Trinity Sunday

• 1. Introduction

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  Trinity Sunday falls eight weeks after Easter, on the first Sunday following Pentecost in the Western Christian calendar. Its earliest possible date is the 17th of May, as it fell in 1818 and will again in 2285. Its latest possible date is the 20th of June, as it fell in 1943 and will again in 2038. The feast honors the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, the belief that God exists as three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Yet for centuries after that doctrine took shape, no single day on the calendar belonged to it.

  How a feast built from doctrinal debate came to be celebrated across Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, and Methodist churches is one question this documentary answers. Why Eastern Christians mark the same Trinity on an entirely different day is another.

• 2. A Feast Long Resisted

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  When the Arian heresy spread through the early Church, questioning Christ's divinity, the Fathers responded with a new Office for Sunday recitation. That Office included canticles, responses, a Preface, and hymns. The Sacramentary of Gregory the Great preserved prayers and a Preface written specifically for the Trinity. Devotion deepened during the Carolingian period of the Middle Ages, when private devotion to the Trinity inspired new liturgical expressions. Sundays generally came to be dedicated to the Trinity as well.

  By the pontificate of Gregory VII, the Micrologies still listed no special Office for the Sunday after Pentecost. In some places, clergy recited an Office of the Holy Trinity composed by Bishop Stephen of Liège, who held that see from 903 to 920. Elsewhere the Office was said on the Sunday before Advent instead. Pope Alexander II, who reigned from 1061 to 1073, turned down a request for a dedicated feast. He argued the Roman Church already honored the Trinity daily through the Gloria Patri. He did not, however, ban the observance where it already existed. Later, the Franciscan John Peckham, a canon of Lyons who became Archbishop of Canterbury and died in 1292, composed a new Office for the day.

  Pope John XXII, who reigned from 1316 to 1334, finally ordered the feast for the whole Church on the first Sunday after Pentecost. He ranked it a Double of the Second Class. It stayed at that rank until the 24th of July 1911, when Pope Pius X elevated it to a primary feast of the first class. The reasoning tied the feast to its place on the calendar. Since the doctrine of the Trinity had been proclaimed to the world after the first Pentecost, the feast fittingly followed Pentecost itself. That reasoning about timing and rank would soon shape how Rome treated the season around the feast.

• 3. Rome's Calendar and Creed

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  Today the Roman Catholic Church calls the day the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. Before the Second Vatican Council's reforms, the feast marked the end of a three-week span in which church weddings were forbidden. That period began on Rogation Sunday, the fifth Sunday after Easter. White is the liturgical color prescribed for the day.

  The Athanasian Creed, also known as the Quicumque vult, is recited at Prime in the traditional Divine Office on Trinity Sunday. Before 1960, that same creed was said on every Sunday after Epiphany and Pentecost that fell outside an Octave and carried no Double-rank feast. The 1960 reforms cut that recitation back to a single day each year: Trinity Sunday itself. In the 1962 Missal, the Mass proper to the First Sunday After Pentecost never appears on the Sunday, since Trinity Sunday permanently displaces it there. That Mass is used only during the following week, when the ferial Mass is said instead.

  The Thursday that follows Trinity Sunday is kept as the Feast of Corpus Christi. In the United States, Canada, and Spain, parishes may instead move that observance to the following Sunday. That way, more of the faithful are able to attend Mass and celebrate the feast. The same feast day would take a different shape once Lutheran and Anglican churches adapted it to their own calendars.

• 4. Protestant Paths

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  Lutheran worship keeps a distinctive practice on Trinity Sunday: the Athanasian Creed is recited during Matins, and it may replace the Nicene Creed at Mass. Three worship books spell out this custom by name: the Lutheran Book of Worship, Lutheran Worship, and the Lutheran Service Book.

  In the Church of England, Trinity Sunday holds the rank of a Principal Feast. It is one of seven principal feast days observed in the Episcopal Church in the United States. Thomas Becket, who lived from 1118 to 1170, was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on the Sunday after Pentecost, known in England as Whitsun. His later martyrdom may have helped fix the feast's popularity in England. From there, the observance is said to have spread across the whole of western Christendom.

  The Athanasian Creed appears in Anglican practice too, though less often, mainly in churches of High Church tendency. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer prescribed its use on certain Sundays at Morning Prayer, Trinity Sunday among them. Many modern Anglican prayer books still include it today. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church places the creed in its Historical Documents section. Its rubrics, however, do not specifically call for the creed's use. Parishes with an Anglo-Catholic churchmanship follow their own calendar, observing Corpus Christi on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday or, in some cases, the following Sunday.

  Methodist practice added a late piece to the calendar in 1965. The Book of Worship for Church and Home supplied fresh Collects written specifically for Trinity Sunday.

• 5. The Eastern Trinity

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  In the Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Catholic, and Eastern Lutheran churches, Trinity Sunday is not the Sunday after Pentecost at all. It is the Sunday of Pentecost itself. What Western Christians call the Sunday after Pentecost, Eastern Christians instead call All Saints Sunday.

  The Monday after Pentecost is kept as Monday of the Holy Spirit, and the following day is called the Third Day of the Trinity. Eastern practice shifts the liturgical color for the season: green is worn for Pentecost and its Afterfeast. Wherever the feast falls on the calendar, it has also left its mark in music, not just liturgy.

• 6. Hymns and Cantatas

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  The oldest hymn still sung on Trinity Sunday today is a 12th-century Italian hymn called Alta Trinità beata. It is recorded as such in the manuscript collection known as the Laudario di Cortona.

  Johann Sebastian Bach, the Lutheran musician, composed a number of cantatas for Trinity Sunday, though only three of them survive today. The first is O heilges Geist- und Wasserbad, BWV 165. The second is Es ist ein trotzig und verzagt Ding, BWV 176, and the third is Gelobet sei der Herr, mein Gott, BWV 129. A fourth cantata, Höchsterwünschtes Freudenfest, BWV 194, was written for the dedication of the church and organ at Störmthal. Bach later brought it back to Leipzig for Trinity Sunday services. It was performed there first on the 4th of June 1724. A shortened version followed in 1726, and the complete version was heard in 1731. That complete version, heard in Leipzig in 1731, is the last performance of a cantata Bach first brought to Trinity Sunday services seven years earlier.