Celebrating the Festal Eucharist in Holy Trinity Church on Trinity Sunday

Inside Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

Sunday, 11 June 2017: Trinity Sunday

11.30 a.m.: Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, Co Limerick, The Festal Eucharist.

Readings: Genesis 1: 1-2: 4a; Psalm 8; II Corinthians 13: 11-13; Matthew 28: 16-20.

In the name of + the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Although Trinity Sunday is one of my favourite Sundays in the liturgical year, I am aware that many of my priest colleagues and friends are reluctant to preach on this Sunday for fear of heresy.

The difficulties of preparing for this Sunday are compounded because this is the only festival in the Church year that celebrates a doctrine rather than an event or a person.

But perhaps if we approached Trinity Sunday thinking about how to celebrate our life in the Trinity rather than explaining our doctrine about the Trinity we might have very different sermons, with very different approaches.

Heavy on the celebrations, light on the explanations – would it work better?

In the Western traditions of the Church, Trinity Sunday is the Sunday following the Day of Pentecost.

Interestingly, Trinity Sunday is a very Anglican day too: Thomas Becket (1118-1170) was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on the Sunday after Pentecost, and his first act was to ordain that the day of his consecration should be held as a new festival in honour of the Holy Trinity. This observance then spread from Canterbury throughout the Western Church.

Trinity is a popular name for churches and colleges throughout the English-speaking world. It is the dedication of Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, and so we are celebrating the Festal Eucharist this morning. Trinity Episcopal Church opened as a proprietary chapel in Catherine Street, Limerick, in 1834 and was associated with a ‘blind asylum.’ The official name of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin is actually the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity. But it is also the official name of Christ Church Cathedral, Waterford, and there are Trinity Colleges in Dublin, Cambridge and Oxford, as well as a Trinity Hall in Cambridge.

A modern icon in the style of Andrei Rublev’s icon of the Old Testament Trinity or the Hospitality of Abraham

So, why are Anglican clergy, and clergy in general, so reluctant to talk about the Trinity, or so turgid and tortured when they do so? I know that for some preaching can be a difficult task. But sometimes preachers make it difficult – not only for ourselves, but for those who must listen to us.

And I wonder why so many clergy who get into the pulpit to preach on Trinity Sunday either descend to the depths of heresy or rise to the heights of lunacy.

The novelist and Anglican spiritual writer, Dorothy Sayers, wrote a humorous essay, ‘The Dogma is the Drama’ (Dorothy L. Sayers, Creed or Chaos, London: Methuen, 1947), on the relevance of Christian doctrine to real life. In that essay, she drew up a kind of questionnaire with the sort of answers she felt ordinary people would give to questions like this. She wrote:

Question: What does the Church think of God the Father?

Answer: He is omnipotent and holy. He created the world and imposed on man conditions impossible of fulfilment. He is very angry if these are not carried out. He sometimes interferes by means of arbitrary judgment and miracles, distributed with a good sense of favouritism. He likes to be truckled to, and is always ready to pounce on anybody who trips up over a difficulty in the Law, or is having a bit of fun. He is rather like a dictator, only larger and more arbitrary.

Question: What does the Church think of God the Son?

Answer: He is in some way to be identified with Jesus of Nazareth. It was not his fault that the world was made like this and, unlike God the Father, he is friendly to man and did his best to reconcile man and God. He has a good deal of influence with God, and if you want anything done, it’s best to apply to him.

Question: What does the Church think of God the Holy Ghost?

Answer: I don’t know exactly. He was never seen or heard of till Whit Sunday. There is a sin against him which damns you for ever, but nobody knows what it is.

Question: What is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity?

Answer: ‘The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the Holy Ghost incomprehensible’ – the whole thing incomprehensible. Something put in by theologians to make it more difficult. Nothing to do with daily life and reality.

Incomprehensible?

Nothing to do with daily life and reality?

Are these some of the difficulties you could imagine when it comes to thinking and talking about the Trinity?

It might be easier on Father’s Day next Sunday [18 June 2017] to talk about our images of God the Father. But this Sunday is Trinity Sunday, so allow me to introduce us this morning to some ways of thinking of God as the Trinity.

