Tenth Sunday after Trinity
The Collect for Trinity X shows our dependence and focus upon the grace of God.
Today is the tenth Sunday after Trinity. However, since the Feast of St. Bartholomew falls on this day, it takes priority (with the Athanasian Creed during Mattins!). However, since the Collect for Trinity X will still be said, it will be helpful to reflect on what it teaches us.
Let thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the prayers of thy humble servants; and that they may obtain their petitions make them to ask such things as shall please thee. Through.
This Collect shows a common theme in our liturgical life: the circular motion of prayer, worship, and oblation. Due to our fallen and limited perspective, we can view interactions with God as a give-and-take. This may be the idea of ‘I give this and God gives that’, or perhaps ‘I ask for this so that God may give me that’. However, there is no competition in an authentic relationship with Christ. Rather, it is I who live in Christ and He who lives in me. As St. Paul teaches us,
It is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. —Philippians 2:13
The Most Holy Trinity, superabundant in love, always first works in us. He who is Good is the Source of All Good. So He works in us to do all good things: even our prayers for good things come from Our Lord, since it is itself a good work.
So, the Lord moves us to request good things so that we may received good things. And it does not end there; indeed, we then return all we have and offer it back up to the Lord and receive blessings in return. This is the circular motion of grace.
This is the framework within which the Collect is prayed. We ask for our prayers (both our intentions and the object requested) to be themselves purified, that Our Lord may give us grace to offer him pure prayers so that His return of grace may be even more glorious and amazing.
Liturgical Motion of Grace
We see this constantly in the liturgies of the Church. For example, Antecommunion so concludes:
We beseech thee mercifully to incline thine ears to us who have now made our prayers and supplications unto thee; and grant that those things which we have faithfully asked according to thy will, may effectually be obtained, to the relief of our necessity, and to the setting forth of thy glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Having offered our ‘worship, praise, and thanksgiving’, we ask for the grace to offer it even better through our lives: that we be so inclined to His will that we only offer the purest of sacrifices.
Anglican Mass
This is seen most excellently in the Sacrifice of the Mass, and is seen in not just the Anglican Rite but also in the Roman and Constantinopolitan Rites. In the Anglican Rite, the Priest offers the Bread and Wine. He prays,
we, thy humble servants, do celebrate and make here before thy Divine Majesty, with these thy holy gifts, which we now offer unto thee, the memorial thy Son hath commanded us to make; having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension; rendering unto thee most hearty thanks for the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same.
This shows that we are offering the sacrifice unto the Father, and that the act of offering is itself a gift of God (being thanksgiving for what has already been given) which we then pray will result in the further appreciation of God’s grace.
The Priest then continues,
And we thine unworthy servants beseech thee, most merciful Father, to hear us, and to send thy Holy Spirit upon us and upon these thy gifts and creatures of Bread and Wine, that, being blessed and hallowed by his life-giving power, they may become the Body and Blood of thy most dearly beloved Son, to the end that all who shall receive the same may be sanctified both in body and soul, and preserved unto everlasting life.
Here we see the high point of the Mass, the offering of the sacrifice is completed. And, upon being graciously received by the Most Holy Trinity, He then sends His grace for the transubstantiation of the gifts and the blessing of His People.
Roman Mass
This is motion is also excellently seen in the Roman Mass. Similarly, the Priest offers the Bread and the Wine, beseech the Father,
Upon which vouchsafe to look with a favorable and serene countenance, and to accept them as thou wert graciously pleased to accept the gifts of thy just servant Abel, and the sacrifice of our patriarch Abraham, and that which thy high priest Melchisedech offered unto thee, a holy sacrifice, a spotless victim.
Special emphasis is placed in the Roman tradition on the need for the Lord to truly receive the sacrifice. As the Scriptures teach us, it is possible to offer false sacrifice, strange fire, rejected worship. Therefore, the liturgy guides the Priest to ask for the acceptance of the sacrifice at various times, finally concluding in the fulfilment of these requests.
We humbly beseech thee, almighty God, to command that these things be borne by the hands of thy holy angel to thine altar on high, into the presence of thy divine majesty, that so many of us as shall partake at this altar of the most sacred Body and Blood of thy Son, may be filled with all heavenly benediction. Through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.
The offering concludes with the Bread and Wine being elevated even up to the Lord’s own high altar in heaven. And how else can they be elevated but by being transubstantiated, so that we may feed on the Body and Blood of Our Lord?
Constantinopolitan Mass
Finally, we see this in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. We have been analysing the Invocations in the previous liturgies, but this is succinctly and clearer seen in the petitions after the Invocation, where the Deacon prays,
That our God, who loveth mankind, receiving them upon his holy, heavenly, and ideal Altar for an odor of spiritual fragrance, will send down upon us in return his divine grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit, let us pray to the Lord.
We see the signficance of the theology of prayer in the Collect for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity. This is not just true of our personal prayers, but it permeates the whole Christian life, seen most excellently in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.