You can join the service via YouTube!
The stream will begin shortly before 10 am, and you’re able to watch or re-watch the live-stream at this YouTube link at any time.
The order of service is available here.
You may wish to having it at hand when you join the live-stream. It includes the words to the hymns, the readings & all of the responses–it makes it easier to join in, remotely. It also includes prayers you may wish to offer during the reception of the Eucharist.
Today we’re observing one of the seven Principal Feasts of the Church–the Feast of the Holy Trinity. Here’s a note from Sundays and Seasons that speaks to the readings we’ll reflect on together:
When we say God is the triune God, we are saying something about who God is beyond, before, and after the universe: that there is community within God. Our experience of this is reflected in Paul’s words today. When we pray to God as Jesus prayed to his Abba (an everyday, intimate parental address), the Spirit prays within us, creating between us and God the same relationship Jesus has with the one who sent him.
In addition to the famous icon of the Holy Trinity written by Andrei Rublev for the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius monastery near Moscow, many artists have been inspired by the God who reveals God’s self as One and Three.
The composer Johann Sebastian Bach wrote cantatas for Trinity Sunday. Three of them are still available. O heilges Geist- und Wasserbad (O holy bath of Spirit and Water, BWV 165) was written in Weimar and first performed on June 16, 1715. You can listen to a recording by the J.S. Bach Foundation from 2021 here.
The English poet John Donne (~1571 – 1631) was an exemplar of the metaphysical school of poetry. A collection of some of his poems, entitled Holy Sonnets (also known as Divine Meditations or Divine Sonnets) was printed in 1633, after his death. Scholars think they were written in 1609–10, during a period of some distress in Donne’s life. Holy Sonnet XIV is especially striking:
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.