If I were to introduce you to my world, to my story, I might invite you to visit the places that have shaped and made me.

I might invite you to imagine what it was like for a small boy to lay awake in his grandmother’s farmhouse in west Waterford, it was so bright outside on a balmy summer’s evening. Downstairs, I can hear the old clock chiming out the time: it’s 10, and a hush descends on the house as the adults settle down in their chairs to listen to the news on the wireless. I hear the black kettle boiling on the open fire as someone prepares to make a pot of tea. Outside, a pigeon is still cooing in the thatch, I imagine I can hear the abbey bells ringing out the time across the fields, and I know I am safe and loved in this world.

Twenty or so years later, once again it is late at night, in the top storey of a tall house in a narrow street in Wexford town.

It is comforting to hear the clock of Rowe Street church count out the hours. Is that a late train I hear trundling along the quays? A lone voice in the Theatre Royal braving a late rehearsal for the opera? And I am so looking forward to the Festival Service in Saint Iberius’s Church.

Let us move forward another two decades or so. I cannot sleep in this house in suburban Dublin. But I can hear my children snoring contentedly in their own rooms. Outside, the unseasonable rain is pelting down, the wind is rustling through the cherry tree outside, and I wonder whether all the cherry blossom will be shaken down and washed onto the grass below by the time morning dawns.

We can use words not only to tell our stories, but to paint pictures, to invite others into our communities, into our families, and into our lives. Now that you have heard and seen what has shaped me, where I have been formed, what made me feel loved and secure, now that you have been invited into my story, my family, and know me, we are ready to sing the same songs, to sit together at the same table. Why, we might even dance!

The Trinity is an image of God, a perfect community, a community of God that invites us to share God’s story, to sit at table with God, to sing songs with God, … all the things we’re doing at this Eucharist this morning. Why, as Karen Baker-Fletcher said ten years ago in her book, the Trinity could be God’s invitation for us to dance with God [Karen Baker-Fletcher, Dancing With God: A Womanist Perspective on the Trinity (St Louis: Chalice Press, 2006; 2007)].

Two of the great Early Fathers of the Church, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint John of Damascus, use the term περιχώρησις (perichoresis), an image of going around, enveloping, to describe the mysterious union of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Clark Pinnock writes: ‘The metaphor suggests moving around, making room, relating to one another without losing identity’ [Clark Pinnock, Flame of Love, A theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996)].

There is a play on words – a pun on the Greek origins of the word – that allows us to think of creative choreography, to imagine a dance of reciprocal love. This divine unity is expressed in the relationship of the three as one, for relationship is at the heart of the unity of the three-in-one. It is a relationship that is mutual and reciprocal. The Trinity tells us that shared life is basic to the nature of God: God is perfect social relationship, perfect mutuality, perfect reciprocity, perfect peace, perfect love.

‘As a circle of loving relationships, God is dynamically alive.’ The three persons of the Trinity are caught up in an eternal dance of reciprocity, so intertwined that at times it may appear difficult to tell who is who. They move with choreographed harmony. The love emanating from within cannot help but create, for it is the nature of love not to harbour and to hoard but to expand and to create.

God has, from the beginning, been wooing creation to dance. The community of God desires community with us. You and I are being courted, God wants to dance with you, and with me. The love that created us and our world is the same love that longs to be in fellowship with us.

When we worship in spirit and in truth, do others, does the world, see us united as one, bound by love, dancing in harmony and flinging out new creation from within our midst? And do we call others to dance with us?

The Russian icon writer Andrei Rublev tried to create the same picture in a different way. In his famous icon of ‘The Visitation of Abraham,’ he depicts three visitors who arrive at Abraham’s door. The guests become the hosts, the host becomes the guest, and Abraham is invited to a meal that is past, present and future. It is every domestic meal, it is a foretaste of the Eucharist, it is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.

In welcoming strangers, Abraham is entertaining angels. But in entertaining angels, he is invited into communion with God as Trinity.

It is a moment in the past, a moment in the present and a moment in the future, when we shall all be restored to being in the image and likeness of God our Creator. God, in creating us, creates out of love, making our destiny eternal life with him. We are created to experience life within the Trinitarian communion of persons.

