Bernard Mizeki

Catechist and Martyr in Zimbabwe, 1896

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

Friday, June 19, 2026

 

Bernard Mizeki was born around 1861 in the town of Gwambene in Portuguese East Africa (today Mozambique). His original name was Mamiyeri Mizeka Gwambe. When he was about twelve, he left his home and went to Cape Town, South Africa, where for the next ten years he worked as a domestic servant by day and attended classes at a school run by the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, the Cowley Fathers, by night. Under their influence, he was baptized on March 9, 1886, receiving the name Bernard. He subsequently began training as a lay catechist. In addition to the basics of European schooling, he mastered English, French, Dutch, and at least eight African languages.

 

In 1891, he accompanied the new missionary Bishop of Mashonaland, George William Knight-Bruce, to what is now southern Zimbabwe. The bishop assigned him to Nhowe, the village of Chief Mangwende, where he built a mission complex. He prayed the Offices each day, tended his garden, studied the Shona language, and cultivated friendships with the villagers. To facilitate his work, he translated the Prayer Book Catechism, Morning and Evening Prayer, and the Eucharist into Shona. He eventually opened a school, winning the hearts of many of the Mashona through his love for their children.  

He moved his mission complex to a nearby plateau, next to a grove of trees sacred to the ancestral spirits of the Mashona. Although he had the chief's permission, he angered local religious leaders by cutting down some trees and carving crosses into others. While he opposed certain local religious customs, Bernard was attentive to the nuances of the Shona Spirit religion. He developed an approach that built on people's already monotheistic faith in one God, Mwari, and on their sensitivity to spirit life, while at the same time forthrightly proclaiming Christ as Lord. Over five years, from 1891 to 1896, the mission produced an abundance of converts. 

 

On the tenth anniversary of his baptism, he married one of his catechumens, Mutwa, later known as Lily, a granddaughter of Chief Mangwende. That same year, the Matabeleland Rebellion broke out, and dozens of white settlers were massacred, precipitating a war that lasted more than a year and featured the exploits of British military figures such as Cecil Rhodes and Lord Baden-Powell. Because the rebels regarded all missionaries as working for European colonial governments, Bernard was urged to flee. He refused, believing he served no one but Christ, and he would not desert his converts or his post. 

On June 18, 1896, three months after marrying, Bernard was attacked outside his hut and fatally wounded by a spear thrust. He had time to tell his wife that he was dying, that the work would continue with others who would come, and that when they did, she should complete her catechism and be baptized along with the baby she was carrying. She and a companion went to get help for him. They later reported that, from a distance, they saw a blinding light on the hillside where he’d been lying and heard a whooshing sound, as if of many wings. When they returned, he’d disappeared. His body was never found.

 

The place of his death has become a focus of devotion for Anglicans and other Christians. At the 1996 Centenary of his martyrdom, more than 10,000 people converged on the site from Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi, Botswana, Zambia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The annual gathering has since become one of the largest Anglican pilgrimages in the world, drawing 15 to 20 thousand participants each year.

THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS

Friday 12 June 2026

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R.I.

 

 

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus grew out of an earlier devotion to the Five Wounds of Christ, dating to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The spear wound in his side was believed to have pierced his heart. These devotions gained popularity as Western Christian spirituality began to focus on Christ’s human suffering. Before that time, devotion to Christ tended to focus more on his glory as the risen and ascended Lord of all creation.

 

Where the earlier devotion to Christ’s wounds emphasized his physical sufferings, devotion to his pierced heart focused more on his compassion and interior suffering, since the heart is symbolically the seat of our inner emotional, mental, and moral life.

 

One of the first Christian mystics to write explicitly of the Sacred Heart was Saint Gertrude of Helfta, who lived in the latter part of the thirteenth century. In one of her visions, a ray of light emanating from Christ’s heart pierced her heart.

From the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, devotion to the Heart of Jesus spread in the Western Church, especially among the Franciscans, Carthusians, and eventually the Jesuits, who placed the emblem of the Sacred Heart on the title pages of their books and on the walls of their churches.

