The Season after Pentecost: An Anglican Perspective

The Season after Pentecost

The Season after Pentecost is the longest season in the Anglican liturgical year — the great green stretch of Sundays that runs from Trinity Sunday through the Last Sunday after Pentecost, Christ the King Sunday, ending on the Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent. In most years it spans twenty-four to twenty-eight Sundays, covering the full arc of summer, autumn, and the early weeks of winter. It is the season in which the Church lives most fully in the ordinary time of the Christian life: not preparing for a feast, not celebrating a great event, but living in the light of everything the liturgical year has declared and working out what it means. The BCP 2019 appoints collects on pages 615–634 and lectionary readings on pages 725–730 for the Season after Pentecost, giving it a theological breadth that no other season can match in sheer scope.

The season is sometimes called Ordinary Time — a term more common in Roman Catholic usage but occasionally heard in Anglican circles as well. The BCP 2019 uses “the Season after Pentecost” throughout. The Sundays of the season are named by their Proper number: Proper 1 through Proper 29, each with its own collect and lectionary readings. In the older Anglican tradition, the Sundays may also be numbered “after Trinity” — the First Sunday after Trinity, the Second Sunday after Trinity, and so on — a practice the BCP 2019 notes as an alternative. Both namings name the same Sundays. One looks back to Pentecost as the season’s origin; the other looks back to Trinity Sunday as its opening feast.

The Character of the Season

The Season after Pentecost is the season of formation. The great Paschal cycle — Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter — has proclaimed the Gospel in its full sweep: Incarnation, ministry, Passion, resurrection, Ascension, and the outpouring of the Spirit. The Season after Pentecost now asks the Church to inhabit what has been proclaimed. It is the season not of event but of growth — the slow, sustained, unspectacular work of becoming what the Gospel has declared the Church to be.

The parables of Jesus dominate the Gospel readings of this season, and the choice is deliberate. The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, like yeast hidden in flour, like a treasure buried in a field, like a net thrown into the sea. These are not descriptions of dramatic events but of ordinary processes: growth, hiddenness, discovery, sorting. The Season after Pentecost is the season of the mustard seed — the time in which the Kingdom that was announced at Christmas and vindicated at Easter is growing in the world and in the Church by the slow, ordinary work of the Spirit.

This is also the season of the Sermon on the Mount, of the Beatitudes and the antitheses, of the demands of discipleship in their full weight. The lectionary does not cushion the season’s ethical demands. The righteousness that must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, the love of enemies, the impossibility of serving two masters, the narrow gate and the hard road — these are the readings that shape the long green season. The Season after Pentecost is the Church’s annual school in the life of the Kingdom.

The Proper System

The BCP 2019 organizes the Season after Pentecost around a system of Propers — numbered sets of collect and readings assigned to the Sundays of the season. Propers 1 through 29 are found in the lectionary beginning on page 725, with the corresponding collects on pages 615–634. Each Proper is assigned to a range of calendar dates, and the Proper used on any given Sunday is determined by the date of that Sunday: Proper 1 applies to the Sunday closest to May 11, Proper 29 to the Sunday closest to November 23.

The date table on pages 713–715 of the BCP 2019 gives the user the Proper that applies to any given Sunday, determined by the date of Easter for that year. Because the date of the Sunday nearest to each Proper’s anchor date varies from year to year depending on the date of Easter, the number of Sundays actually observed in the season varies as well. When Easter falls early, the season is longer and the earlier Propers are used. When Easter falls late, the season is shorter and Proper 1 and 2 may be skipped entirely. In every year, the season ends with Proper 29 — Christ the King Sunday — and begins the following week with Advent.

The collect system of the Season after Pentecost is one of the richest in the BCP 2019. The collects do not follow a single theme but range widely across the Church’s life: petition for grace to keep God’s commandments, for the increase of faith, for deliverance from anxiety, for the love that casts out fear, for the fruitfulness of the Word, for perseverance under trial, for mercy on the lapsed, for the life of the world to come. Read in sequence across the season, they are a sustained catechesis in the full range of the Christian life.

The Season after Pentecost Lectionary

The lectionary readings for the Season after Pentecost are found on pages 725–730 of the BCP 2019 and rotate across the three-year cycle. Each year follows a primary evangelist for its Gospel readings: Year A follows Matthew from the Sermon on the Mount through the final discourses and parables; Year B follows Mark, the most urgent and compact of the Gospels, supplemented by John 6 in the middle weeks; Year C follows Luke, the Gospel of the poor and the outsider, the prodigal son and the persistent widow, the table fellowship and the journey to Jerusalem.