For there are three things we all encounter in our lives:

● we all need to be cared for;
● we all encounter suffering;
● we all need company.

God the Father creates us and cares for us; God in Christ identifies with our suffering, takes on and takes away our suffering; God the Holy Spirit enlivens our communities, gives us that divine measure. God has, in a very real way, entered into the mystery of our humanity, so that we may enter into the mystery that is his communio personarum.

‘This deifying union has, nevertheless, to be fulfilled ever more and more even in this present life, through the transformation of our human nature and by its adaptation to eternal life.’ [Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Press, 2002), p. 196.]

God invites us in creation, in Christ, in the Church, in the Word, and in the Sacrament, to be in union with God, to share God’s story, to sit down and dine with God, to sing and dance with God, to find our inner dwelling with God, and to be at one with God. And that is the purpose and the fulfilment of Christian life.

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you have given us your servants grace,
by the confession of a true faith,
to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity
and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity:
Keep us steadfast in this faith,
that we may evermore be defended from all adversities;
for you live and reign, one God, for ever and ever.

Introduction to the Peace

Peace to you from God our heavenly Father.
Peace from his Son Jesus Christ who is our peace.
Peace from the Holy Spirit the Life-giver.
The peace of the Triune God be always with you.
And also with you.

Preface:

You have revealed your glory
as the glory of your Son and of the Holy Spirit:
three persons equal in majesty, undivided in splendour,
yet one Lord, one God,
ever to be worshipped and adored:

Post-Communion Prayer:

Almighty God,
may we who have received this holy communion,
worship you with lips and lives
proclaiming your majesty
and finally see you in your eternal glory:
Holy and Eternal Trinity,
one God, now and for ever.

Blessing:

God the Holy Trinity
make you strong in faith and love,
defend you on every side,
and guide you in truth and peace:

Canon Patrick Comerford is Priest-in-Charge, the Rathkeale and Kilnaughtn Group of Parishes in the Diocese of Limerick, Killaloe and Ardfert. This sermon was prepared for Trinity Sunday, 11 June 2017.

Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale … Trinity is a popular name for cathedrals, churches and colleges, so why do we shy away from talking about the Trinity? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Joining the Holy Trinity in the choreographed dance on Trinity Sunday

A modern icon in the style of Andrei Rublev’s icon of the Old Testament Trinity or the Hospitality of Abraham

Patrick Comerford

Sunday, 11 June 2017: Trinity Sunday

9.30 a.m.: Castletown Church, Kilcornan, Co Limerick, Holy Communion II, the Parish Eucharist;

Readings: Genesis 1: 1-2: 4a; Psalm 8; II Corinthians 13: 11-13; Matthew 28: 16-20.

In the name of + the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Although Trinity Sunday is one of my favourite Sundays in the liturgical year, I am aware that many of my priest colleagues and friends are reluctant to preach on this Sunday for fear of heresy.

The difficulties of preparing for this Sunday are compounded because this is the only festival in the Church year that celebrates a doctrine rather than an event or a person.

But perhaps if we approached Trinity Sunday thinking about how to celebrate our life in the Trinity rather than explaining our doctrine about the Trinity we might have very different sermons, with very different approaches.

Heavy on the celebrations, light on the explanations – would it work better?

In the Western traditions of the Church, Trinity Sunday is the Sunday following the Day of Pentecost.

Interestingly, Trinity Sunday is a very Anglican day too: Thomas Becket (1118-1170) was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on the Sunday after Pentecost, and his first act was to ordain that the day of his consecration should be held as a new festival in honour of the Holy Trinity. This observance then spread from Canterbury throughout the Western Church.

Trinity is a popular name for churches and colleges throughout the English-speaking world. It is the dedication of Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, and so we are celebrating the Festal Eucharist this morning. Trinity Episcopal Church opened as a proprietary chapel in Catherine Street, Limerick, in 1834 and was associated with a ‘blind asylum.’ The official name of Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin is actually the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity. But it is also the official name of Christ Church Cathedral, Waterford, and there are Trinity Colleges in Dublin, Cambridge and Oxford, as well as a Trinity Hall in Cambridge.

Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale … Trinity is a popular name for cathedrals, churches and colleges, so why do we shy away from talking about the Trinity? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

So, why are Anglican clergy, and clergy in general, so reluctant to talk about the Trinity, or so turgid and tortured when they do so? I know that for some preaching can be a difficult task. But sometimes preachers make it difficult – not only for ourselves, but for those who must listen to us.

And I wonder why so many clergy who get into the pulpit to preach on Trinity Sunday either descend to the depths of heresy or rise to the heights of lunacy.

The novelist and Anglican spiritual writer, Dorothy Sayers, wrote a humorous essay, ‘The Dogma is the Drama’ (Dorothy L. Sayers, Creed or Chaos, London: Methuen, 1947), on the relevance of Christian doctrine to real life. In that essay, she drew up a kind of questionnaire with the sort of answers she felt ordinary people would give to questions like this. She wrote:

Question: What does the Church think of God the Father?

Answer: He is omnipotent and holy. He created the world and imposed on man conditions impossible of fulfilment. He is very angry if these are not carried out. He sometimes interferes by means of arbitrary judgment and miracles, distributed with a good sense of favouritism. He likes to be truckled to, and is always ready to pounce on anybody who trips up over a difficulty in the Law, or is having a bit of fun. He is rather like a dictator, only larger and more arbitrary.

Question: What does the Church think of God the Son?

Answer: He is in some way to be identified with Jesus of Nazareth. It was not his fault that the world was made like this and, unlike God the Father, he is friendly to man and did his best to reconcile man and God. He has a good deal of influence with God, and if you want anything done, it’s best to apply to him.

Question: What does the Church think of God the Holy Ghost?

Answer: I don’t know exactly. He was never seen or heard of till Whit Sunday. There is a sin against him which damns you for ever, but nobody knows what it is.

Question: What is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity?

Answer: ‘The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the Holy Ghost incomprehensible’ – the whole thing incomprehensible. Something put in by theologians to make it more difficult. Nothing to do with daily life and reality.

Incomprehensible?

Nothing to do with daily life and reality?

Are these some of the difficulties you could imagine when it comes to thinking and talking about the Trinity?

Inside Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

It might be easier on Father’s Day next Sunday [18 June 2017] to talk about our images of God the Father. But this Sunday is Trinity Sunday, so allow me to introduce us this morning to some ways of thinking of God as the Trinity.

If I were to introduce you to my world, to my story, I might invite you to visit the places that have shaped and made me.

I might invite you to imagine what it was like for a small boy to lay awake in his grandmother’s farmhouse in west Waterford, it was so bright outside on a balmy summer’s evening. Downstairs, I can hear the old clock chiming out the time: it’s 10, and a hush descends on the house as the adults settle down in their chairs to listen to the news on the wireless. I hear the black kettle boiling on the open fire as someone prepares to make a pot of tea. Outside, a pigeon is still cooing in the thatch, I imagine I can hear the abbey bells ringing out the time across the fields, and I know I am safe and loved in this world.

Twenty or so years later, once again it is late at night, in the top storey of a tall house in a narrow street in Wexford town.

It is comforting to hear the clock of Rowe Street church count out the hours. Is that a late train I hear trundling along the quays? A lone voice in the Theatre Royal braving a late rehearsal for the opera? And I am so looking forward to the Festival Service in Saint Iberius’s Church.

Let us move forward another two decades or so. I cannot sleep in this house in suburban Dublin. But I can hear my children snoring contentedly in their own rooms. Outside, the unseasonable rain is pelting down, the wind is rustling through the cherry tree outside, and I wonder whether all the cherry blossom will be shaken down and washed onto the grass below by the time morning dawns.

We can use words not only to tell our stories, but to paint pictures, to invite others into our communities, into our families, and into our lives. Now that you have heard and seen what has shaped me, where I have been formed, what made me feel loved and secure, now that you have been invited into my story, my family, and know me, we are ready to sing the same songs, to sit together at the same table. Why, we might even dance!

The Trinity is an image of God, a perfect community, a community of God that invites us to share God’s story, to sit at table with God, to sing songs with God, … all the things we’re doing at this Eucharist this morning. Why, as Karen Baker-Fletcher said ten years ago in her book, the Trinity could be God’s invitation for us to dance with God [Karen Baker-Fletcher, Dancing With God: A Womanist Perspective on the Trinity (St Louis: Chalice Press, 2006; 2007)].