 

In the 1670s, Sister Margaret Mary Alacoque of the Order of the Visitation in France reported a series of visions in which Jesus requested that a feast of the Sacred Heart be observed on the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi. The devotion thus continued to spread, and it was added to the Roman calendar in 1856.

 

In art, the Sacred Heart is usually depicted wrapped in the crown of thorns, and a flame emanating from its top – representing the burning fire of God’s love for humanity. According to Saint John’s Gospel, when the soldier thrust his spear into Christ’s side, there came out both blood and water. New Testament scholars and medical researchers have debated at length whether this description is medically plausible. But the Church has always taken the water and the blood as a symbol anticipating the Sacraments of Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, flowing from the heart of Christ.

 

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus reminds us that the Christian spiritual life properly engages us in the fullness of our humanity: our hearts, our minds, and our wills. A sentimental religion based solely on warm feelings and exhilarating experiences is inadequate and lets us down when the going gets rough. But a balanced spirituality cannot dispense with emotions either. Otherwise, our religion becomes overly intellectual, dry, and arid. 

 

So, devotion to the Sacred Heart reminds us that our Lord’s heart burns with love for us, evoking a similar love for him in our hearts. To quote the motto of Saint John Henry Newman, Cor ad cor loquitur, “heart speaks to heart.” So, we pray that our hearts will be open to hearing the heart of Jesus speaking to us, so that our hearts may speak to one another and share his love.

 

PROPER 6, YEAR A

June 14, 2026

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Matthew 9:35-10:8

 

I’ll probably date myself by saying this, but, in my opinion, one of the greatest war movies of all time is The Dirty Dozen, released in 1967. The film dramatizes a military operation behind enemy lines during World War II. Lee Marvin plays John Reisman, an American officer assigned to parachute into France and eliminate high-ranking Wehrmacht officers on leave at a resort chateau to disrupt the German chain of command ahead of the D-Day landings.

 

The mission is so dangerous that Reisman adopts an unusual recruiting strategy. Instead of assembling a team of the best and the brightest, West Point graduates, or members of elite commando units, he goes to a military prison containing the army’s dregs: thugs, murderers, and thieves—men who’d been criminals in civilian life and who continued in their lawless ways in the army until court-martialed and incarcerated.

 

Five of these convicts have been sentenced to death, and the remaining seven face lengthy imprisonments at hard labor. Reisman offers the convicts a pardon and freedom if they’ll volunteer for this one mission and survive. Odds are nine to one that the mission will fail, and they’ll all be killed. But the twelve who do volunteer become the Dirty Dozen.

 

Reisman is scraping the bottom of the barrel. But the strategy’s wisdom soon becomes apparent. The Dirty Dozen have developed skills in their criminal careers that prove perfect for the mission. One knows how to pick locks. Another is good with his fists. They all excel at lying, cheating, concealment, and other criminal tactics that are exactly the talents needed to get this job done.

 

Now, I’m not endorsing a policy of using convicts in the military. Such a policy can have bad consequences, as we’ve seen with the Russians in Ukraine. But the movie’s appeal is that in the right circumstances, with the right team and leadership, those whom the world considers losers can become heroes. Even so, when the mission succeeds, only one of the Dirty Dozen survives and lives to tell the tale. The rest are nonetheless redeemed from a fate of living and dying ignominiously as convicts. 

 

Today’s Gospel tells of another dozen, this time chosen and recruited by Jesus—not the Dirty Dozen to be sure, but a collection who also seem at first glance totally lacking in qualifications for the mission to which he calls them.  In his compassion for the crowds, who are like sheep without a shepherd, Jesus selects the Twelve Apostles from his disciples and sends them out to do the very same work that he’s been doing: preaching the good news, healing the sick, cleansing lepers, raising the dead.

