Our times, the seasons, and Trinitytide

The long season of Trinitytide now stretches before us.  On the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity, 26th November, Trinitytide will draw to a close with Stir-up Sunday. This is part of the reason why I particularly value Trinitytide.  It journeys from late Spring, through the long, warm days of Summer, into the rich hues and fruitfulness of Autumn, bringing us to the cusp of dark Winter. Today, here in Jeremy Taylor country, the sun will set at 10:03pm, after 17 hours of daylight.  On the last day of Trinitytide this year, Saturday 2nd December, the sun will set at 4:03pm, after a mere 7 1/2 daylight hours.

And so does Trinitytide reflect something of our earthly pilgrimage, through days of growth, into long, full, busy days, moving into times of quieter maturity, bringing us to that season when "the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done". The weeks of Trinitytide are marked by the ordinary rhythms of common prayer, even as we are sustained throughout our earthly pilgrimage by prayer, scripture, and sacrament.

Alongside the seasons of the year, Trinitytide also gathers up the festivities and civic commemorations which help shape our common life. In these Islands, Trinitytide includes Harvest Thanksgiving and Remembrancetide, with Accession Day (the anniversary of the beginning of His Majesty's reign) now falling on 8th September; in Canada, alongside Accession Day and Remembrancetide, there is the celebration of confederation on Canada Day (1st July) and Thanksgiving (the second Monday in October); in the United States, Independence Day and Thanksgiving. The fact that these commemorations are given liturgical expression is a reminder of how all of life is caught up, through the church's prayer, in Christ. Our life in the polity with its call to the peaceable and just life, and our gratitude for "those things which are requisite and necessary, as well for the body as the soul", these are integral to the Christian life, of living in "love and charity with your neighbours", of being thankful "for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life", of passing "our time in rest and quietness".

Trinitytide also brings us to reflect on the nature of our earthly pilgrimage by its focus on "the fruit of good living", that "our hearts may be set to obey thy commandments". As Henry Handley Norris of the Hackney Phalanx, in his 1815 A Manual for the Parish Priest, stated:

With Trinity Sunday, the Church in the Collects, Epistles and Gospels closes her doctrinal instruction; and from thence to the return of Advent, appropriates them to practical Christianity. The parochial minister cannot perhaps follow a better rule. Having in the former part of the year fully instructed his flock in the doctrines, let him in the latter part enforce upon them the duties of the Gospel.

This is richly set before us in the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel of the First Sunday after Trinity: "that in keeping of thy commandments we may please thee"; "If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar"; Lazarus "desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man's table". Throughout the Sundays of Trinitytide, as Handley Norris noted, the call to the moral life is consistently heard. And, of course, Trinitytide concludes with the collect of Stir-up Sunday, "that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works". Well might we think of words from Benjamin Whichcote:

If a Man be not far better-natur'd towards God and all the world; more kind and loving to men; more at Peace within himself after his regeneration than before; there hath been Motion, without a Form introduced.

In other words, Trinitytide sets before us the most challenging aspect of the Christian life: that the way of love and forgiveness, of grace and mercy must be a practical reality in our daily, domestic, communal, secular living, strengthened by prayer, guided by the scriptures, sustained by the holy Sacrament.

After the richness of Advent through Christmas to Epiphany, and the drama of Lent, Holy Week, and Easter, Trinitytide may appear to be, well, 'ordinary time'. Such, however, is the nature of the life flowing from Cross and Resurrection.  It is not meant to be characterised by 'The Weird', by high spiritual drama, or intense experience.  We are, rather, to "lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty" (I Timothy 2:2), to "live soberly, righteously, and godly" (Titus 2:12), to be those who do the will of the Father, akin to the labour of building a house, not those who loudly proclaim "have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done wonderful works?" (Matthew 5:21ff).

Trinitytide, therefore, is a season which both brings us to discern, and calls us more authentically into, the pilgrimage that is the Christian life, over our years and decades. It brings us in daily living, in households and in the community, in the marketplace and as citizens, to know what it is to "live a godly, righteous, and sober life", through the warmth of our summers, into the slower pace of our autumnal days, until we prepare to pass through the gate of winter, into the heavenly kingdom.

(The photographs are of The Middle Church, in the heart of Jeremy Taylor country, in high Summer and in the depths of Winter.)