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Commentary from 
THE ANNOTATED
BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER
Edited by JOHN HENRY BLUNT
Rivingtons, London, 1884

 

FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
 
The Sundays and other Festivals from Advent to Trinity form one system of dogmatic illustrations of Christianity: Prayer and the words of Holy Scripture all combining to present the memorial of primary truths before God in acts of worship, and before man as words of instruction.  The Sundays after Trinity may be regarded as a system illustrating the practical life of Christianity, founded on the truths previously represented, and guided by the example of our Blessed Lord.  There is a Rubric given on this Sunday in the Salisbury Missal: "Memoria de Trinitate fiat omnibus dominicis usque ad adventum Domini."

The love of God and the love of man are - one may almost say, of course - the first subject selected for the Eucharistic Scriptures in this system, as shown in St. John's wonderful definition of love, and in the historical parable of the rich man and Lazarus.  In the Epistle St. John shows that God's own love for mankind is the source and spring of all love towards Him, and that all true love towards Him is shown by the evidence of charity.  The Gospel, independently of the revelation made in it concerning the state of the departed, places in the most awful light the sin of being without Christian love; and the utter incompatibility of such a condition with a life that will gain the award of future happiness.  In teaching this truth our Blessed Lord also revealed to us the intermediate state.  Although the Last Judgement was very distant when He told the Jews this history of two men who had, perhaps, been known to them, yet He put it beyond doubt that the souls which had departed from their bodies were as living and conscious as they had ever been, and that their condition was already that of those upon whom a preliminary judgement had been passed; an award of happiness to the one, of torment to the other.