What Trinity Sunday tells us about the Church’s indefectible authority
Christ's final command was to teach, govern and sanctify all men, until the end of time. On Trinity Sunday, the Church recalls this—not as a memory, but as her living mission today.
Christ's final command was to teach, govern and sanctify all men, until the end of time. On Trinity Sunday, the Church recalls this—not as a memory, but as her living mission today.
Editor’s Notes
Pentecost marks the end of the great cycle of the liturgical year that began on Septuagesima (or Advent, depending on one’s reckoning). From Trinity Sunday—the Octave of Pentecost—the temporal cycle ceases to dominate the Sundays of the Year. It is fitting that on this day, the Roman Liturgy recounts one of Christ’s final acts before his Ascension.
The Gospel on Trinity Sunday recounts Our Lord definitively commissioning his Apostles to bring the Gospel to all nations, and promising to be with them until the end of time. This event forms the foundation of the Church’s mission, structure and authority.
Each Evangelist closes his Gospel with a slightly different emphasis, which we will see as we progress through the parts of this chapter.
In this part, Fr. Coleridge tells us…
How Christ’s parting words establish the Church’s mission and reveal the mystery of the Trinity.
That this charter binds every age to preach, baptise, and teach all nations in the Name of the Triune God.
Why these words, read on Trinity Sunday, proclaim both the doctrine and the power by which the Church endures.
He shows us that the Great Commission is not only a command but the living proof of Christ’s presence until the world’s end.
Before the Ascension
The Passage of Our Lord to the Father
Chapter XVI
St. Matt. xxviii. 16-20; St. Mark xvi. 14-18; St. Luke xxiv. 44-49.
Story of the Gospels, § 180
Burns and Oates, London, 1892
The mission of the Church unveiled
Many devout children of the Church are in the habit of lingering in their contemplations over that part of the history on which we have been lately engaged, as if they found some special sweetness therein.
There is a solemn calm about the whole, and we feel the unseen world very close at hand. There is no conflict, or noise of opposition, and the persons mentioned seem already to belong to a higher and happier life. After they have left Jerusalem for Galilee, it requires a kind of effort to realize that the Apostles have yet to go forth to convert the world, to overthrow the kingdom of Satan, and to occupy themselves in an unending struggle with the powers of darkness, and their ready tools among the children of the evil one.
The calm scenes before us are soon to pass away, and the activity and energy of the Pentecostal Church is to fill the world with the wonders wrought through the Holy Ghost.
We have lately been occupied with the simple and spiritual words in which the fourth Evangelist concludes the part of the work which has occupied him, and we have followed him in some of the last footsteps of his Incarnate Lord. The other Evangelists close the history, each one in few words about our Blessed Redeemer characteristic of some thought concerning Him which the writer has from time to time before been fond of setting before them.
St Matthew and the Great Commission
St. Matthew proceeds, after his short statement about the Resurrection, to tell us that the Eleven, in obedience to our Lord’s injunction, went into Galilee to the mountain which He had appointed them as the place where they were to see Him, and there adored Him.
‘But some doubted.’
St. Matthew adds that He gave them—the time not being specified—though it seems fair to gather from the manner of the Evangelist that he means to speak of one of the greater and more solemn occasions on which they received their authoritative charge for the evangelization of the world—the commission which is embodied in the well known words:
‘All power is given to Me in Heaven and on earth. Going, therefore, teach all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world.’
There can be no question among Christians about the paramount authority which is here assumed by our Lord, and which is stated to have been conferred on Him as Man as a fruit of the sacrifice of His Passion.
The New Covenant and Baptism
We are struck by the singular silence observed concerning any former powers granted for the same purpose of the conversion of the world, in any former dispensation for the benefit of this or that nation or class.
All such earlier arrangements are swept aside, and virtually superseded, and the new Kingdom put in place of all as unique, universal, and sovereign.
The citizens of the new Kingdom are not the seed of Abraham, or the kindred races, but all nations, and in this we see the liberty preached in a few years to all the children of Adam, and for which St. Paul had to suffer so bitterly from the brethren of the circumcision.
And instead of the painful rite by which entrance was administered under the old Jewish Covenant, we have the simple initiation by Baptism in the single Name of the One Godhead in three Persons, involving, we may think, a further declaration of the great truth now proclaimed, which now became the rule of Christian faith, and at the same time the fruitful seed of the whole Christian system of theology.
And moreover, the instruction which is to be ministered by the Apostles to their baptized children all over the world is described by our Lord as embracing all things which He has taught them; and He describes the method which is to be used, by a verb which is formed from the noun which signifies our word ‘disciple,’ involving the full authority with which the teachers of the world are to impart the truths committed to them, the formation of lives as well as the instruction of minds by a system of holy guidance which is never to lose its hold over them, issuing in the formation of an organized and living and complex body, which is to last as long as the world endures.