 

These Twelve Apostles are a motley crew. Some years ago, I read a whimsical piece of writing that speculates on the kind of personnel evaluation that Jesus might have received from a management consulting agency. The report reads as follows:

 

“Dear Sir:

 

“Thank you for submitting the resumes of the twelve individuals you have selected for managerial positions in your new organization. They have all now taken our battery of tests. We have not only analyzed the results, but have also arranged personal interviews for each of them with our psychologist and vocational aptitude consultant.

 

“The test profiles of all twelve candidates are included. You will want to study each carefully. As part of our service, we provide some general recommendations at no additional fee.

 

“Our staff’s opinion is that most of your nominees are lacking in educational background and vocational aptitude for the type of enterprise you are undertaking. They do not have the team concept. We recommend that you continue to search for persons with experience and proven managerial capability.

 

“Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and given to fits of temper. Andrew has absolutely no leadership qualities. The two brothers, James and John, place personal interest above company loyalty. Thomas demonstrates a questioning attitude that would tend to undermine morale. It is our duty to tell you that Matthew has been blacklisted by the Greater Jerusalem Better Business Bureau. James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddeus have radical leanings.

 

“Only one of the candidates shows any potential. He is a man of ability and resourcefulness who meets people well and has a keen business mind. He has contacts in high places and is highly motivated, ambitious, and responsible. We recommend Judas Iscariot as your controller and right-hand man.

 

“Wishing you every success in your new venture.

“Sincerely yours, 

“Jordan Management Consultants

Jerusalem, Judea”

 

So, from a contemporary management perspective, Jesus could have done better. But, like Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen, Jesus knew exactly what he was doing. He didn’t choose the brightest and best of his society: the most accomplished rabbinical students, or the most eminent priests, lawyers, and scribes. Instead, he chose fishermen and tax collectors. And his strategy paid off. After his death, resurrection, and ascension, eleven of the twelve became the leaders of a missionary movement that spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

 

(Another parallel with the Dirty Dozen is that only one of the Twelve, Saint John, lived to die a natural death. The rest died as martyrs for the faith, but their deaths ensured the mission’s success.) 

 

The choice of the Twelve Apostles teaches us something about how God works. In today’s Old Testament reading from Exodus, the Israelites are a band of escaped slaves, complete nobodies in the world’s eyes. Yet God tells them that he’s chosen them out of all peoples to be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. And in today’s Epistle reading, Saint Paul reminds us that Christ died for us while we were still sinners. So, the theme running throughout today’s readings is that God chooses us, calls us, and sends us out to do his work despite, or maybe because of, our complete unworthiness.

All baptized Christians, not just the clergy, are entrusted with a share in the Church’s mission. Studies of church growth demonstrate that there’s no substitute for all members of the congregation taking responsibility for their share in the task of recruiting new members by means of personal, one-to-one evangelization.

 

We instinctively recoil from that idea, I think, because we have a healthy dose of self-doubt about our ability to do the job. Who among us is qualified to proclaim the Gospel to an unbelieving world? Who among us is qualified to be an agent of healing and reconciliation in Jesus’ Name? I'm not, and you're not. But the Lord chooses us anyway. He sees more potential in us than we see in ourselves. He sees gifts and talents he can develop and use in totally unpredictable ways.

 

That’s how Jesus works. He delights in calling the most unlikely people. He promises us that he’ll give us everything we need to be faithful to him and to his mission. And then he sends us out to share in that mission of proclaiming the Gospel and bringing salvation to a hungry and hurting world.

 

 

 

Acknowledgment: Key ideas for this sermon came from a sermon of Will Willimon, published sometime in the 1990s or early 2000s.

CORPUS CHRISTI SUNDAY

The Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ

Sts. Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

Sunday, June 24, 2001

 

 

It’s easy to take for granted the great privilege of weekly Communion. Here at Sts. Matthew and Mark, we celebrate the Eucharist at ten o’clock every Sunday, and most people come to the altar rail and receive Communion as a matter of course.

 

This is not the way it always was. Not so long ago, in many, if not most, Episcopal parishes, the principal Sunday service was almost always Morning Prayer with hymns and a sermon. And those who wanted Communion would go to the early service at 8:00 am.

