A Note on Trinitytide

Excerpt from News Notes 12 June 2021, Victoria Ordinariate Community.

Those unfamiliar with the Anglican tradition might wonder as to why, in the Ordinariate, our Sundays in this summer period are ordered not ‘tempus per annum’ (‘time throughout the year’, often incorrectly translated into the rather uninspiring ‘Ordinary Time’), as in the Ordinary Form, or ‘after Pentecost’, as in the Extraordinary Form, but are instead ‘after Trinity’.

Anglicans count their Sundays ‘after Trinity’ not because they want to do things differently, but rather because they inherited the practise from the pre-Reformation Catholic Church in England. St Thomas Becket was, in 1162, consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on the Sunday after Whitsunday, and his very first act of episcopal authority was to decree that, henceforth, that Sunday would be kept as the Feast of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity. It took root and gradually spread outside of England to other parts of Christendom until, in the 14th century, Pope John XXII extended it to the whole Church.

The Ordinariates have the benefit of both of these great patrimonies to draw on, of course, and we rejoice in a little re-patriation, as it were, of this pre-Reformation custom back into the fulness of the Catholic liturgical life; no longer the preserve of Anglicans alone, but a treasure to be shared with the whole Church.

Trinitytide offers us the opportunity to study the life of Christ as he completely obeyed the commands of the Father, as he taught his disciples, and as he ministered to the people around him. It is a time for our growth into the fulness of the image of God –  Father, Son, and Holy Ghost – in whom we are made and have our being, and so to bring forth the rich fruits of our faith.