SMALL ACTS OF FAITHFULNESS

For Quiet Confidence.

O GOD of peace, who hast taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength; By the might of thy Spirit lift us, we pray thee, to thy presence, where we may be still and know that thou art God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

It’s that time of the year again: when we are more than halfway through Trinity season, but there are still ten more weeks until we begin the season of Advent and the new Christian year. It’s this odd season of sacred time where we are neither feasting nor fasting, and we are still a number of weeks away from beginning a dedicated season of either. Trinity can feel daunting in this place and it is often easy to begin to allow our Rule of life and rhythms of prayer to slip through the cracks. For as many people get teased that “Lent is coming”, I always get teased that “Trinity is still here.” In fact, in many ways, there is a part of me that dreads Trinity each year simply because of what I initially perceived as the formlessness of its length. Yet, I’ve come to realize that the sanctification Trinity offers is something very unique within the liturgy of our year: the sanctification produced in small acts of faithfulness. 

If I’m being honest with myself, I much prefer our seasons of fasting here in the Church. It feels right to draw nearer to God through penance, mortification of the flesh, and daily readings that meditate upon the sorrows of the season. I’ve grown to appreciate the seasons of feasting, for it is right to celebrate the birth and resurrection of our Lord equally as much as it is to wait patiently with our Blessed Mother Mary in Advent, and mourn with her in Lent. Our lives find order and meaning through this yearly renewal and cycle of Holy Days which always draw us into the life, death, and resurrection of Christ as part of God’s fulfillment of his promises to his people. In this way, we experience God’s salvific acts afresh as we await the return of our Lord once more. This is what we refer to as the “sanctification of time”. Although this is a yearly renewal of time that we represent with a circle, it is not a circle that we should imagine tracing over and over with a pencil. Bishop Scarlett often uses the imagery of a spiral: we are ever moving in the cycle of the Church year, but our movement draws us closer and closer to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Our time is given shape as we prepare, celebrate, and reflect. Yet, practically for the Christian, Trinity season stands in a unique place as an extended period of reflection within our Rule and life of prayer.

When I am teaching Godly Play or Liturgy of the Word in our Children’s Ministry, I use Trinity as an opportunity to catechize our children in small ways and teach them the basics of our faith: the Creeds broken down word for word, the Lord’s Prayer, how to make the sign of the cross, and other important elements of our faith and tradition. We discuss how Trinity is a special time of reflection where we have not only our growth from a season of fasting or feasting to reflect on, but rather the entire liturgical year from Advent onward. Our liturgical color is green, representing growth, but our growth does not come from a perpetual mortification of the flesh--it comes from our small, daily acts of faithfulness. I take no joy in brushing my teeth, but faithfulness to this activity produces a healthy mouth that can savor the flavors of God’s delicious creation. The spiritual life can follow a similar pattern: as Bishop Scarlett reflected in his sermon for Trinity 15, no sooner do we commit ourselves to a pattern of prayer or fasting than we find that commitment challenged, even by our own fickle nature and feelings. Often contemporary Christianity leans heavily into our “feelings” that surround worship and prayer. The problem arises that when we no longer “feel” a desire or passion to do the act, we begin to question our faithfulness to God, and even at times our salvation. We can hear within ourselves, “If you really were saved and truly devoted yourself to the Lord, you should want to pray and should desire to read your Bible.” How fickle our feelings are as human beings, such that it causes us to turn even on ourselves! As our spirituality and life of prayer moves away from the subjective base of feelings and towards the objective good of the acts in which we participate, this is where we begin to experience this sanctification of time. We are drawn out of the hurried and unthoughtful nature of the world and into sacred time through our small acts of daily faithfulness. This can be seen most prominently in our readings for the Daily Offices. We mark our time as we journey each day with the people of Israel from Genesis all the way to Revelation. We know the turn of the readings in Trinity season from the joy of David as a forerunner of Christ the King, to the sobering reminder of our need for a Savior each time we hear, “It happened in the spring of the year, at the time when kings go out to battle...But David remained at Jerusalem” (2 Samuel 11:1, NKJV). We know what this verse means for the remainder of the liturgical year, because we have allowed ourselves to be formed by this pattern. If we allow it, our daily faithfulness in praying the Offices will better reveal to us the power of God’s Word to shape our lives.

Each day we choose to pray the Daily Offices, we draw ourselves into sacred time. Each time we choose to attend Mass and partake in the Eucharist, we draw ourselves into sacred time. Every breath prayer, every rosary, every conversation with God, every tithe, every use of our spiritual gifts, every spiritual direction meeting, every Wednesday fast...each and every choice we make draws us into or away from sacred time. To us the individual choices on a daily basis may seem small, but these small choices over time establish our Rule, for better or for worse. 

It’s not too late, dear friends. As we often encourage one another during Lent, it is never too late to recommit one’s self to the faithful acts of the spiritual life. It is through these daily choices in our spirituality that we will begin to understand St. Paul’s encouragement in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to “pray without ceasing” (NKJV). Will the anxieties of our life disappear completely? No. Will we stumble and fall in our commitment? More than we can count. Yet our spirituality that is deeply rooted in the faithful habits of the Christian life will bring us once more to the foot of the Cross, where we find forgiveness, restoration, and true peace. In the words of St. Paul, we are “always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.” (2 Cor. 4:10-11, NKJV).

Bishop Scarlett lists six helpful habits in his “Trinity Season Spirituality” blog post which are as true for our last half of Trinity as they are for our first half. I encourage you to revisit these six habits for our last ten weeks of Trinity to prepare you as we transition towards Advent and our new Christian year.