 

So, the majority of worshipers might faithfully attend the principal service every Sunday and receive Communion just three or four times a year, or maybe once a month in some places. 

 

To this day, in the canon law of the Episcopal Church, to be a communicant in good standing—and thus to be eligible to vote at the annual parish meeting or be elected to the vestry—one needs to receive Communion only three times a year. The traditional times for doing so were Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. And maybe All Saints Day for good measure.

 

This pattern began to change as early as the 1930s, under the influence of something called the Parish Communion Movement. This movement aimed to promote the people’s full participation in the Church’s worship. And since receiving Communion is the fullest expression of such participation, this movement sought above all to make the principal Sunday service a Eucharist at which all the people would have the opportunity to do just that.

 

In England, one of the principal advocates of the parish Communion, A. G. Hebert, wrote in 1937 that the ideal time for such a service was around 9:00 or 9:30 in the morning. For many, the 8:00 am service was too early, and for most, the 11:00 am service was too late for those who wanted to keep the traditional fast before Communion.

 

Four decades later, the Episcopal Church’s 1979 Prayer Book achieved the Parish Communion Movement’s main goal by naming the Holy Eucharist as “the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day and other major Feasts.” Don’t look it up now, but that’s on page 13 in the Book of Common Prayer.

 

So, we’ve come a long way. The real question today, however, is whether we’ve come too far and become too casual in our approach to the Blessed Sacrament. And here, perhaps, the Feast of Corpus Christi can help us.

 

Church history has tended to see-saw between periods when Christians felt free to receive Communion weekly or even daily, as in the early Church, and periods when people were so afraid of receiving unworthily that they refrained from Communion altogether. In the year 1215, for example, the Fourth Lateran Council required lay people to receive at least once a year, at Easter, after making their Confession to a priest.

 

Today’s Feast of Corpus Christi originated in the thirteenth century as part of a movement of popular devotion that aimed, among other things, at encouraging more frequent Communion. This feast’s message is really twofold. On one hand, we should by all means avail ourselves of the opportunity for weekly or even daily Communion. But on the other hand, we need to approach the Sacrament with the utmost care, preparation, reverence, and devotion. 

 

In other words, we need to steer a middle course between a strictness that would keep us from Communion and a laxity that would make us careless in our approach to the Sacrament. And I would submit that the greater danger to us today is not strictness but laxity.

 

The Church’s spiritual tradition offers practices that can help us deepen our reverence and devotion when receiving Holy Communion. Most important of all is spiritual preparation, including saying our prayers and examining our consciences. For what sins and moral shortcomings do we want to ask God’s forgiveness? And for which people, situations, tasks, and challenges do we want to ask God’s grace and help?

 

At the very least, it’s a good idea to get to church on time so that we have an opportunity to get recollected in the few minutes before the service begins. Once the candles are lit at the Altar, and Charlie starts playing the organ, it would be wonderful if we could get quiet and keep the chatter to a minimum, so that those who want to say their prayers can do so without undue distraction.

 

One useful discipline is the traditional Fast before Communion. I realize that health concerns make this impossible for many, if not most, of us, and I certainly don’t want anyone passing out in the pews! For my part, some years ago, I gave up trying to go completely without food from the night before. We’re not Roman Catholics, but it’s worth noting that in the Roman Catholic Church, everyone sixty years of age and older is automatically dispensed from that Church’s fasting rules. 

 

Still, the right question to ask is not what the rules are, or what we’re required to do or prohibited from doing—which seems to be the question that so many of us instinctively want to ask. No, in this regard, the right question is not what is lawful or unlawful, but what is helpful. As Saint Paul says in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “All things are lawful for me, but not all things are beneficial.” 

 

So, before we come to church, it’s a good idea, as far as reasonably possible, to keep breakfast to a minimum and to eat nothing for at least an hour before receiving Communion. These are guidelines, not hard-and-fast rules, and they’re meant to help us. The point is that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to approach Holy Communion with the necessary spiritual hunger and receptivity when we’re feeling stuffed and satiated with physical food.

