Commontide
Liturgical Color: White/Gold
Trinity Sunday
Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Trinity Sunday
Who, with your co-eternal Son and Holy Spirit, are one God, one Lord, in Trinity of Persons and in Unity of Substance. For that which we believe of your glory, O Father, we believe the same of your Son, and of the Holy Spirit, without any difference or inequality.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
Red Letter Day
Reformer and Pastor of Geneva
Ecumenical Commemoration
The feast of the Holy Trinity, the one God in three Persons. Almost alone in the Western calendar, this day keeps not an event but a doctrine, and in the Prayer Book tradition it gives its name to the long season that follows.
Trinity Sunday is the feast of the Holy Trinity — the one God in three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It falls on the first Sunday after Pentecost, completing the great arc of the liturgical calendar: the Father sends the Son (Christmas), the Son accomplishes redemption (Easter), the Spirit is given to the Church (Pentecost), and on Trinity Sunday the Church confesses the fullness of God as revealed through these mighty acts. Unlike most feasts, Trinity Sunday commemorates not an event but a doctrine — the central mystery of the Christian faith. The feast is comparatively late in origin. While Trinitarian theology was definitively settled at Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), a distinct feast of the Trinity did not become widespread until the medieval period. Individual bishops promoted it — Thomas Becket, consecrated on Trinity Sunday 1162, established it at Canterbury. Pope John XXII made it universal for the Western church in 1334. The BCP tradition, however, gave Trinity Sunday a structural importance beyond Rome's: in the English Prayer Book tradition, the Sundays of the long season after Pentecost are numbered 'after Trinity' rather than 'after Pentecost,' making Trinity Sunday the hinge of the entire second half of the church year. The BCP 2019 lists it among the seven Principal Feasts, and the Athanasian Creed — the most detailed creedal exposition of Trinitarian doctrine — is traditionally appointed for this day.
Trinity Sunday's liturgical tradition reflects the challenge of celebrating a doctrine rather than a narrative. The appointed readings across the three-year lectionary cycle present different facets of Trinitarian revelation: Nicodemus's nighttime conversation with Jesus (John 3), the baptismal commission 'in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit' (Matthew 28), and Paul's Trinitarian benediction (2 Corinthians 13:14). The Athanasian Creed (Quicunque Vult), with its precise and paradoxical formulations — 'neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance' — has been associated with this feast since at least the ninth century in the West, and the BCP 2019 includes it among its historical documents. The collect for Trinity Sunday is among the most theologically careful in the Prayer Book: 'by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity.' Cranmer's 1549 language echoes here. The white or gold vestments used on this day reflect its status as a feast of the Godhead. In Anglican practice, numbering Sundays 'after Trinity' rather than 'after Pentecost' has given this feast a unique structural role — it names half the church year.
John Calvin, born at Noyon in Picardy in 1509, was a French lawyer and humanist who became the pastor and teacher of Geneva. Never ordained in the Roman church, he wrote the Institutes of the Christian Religion at twenty-six as a plea to a king who was burning his countrymen, was twice made a Genevan against his own plans, and left behind a church order, an academy, and thousands of sermons. He died on 27 May 1564 and was buried the next day in an unmarked grave, by his own instruction.
Born in Noyon, Picardy, Jean Calvin received a humanist legal education before converting to evangelical Christianity around 1533. Fleeing Catholic France, he published the first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion in Basel in 1536 — a work he expanded through four editions (final 1559) into the most comprehensive Protestant systematic theology.
Calvin spent brief time in Strasbourg under Martin Bucer before settling in Geneva, where — after an initial exile (1538-1541) — he established the Ecclesiastical Ordinances restructuring church governance around four offices: pastors, teachers, elders, and deacons. Geneva became a refuge for persecuted Protestants and a training ground for Reformed ministers.
Calvin's productivity was extraordinary: he preached nearly daily, wrote commentaries on most biblical books, produced thousands of surviving letters, and shaped Geneva's religious, educational, and civil institutions. His theology emphasized God's sovereignty, predestination, Scripture's authority, and the invisible church. His role in the execution of Michael Servetus for heresy in 1553 remains controversial and reflects the coercive religious uniformity of the era. Calvin's influence extended across Europe, shaping Reformed traditions from Scotland to Hungary to the Netherlands. He died on May 27, 1564.
Calvin's legacy is interpreted differently across traditions. Reformed tradition celebrates his theological brilliance; Catholic and critical accounts stress his coercive governance and the Servetus execution. Modern ecumenical dialogue has produced more nuanced assessments.