Help us to show his love
This Sunday, the Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity, is a very rare Sunday, so rare, in fact, that it doesn’t even have its own Collects and Post-Communion Prayer. The Collect quoted below is the correct one for this Sunday, but it is actually the Additional Collect for the Third Sunday before Lent. The reason for this rather strange anomaly is because Lent and Easter were so very early this year, which I wrote about way back at the beginning of February.
“Help us to show his love” — “love” (again), a subject talked about a lot on this blog. But how can we “show” God’s love to the world?
Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34). I think that’s how we demonstrate the Father’s love for us; we show it in the way we love each other, those around us, and throughout the rest of the world.
Angel, one of the people who left a comment on my post for the Blog Action Day earlier this week, wrote a very moving post himself for Blog Action Day. In it he wrote:
So, how did I escape from poverty? I did not sell my soul and honor, as I strongly believe that it this will only bring me to a more pitiable life, in the long run. Although the escape was gradual and the road was stiff, I was determined that I will be able to make it. No, I did not get rich, but at least I am having a good fight.
Actually, there was no secret or magic. It only began from a single word – family.
I was raised with a broken family so basically, I did not have one. When I realized that, I thought why not treat every person I meet as my family? Maybe, I will be inspired to make plans to escape poverty. Maybe, they will be kind enough to help me not by giving me fish but teaching me how to catch them. And surprisingly, it did help a lot. But the biggest help I got is the lesson I learned, that is to study harder, not about academics but how to observe life.
“Family”, if we, too, can treat everyone we meet as family, then perhaps we, too, can help to lift others from poverty, or be lifted from it ourselves. And in that transformation of our lives, we’ll be showing others how God loves them, and us.
Eternal God,
whose Son went among the crowds
and brought healing with his touch:
help us to show his love,
in your Church as we gather together,
and by our lives as they are transformed
into the image of Christ our Lord. Amen.Additional Collect for The Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council
