Celebrating Sundays

Reflections from the Early Church on the Sunday Gospels

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• Publisher: Canterbury Press Norwich
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781848252103
• eBook ISBN: 9781848255005
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

Celebrating Sundays provides readings from the Christian tradition that offer commentary on every Sunday Gospel reading in the three year lectionary. In the middle of the sixth century, St Benedict wrote 'Let the inspired books of both the Old and the New Testaments be read at Vigils, as also commentaries on them by the most eminent orthodox and catholic fathers' (Rule of Benedict, IX) and this set the pattern for worship and preaching which prevails today. All the great patristic names are included here: Augustine, Bede, Ambrose, Gregory the Great, Aelred, John Scotus Erigena, Origen, Cyril of Alexandria and dozens besides.An invaluable companion for preachers and for personal reflection on the Sunday lections, this makes an ideal gift for confirmation, ordination and anniversaries of priesthood.

ORDINARY TIME AFTER PENTECOST SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY

AS soon as we have celebrated the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost we greet with song the feast of the Holy Trinity on the following Sunday, a well-chosen place in the calendar for immediately after the descent of the Holy Spirit preaching and conversion began and faith through baptism and confession in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Rupert of Deutz

ALMIGHTY God, you 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 may be brought to the glorious liberty of the children of God; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Collect for the Third Sunday after Trinity, Common Worship

FOR as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and the snow come down from above, and return not again but water the earth, bringing forth life and giving growth, seed for sowing and bread to eat, so is my Word that goes forth from my mouth, it will not return to me fruitless, but it will accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the task I give it.

A Song of the Word of the Lord (Isaiah 55), Common Worship

‘For Jesus Christ is your living Word; through him you have created all things from the beginning, and formed us in your own image. Through him you have freed us from the slavery of sin, giving him to be born of a woman and to die upon the cross; you raised him from the dead and exalted him to your right hand on high. Through him you have sent upon us your holy and life-giving Spirit, and made us a people for your own possession.’7 Sunday, also called the Lord’s Day, is the first Christian feast-day, the first day of the week on which our Lord rose from the dead and on which the first disciples gathered for prayer and the Eucharist (Matthew 28.1; John 20.19; Acts 20.7; Didache 14). The pristine shape of Sunday as the commemoration of the Lord’s resurrection takes central stage in the Sundays in Ordinary Time.

The Revised Common Lectionary follows the revised Roman Lectionary in having a series of Gospel readings from the three synoptic Gospels on the Sundays before Lent and after Pentecost, which the 1970 Roman Missal has called ‘Sundays in Ordinary Time’. These follow the sequence of each Gospel, although the reading of the shorter Gospel of Mark in Year B has a major insert on Sundays of Ordinary Time 17–21 from the Gospel of John, the sermon on the bread of life in John 6, which replaces the Marcan story of the miraculous feeding and fits well with Mark’s concern with Jesus’ revelation of himself on the surrounding Sundays. The short Gospel readings of the Sundays of Ordinary Time do not give enough space to read all the Gospel text between the early passages of the Christmas cycle and the passion and resurrection stories of Eastertide. Those who created the Roman Lectionary sought to include as much of the story of Jesus’ public ministry as possible and to emphasize the special qualities of each Evangelist while ensuring that the same basic story was told in each of the three years. About three-quarters of the stories of Jesus’ public life are thus included and Years A and C contain much material that is special to Matthew and Luke while all three years repeat important episodes that are found in all three Gospels such as the calling of the disciples and the confession of Peter. The old Roman Missal had called these Sundays at the end of the Church’s year, ‘Sundays after Pentecost’. Other Churches have other names for these Sundays while following the same cycle of readings. For the ‘Sundays after Pentecost’ the Church of England followed the ancient Calendar of Salisbury (the ‘Sarum Use’), widely followed in the British Isles in the Middle Ages, and called them ‘Sundays after Trinity’. In most Churches today the liturgical colour for this season in green.

Three major feast days that occur in this period are included in this book. The Feast of the Most Holy Trinity (Trinity Sunday) is the first Sunday after Pentecost; Corpus Christi (‘The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ’ or ‘The Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion’) is the Thursday after Trinity and may be celebrated on the following Sunday; the Roman Catholic Church keeps the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the Friday after the Second Sunday after Pentecost and calls these three feasts, the ‘Solemnities of the Lord in Ordinary Time’.

Trinity Sunday has its roots in a commemoration of the mystery of the Trinity on the Sunday after Pentecost in the seventh-century book of prayers for the Eucharist called the ‘Gelasian Sacramentary’. About the year 800 the great English scholar Alcuin composed a Mass for the Holy Trinity and the celebration of the feast on various days became popular in the Middle Ages. It was eventually fixed on this day and ordered to be celebrated everywhere in the Christian West by Pope John XXII in 1334. The feast of this great biblical mystery of our faith has been preserved in Anglican and Lutheran calendars.

