Summer Collects: July 5

How do peace and love relate?

Edie Mae Herrel (d. 2026), The Evening and the Morning Were the Second Day [undated]

Each Sunday of the year, the Book of Common Prayer appoints a special prayer for the week called a Collect. They are gems of devotion, theology, and turns of phrase. For the summer’s long green Season After Pentecost, I want to compare the current BCP collect appointed according to the calendar date with its older counterpart appointed according to the Sundays after Trinity, looking for connections that can yeild insight on holiness and the Christian life.

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July 5, 2026

• Proper 9 After Pentecost — 1979 Book of Common Prayer

• 5th Sunday After Trinity — Old (pre-1979) Book of Common Prayer editions

Proper IX After Pentecost
(BCP pp. 178/230-31)

O God,
You have taught us to keep all your commandments
by loving You and our neighbor:
Grant us the grace of Your Holy Spirit,
that we may be devoted to You with our whole heart,
and united to one another with pure affection;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

V Sunday After Trinity
(cf. Proper 3 After Pentecost, BCP 1979)

Grant, O Lord, we beseech Thee,
that the course of this world
may be so peaceably ordered by Thy governance,
that Thy Church may joyfully serve Thee in all godly quietness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The BCP 1979 shuffled V Trinity to Proper III, the Sunday closest to May 25, which means it is rarely prayed on a Sunday unless Easter comes very early. I think the coincidence of these Proper IX and V Trinity being the same Sunday this year allows one to compare and unite the virtue of love with the desire for peace in their collects.

The 1979 Collect’s guiding theme is Christ’s Summary of the Law, also known as the Great Commandment. It appears in all the Synoptic Gospels: in Mark 12 and Matthew 22 during a dispute with a scribe (Mark) or lawyer (Matthew), and in Luke 10 during an exchange with a lawyer that prompts the magnificent Parable of the Good Samaritan. Here’s Mark’s version:

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12.28-31 NRSV)

The Summary of the Law welds the famous Shema (Hebrew, “Hear”) of Deuteronomy 6.4-5, and the last clause of Leviticus 19.18 (a slice of that book’s Holiness Code). Matthew’s version is the one quoted by the Book of Common Prayer in the communion rite after the Collect for Purity (Rite I, p. 324). I included Mark’s because unlike Matthew it includes the opening phrase and proclamation of God’s oneness, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

Oneness is not just an attribute of God, but an attribute of life with God. The central theme and petition of Proper IX this week is one strong and complete thought, like many of the greatest Collects. To love God and to love neighbor is the banner of Christian life. But it is not a generic love, because this kind of formula is a summary of the Law. This is not a generic principle of life, but the covenantal banner of Jesus Christ’s Torah. It is continuous with Torah. It is one with Torah as the Lord is One with Himself; indeed, it is one just as these two commandments are ultimately one. This theme of union is picked up by the Collect’s petition: it asks for union with God and union with neighbor under the idiom of devotion of the “whole heart” and “pure affection.” The language of the “heart” in the Collect keeps the Deuteronomic character of what it means to love God—it is always a union of inward character with outward acts. Affection to the neighbor behaves similarly.

The central petition of V Trinity concerns the maintenance of peace. The phrase “godly quietness” sticks out to me and reminds me of a choice exhortation in I Thessalonians:

Now concerning love of the brothers and sisters… we urge you, brothers [and sisters], to do so more and more, to aspire to live quietly, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we directed you, so that you may behave properly toward outsiders and be dependent on no one. (I Thess 4.9, 11-12 NRSV n.)

Given that the Collect asks for an orderly divine governance of society, I suspect a sharper and more civic-minded cross reference is the famous Pauline exhortation of I Timothy 2:

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour. (I Tim 2.1-3 KJV)

This is the exact same passage reference in the classical Prayer Books’ “Prayer for the Whole State of Christ’s Church” (now called in the 1979 Rite I “the Prayers of the People”):

Almighty and everliving God, who in thy holy Word¹ hast taught us to make prayers, and supplications, and to give thanks for all men: (1979 BCP p. 329)

I cannot help but think about this last Sunday’s proximity to July 4 and the frequent question of churches’ proper relationship to civil religion, which is sometimes proximate but never identical to Christian faith.² At its best, churches want to pray for good order and peace in society, as V Trinity models. At its worst (more often than not), the state’s pursuit of “peace” in society is a false one enforced by violence and injustice, thus mocking the values of the Gospel. In many ages, the Church has confused “godly quietness” with a tolerance of injustice.³ The Church is caught between these two visions—St. Augustine of Hippo famously called these two visions and ways of life the City of God and the City of Man.⁴ The difference must be one of love. A true love of God and neighbor, which is to say a love modeled after God’s covenant love of humanity throughout the world of the Bible, can reveal whether the peace asked for in V Trinity is a true peace of the City of God or a false peace of the City of Man. Love cuts through the crap and allows Christians to see whether “the course of this world” is actually “peaceably ordered by Thy governance.”

Now may the Lord of peace Himself continually grant you peace in every circumstance. The Lord be with you all! (II Thessalonians 3.16 NASB2020)

1. Before the 1979 it read “by thy holy Apostle,” an even more obvious reference to I Timothy. Perhaps it was altered since most New Testament scholarship now considers that epistle pseudonymously Pauline.

2. An honest reflection in this article quotes an Episcopal priest saying, “The Anglican tradition is one of the most deeply public or state-friendly traditions of Christianity. And this is so, rightly or wrongly.” Zen Hess, “Praying for the Nation,” The Living Church— Covenant (weblog), July 3, 2026, https://livingchurch.org/covenant/praying-for-the-nation/.

3. Another honest reflection comes from my friend the Rev. Tony Hunt and his recent displeasure at how a classic Church of England spiritual text envisioned holiness in society: “It was, perhaps, naive of me to think that even Jeremy Taylor would be immune from Anglicanism’s original sin.”

(Un)Holy Hierarchy

4. I haven’t read the City of God, perhaps the late Augustine’s magnum opus, but I listened to a great podcast about it last year here from Gregory Lee, a scholar who recently edited an anthology of this text: https://onscript.study/podcast/gregory-lee-the-essential-city-of-god/.