The Anglican Catholic Chronicle Newsletter of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada A Province of the Traditional Anglican Communion TRINITYTIDE 2016 shopping, picking up the kids, balancing the A Message from cheque book, and all the other regular Archbishop Shane Janzen things of family life, including the worship of Metropolitan of All Canada God. and Bishop Ordinary of the The Prayer Book offers us in the Collects, Diocese of Canada West Epistles and Gospels of Trinitytide, the N the course of five months we have lessons and prayers we need in order to live I celebrated the major feasts of the our ‘ordinary daily lives’ as true and faithful Christian Year: Christmas, Epiphany, Christians. We hear and learn through the Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Day, petition of prayer that God is the “strength Ascension Day, Pentecost and Trinity of all them that put their trust in [Him]”; Sunday. The times of celebration and that “through the weakness of our mortal festival, worship and prayer, penitence and nature we can do no good thing without praise, have gone by all too quickly. And [Him]”; and that it is only with the help of now we settle down to the long Season of God’s grace that we are able to “keep His Trinitytide. Commandments and so please God both in While it is true that the Season of will and deed.” Trinitytide includes many festivals of Saints Maybe not ‘earth shattering’ but as we and other holy days of commemoration and begin the long season of Trinitytide, these celebration, it is for us as Christians a time petitions put into perspective the reality of of living out our faith in the midst of the our daily existence as Christian men and everyday things of life – work, play, family, women. If we are to be strong, if we are to church and home. It is during this time and be faithful, if we are to please God in will in these days that we are called upon to put and deed, then it is to Him, and to His into practice all that we have heard and saving grace, that we must turn – each and received in the revelation of our Lord Jesus every day, in each and every moment of our Christ: His Nativity, Ministry and Teachings, lives. Without God, without His grace and Passion, Death, Resurrection, Ascension and supernatural strength, we don’t stand a His gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. chance of succeeding in the struggles of Trinitytide is the season encompassing daily living, let alone of being victorious on and speaking to our ‘ordinary lives’. While the battlefield, which is the spiritual warfare we continue to celebrate the festivals of the every Christian must fight as we ‘work out Christian Year, and those in our own our salvation with fear and trembling’. (Phil. personal lives, birthdays, anniversaries, 2:12) births, weddings, and other milestones, we In living out our lives as Christians, the do not live in continual ceremony and First Epistle of Saint John provides us with celebration. Rather for most of us our day- the ‘secret’, if you would, of living daily our to-day living is taken up with the ‘ordinary’ vocation as Christians in but not of the things of work, household chores, grocery world. That secret, writes St. John, is The Anglican Catholic Chronicle Page 2. “love”. He writes: “Beloved, let us love one TRINITY SUNDAY AND TRINITYTIDE another; for love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. HE fundamental doctrine, on which He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God Teverything in the Christian Faith is based, is love.” (1 John 4:7) is that of the Most Holy Trinity, in whose The love of which St. John writes, is the name all Christians are baptized. Holy love reflected in the Gospels. It is the love Trinity Sunday needs to be understood and reflected in our Saviour Christ and His celebrated as a prolongation of the sacrifice upon the Cross. It is the love of mysteries of Christ and as the solemn which St. Paul writes in the 13th chapter of expression of our faith in this triune life of his First Epistle to the Corinthians. While the Divine Persons, to which we have been the modern world may romanticize ‘this given access by Baptism and by the thing called love’, we do not. Nor, on the Redemption won for us by our Lord Jesus other hand, do we as Christians shy away Christ. Only in heaven shall we properly from ‘this thing called love’, whether from understand what it means, in union with fear of sentimentalism or a sign of weakness Christ, to share as sons and daughters in or being accused of permissiveness. No, the very life of God. love is of God and that love is sacrificial, The doctrine which forms the object of kind and caring, seeks not itself, is life this holy day is this: There is one God and in affirming and other-centred. There is no this one God there are three Divine Persons; fear in love. the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy So, as we begin Trinitytide, the ‘season of Spirit is God. Yet there are not three Gods, ordinary living’, we are provided in our but one, eternal, incomprehensible God. Sunday liturgies the lessons and the means The Father is not more God than the Son, to live daily the Christian life. In this we neither is the Son more God than the Holy come to know that in order to live our daily Spirit. The Father is the first Divine Person; lives and to meet its daily challenges we the Son is the second Divine Person, must seek for God’s guidance and grace. begotten of the Father from eternity; the We know that through the Sacraments, the Holy Spirit is the third Divine Person, visible means of grace provided to us by proceeding from the Father and the Son. Christ in His Church, especially the No mortal can fully fathom this sublime Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood in truth; but as Christians we submit humbly Holy Communion, we have been given the and say: ‘Lord, I believe, help thou mine means of our salvation and the supernatural unbelief.’ strength to live out our lives with faith, hope Why is this feast celebrated at this and love. particular time? It may be interpreted as a We know too that we are to have at the finale to all the preceding feasts. All three very centre of our daily existence, God’s holy Persons of the Holy Trinity contributed to Word, God’s love for us, and our love for and shared in the work of redemption. The God and our neighbour. We are reminded Father sent His Son to earth, for "God so that on the Last Day we shall stand before loved the world as to give His only-begotten our God to give account for what we have Son." The Father called us to the faith. The done and what we have failed to do; but Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, became man even in that we are assured of God’s mercy. and died for us. He redeemed us and made Let us then live out our ‘ordinary lives’ with us children of God. He ever remains the One faith, hope, and love. to whom we are united in all sacred functions. After Christ's ascension, the Holy Archbishop Shane B. Janzen The Anglican Catholic Chronicle Page 3. Spirit became our Teacher, our Leader, our From the ninth century on, various bishops Guide, our Consoler. of the Frankish Kingdoms (the area we know The Feast of the Most Holy Trinity may today as France and parts of Germany) well be regarded as the Church's Te Deum promoted within their own dioceses a of gratitude over all the blessings of the special feast for the Holy Trinity … usually Christmas and Easter seasons; for this on the Sunday after Pentecost. The Mass mystery is a synthesis of Christmas, texts themselves are said to have been Epiphany, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost. composed by the great English Benedictine This feast, which falls on the first Sunday Abbot and liturgist, Alcuin, around the year after Pentecost, should make us mindful 804. Thus, the custom of observing a that actually every Sunday is devoted to the special feast in honor of the Holy Trinity honor of the Most Holy Trinity, that every became increasingly popular in the Northern Sunday is sanctified and consecrated to the countries of Europe. triune God. Sunday after Sunday we should The feast of the Holy Trinity gained a recall in a spirit of gratitude the gifts which special popularity in England due to its the Holy Trinity is bestowing upon us. The association with St. Thomas Becket, the Father created and predestined us; on the famous Archbishop of Canterbury, who first day of the week He began the work of directed its regular observance throughout creation. The Son redeemed us; Sunday is the English realm. This feast was considered the "Day of the Lord," the day of His so important within the Sarum (Salisbury) resurrection. The Holy Spirit sanctified us, Use and its kalendar, that the Sundays from made us His temple; on Sunday the Holy Trinity Sunday until Advent were reckoned Spirit descended upon the infant Church. as the Sundays after Trinity Sunday, instead Sunday, therefore, is the day of the Most of after Pentecost Sunday, which was Holy Trinity.