Trinitytide, coinciding (in Texas at least) with the long, hot summer, is on us. Stretching from June to November, it’s “green”: not from ecological commitment, but ecclesiastical custom: green vestments of the clergy, green hangings on the Altar, the liturgical color traditionally representing “hope.” Trinitytide is a medieval English and French invention. Before that, those days reaching from Whitsunday till Advent were simply lumped together as tempus per annum, “time through the year.” Nowadays, with our lowest common denominator language, many call this season “Ordinary Time.”
Whether we follow Medieval English or contemporary American use, this long season seems to lack the focus of the “other” half of the Church’s Year. Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost: every child who’s gone through confirmation class knows these great seasons and what they celebrate. Trinitytide, the tempus per annum, seems to be the time of year we tread water till November reminds us Advent is coming again. It’s a time for committee meetings, clerical conferences and continuing education programs.
Nothing wrong with any of that: building committees need to meet. Maybe we’re missing something, though. I think there may be something in the treasury of the Church’s tradition we’ve overlooked for a while, and the clue to what it is lies out in the open, right in front of us, waiting to be picked up again and restored to its former use.
Trinity Sunday, the day we’ve set aside for reflection on one of the two great dogmas of the Catholic religion, comes after those cycles of celebration of the other great dogma of the faith: the Incarnation—God became one of us in Jesus Christ. From Advent through Easter we keep the feasts of that great truth. Whitsunday, the end of that cycle, is not a feast of the Incarnation—our Lord wasn’t around anymore when the Holy Ghost fell on the Apostles. He was in Heaven. Whitsunday is a feast celebrating “what are we gonna do now?” Now that God has come “for us men and our salvation,” what’s next?
When our Lord was about to ascend with His human body and soul into Heaven (taking the fullness of our humanity into glory) He told His disciples “Wait here. You’re about to be given power from on high.” They did and they were.
The power (dunamis is the Greek word; our English word “dynamite” comes from it) they were given was—and still is—the power of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is God’s power active in Christians today. It’s the dunamis of the Sacraments, the dunamis of prayer, the dunamis of sacrifice, the dunamis of love. The Holy Ghost is meant to be the Power of your life and mine as disciples of the Lord Jesus. The Church’s ancient calendar teaches us how to live out that dunamis.
We need times of reflection, of contemplation, retreat, times devoted to bathing in the deep waters of the Spirit. We need Advents and Lents. We need times to discover joy, to renew ourselves in the realities that answer our spiritual needs. We need Christmases and Easters. But God didn’t put us into His creation to rise, guru-like, above it. We are an integral and necessary part of God’s creation. We need Lenten discipline and Easter joy as we need Whitsun fire and dynamite.
St Leo the Great never tires of saying “Christ is born in us at Christmas. He suffers in us on Good Friday. He rises in us on Easter.” The calendar doesn’t merely recall those long-ago events, in the Liturgy it makes them active in us. That dynamite ignited by the Spirit on Whitsunday wasn’t meant to fizzle out on Trinity. Let the necessary building and finance committees meet. But Trinitytide should be the time for letting the Power of the Spirit, burning over our heads at Whitsunday, to explode like dynamite. Let’s make it so. Ask and then, like the disciples waiting to be turned into apostles, wait. The dunamis we so desperately need is not our own.—Fr Gregory Wilcox
No comments:
Post a Comment