May we trust in your mercy and know your love
Sometime around the middle of the nineteenth century, Frederick Faber wrote the hymn, “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy”. That would have been soon after he converted from Anglicism to Catholicism, and founded what was to become the Brompton Oratory in Kensington. Before that he’d spent a couple of years as Rector of the Parish of Elton, in Huntingdonshire, which isn’t far from where I live.
It’s a wonderful hymn. When you read the words you can understand the sentiment of William Wordsworth, when he wrote to Faber after he’d decided to take Holy Orders, “I do not say you are wrong, but England loses a poet”. It’s thought that he wrote this, along with others he wrote, to try and increase the importance of hymn singing in the Catholic Church; he’d always been impressed by the power of hymns in the Protestant tradition.
This hymn says, far better than I ever could, what I would want to say about today’s Collect — The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity. Please, read the words, take them to heart, and trust in their truth.
There’s a wideness in God’s mercy
Like the wideness of the sea;
There’s a kindness in his justice,
Which is more than liberty.
There is no place where earth’s sorrows
Are more felt than up in heaven;
There is no place where earth’s failings
Have such kindly judgement given.
For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of man’s mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
But we make his love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify his strictness
With a zeal he will not own.
There is plentiful redemption
In the blood that has been shed;
There is joy for all the members
In the sorrows of the Head.
There is grace enough for thousands
Of new worlds as great as this;
There is room for fresh creations
In that upper home of bliss.
If our love were but more faithful,
we should take him at his word;
and our life would be thanksgiving
for the goodness of the Lord.
Frederick William Faber (1814-1863)
You can discover much more about Frederick William Faber on the Diocese of Ely website.
Merciful God,
your Son came to save us
and bore our sins on the cross:
may we trust in your mercy
and know your love,
now and in all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.Additional Collect for The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity
is Copyright © The Archbishops Council
About Paul Sibley
Andrew Gosden (now 18) has been missing from his Doncaster home since 14 September 2007. The search continues.
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