Two of the great Early Fathers of the Church, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint John of Damascus, use the term περιχώρησις (perichoresis), an image of going around, enveloping, to describe the mysterious union of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Clark Pinnock writes: ‘The metaphor suggests moving around, making room, relating to one another without losing identity’ [Clark Pinnock, Flame of Love, A theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996)].

There is a play on words – a pun on the Greek origins of the word – that allows us to think of creative choreography, to imagine a dance of reciprocal love. This divine unity is expressed in the relationship of the three as one, for relationship is at the heart of the unity of the three-in-one. It is a relationship that is mutual and reciprocal. The Trinity tells us that shared life is basic to the nature of God: God is perfect social relationship, perfect mutuality, perfect reciprocity, perfect peace, perfect love.

‘As a circle of loving relationships, God is dynamically alive.’ The three persons of the Trinity are caught up in an eternal dance of reciprocity, so intertwined that at times it may appear difficult to tell who is who. They move with choreographed harmony. The love emanating from within cannot help but create, for it is the nature of love not to harbour and to hoard but to expand and to create.

God has, from the beginning, been wooing creation to dance. The community of God desires community with us. You and I are being courted, God wants to dance with you, and with me. The love that created us and our world is the same love that longs to be in fellowship with us.

When we worship in spirit and in truth, do others, does the world, see us united as one, bound by love, dancing in harmony and flinging out new creation from within our midst? And do we call others to dance with us?

The Russian icon writer Andrei Rublev tried to create the same picture in a different way. In his famous icon of ‘The Visitation of Abraham,’ he depicts three visitors who arrive at Abraham’s door. The guests become the hosts, the host becomes the guest, and Abraham is invited to a meal that is past, present and future. It is every domestic meal, it is a foretaste of the Eucharist, it is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.

In welcoming strangers, Abraham is entertaining angels. But in entertaining angels, he is invited into communion with God as Trinity.

It is a moment in the past, a moment in the present and a moment in the future, when we shall all be restored to being in the image and likeness of God our Creator. God, in creating us, creates out of love, making our destiny eternal life with him. We are created to experience life within the Trinitarian communion of persons.

For there are three things we all encounter in our lives:

● we all need to be cared for;
● we all encounter suffering;
● we all need company.

God the Father creates us and cares for us; God in Christ identifies with our suffering, takes on and takes away our suffering; God the Holy Spirit enlivens our communities, gives us that divine measure. God has, in a very real way, entered into the mystery of our humanity, so that we may enter into the mystery that is his communio personarum.

‘This deifying union has, nevertheless, to be fulfilled ever more and more even in this present life, through the transformation of our human nature and by its adaptation to eternal life.’ [Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Press, 2002), p. 196.]

God invites us in creation, in Christ, in the Church, in the Word, and in the Sacrament, to be in union with God, to share God’s story, to sit down and dine with God, to sing and dance with God, to find our inner dwelling with God, and to be at one with God. And that is the purpose and the fulfilment of Christian life.

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you have given us your servants grace,
by the confession of a true faith,
to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity
and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity:
Keep us steadfast in this faith,
that we may evermore be defended from all adversities;
for you live and reign, one God, for ever and ever.

Introduction to the Peace

Peace to you from God our heavenly Father.
Peace from his Son Jesus Christ who is our peace.
Peace from the Holy Spirit the Life-giver.
The peace of the Triune God be always with you.
And also with you.

Preface:

You have revealed your glory
as the glory of your Son and of the Holy Spirit:
three persons equal in majesty, undivided in splendour,
yet one Lord, one God,
ever to be worshipped and adored:

Post-Communion Prayer:

Almighty God,
may we who have received this holy communion,
worship you with lips and lives
proclaiming your majesty
and finally see you in your eternal glory:
Holy and Eternal Trinity,
one God, now and for ever.