 

No less important than preparation before is thanksgiving after receiving Holy Communion. When we return to the pew from the altar rail, or perhaps after the end of the closing hymn, it’s really helpful to take a few moments to say “thank you” to God for his gift of himself to us, and to recommit ourselves to the tasks he’s given us to do in the world. In this way, we position ourselves to make the best use of the grace that God gives us in this wonderful Sacrament.

 

So, on this Feast of Corpus Christi, we give thanks for all those who worked so hard for so many years to establish the Communion of the Faithful as the Episcopal Church’s normative practice every Sunday and Holy Day. And the best way we honor their memory is by cultivating the care, reverence, and devotion that this wonderful gift truly deserves.

 

THE VISITATION 

OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY TO ELIZABETH

Transferred from May 31 to June 5, 2026

Sts. Matthew and Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

 

From the Collect for today’s Feast: “Father in heaven, by whose grace the virgin mother of thine incarnate Son was blessed in bearing him, but still more blessed in keeping thy word …”

 

This Collect gives us two reasons why the Virgin Mary is called the Blessed Virgin Mary. She was blessed in bearing the incarnate Son of God. But she was even more blessed in keeping God’s Word. And both blessings, the Collect reminds us, came by the grace or gift of God our Father in heaven.

 

The Collect mirrors the double blessing pronounced by Elizabeth in the Gospel that we’ve just heard. When Mary enters the house, Elizabeth cries out, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” That’s Mary’s first blessing: to be the Mother of the Lord. But then Elizabeth adds a second blessing: “And blessed is she that believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.” 

 

Saint Luke records Jesus himself repeating a similar double blessing. In Chapter 11, verses 27 and 28, we read: “As he said this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice, and said to him, Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked.” The language is a bit more anatomically graphic than we might feel comfortable with today, but it’s clearly a blessing on the Lord’s mother. He does not deny what she has said, but adds, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

 

The genius of the Collects and other liturgical texts in our Prayer Book tradition is that they weave such rich webs of biblical allusions in so few words: “Father in heaven, by whose grace the mother of thine incarnate Son was blessed in bearing him but still more blessed in keeping thy word …”

 

Then comes the second part of the Collect, where we ask God for some specific gift or grace related to the day’s liturgical theme: “Grant us who honor the exaltation of her lowliness to follow the example of her devotion to your will …”

 

So, the Collect challenges us to be attentive to God’s Word. The Church commends many kinds of practices to help us read and meditate on Scripture, from the Daily Office, to lectio divina, to spiritual exercises in the Ignatian tradition, to daily devotional commentaries like Forward Day-by-Day.

 

Different methods suit different individuals; there’s no one-size-fits-all plan. But today’s Feast invites us to consider what practical steps we might take not only to engage with God’s Word but also to deepen our devotion to doing God’s will.

 

By following Mary’s example, we not only receive God’s blessing, but we also become a blessing to others. The beauty of the Visitation story is this quality of mutual blessing. Mary’s arrival bearing the unborn Jesus is a blessing to both Elizabeth and the unborn John the Baptist, who leaps for joy in his mother’s womb; Elizabeth, in turn, blesses Mary and the fruit of her womb. Blessings are flowing back and forth, all around. All these blessings originate in Mary’s simple attentiveness and obedience to the angel Gabriel’s announcement: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord: let it be to me according to your word.” 

 

The Blessed Virgin Mary alone is the bearer of the Word-made-flesh, the Mother of God. That is her unique vocation, her unique place in God’s plan of salvation.

 

But as Christians, we all have the vocation to be bearers of God’s Word: to one another and to the world. That mission begins when we honor the exaltation of Mary’s lowliness and learn to follow her example of devotion to God’s will. Then we shall be blessed as those who hear the Word of God and keep it.