Year A’s Matthean arc is perhaps the most systematically organized of the three. The season opens with the Beatitudes and the antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount, moves through the missionary discourse of Matthew 10, the parables of Matthew 13, the community discourse of Matthew 18, the controversies of Matthew 22, and the eschatological discourse of Matthew 24–25. The season ends each year in Year A with the great judgment parables: the ten virgins, the talents, and the sheep and the goats. The lectionary shapes the congregation’s reading of Matthew as a sustained account of the Kingdom’s demands.

Year B’s Markan arc is characterized by the urgency and compression that mark that Gospel throughout. The season follows Jesus through Galilee and toward Jerusalem, with a notable interruption in the middle weeks when John 6 — the Bread of Life discourse — is read for five consecutive Sundays. This extended Johannine passage in the midst of the Markan year gives the season’s middle a Eucharistic density that anchors the congregation in the sacramental life even as the lectionary presses toward the cross.

Year C’s Lukan arc covers the long central journey narrative of Luke 9–19 — the journey to Jerusalem that occupies the heart of the third Gospel and contains more unique Lukan material than any other section of the New Testament. The Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Rich Man and Lazarus, Zacchaeus, the persistent widow, the Pharisee and the tax collector — all of these fall in the Season after Pentecost in Year C. The season reads Luke’s portrait of the Kingdom’s reversals and the mercy of God toward the excluded.

The Old Testament readings in the Season after Pentecost are drawn from across the breadth of the Hebrew Scriptures: the Pentateuch, the historical books, the psalms, and the prophets. They are chosen in relationship to the Gospel readings of each Sunday, providing the prophetic or narrative background against which the Gospel passage is read. The Epistle readings draw heavily from Paul’s letters — Romans in Year A, 1 and 2 Corinthians in Year B, Galatians through Colossians and Philemon in Year C — tracing the apostolic theology of the Church’s life in the Spirit.

Trinity Sunday and Christ the King Sunday

The Season after Pentecost is bookended by two theological statements of the highest order. It opens with Trinity Sunday — the feast on which the Church turns from the events of salvation history to the God who accomplished them, confessing one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And it closes with Christ the King Sunday — the feast on which the Church proclaims that the one who was born in a manger, crucified under Pilate, raised from the dead, and ascended to the Father’s right hand is the Lord of all history and the King of every nation. The season that runs between these two declarations is the Church’s annual school in what it means to live under the reign of the Triune King.

Trinity Sunday’s collect on page 615 prays for steadfastness in the true faith and brings the whole liturgical year to a theological summary before the long season begins. Christ the King Sunday’s collect on page 634 asks that God would mercifully free the world from sin and bring it to the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ — a petition that looks forward to the completion of the Kingdom that the season has been tracing week by week. The two collects together frame the season: we begin confessing the Triune God, and we end praying for the full establishment of his reign.

The BCP 2019 Prefaces

The Season after Pentecost does not have a single proper preface governing the entire season, as Lent and Easter do. Instead, the BCP 2019 appoints the Preface of Trinity Sunday on page 154 for use on Trinity Sunday itself, and provides three options from the Preface of the Lord’s Day for use on the Sundays that follow. All three may be used at the celebrant’s discretion throughout the season.

The first Preface of the Lord’s Day centers on the resurrection: “Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who on the first day of the week overcame death and the grave, and by his glorious resurrection opened to us the way of everlasting life.” This preface places every Sunday of the Season after Pentecost in explicit resurrection context: each Sunday is a little Easter, the weekly commemoration of the day the Lord rose from the dead. The long green season is not a departure from the Easter proclamation but its weekly renewal.

The second Preface of the Lord’s Day centers on the eternal Word: “Through Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is your living Word from before time and for all ages; by him you created all things, and by him you make all things new.” This preface sets the ordinary work of the season in a cosmic frame: the Word by whom all things were created is the Word by whom all things are being made new. The formation and discipleship of the Season after Pentecost is not a minor project but the renewal of creation in Christ.

The third Preface of the Lord’s Day grounds the season in the image of God and the call to new life: “For you are the source of light and life; you made us in your image, and called us to new life in Jesus Christ our Lord.” This preface connects the creation of humanity in God’s image with the new creation in Christ — the long season’s work of formation as the restoration of the image that sin has marred. The three prefaces together offer three theological frames for the season: resurrection, new creation, and the renewal of the image of God. Any of them may be used on any Sunday.