Blessing:

God the Holy Trinity
make you strong in faith and love,
defend you on every side,
and guide you in truth and peace:

Canon Patrick Comerford is Priest-in-Charge, the Rathkeale and Kilnaughtn Group of Parishes in the Diocese of Limerick, Killaloe and Ardfert. This sermon was prepared for Trinity Sunday, 11 June 2017.

The east end of Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, with the vestry on the south side (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Thoughts on preparing to celebrate Trinity Sunday

Andrei Rublev’s icon, the Old Testament Trinity or the Hospitality of Abraham.

Patrick Comerford

Throughout the Western Church, we are marking today in the Liturgical Calendar as Trinity Sunday. This is the festal day for Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, Co Limerick – which is one of the four churches in my group of parishes – and this morning I am in both Castletown Church, Pallaskenry, and Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, presiding at the Eucharist and preaching.

As it was after the first great Pentecost that the doctrine of the Trinity was proclaimed to the world, it is appropriate that the feast of the Trinity follows that of Pentecost. However, this tradition of observing the First Sunday after Pentecost as Trinity Sunday has unique roots in the Anglican tradition. Although this day is observed in all the Western liturgical traditions – Anglican, Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Methodist – it is not observed in the Eastern Orthodox or Eastern Catholic traditions, and is not found in the history of the Early Church.

According to the Book of Common Prayer (2004), this Sunday is marked in the Church of Ireland as one of the ‘principal holy days which are to be observed.’ On this day, according to the Book of Common Prayer (p. 18), ‘it is fitting that the Holy Communion be celebrated in every cathedral and parish church or in a church within a parochial union or group of parishes.’ The liturgical provisions for this day ‘may not be displaced by any other observance.’

As I was preparing my sermons and selecting hymns for this morning [11 June 2017], I wondered how many parish churches in the Church of Ireland are respecting these liturgical provisions this morning? A quick glance at the Church Notices in The Irish Times online yesterday, or at the parish notices in many diocesan magazines this month makes one wonder.

Following the pre-Reformation Sarum use, both the Church of Ireland and the Church of England, name the Sundays that follow as ‘Sundays after Trinity,’ although in the US the Episcopal Church (TEC) now follows Roman Catholic usage, and calls them ‘Sundays after Pentecost.’

Although liturgically we are now in Ordinary Time, the liturgical colours change from green to white. The Book of Common Prayer (pp 771-773) places ‘The Creed (commonly called) of Saint Athanasius, also known as the Quicunque Vult,’ between the Catechism and the Preamble to the Constitution, but makes no provision for its use. However, some churches in the Church of Ireland and the Church of England, especially those with a High Church tradition, use this creed on Trinity Sunday.

The early Church had no special Office or day to honour the Holy Trinity. However, with the spread of the Arian heresy, the Church Fathers prepared an Office with canticles, responses, a Preface, and hymns, to be recited on Sundays.

There are prayers and the Preface of the Trinity in the Sacramentary of Saint Gregory the Great. However, the Micrologies, written when Gregory VII was Pope, call the Sunday after Pentecost a Dominica vacans, or an ordinary Sunday, when there was no special office, although it did note that the Office of the Holy Trinity composed by Bishop Stephen or Liège (903-920) was recited in some places on this Sunday, and in other places on the Sunday before Advent.

Pope Alexander II (1061-1073), refused a petition for a special feast on his day. Although he did not forbid the celebration where it already existed, he pointed out that such a feast was not customary in the Roman Church, and that the Church honoured the Holy Trinity every day with the use of the Gloria Patri.

When Saint Thomas Becket (1118-1170) was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on the Sunday after Pentecost Day, his first act was to decree that the day of his consecration should be held as a new festival in honour of the Holy Trinity.

This observance spread from Canterbury throughout the Western Church. In the following century, a new Office for the Holy Trinity was written by the Franciscan friar, John Peckham (died 1292), who was a Canon of Lyons and later became Archbishop of Canterbury.

Pope John XXII (1316-1334) ordered the feast for the entire Church on the first Sunday after Pentecost, establishing Trinity Sunday as a Double of the Second Class. It was only raised to the dignity of a Double of the First Class by Pope Pius X on 24 July 1911.

