which are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God”. (Col. 3:1).

Trinity

Trinity Sunday is the crowning Festival of the first half of the Christian Year, embracing all that has gone before.

The Holy Trinity is neither a mathematical formula nor a doctrine to confuse the “man in the pew” but Almighty God Himself, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who is ever to be worshipped and adored.

Christians in the early Church came to realise the three-fold nature of the One God through the witness of the apostles and the activity of the three Persons within their own lives, leading to the formulation of the doctrine by the great Councils. We, in our day, have to approach it the other way round, in a sense, being presented with an already established doctrine and having to discover the truth of it slowly as God reveals Himself to us in all His ways.

The Collect for Trinity Sunday emphasises the necessity of keeping firm in this Faith. If our religious life is to be balanced and healthy then a response has to be made to all three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Movements and Sects arise which concentrate on one “aspect” of God’s activity at the expense of the others, leading to an imbalance. In our day the church is criticised for not giving enough prominence to God the Creator, in particular reference to the way we treat this natural world.

Just as our own personality consists of body, mind and spirit, which, when working together harmoniously make us into whole and integrated persons, so our relationship with God is more wholesome if we recognise and respond to the Father who made us, the Son who saves us, and the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us.

Everything exists in relationship and God Himself exists in the relationship of the three Persons. He has no need of anything else, but out of pure love has created the world and everything in it. A relationship with Him is vital to every human being if he or she is to live life to the full as God intended it, responding to His love with love and obedience.

It is gratifying to know that the new Lectionary has provided “Sundays after Trinity” to replace the “Sundays after Pentecost” of the ASB as this will help us to keep in mind, for the latter part of the year at least, the majesty and holiness of the Triune God, a mystery beyond our understanding yet which brings us to our knees in humble adoration.

“O holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity,
Three Persons in one God,
have mercy on us.” (The Litany)