Trinity Sunday

Having celebrated the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the church assigns the Sunday immediately following Pentecost as the feast of the Holy Trinity.  

While the entire breadth of our liturgical life as Anglicans drips with Trinitarian teaching, Trinity Sunday is especially reserved for the celebration of God's self-revelation to his people as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 

Liturgically, Trinity Sunday caps off the entire first-half of the church year which began in Advent and focused on the revelation of the Son in the person of Jesus Christ whose earthly ministry culminated in his ascension and the sending of the Holy Spirit.  Trinity Sunday functions as a sort of liturgical exclamation point to God's revelation through Christ.

In keeping with our parish practice, we will recite the  Athanasian Creed in place of the Nicene Creed during our service of Holy Communion this coming Sunday.  Though not composed by St. Athanasius, this creed was developed in the Western church in the 5th or 6th century and was widely received to combat various forms of Arianism and other Trinitarian heresies.  Admittedly, the creed is long and verbose, which likely contributes to its limited liturgical use.  Nevertheless, the strong and clear language contained within it is a fitting reminder that at the core of our faith "we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the substance." 

Following Trinity Sunday we begin the long liturgical season of Trinitytide.  The name for the season stems not only from the fact that it follows the feast of the Holy Trinity, but also from the theological emphasis of the season; that the whole of the Christian life is lived in light of God's revelation as Trinity.  In other words, in the weeks after Trinity Sunday we learn in a myriad of different ways what living in response to knowing the Triune God ought to look like.

Collect for Trinity Sunday:

Almighty and everlasting God, who hast given unto us thy 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; We beseech thee that thou wouldest keep us stedfast in this faith, and evermore defend us from all adversities, who livest and reignest, one God, world without end.  Amen. (BCP, 186).  Amen.