Surprisingly, this feastday never spread to the Orthodox Church. In the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, the Sunday of Pentecost itself is called Trinity Sunday, and instead the Sunday after Pentecost is celebrated as All Saints’ Sunday. The Monday after Pentecost is called the Monday of the Holy Spirit, and the next day is called the Third Day of the Trinity. Although liturgical colours are not as fixed in Eastern practice, where normally there are simply ‘festive’ colours and ‘sombre’ or Lenten colours, in some churches green is used for Pentecost and its Afterfeast.

One of the best-known presentations of the Trinity is found in Andrei Rublev’s icon, the Old Testament Trinity or the Hospitality of Abraham. This icon recalls the passage in Genesis 18, in which God visits Abraham and Sarah at Mamre. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that Abraham’s guests – now only a single guest – is God.

Rublev’s icon itself is a masterpiece of composition: The viewer is being invited to join the meal; the doctrine of the Trinity as a community of Love into which the believer is invited to enter is depicted with clarity and simplicity; the icon communicates the idea that basis of the divine life is hospitality. The vanishing point in the sacred space is placed in front of the icon, inviting the viewer to enter into the holy mystery.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews picks up the theme of the Hospitality of Abraham at the end of his epistle when he advises Christians not to neglect hospitality: ‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it’ (Hebrews 13: 2).

The Collect of Trinity Sunday:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you have given us your servants grace,
by the confession of a true faith,
to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity
and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity:
Keep us steadfast in this faith,
that we may evermore be defended from all adversities;
for you live and reign, one God, for ever and ever.

Two plaques on a street corner in London recall Saint Thomas Becket … he introduced Trinity Sunday to the Church Calendar (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Some of this material was used in an earlier posting on Trinity Sunday in 2008.

Chasing my tail in search of the Precentor’s stall in Saint Mary’s Cathedral

The carved wyvern biting his tail under the seat in the precentor’s stall in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

Earlier this week I was in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, not so much in search of the discreet grave of Prince Milo of Montenegro, as seeking out the original Precentor’s stall among the mediaeval misericords.

They were called misericords or mercy seats because each of the 23 seats had a ledge or lip that allowed the priest using it to tip up the seat and still rest on it, appearing to stand throughout lengthy choral services while still remaining seated.

These misericords are the only surviving examples in Ireland of this type of late mediaeval ecclesiastical furnishing. They were carved from oak from Cratloe in Co Clare, the same woods that had previously provided the oak beams for the roofs of both Westminster Hall and Saint Mary’s Cathedral.

Each seat or stall was assigned to an individual member of the cathedral chapter and the underside of almost every one of the seats is decorated with a beautiful, carved figure. Some represent fabulous creatures, others are symbols of the conflict between good and evil, others portray benign human beings.

As I went searching for what I wanted to claim affectionately as ‘my stall,’ I was reminded of similar misericords I saw in Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas Church in Beaumaris last year, dating from around the same time.

The Glentworth Chapel in Saint Mary’s Cathedral … was the screen designed by James Pain? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

But as I searched for the Precentor’s misericord, I was distracted yet again. For the past few months, I have been writing about the contributions to church architecture in Limerick by James Pain, and I was led to believe that this London-born, Limerick-based regency architect and his brother, George Richard Pain were the authors of some interesting features in Saint Mary’s Cathedral.

A recent booklet claimed: ‘In the early 19th century, the Pain brothers designed the Bishop’s Throne or Cathedra, the screen to the Glentworth Chapel, and the monument to Bishop John Jebb …’

Peter Galloway, in The Cathedrals of Ireland ((1992) says the Bishop’s Throne, which occupies the traditional place on the south side of the chancel, was designed by James Pain in 1831. The problem, however, is that none of these three works is attributed to either of the Pain brothers by other authorities, including the on-line Dictionary of Irish Architects and David Lee in his MA dissertation, ‘James and George Pain – Gothic Architects,’ supervised by Liam Irwin of the University of Limerick.

The statue of Bishop John Jebb is the work of the English sculptor Edward Hodges Baily (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Indeed, the statue of Bishop John Jebb was created in 1836 by the English sculptor Edward Hodges Baily (1788-1867), whose best-known work in the statue of Admiral Nelson on Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, London.

The cathedra or bishop’s throne in Saint Mary’s Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Not to be defeated, I found that the Pain brothers had been involved in other works in the cathedral.

