From the Rector
The Week of July 27, 2025
Dear friends in Christ,
This Sunday’s Collect, from an eighth-century supplement to the Gregorian Sacramentary, attributed to Saint Gregory the Great, sets before us one of the most beautiful petitions in our liturgical tradition:
"O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy: Increase and multiply upon us your mercy; that, with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we lose not the things eternal…" (BCP 231)
Its voice is full of both longing and steady courage. It admits what we’re often reluctant to acknowledge, namely, that even in times of strength or prosperity, nothing in life is truly strong and secure unless it is rooted in God the Father, from whom every good gift comes. God’s mercy and loving providence reframes our trust in God's provision, and we more fully able to to withstand adversity and rightly enjoy the abundance of his mercy. Far from a denial of the goodness of temporal life, the collect reorients who we are as creatures. We are sojourners, passing through things temporal, steered by mercy and drawn into holiness of living.
The imagery in this collect evokes Psalm 121, where the psalmist says, “The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in, from this time forth forever more" (v.8). The Wisdom literature of the Old Testament too, as King Solomon wrote in his Proverbs: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths" (vv.3:5–6). The collect also beautifully echoes Deuteronomy’s summons to remember the Lord our God, “for it is he who gives you power to get wealth,” lest in prosperity we forget our dependence (8:18).
We may also hear in the collect the wisdom of Saint Paul in his second letter to the church in Corinth. “We look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal" (4:18). The “eternal things” of which he writes are not befuddlingly abstract. They are bound up, rather, in Christ himself, who is our life (see Colossians 3:4), and in the charity that tethers each of us to one another in him.
The disciples ask Jesus in our reading this Sunday from the Gospel of Luke, “Lord, teach us to pray…” (11:1). And Jesus teaches them to open their hearts to God by seeking his reign, our daily bread, forgiveness of trespasses, and deliverance from all evil. All of which is to pray that we ought to direct all things temporal toward the communion God invites us to share perfectly with him throughout eternity. We find help to ask for mercy, with joy and confidence in his great goodness, to make it through another day, with our eyes turned towards the hills, from where our help comes.
May God guard, cherish, protect, and visit you today.
In Christ~
Fr. Peter
