Patrick Comerford
We are now well into Lent, which began on Ash Wednesday, and today is the Second Sunday in Lent (Lent II, 16 March 2025).
The Six Nations championship came to a climax yesterday with the last three fixtures, and each successive match yesterday was a nail-biting decider in its own way. Tomorrow is Saint Patrick’s Day (17 March 2025).
Later this morning, I hope to sing with the choir at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Luke 13: 31-35 (NRSVA):
31 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’ 32 He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33 Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem.” 34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35 See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”.’
Today’s Reflection:
In my private meditations and prayers, I often reflect on words from Samuel Johnson from Lichfield, who compiled the first English-language dictionary but who is also often regarded as one of the great Anglican saints of the 18th century. Thinking about the stars at night, the great tragedies in the world and the unbounded love of God, Dr Johnson once wrote:
‘The pensive man at one time walks ‘unseen’ to muse at midnight, and at another hears the sullen curfew. If the weather drives him home he sits in a room lighted only by ‘glowing embers’; or by a lonely lamp outwatches the North Star to discover the habitation of separate souls, and varies the shades of meditation by contemplating the magnificent or pathetick scenes of tragick and epick poetry.’
I sometimes found as I stood presiding at or celebrating the Holy Communion or the Eucharist that I am taken aback by intense feelings of the love of God.
On one memorable occasion, this happened to me as I was using the ‘Prayer of Humble Access’ at the fraction, when we were breaking the Bread of Communion at the invitation.
It is a prayer that has gone out of fashion in many parishes, but it is a reminder that we come to the Table or the Altar not because of our own goodness, not in spite of our own sinfulness, but because of the overflowing mercy and grace that God gives us freely and with unlimited bounty:
We do not presume to come to this your table,
merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness
but in your manifold and great mercies.
We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table.
But you art the same Lord,
whose nature is always to have mercy.
Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ,
and to drink his blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body,
and our souls washed through his most precious blood,
and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.
I was taken aback and was conscious of the love of God unexpectedly as I came to those words: ‘We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table.’
What flashed across my mind was a video clip that had gone viral at that time on YouTube and social media, of two small, frail abandoned children caught up in the bloody civil war in Syria, fending for themselves by picking up crumbs of bread from the street to eat.
These two homeless mites, who were braver than any groups fighting or waging war in Syria, told the camera crew: ‘We go to sleep hungry, we wake up hungry.’
They had been separated from their parents. At the time, the Anglican mission agency, USPG, was working with the plight of Syrian refugees in Lesvos and Athens and other parts of Greece.
In that video clip, the 10-year-old girl said she had been collecting bread crumbs off the street with her brother because their area of Damascus, al-Hajar, has been under siege for more than 15 months.
‘If we had food, you wouldn’t have seen us here,’ she said.
But their final message to the world that had abandoned them was: ‘May you be happy and blessed with what God has given you!’
Europe takes pity on children like this when we see them on YouTube or on the 10 o’clock news. But when they land on the shores of the Aegean Islands in Greece, or make their way up through central Europe and cross the Channel into England, we deem them not worthy to gather up the crumbs under our table.
I have looked at this video clip again and again since then. And I think of the image of Christ in the Gospel reading this morning:
‘How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’ (Luke 13: 34)
The children of the world are the future of the world. It does not matter whose children they are. It does not matter how many of them there are: whether they are two children searching for crumbs that I am not worthy to gather up, or small enough to be gathered in by a loving parent, or are countless in numbers like the stars, they are all embraced in the love of the loving and living God. They are all heirs to God’s promises.
And how we respond to them, how I respond to them, shows them what I think, what we think, of God and how much we believe in his promises.
Today’s Prayers (Sunday 16 March 2025):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Truth: The Path to Reconciliation’. This theme is introduced today with a programme update by Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG:
‘We each have the power to change our world. We’re not all going to be Nobel Peace Prize winners and we’re not all going to have books written about our lives. But we all can impact someone’s life in a positive way.’
This is just some of the wisdom shared by the Revd Nontombi Tutu, Episcopal priest and human rights activist, as she led our inaugural Desmond Tutu Memorial Lecture on ‘Truth, the Path to Reconciliation’ held at York Minster.
She shared about the importance of being truthful; about our history, our own roles in societal ills and the power that we each must make change. To this end, she referenced a particular testimony that stood out to her during a hearing of Truth and Reconciliation Commission – a legal body tasked with exposing human rights abuses and promoting reconciliation after apartheid.
The letter, written by a young, white South African, read: ‘I didn’t know about policing in black classrooms. I didn’t know what my government was doing to my black compatriots. I didn’t know … and I recognise that part of me chose not to know’. So often, we stop at what we don’t know and brush things aside. How much more powerful is it, therefore, to courageously listen and speak the truth in love.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 16 March 2025) invites us to pray, reflecting on these words:
‘Finally, brothers and sisters, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, as you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God (as, in fact, you are doing), you should do so more and more’ (I Thessalonians 4: 1).
The Collect:
Almighty God,
you show to those who are in error the light of your truth,
that they may return to the way of righteousness:
grant to all those who are admitted
into the fellowship of Christ’s religion,
that they may reject those things
that are contrary to their profession,
and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same;
through our Lord Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
Almighty God,
you see that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves:
keep us both outwardly in our bodies,
and inwardly in our souls;
that we may be defended from all adversities
which may happen to the body,
and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Almighty God,
by the prayer and discipline of Lent
may we enter into the mystery of Christ’s sufferings,
and by following in his Way
come to share in his glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
