Summer Collects: June 28
goodbye June
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.
Sunday, June 28, 2026
Proper 8 After Pentecost — 1979 Book of Common Prayer
4th Sunday After Trinity — Old (pre-1979) Book of Common Prayer editions
Proper VIII After Pentecost
1979 BCP pp. 178, 230
Almighty God,
You have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone:
Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching,
that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to You;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
IV Sunday After Trinity
O God, the protector of all that trust in Thee,
without Whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy;
Increase and multiply upon us Thy mercy;
that, Thou being our ruler and guide,
we may so pass through things temporal,
that we finally lose not the things eternal.
Grant this, O heavenly Father,
for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Something many miss about the Proper VIII Collect is that it is adapted from an older collect for a fixed date. In the old Prayer Books, this was the Collect for the feast of the apostles Simon and Jude, celebrated October 28 every year. The wording for the 1979 BCP is exactly the same. Proper VIII After Pentecost in the 1979 BCP corresponds to the Sunday closest to June 29, which informed Prayer Book users should recognize as the major feast of two less obscure apostles: Peter and Paul. In this way the 1979 BCP keeps in a sly way the older placement of the Collect for an apostolic feast.
So little is written about Simon and Jude in the New Testament that I suspect their old proper Collect decides to exposit a general notion of apostleship rather than something specific to those two men. But in this generality lies the Collect’s strength. A Collect teaches us as we pray it. This Collect teaches us what apostleship means: to be built upon Christ. This way of life and posture of the heart is what is celebrated in all the Twelve. Whether the obscurity of Simon or Jude, or the fame (and infamy) of Peter and Paul, the Collect instructs believers that looking to the example of the apostles has a united foundation. I think there is encouragement to be found here in that, wherever a Christian finds themselves in life, God has prepared a common place for them in Christ. Obscurity in the eyes of the world does equate to a lack of value.
Another basic feature of Proper VIII is the heavy reliance on unsubtle allusions from Ephesians 2:
So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. (Eph 2.19-21 RSV)
This rich, direct, unapologetic quotation of the passage displays a common apostolic metaphor in the New Testament where the people of God are compared to a temple. Ephesians 2 is a Pauline use of the metaphor and in the spirit of June 29’s feast, there is also a Petrine example:
To whom coming, as unto a living stone… ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. (I Pet 2.4-5 KJV)
An organic collective image, the human body, and a collective image pertaining to civilization, the temple, are united to describe the people of God. Scripture takes two to become one. God is in the business of union and intimacy with humanity, and for God to be united to humanity, humanity must be united with itself. I do not know what this union looks like, but it must come from God. The image of “living stones” (I Pet 2.4) or a temple that “grows” up into holiness (Eph 2.21) is a strange one befitting God’s own life and holiness. It will look unnatural to worldly eyes. But, as Christians know from the Cross, “The stone that the builders rejected / has become the chief cornerstone. / This is the LORD’s doing” (Ps 118.22-23 NRSV).
The majority of my thoughts have been toward Proper VIII. How might the Collect for IV Trinity inform this Collect? The Fourth Sunday After Trinity was shuffled by the 1979 BCP to Proper XII (which will be coming up on July 26 this year). What strikes me is a biblical allusion to the Sermon on the Mount:
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Matt 6.19-21 RSV)
The contrast the Lord Jesus makes between earth and heaven feels similar to what IV Trinity prays: “that, Thou being our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal.” Earth and time. Heaven and eternity. These pairs, like Simon and Jude, like Peter and Paul, like body and brick, like people and temple, are meant for union, because God yearns for union to ourselves, to His precious image. In Scripture God unites two into one, to unite them to Himself.
Where Proper VIII prays that Christians may be collectively built upon Christ, IV Trinity prays that Christians know and embrace the cost of being built (cf. Luke 14.28). I feel that both Collects, then, remind me to keep the main thing the main thing. Can someone who claims to be a Christian learn to life their life as if Jesus Christ was the foundation, rather than an extracurricular element or decoration added to the foundation? Can someone who claims to be a Christian live their days with a consistent contact with the foundation?