And that the society thus set up on the earth may have the Almighty promise of endless endurance, the final sentence by which the perseverance and stability of the whole work is guaranteed, ensures its perfect immunity from change or failure, by the Divine promise of His own perpetual and ever enduring presence:
‘And behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world.’
The complete sufficiency of the Catholic religion
The more deeply and habitually Christians consider the religion in which they live and on which they rest their hopes in this life and in eternity, the more clearly they will be able to see how this great charter, so to call it, of the Church, embraces everything that they require for the needs of their souls.
There is nothing that has grown obsolete or superfluous in the course of generations and the lapse of ages. The truths spoken of and believed in consequence of the teaching of these eleven peasants of Galilee are as full of life and power and strength as when our Lord uttered them to His chosen followers.
What is this but to say, in other words, that the closing clause of the Divine promise has been always verified?—that He Who spoke these words on the appointed spot in Galilee has been present all days within the Church, and, having warned them that they were to hear of false Christs and false prophets who should come in His name, so as to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect, that men should continue saying to them, Lo here or lo there, they would always be safe in keeping their mind fixed upon the great truth, which is to be to them as the pole-star is to the mariner, the truth of the perpetual presence of their Lord in the Church:
‘For as lightning cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west, so shall also the coming—or the presence—of the Son of Man be.’
When did Our Lord speak these words?
Such is the great declaration made by our Lord in the first Gospel, in his parting words to the Apostles. The actual time, as has been said, is not fixed, but it seems from St. Matthew’s language to have been on the mountain in Galilee, and so before the Ascension. But this Evangelist is so indifferent about marks of time and place, that there is no certainty about it. The main point for us is the extent and breadth of the commission thus given, which seems to belong to all time, and to be addressed to the Church of all ages.
As this declaration is characteristic of St. Matthew, we find very different and equally characteristic of St. Mark, the leave-taking, as it may be called, with which the second Gospel ends. This appears to belong to a later period than the closing words recorded in St. Matthew, and there is no hint given that the scene is elsewhere than at Jerusalem. It may be supposed to have been on the occasion which St. Paul mentions1 before he speaks of the manifestation made to himself, as to one born out of due time,’2 and which mention causes in him a beautiful outburst of humility.
St. Mark, after his very few words about the events of Easter Day, mentions without more this manifestation.
‘At length He appeared to the Eleven as they were at table, and He upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He was risen again.
‘And He said to them, Go ye into the whole world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not, shall be condemned.
‘And these signs shall follow those that believe, in My Name they shall cast out devils, they shall speak with new tongues, they shall take up serpents, and if they shall eat any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’
Here the Evangelist pauses, and his remaining words are concerned with our Lord Himself.
‘And the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken to them, was taken up, and sitteth on the right hand of God, but they going forth preached everywhere, the Lord co-operating with them, and confirming the word with signs that followed.’
Severity of the tone in some places in St. Mark
From this termination of his Gospel we are able to see that St. Mark was repeating what we may call the dominant, or at least, a dominant note, in his Gospel, at the time at which he was drawing it to a close.
For it is certainly a distinguishing feature in the Gospel of which we are speaking, that it dwells so prominently on the use made of His miraculous power by our Lord, and more with the mighty works by which His Mission was accredited, and less with His oral teaching, and here he seems to bring forward in particular prominence the miracles, which have of course been always made one of the chief elements used by the Church, but not always so exclusively as is the case in this Gospel.
There is also something characteristic of this Gospel in the severe way in which our Lord speaks on this occasion of the unbelief, or at least, the difficulty of belief, of which the Apostles are found culpable. Our Lord had before on some occasions uttered the same complaint, which here is made an especial cause of blame. Perhaps He saw more clearly the immense mischief to the advancement of His Kingdom which was to result from this slowness of faith, which was of course accompanied by great hardness of heart in many cases, so that the work of the conversion of the world was very greatly imperilled thereby.
It was most important that no time should be wasted in advancing the frontiers of the Church, on account, it may be, of the shortness of human life, which is constantly closing the opportunities, many of which last but for a limited time, in the case of the great majority of the souls of whom any generation consists.
We are constantly reminded of the briefness of the span allotted to any individual among us, and we are always being confronted with the case of souls to whom occasions are allowed which if they let them pass, are never, as a matter of fact, to return.
The hardness of heart for which our Lord had so often to complain to those whom He loved so much, as the Apostles, may have lessened the chances of salvation to thousands for whom He died, and if the obstacles to faith were already so great in the earliest times, what may be thought of the extent to which this retarding influence swelled age after age?
In the next part, Fr Coleridge explains how St Luke treats Our Lord’s final acts before his Ascension.
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Before the Ascension
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1 Cor. xv. 8.
1 Cor. xv.