The Sixth Sunday after Trinity appoints a Collect of singular beauty and depth: O God, who hast prepared for them that love thee such good things as pass man's understanding; Pour into our hearts such love toward thee, that we, loving thee in all things and above all things, may obtain thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire. The prayer reaches beyond human understanding and human desire to the inexhaustible goodness that God alone can give and that only the love of God can receive. It is one of the most spiritually ambitious petitions in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.

The appointed Epistle from Romans 6 speaks of Baptism as union with the death and resurrection of Christ: Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? We were buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. The baptismal theology of Romans 6 is the ground of all Christian ethics: the old life is dead and buried, and the new life is already given in the risen Christ. Those who love God above all things do so because they have been united to the God who loved them first.

The appointed Gospel from Matthew 5 gives the Sermon on the Mount's moral teaching at its most searching: Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. Our Lord then deepens the sixth commandment from the external act to the interior attitude — the anger and contempt that are the roots of violence and destruction of community. The inner reformation of the heart is precisely the work that the love poured in by the Spirit accomplishes.