In 1813-1816, James Pain probably designed the west porch of the cathedral, and he may also have designed the west porch and the Bow Lane gateway and lodge, which opened on Christmas Day 1813. Two years later, he may have been responsible too for reroofing the cathedral in 1815.

In 1823-1826, the Pain brothers designed the monument to the Revd William Deane Hoare, Vicar-General of the Diocese of Limerick, who died in an accident in 1823. This is their only known church memorial and was executed by Fitzgerald of Cork. In 1826, the Pain brothers also designed a Gothic wooden screen behind the altar. This cannot have been the screen in the Glentworth Chapel.

In 1841, James Pain designed the new entrance on Bridge Street. Two years later he designed a number of alterations in the cathedral, including the installation of a Perpendicular-style East Window.

Pain’s window was removed by William Slater when he was restoring the East End of the cathedral, and was installed in Saint Michael’s Church on Pery Square, Limerick. It was replaced in 1857 by a new East Window designed by William Slater in memory of Augustus O’Brien Stafford.

James Pain died on 13 December 1877, at the age of 97, and was buried on 17 December in the Vereker family vault in the churchyard of Saint Mary’s Cathedral. In his will, he makes bequests to many nephews and nieces including Sally, daughter of his brother George Richard Pain and wife of Henry Vereker of Limerick, which explains the place of his burial.

The West Door of Saint Mary’s Cathedral … James Pain’s west porch was removed in 1892 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

James Pain’s west porch was removed in 1892 and his Gothic wooden screen has been removed too. But even if I found none of Pain’s work in the cathedral this week, yes, eventually, I found the misericord that decorated the underside of the seat in the precentor’s stall.

Until the 19th century, the cathedral chapter consisted of the Dean, Precentor, Chancellor, Treasurer, Archdeacon, and the 11 prebendaries of Saint Munchin, Donoghmore, Ballycahane, Kilpeacon, Tullybracky, Killeedy, Disert, Ardcanny, Croagh, Athnett and Effin. The corps of the precentorship consisted of the rectories and vicarages of Kilfenny and Loughill, the rectories of Nantinan, Shanagolden, Knocknagaul and Dromdeely, and the vicarage of Morgans. In addition, the Precentor had the right of presentation to the vicarage of Dromdeely.

During William Slater's Gothicising restoration of the cathedral in 1859-1868, the chapter and the choir stalls with their misericords were moved from their traditional place in the chancel of the cathedral to the north and south transepts. Later they were stored below in the crypt. Thankfully they have been moved back up into the main body of the cathedral. Although not in their traditional place, they are now in the Jebb Chapel in the north aisle, where once again they can be seen in the light of day.

But far from the light of day this week, the precentor’s stall was hidden in a corner, behind a large chair that had been moved to create extra space for a mid-week recital in the cathedral.

The misericord under the precentor’s seat, displayed only when he tipped it up to allow himself to sit comfortably while standing at choral services that were part and parcel of his chapter responsibilities, shows a wyvern biting his tail, depicting not the battle between good evil but our own internal struggles.

Among the other stalls, the dean is represented by a human head wearing a chaperon, the treasurer’s seat is broken and has no carved figure, the chancellor has a wyvern or two-legged dragon, and the archdeacon has a cockatrice or two-headed lizard, portraying the role of the mediaeval archdeacon as both the eyes and ears of the bishop.

The Lion of Judah fighting a dragon … the symbol of the Prebendary of Donoghmore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Other emblems include a two-legged one-horned goat, a griffin, a sphinx, a wild boar, an angel, a head said to resemble King Henry IV, antelopes with intertwined necks, a swan, an eagle, the Lion of Judah with a dragon, and a cockatrice holding its tail.

Perhaps I was chasing my tail as I searched for some of the works attributed to the Pain brothers. But, even if I never found out who carved the bishop’s cathedra or throne, at least I found the precentor’s stall among the misericords.

Meanwhile, the stalls of the Minor Canons of the cathedral, who no longer exist as a body, are stored away in the Glentworth Chapel.

The former stalls of the Minor Canons … hidden behind the monument in the Glentworth Chapel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)