SECOND SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY THIRD SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY. FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY ALMIGHTY GOD, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which Thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when He shall come again in His glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through Him who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Spirit, now and ever. Amen. The Church divides her year into two parts-the first beginning with Advent Sunday; in which she commemorates our blessed Redeemer's living here B on earth, and embraces the Creed; in the second, beginning with Trinity Sunday, she instructs us to live after his example, and enlarges upon the Commandments; and thus unites faith and practice. The word Advent signifies coming, and is here applied to the coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, whose expected appearance was the hope of all mankind, such a Redeemer being promised at the fall of our first parents. Dark night, a night of ignorance and guilt, had long covered the earth, and at the time of his birth, had enveloped it in its deepest shades. It was in the midst of this gloom that the harbinger of the Lord, the bright morning star, the holy Baptist appeared, to give notice that the Day-spring from on high was at hand. In joyful remembrance of this event the Church commences her year on this day, not calculating her seasons by the sun in the visible heavens, but according to the course of the Sun of Righteousness, her Lord and Master. She now calls on her children to "awake," and by a due observance of the first advent of Christ, to prepare for his second and last, when he shall come in glory to judge the world. The Collect for this Sunday, which is repeated every day as proper to the season, clearly and expressly instructs us in the design of it. It implores the grace of God to enable us to put off the works of darkness or wickedness, and to array ourselves in the heavenly armour of Christianity, that so, fighting against our spiritual enemies, the great powers of darkness, we may live as becomes the followers of a holy Redeemer, looking for the final coming of our Lord and Judge.* The Epistle accordingly, by the most powerful considerations, calls on us to awake from spiritual sloth and become active in our Christian course, declaring that the night of ignorance is past, that the day of salvation—the light of divine knowledge—is at hand. As, therefore, we pray in the Collect to be enlightened by the word of God, and enabled by his grace to lead a godly life, it becomes a duty to study with increased attention and earnestness, the holy Scriptures, and there seek the light which shall rescue us from the darkness with which sin would still blind us. In the Gospel + we are presented with a striking instance of our Lord's humility, in his riding lowly upon an ass into Jerusalem, immediately previous to * St. Jerome is thought to have selected the Epistles and Gospels: many of the Collects were doubtless framed by the same venerable Father. All however have the stamp of antiquity, the Reformers having confined themselves to a strict revisal of the old ones rather than making new ones. The Epistles are selected for the most part out of the writings of the apostles. They are so called, because they were sent by way of letter by the apostles to the several churches or places to which they are inscribed. †The Gospels are taken out of the writings of the four Evangelists, and in honour to our Saviour, whose words and works they are, the Church commands them to be read and heard standing; whereby we not only denote reverence, but a resolution to adhere and stand to them. |