The evenings are shorter, the early mornings cooler; the verdant greenery of High Summer is now faded; the birdsong is quieter; the hedgerows are full of berries; chestnuts are falling. With the last days of August, late Summer begins to draw to a close.
It is a time of year I particularly enjoy, its own 'micro-season' when we begin to feel Autumn approach. The loud, brash days of Summer are past. Late Summer is quieter, more modest. It is a time when, for me, the words of the Second Collect at Evening Prayer have a seasonal resonance, reflected in the passage of the year, in the landscape preparing for autumnal days.
This occurs as parish life resumes after the Summer break, as schools, colleges, and universities begin a new academic year, as the Summer holidays begin to recede into memory, and the Christmas holidays still feel somewhat distant. All this activity, however, only seems to emphasise the quietness of the landscape in late Summer and our need of the "rest and quietness" for which we pray in the Second Collect at Evening Prayer.
... send thy blessing down from heaven to give us a fruitful season
We prayed these words at Rogationtide. Now, amidst the labour of the farmers in the fields around us, we see our prayer answered. Late Summer is harvest time, the fruitful season. Soon, after all is safely gathered in, Harvest Thanksgivings will begin in local parishes. Some will occur in September, most in early to mid October, a few falling in late October. When the hymns and prayers of Harvest Thanksgiving are first heard each year, and when we see the first parish church decorated with the fruits of the earth, we know that late Summer has become Autumn, that the days of falling leaves and darker evenings have again arrived.
Lighten our darkness ...
Soon, when the darker evenings come, we will also be celebrating (a month from today) Saint Michael and All Angels, a reassuring reminder that those dark evenings and the intimations of mortality brought by another Autumn are not to be received with fear and foreboding. Divine love and light enfolds us, the covenant promise given to Jacob is ours during this earthly journey, the host of heaven "succour and defend us on earth". Even now, with the long, light-filled evenings of High Summer well behind us, with darkness falling before nine o'clock, we sense something of what will be in coming weeks and why Michaelmas fittingly falls at September's end.
And our mouth shall shew forth thy praise ...
Choral Evensong resumes in the parish in September, just as late Summer becomes Autumn. The quiet, contemplative nature of Choral Evensong echoes the seasonal character, giving us a time and space to "pass our time in rest and quietness" as "we assemble and meet together to render thanks for the great benefits we have received at his hands", as "his most holy Word" is read, as we come before "the throne of the heavenly grace".
As August ends, as late Summer begins to draw to a close, may readers of laudable Practice know the blessing of the Triune God in whose hands are all our times and seasons.
(The photograph is of the lychgate at The Middle Church, taken on a late August day, 2025.)
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