Corpus Christi was celebrated for the first time at Liège in 1247 at the suggestion of a nun, St Juliana of Mont-Cornillon. In 1264 the feast was extended to the whole Latin Church by Pope Urban IV and a Mass was composed for the feast, probably by St Thomas Aquinas. It became popular in the following century. The feast takes up themes from the commemoration of the institution of the Eucharist on Maundy Thursday and is also in the calendar of the Church of England and other Anglican Churches. It is celebrated on the Thursday after Trinity, although some Roman Catholic Churches keep it on the following Sunday.

The feast of the Sacred Heart has its remote roots in medieval devotion to the wound in Jesus’ side when he was on the cross but was first celebrated by St John Eudes in France in the seventeenth century. It became popular because of the visions of a nun, St Margaret Mary Alacoque, but was only extended to the whole Roman Catholic Church by Pope Pius IX in 1856. The feast celebrates the great love of Jesus for humanity and is celebrated on the Friday after the second Sunday after Pentecost.

In among the Sundays of Ordinary Time, the Common Worship Lectionary adds readings for the commemoration of the dedication of a church-building which may be used on the first Sunday in October or the last Sunday after Trinity if the anniversary of the actual rite of dedication is not commemorated. The dedication of a church, in which the community of the Church meets, is a feast of the Church which is the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit: ‘Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?’ (1 Corinthians 3.16). The Gospels for this feast are of the cleansing of the Temple and the feast of the dedication of the Temple, showing that the relationship of Jesus to the Jerusalem Temple was central to his ministry. Liturgical rites for the dedication of a church reveal the relationship that still exists between the sacred space of a Christian church and the Temple of the Old Covenant.

This liturgical season of ‘Sundays in Ordinary Time’, ‘Sundays after Trinity’ or ‘Sundays after Pentecost’ represents the Age of the Church or the Age of the Spirit when the people of God gather Sunday by Sunday to hear the story of Jesus, to celebrate his paschal mystery in the sacraments, and to await his glorious return. At the end of this season, which is the end of the liturgical year, on the last Sundays before Advent our attention begins to turn more strongly to the Last Things and the consummation of all in Christ.

Trinity Sunday Year A: John 3.16–18 [RCL Trinity B]

A READING FROM A HOMILY BY ST JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that those who believed in him might not perish, but might have eternal life. As you see, the reason for the Son’s coming was to enable people heading for ruin to be saved by believing in him. Could anyone have imagined the great generosity, wonderful beyond description, which God has shown to us? By the grace of baptism he has freed us from all our sins! But why continue? The mind cannot count, words cannot enumerate all the rest of God’s gifts. However much I said would leave much more unsaid. Who could ever have thought of the way of repentance which God in his indescribable love for us has provided for our race, or of the wonderful commandments that we may, if we wish, gain his grace after baptism?

Do you not see, beloved, how boundless God’s blessings are? I have counted a great many, but there are many more which I have not yet been able to mention. How can a human tongue tell all God has done for us? Yet although the blessings he has lavished on us are many and great, to those walking in the way of virtue he has promised others much greater and more inexpressible when they have left this world for the next. To show us their sublimity in a few words the blessed Paul said: No eye has seen, nor ear heard, no human heart conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.

Do you not see the excellence of these gifts, and how God’s blessings surpass all human understanding? No human heart has even imagined them, says St Paul. If then we desire to reckon them up and give thanks for them as best we can, that in itself will win for us an increase of grace and help us to grow in virtue. It will make us ready to rise above present circumstances and place all our hope in the giver of such great gifts, longing for him more and more every day.

St John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis, 27.1–2: PG 53, 241

Trinity Sunday Year B: Matthew 28.16–20 [RCL Trinity A]

A READING FROM THE LIFE IN CHRIST BY ST NICHOLAS CABASILAS

Although it was by a common benevolence that the Trinity saved our race, each one of the blessed Persons played his own part. The Father was reconciled, the Son reconciled, and the Holy Spirit was the gift bestowed upon those who were now God’s friends. The Father set us free, the Son was our ransom, and the Spirit our liberty, for Paul says, Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. The Father recreated us through the Son, but it is the Spirit who gives life.

Even in the first creation there was a shadowy indication of the Trinity, for the Father created, the Son was the Creator’s hand, and the Paraclete was the life-giver’s breath. But why speak of this? For in fact it is only in the new creation that the distinctions within the Godhead are revealed to us.

God bestowed many blessings on his creation in every age, but you will not find any of them being ascribed to the Father alone, or to the Son, or to the Spirit. On the contrary, all have their source in the Trinity, which performs every act by a single power, providence, and creativity. But in the dispensation by which the Trinity restored our race, something new occurred. It was still the Trinity that jointly willed my salvation, and p...

Table of contents

• title page
• Copyright information
• Contents
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• Table of Readings
• ADVENT
• CHRISTMAS
• ORDINARY TIME BEFORE LENT
• LENT
• EASTERTIDE
• ORDINARY TIME AFTER PENTECOST SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY
• ORDINARY TIME BEFORE ADVENT
• BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE AUTHORS
• Further Reading