Collect Feast of the Holy Trinity

In the beginning of this prayer, we find three words in a sequence we are familiar with: Our Father, who. Just like the Lord’s prayer, this prayer, the Collect for the Feast of the Holy Trinity, also gives us an opportunity to meditate on the majesty of God.

God our Father, who by sending into the world the Word of truth and the Spirit of sanctification made known to the human race your wondrous mystery, grant us, we pray, that in professing the true faith, we may acknowledge the Trinity of eternal glory and adore your Unity, powerful in majesty. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.

We find quick and easy references to the persons in the Trinity in the Who phrase of the prayer. The prayer is addressed to God our Father and we recognize the Word of truth as Jesus. John is quite specific about the Word in John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

First Corinthians 6:11 tells us about the Spirit of sanctification. ”but now you have had yourselves washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”

Things get fun when we start looking at the petition of the prayer, where we acknowledge the Trinity of eternal glory and adore God’s Unity.

To acknowledge the Trinity of eternal glory is to confess our belief in the Trinity of Persons. I love the details that the Nicene Creed gives us: I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. Notice the God is the maker of ALL things. Have you ever looked up the definition of “all”? I have, and it really means all.

In the Creed we confess that Jesus is the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. He is true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father and we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

As amazing as that thought is, in this week’s Collect, the next phrase of the prayer has become my favorite, we may adore your Unity, powerful in majesty.

We describe the Trinity as one God and three Persons, but what is it that makes them one? In the Creed we call it consubstantial, which means of the same substance. The substance of God refers to His divine nature.

At this point, a flood of “spirit” thoughts came to my mind. God is pure spirit. John 4:24 tells us that God IS spirit. He doesn’t have a spirit like we do because He is spirit. Angels are spirits, too. Humans have a spirit, and yet God, who is spirit, creates spirits. He created the angels and the spirit He puts in each person. He even put His own Spirit in us. It is God who makes us who we are.

As I sorted through my thoughts, I realized that if I truly believe that God is almighty, and as I reflect on how the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit fulfill what I need not just in my spiritual life, but in my life as a whole, there should be no obstacles in my way of placing all of my trust in God. I also realized that I can grow in this area and perhaps I’m not the only one.

I also found one huge takeaway from Holy Trinity Sunday, something we can do every day. It only takes minutes and it will super-charge your faith. The one thing is to adore His unity, powerful in majesty and put yourself in the middle of it.

We were made to live in the midst of the love of the Trinity. How the world would change if we would each love and minister from that place.