The Christian virtue of humility is set forth in the Epistle for this
Sunday in the words of St. Peter, and illustrated in the Gospel by the
example of our Blessed Lord in receiving sinners and eating with them.
The Collect, however, seems to take its tone from the latter portion of
the Epistle, which speaks of the afflictions and sufferings to which the
early Christians were subjected. The Epistle and the Collect are,
in fact, much more frequently associated together in tone and language
than the Collect and the Gospel; indicating a probability that the Gospels
were not read in the Communion Service until a later period than that in
which the Epistles came to be used.
