The Seventh Sunday after Trinity offers a Collect that has fed the Church's devotion across the centuries: Lord of all power and might, who art the author and giver of all good things; Graft in our hearts the love of thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of thy great mercy keep us in the same. The horticultural image of grafting — a scion joined to a living stock — captures what grace does to the human heart: it does not merely improve an existing growth but introduces a new life from without. The verbs of the Collect are all divine actions: graft, increase, nourish, keep. The Church asks; God works.

The appointed Epistle from Romans 6 continues Paul's great argument about freedom from sin and the fruit that grace produces: What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. The contrast between death as wages duly earned and life as gift freely given is among the most concentrated and memorable theological statements in all of Paul.

The appointed Gospel from Mark 8 gives the second feeding of the multitude: four thousand men, together with women and children, fed from seven loaves and a few small fishes in a wilderness place. As the first feeding in John 6 was given to a primarily Jewish crowd, this feeding in Mark takes place in the region of the Decapolis — predominantly Gentile territory — declaring that the Lord's provision is for all peoples. The miracle anticipates the Eucharist in which the Church is nourished by the one who gave himself as bread for the life of the world.