The Second Sunday after Trinity deepens the Church's entrance into the long season of Trinity through a Collect that asks for the protection of God's good providence and a perpetual fear and love of his holy Name. The 1928 Prayer Book tradition understands fear and love not as opposites but as two aspects of the one right relationship with God: reverential awe before his holiness and majesty, and filial affection for the goodness that has drawn us into his family.

The appointed Epistle from 1 John 3 continues the great discourse on love from the apostle who was known as the Beloved Disciple: Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you. We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. The love enjoined here is not sentiment but action and sacrifice — My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. The test of authentic Christian life is not orthodoxy alone but the love that orthodoxy generates.

The appointed Gospel from Luke 14 gives the Parable of the Great Supper: a man made a great feast and invited many, but when the hour came those invited began to make excuses — a field purchased, oxen to be proved, a wife newly taken. The servants were sent instead to the highways and hedges, and the house was filled with those the original guests had despised. The parable is at once a warning against the comfortable refusal of grace and a proclamation of the astonishing inclusiveness of God's invitation to the feast of salvation.