Saint Augustine of Canterbury

Friday, May 29, 2026

(Transferred from May 26)

 

Not to be confused with his perhaps more famous namesake, Augustine of Hippo, the Saint Augustine we commemorate today was a Benedictine monk who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury in the year 598.

 

Britain had been Christian since at least the fourth century. But after the withdrawal of the Roman legions in 410, the southern and eastern parts of what is today England had been settled by pagan tribes from northern Europe, principally the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. The ancient British Church survived in Wales and southwestern England, principally in Devon and Cornwall. However, the native Britons hated the Germanic invaders and appear never to have tried to convert them to Christianity.

 

By the late sixth century, Kent in the southeast had become the most important of the English kingdoms, and a trading partner of the Christian kingdoms in what is today France. (Kent belonged not to the Saxons, but to the Jutes, who had come from the Jutland peninsula in what is today Denmark and northern Germany.) 

 

The king of Kent, Ethelbert, had married Bertha, daughter of the king of Paris. One of the conditions of the marriage was that Bertha be allowed to practice her Christian faith, and she brought a Frankish bishop with her to Ethelbert’s capital, Canterbury, to serve as her chaplain. Together, they restored one of the disused sites of Christian worship dating back to Roman times into a functioning church. So, even prior to Augustine’s arrival, there was a Christian presence in Canterbury.

 

Some historians speculate that Bertha persuaded Ethelbert to ask Pope Gregory the Great to send missionaries. Others believe that Gregory himself took the initiative, as recounted in the Venerable Bede’s story of Gregory seeing Saxons for sale in the slave market in Rome and remarking on their blond hair and likeness to angels. Either way, Kent was the logical place to establish a bridgehead for a mission to England, given its location just across the English Channel from France and the influence of its Christian queen.

 

In 595, Gregory chose Augustine to lead the mission. Augustine was the prior of the Benedictine monastery where Gregory himself had been a monk. When the missionaries were about to cross the Channel, however, they lost heart—having heard stories of the barbaric English ways—and sent Augustine back to ask Gregory’s permission to call off the mission. Gregory urged them on, and they arrived in Canterbury in the spring of 597. Augustine first converted and baptized the king; then, after preaching to his subjects, he converted thousands in a mass baptism on the Day of Pentecost.

 

Augustine was consecrated a bishop sometime in 598. Augustine wrote to Gregory seeking advice on a number of matters, and their correspondence has become a classic of the Christian pastoral tradition. Gregory’s directions included the famous advice not to suppress local customs, but rather to retain and reinterpret what was best in them. Thus, pagan temples and shrines were not destroyed but re-consecrated as Christian churches; pagan feasts were renamed and moved to the nearest Christian holy day.

 

In 601, more missionaries arrived in Kent, bringing letters from Gregory, sacred vessels, relics, books, and, not least, a pallium for Augustine. This gift signified that Gregory was making Augustine an archbishop. (The pallium is a lamb’s wool vestment worn about the neck by archbishops.) Gregory directed Augustine to consecrate more bishops, including a second archbishop for York in the north, and bishops for London and Rochester.

 

Augustine failed to gain the allegiance of the native British church in the west. The venerable Bede tells the story that the British Christians took offense at his disrespect when he didn’t stand as their bishops arrived for their meeting. But the reasons were likely more complex, involving differences over the date of Easter and the form of the tonsure—that is, the way in which priests and monks shaved their heads. Such matters would have to wait for settlement at a later date.

 

Augustine died on May 26, 604, having consecrated Lawrence, one of his companions from Rome, to be his successor. In the span of seven years, Augustine had firmly planted the Roman mission in Britain and laid the foundations of what would become the Church of England.

TRINITY SUNDAY

May 31, 2026

Sts. Matthew & Mark, Barrington, R. I.

 

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Matthew 28:16-20

 

On the occasion of this wonderful celebration, it seems well to begin by saying what the Holy Trinity is not. It’s not a puzzle to be solved; it’s a mystery to be adored. So my goal this morning is not to “explain the Trinity,” as if that were possible. (A wise priest of my acquaintance once said that the classical Christian doctrines are not what require explanation because they are the explanation.)

