Trinity 8 - Praying in Light of God's Providence
Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 8:46AM A Reflection on the Collect (the prayer) for the 8th Sunday after Trinity (Aug 14, 2011)
O God, whose never-failing providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth; We humbly beseech thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things which are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Epistle: Romans 8:12-17 The Gospel: St. Matthew 7:15-21
After the brief Invocation (O God) we move into the Doctrinal portion of the collect (upon which the following two Petitions are grounded). We begin with a reference to God’s providence.
An historical note. A literal translation of the Latin (as found in the Gelasium Sacramentary and Sarum) would read: “God, whose providence in ordering that which is his own, is not deceived (mistaken).” Cranmer’s translation in 1549 shortened the clause to “God whose providence is never deceived” (thus dropping the idea of God’s control over events), an omission which Bishop Cosin considered a mistake and thus in 1661 revised the prayer to the form in which we have it today.[1] The result of Cosin’s revision is that the idea of God’s providential ordering of all things is once again the main idea of the collect.
What does it mean to say that God’s providence is never-failing? On the one hand this phrase points to the fact that God’s providence is continually and ceaselessly operative. He never slumbers or misses a beat. But in light of the collect’s previous forms, this is probably also an allusion to the goodness of God’s providence. In other words, even when the circumstances of our lives tempt us to believe that God has either forgotten about us or that he has made a mistake – we are to rest assured that he has not been deceived into misidentifying something bad as being good. He is incorruptibly good, infinitely wise and cannot make an error. As Paul tells us, “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).
Building upon the doctrinal statement just made, in the petitionary portion of the collect we ask two things of God: (1) put away from us all hurtful things and (2) give us those things which are profitable for us.
Put away from us all hurtful things. This is not a prayer that God would preserve us from every form of pain or suffering. Such a prayer would be in conflict not only with the teaching of the New Testament – consider, for instance: “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking” (1 Peter 4:1) – but also the witness of the saints through the ages. Those who live lives which are faithful to Christ (in a world that rejects him) will inevitably experience hardship (1 Peter 4:12-19; cf. Matthew 5:11-12).
In a culture in which pain is often regarded as an enemy to avoided at all costs, it is important to realize how contrary that notion is to a Christian worldview that is shaped by Christ’s Cross. Put away from us all hurtful things is not a request for a pain free life, it is a prayer that we – enduring faithfully – might be preserved until the end. The “hurtful things” are those things that do injury to our relationship with God, such as “living after the flesh” and doing the “deeds of the body” (see today’s epistle, especially v.12). This petition is very similar to our daily prayer that God “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” As Evan Daniel wrote: “. . . while we recognize a never-failing Providence, we also recognize the indispensability of bringing our wills into accord with God’s will.”[2]
give us those things which are profitable for us. One of the most faith-filled phrases in the BCP (in my opinion) is found towards the end of the second to last prayer in both Morning and Evening Prayer (the prayer is called “A Prayer of St. Chrysostom”). As we conclude our prayers (and perhaps bring back to mind the petitions which we have just made) we ask God to “fulfil . . . the desires and petitions of thy servants, as may be most expedient for them” (BCP, pgs. 20 & 34). By asking God to grant our requests as may be most expedient for us, we are submitting ourselves and our wills to God. (This is another way of praying “thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”) This is a confession that we do not claim to know God’s will in every circumstance and neither do we necessarily know what is best for us. In other words – it is conceivable that to obtain our desires and petitions may in fact hurt us. The example of Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane (O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt) shows us that we may truly and honestly cry out to God with the desires of our heart, while at the same time completely submit ourselves to his wisdom and his will for us. One is reminded of C. S. Lewis’ poem “A Footnote to All Prayers”:
He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing Thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshipping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to Thyself divert
Our arrows, aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolators, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if Thou take them at their word.
Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.
Thus the phrase “as may be most expedient” is a confession that our trust in God is greater than our trust in ourselves. We trust not only that he is wiser than we are, but also that he is better than we are (he is perfectly good and we are not). As Goulburn put it:
The great idea which the whole prayer puts before us, is this, that we are journeying (or making a progress) through life; that in this progress we know not what may befall us, and that, if we conjecture our future, we might grievously err in our calculations; that even if we know what might befall us, we might have no control over it, so as to avert what was really evil. Feeling, therefore, utterly blind and powerless as to our future career, we throw ourselves down before God’s footstool whose providence or foresight is infinite, and beseech Him that He would summarily remove out of our path all such impediments as really block our progress to the heavenly Canaan, and give us one after another all such things as may really further us on our road thither.[3]
The collect’s Termination is essential – through Jesus Christ our Lord. Whatever hope and confidence we have that God’s providence is truly for our good is grounded in the love that he has shown by redeeming us through Christ.
[1] See Goulburn, 270.
[2] Daniel, 296.
[3] Goulburn, 271.