Holy Days Within the Season

The Season after Pentecost contains more Red-Letter Holy Days than any other season, covering the summer and autumn half of the calendar year. The Nativity of John the Baptist falls on June 24 — the feast that honors the last prophet and the forerunner of the Lord, born six months before Jesus and announced by the same angel. Mary Magdalene is commemorated on July 22, the first witness of the resurrection and the one to whom the risen Lord first spoke on Easter morning. The Transfiguration of Our Lord falls on August 6 — the feast that the BCP 2019 recognizes as both a Red-Letter Holy Day in its own right and a date that echoes the Last Sunday of Epiphany’s observance of the same event. The feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary falls on August 15. Holy Cross Day is September 14 — commemorating the finding of the true cross by Helena, mother of Constantine, and providing the anchor for the autumn Ember Days that follow. Holy Michael and All Angels is September 29 — the great angelus feast, on which the Church honors the heavenly host. James of Jerusalem falls on October 23.

The autumn Ember Days, falling on the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after Holy Cross Day (September 14), punctuate the season’s second half with three days of fasting, prayer, and intercession for the Church’s ministry. Their placement in the Season after Pentecost gives them an appropriate context: the long green season of formation and discipleship is the season in which the Church most needs to pray for its ministers and to examine its own vocational faithfulness.

The Season after Pentecost in Anglican Worship

Green vestments are worn throughout the Season after Pentecost, the color of life and growth in the Kingdom. White or red vestments are used on the various Red-Letter Holy Days that fall within the season: white for the feasts of Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the Nativity of John the Baptist; red for Holy Michael and All Angels and for any martyr’s feast. The long green season is the liturgical embodiment of the season’s character as the time of the Kingdom’s slow and steady expansion in the world and in the hearts of the faithful.

The Daily Office — Morning and Evening Prayer — is perhaps most important in the Season after Pentecost, because the season’s formation happens less through dramatic liturgical events than through the sustained discipline of daily prayer, daily Scripture reading, and the regular rhythm of corporate worship. The penitential practices of Lent are behind the Church; the fasting is complete. What the Season after Pentecost asks for is not intensity but fidelity: showing up, week after week and day after day, to receive the Word and be changed by it.

The Anglican tradition’s habit of counting the Sundays “after Trinity” rather than “after Pentecost” has a theological logic worth noting. Trinity Sunday is the feast that most directly governs the season’s character: we live in the after-time of Pentecost under the reign of the Triune God, formed by the Word of the Son, animated by the Spirit, and directed toward the glory of the Father. The Season after Pentecost is Trinitarian life in its ordinary, daily, weekly expression.

Observing the Season

The Season after Pentecost begins on the Monday after Trinity Sunday and ends on the Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent. The BCP 2019 provides collects beginning on page 615 and lectionary readings beginning on page 725. The Proper to be used on any Sunday is found using the date table on pages 713–715.

To observe the season well: follow the lectionary. The Season after Pentecost rewards sustained engagement with the appointed readings more than any other season, because its formation happens through accumulation rather than through single dramatic moments. Read the Gospel of the year — Matthew, Mark, or Luke — devotionally alongside the Sunday readings, tracking the evangelist’s arc through the months. Pay attention to the Epistle readings: Romans in Year A, Corinthians in Year B, Galatians and Colossians in Year C each give the season a sustained theological argument running alongside the Gospel.

Pray the collect for each Sunday. The Propers of the Season after Pentecost contain some of the most practically pastoral collects in the entire BCP — petitions for the increase of faith, for steadfastness under temptation, for the will to do good works, for peace in the world, for the grace to love God above all things. These are not feasts to be celebrated but disciplines to be practiced, and the collect for each Sunday names the specific grace the season is asking the Church to receive.

Observe the Red-Letter Holy Days within the season. The Nativity of John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, the Transfiguration, Holy Cross Day, and the others punctuate the long season with moments of particular theological richness. They keep the Season after Pentecost from becoming a formless stretch of green by placing within it specific witnesses, specific events, and specific theological claims that interrupt the ordinary and call the congregation to attention.

Keep the autumn Ember Days with fasting and prayer for the Church’s ministers. The Season after Pentecost is the season in which the Church is most tempted to coast — to drift through the long weeks without the urgency that Lent and Easter generate. The Ember Days resist that drift, calling the congregation back to the fundamental work of the Christian life: prayer, discernment, and the raising up of faithful leaders for God’s people.

Conclusion

The Season after Pentecost is the Church’s longest and in some ways most honest season. It does not offer the drama of Christmas or the intensity of Lent. It offers instead the long, quiet, demanding work of formation: week after week of Scripture heard and received, collect after collect of honest petition, Sunday after Sunday of the Eucharist celebrated in the ordinary time of the Church’s life. The season begins with the Triune God confessed on Trinity Sunday and ends with Christ proclaimed as King over all things on the Last Sunday after Pentecost. Everything between those two declarations is the Church learning, slowly and imperfectly, to live in the light of both.

“Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who on the first day of the week overcame death and the grave, and by his glorious resurrection opened to us the way of everlasting life.” (Preface of the Lord’s Day, BCP 2019)