 

In any case, a good clue as to what we’re really about today comes in the Collect of the Day. If we listen carefully, we hear four words repeated. Each is said not once but twice. And these four words are: faith, worship, eternal, glory. So let’s listen up for these four words as I read the Collect again:

 

Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servants grace, by the confession of a true faith, to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity, and in the power of your divine Majesty to worship the Unity: Keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, and bring us at last to see you in your one and eternal glory, O Father; who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

 

To paraphrase, we praise God for having revealed himself as one God in three Persons, and we ask him to keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, that we may share with him in his eternal glory. So, today’s feast calls us to faith, worship, and eternal glory!

 

Our calling to eternal glory comes from our creation in God’s image and likeness. Today’s reading of the Seven Days of Creation in the Book of Genesis includes these verses: “Then God said, Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness … So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

 

Notice how the text switches back and forth between the singular and the plural. On one hand, the text speaks of one God who speaks and creates. But, on the other hand, this one God doesn’t say, “Let me make humankind in my image,” but rather, “Let us make humankind in our image.” 

 

Here, the Christian tradition understands the “us” and the “our” as expressing the three divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But again, it’s not “the gods” who speak and act, but God. So, right there, the Genesis text’s grammar is consistent with the Trinitarian doctrine of one God in three Persons.

 

Furthermore, the human race, created in God’s image, is likewise both singular and plural. On the one hand, the noun translated as “humankind” is in the singular. It’s the Hebrew Adam, which earlier translations rendered as “man” but could also be translated as “humanity” or “the human being.” But then the pronouns shift immediately to the plural: In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 

 

The point is that we human beings are simultaneously one and many. We’re many individual persons; still, we’re one in our common humanity, our shared human nature. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity teaches us not only who God is, but also who we are, as human beings created in God’s image. It provides the underlying basis of both our unity and our diversity.

 

The three Persons of the Holy Trinity are traditionally described as having three attributes: coequal, coeternal, and consubstantial. (Consubstantial simply means sharing the same nature, essence, or being. So, we might instead list the three attributes as coequal, coeternal, and of one nature.)

 

We human beings are similarly coequal, coeternal, and consubstantial. Coequal: we all share in equal dignity as bearers of the same divine image. Coeternal: we’re all called to the same eternal life. Consubstantial: we all share in the same human nature. 

 

It follows that racism and other ideologies promoting human inequality and domination of one group by another are not only sinful but blasphemous. Such ideologies disregard and dishonor the divine image in our fellow human beings. For Christians, then, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is a powerful weapon in the struggle against injustice and oppression. And this vision of human beings created in the divine image may be the unique contribution that Christians can make to public discourse at this challenging time in the history of our nation and the world.

 

Today’s Gospel reminds us that just as in the beginning we were created in the image of the Trinity, so in Holy Baptism we’ve been recreated in the name of the Trinity. The risen Lord appears to the eleven in Galilee and commissions them: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.”

 

And so we live confidently in the present and look with joyful hope to the future. As baptized members of Christ’s Body, the Church, we have his promise that he is with us “always, to the end of the age.” 

 

In today’s Epistle from Second Corinthians, Saint Paul bids us, “agree with one another, live in peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you.” And then he gives a trinitarian blessing: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with all of you.” That is, by the way, the traditional concluding sentence of the Anglican Prayer Book offices of daily Morning and Evening prayer.

 

A basic tenet of the Christian faith is that it’s precisely as the Holy Trinity that God is the God of love and peace, or more simply, as St. John puts it, that God is love. The perfect love that the three divine Persons eternally share among themselves, in total mutuality and total self‑giving, is the very same love with which God loves us, and which God invites us to share with one another, both now and in eternity.

 

And so, to end where we began, we pray that God will keep us steadfast in this faith and worship, so that we may share in eternal glory. For he is one God in three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, to whom be all worship, praise, dominion, and power, now and to the ages of ages. Amen.