Readings: Rom 5:1-5/Jn 16:12-15
Almighty and everlasting God,
you have given us your servants grace,
by the confession of a true faith,
to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity,
and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity:
keep us steadfast in this faith,
that we may evermore be defended from all adversities;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.
Today’s collect-prayer is appropriate for this morning’s eucharist, not just because it is about the Trinity, and today is Trinity Sunday, but because the author of this prayer brings together the two nations that are a focus for our celebration, namely England and France. That story began a long time ago, when a man called Alcuin, born in Northumbria, schooled in York, was chosen by the Emperor Charlemagne to help run his empire, before ending his days as Abbot of the prestigious Abbey of St Martin, in Tours, France, where he died in the year 804.
Many good things can be attributed to Alcuin, including a hand-writing script that (shall we say!) raised educational standards at the time. But one of his greatest gifts was a series of prayers that he wrote for use at the eucharist on different occasions. It was a time of change, and with change there are new needs. Among the occasions he had in mind were, for example, the Holy Cross, praying for the gift of tears (yes – a real need then, and perhaps now as well); but top of his list were the prayers he wrote for the Trinity. He had them all written down, and because this was long before the invention of printing, people copied them, not always in exactly the same order. But they circulated, they became popular, they were used…..to such an extent that when it was decided to have a special ‘Trinity Sunday’ a few centuries later, Alcuin’s prayers fitted the bill. And among the results is the wonderful truth that all over the Roman Catholic and Anglican worlds today, this prayer is used on this very occasion. From Northumbria, via York and Aachen, to Tours: England and France are joined, and joined not just in sentiment and friendship, but in prayer.
If there is one thing that has come across to me forcefully during my time in hospital fighting this illness, it is the sheer reality of prayer. People have sent me cards and notes – many of our Church Schools have sent their own form of greeting. All of them have assured me that they were thinking of me. And that is what has made me realise that I was not alone. People often wonder what prayer is, because they are in a rush to get on and do the next thing. Prayer is either squeezed out because there is no time or space for such an apparently useless activity, or it is regarded as a sort of commodity, a piece of commercial goods, that we somehow have to handle (because that is what the rest of life is about), but don’t quite know why.
Prayer is about holding people up before God and expressing our love and union with them. To pray for someone is one of the greatest gifts we can bring. And to pray for someone with whom we have some difficulty, because we’ve fallen out, or had a row, is a way of keeping the channels of love open, both with them and with God. Perhaps I have spent too much time being busy as a modern bishop, trying to prove to myself that I am somehow ‘up to the job’; and perhaps I have spent too little time before the throne of grace, becoming more and more aware of my own need of God’s strength, and that it is only in his strength that I can carry on.
But why the Trinity? For nine years I was Rector of a Church dedicated to the Trinity, and many a year I scratched my head in order to find something to say in my Trinity Sunday sermon! Today is no exception. What is there to say about the Trinity? Alcuin seems remarkably clear (or is he?!) about the Trinity in that prayer. But perhaps he isn’t, because he doesn’t say all that much. If you cast your mind back to the collect-prayer, all he does in fact say is that we have been given grace to confess that faith, as the parents and godparents will do shortly before the baptism; to worship the unity of God in the power of God’s majesty; and to ask for strength to persist in that faith, as a protection from ‘all adversities’. For Alcuin, faith is a gift, not a series of complex facts that we must completely understand; faith is about worship, not endless analysis; and faith is about the adventure of life, in which we need both strength and protection.
I rather warm to Alcuin’s simplicity and depth. He knows that God is beyond our understanding, although he’s not a soft touch on how hard life can be. Alcuin would not be one of those people who think that faith is an anaesthetic, to numb us into not feeling any pain. For him, instead, faith is about trusting in the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is the God we encounter in the heights and depths of life as we know it, as Paul makes clear in today’s epistle reading, in those challenging words about suffering and endurance; and as Jesus tells us in the Gospel, when he warns the disciples that there are still many things he wants to say to us, but we can’t take them all in – which is why the Spirit will come to reveal them to us. There is a strong, earthy sense of patience about Trinity Sunday, both in Alcuin’s collect-prayer, and these two readings. We’re not here to take it all in at a glance, in order to say we’ve ‘done’ Trinity Sunday, got the T-shirt, ticked it off on the journey-planner. That’s to look at God the wrong way round. Instead, God will reveal himself to us, as we glance at his truths, take stock of our lives, and slowly become what he would have us be.
Our friends from Mondaye are a religious community who follow the Rule
of St Augustine, whom Alcuin admired greatly, and whose views on the Trinity influenced him considerably. Right at the end of this Rule, which has been read and pondered by many religious brothers and sisters across the centuries, come the following words:
May the Lord grant that, filled with longing for spiritual beauty (Ecclesiasticus 44:6), you will lovingly observe all that has been written here. Live in such a way that you spread abroad the life-giving aroma of Christ (2 Cor 2:15). Do not be weighed down like slaves straining under the law, but live as free persons under grace (Rom 6:14-22).
+ Kenneth Portsmouth:
