12 December 2023

Church-goers in Limerick During War and Revolution

First World War memorial in the Church of Ireland, Rathkeale (courtesy: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Throughout the First World War, the War of Independence, and the Civil War, Protestants of all denominations throughout Limerick city and county kept their churches open, maintained their church and social life, and proclaimed constantly their goodwill towards their neighbours and, after the Treaty, their loyalty to the new Irish Free State. Throughout the Civil War, cathedral services continued in St Mary’s, together with ordinations and Holy Week addresses, Sunday services continued in parish churches, and diocesan organisations, including the diocesan synod and council, sought to maintain a semblance of normal church life.1 But this period was also marked by a number of attacks and killings that were inevitably perceived as sectarian.

Members of the Church of Ireland, Methodists, and Presbyterians in Limerick identified overwhelmingly with the British cause in the First World War, and few showed any open sympathy with Irish nationalism and independence. Those members of the Church of Ireland who identified with nationalism at the time stand out as exceptional, although none could be regarded as a marginal member of the Church of Ireland. Conor O’Brien (1880−1952), skipper of the Kelpie during the Kilcoole gun running in August 1914, was a grandson of William Smith O’Brien and a nephew of both Lucius Henry O’Brien, who was the dean of Limerick from 1905 to 1913, and the Revd Robert Malcolm Gwynn (1877−1962), who gave the Irish Citizen Army its name. His cousin Mary Spring Rice (1888−1924), a crew member of the Asgard, was a bishop’s granddaughter. Sir Thomas Myles (1857−1937), who skippered the Chotah in the Kilcoole gun running, was a brother of the dean of Dromore, the Very Revd Edward Albert Myles (1865−1951).2

However, as war memorials in churches throughout Limerick attest, during the revolutionary decade the vast majority of ordinary Protestant churchgoers identified not with independence but with family members who enlisted during the First World War.

Experience of the First World War

The experience of war blighted the lives of almost every Protestant family in these years and in the decades that followed. The men who signed up and fought in the main fields of battle, such as Flanders, the Somme, the Gallipoli landings, and Thessaloniki, included about one hundred former members of the Church Lads’ Brigade, a church-based youth organisation in the Limerick city parishes. It is difficult to overstate the impact of the war on Protestant family life in Limerick. The Heaphy family, for example, paid a heavy price with the deaths of three brothers: Private William Heaphy (28) died of his wounds on 7 May 1916; Gunner Frederick Heaphy (17) was killed on 3 May 1917; and Lance Corporal John Eyre Heaphy (33) was killed on 7 April 1918. A fourth brother, George Heaphy, survived the war. All three Heaphy brothers who died are named on the war memorial in St Mary’s Cathedral, along with two Fogerty brothers, two Hackett brothers, and two brothers from the Wills family. When injured men died at home, their families and churches went to great lengths in organising their funerals. Lieutenant William Brabazon Owens died of his wounds at the age of twenty on 25 June 1916, and received a military funeral in St Mary’s Cathedral. The funeral cortege was headed by a firing party and an army band; his coffin, covered with the union fag and his sword, belt, and cap, was borne on a gun carriage.3

After the First World War, war memorials were erected in St Mary’s Cathedral and in ordinary churches throughout Limerick. The cathedral war memorial was unveiled in 1922 and dedicated ‘In memory of the Men of Thomond fallen in the War: 1914–18.’ The forty-three names are listed alphabetically, without class division or separate categories for ‘officers’ and ‘men’. Lord Glentworth (Captain Edmond William Claude Gerard de Vere Pery), the twenty-three-year-old heir of the Earl of Limerick, was killed in action on 18 May 1918; on the monument, he takes his place alphabetically between a Gabbett and a Gore. In contrast, the war memorial in Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, has only seven names, but separates the officers from the men. Their deaths are seen as heroic and are imbued with religious significance, emphasised in the heading and the Biblical citation: ‘1914−1918, To the Glory of God and in loving memory of the following officers and men from this parish who laid down their lives in the Great War … Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.’

Fear among parishioners: The revolutionary years

After the First World War, and as the War of Independence intensified, the Church of Ireland faced difficulties in maintaining diocesan activities. The 1920 diocesan report, for example, refers to ‘the difficulties of travelling, and the early hour at which people must be in their houses.’4 Peter Switzer, an elderly, seventy-five-year-old bachelor, was shot and fatally wounded on 10 January 1922 while he was attending the funeral of his sister in Castletown Church near Pallaskenry.5 When a memorial service for Mrs Maria Lindsay (whose murder as an informer by the Cork No. 1 Brigade IRA on 11 March 1921 caused outrage) was held in St Mary’s Cathedral on 28 January 1922, 450 military of all ranks and ninety Royal Irish Constabulary members attended. In many ways, this service also served to express public anguish in the immediate aftermath of the death of Peter Switzer.6 A week later, on Sunday 5 February 1922, the war memorial in St Mary’s Cathedral was unveiled at a service attended by 800 people. It was unveiled by Brigadier General Louis Wyatt and was dedicated by the newly-elected Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe, Harry Vere White.7 Wyatt was the commanding officer of the troops in Limerick, but was probably invited to unveil the monument because he had become a popular public figure as the general who brought the ‘Unknown Warrior’ from France for burial in Westminster Abbey the previous November.

As the conditions for civil war unfolded across the land in spring 1922, the British Army in Limerick was confined to barracks, and the Church of Ireland Gazette described ‘a strange and dangerous condition of affairs’ in the city.8 Yet, throughout the 1922−23 period, religious services continued in St Mary’s and in parish churches, while the diocesan organisations such as the synod and council worked to maintain the normal routines of church life.9 But on 28 March 1922, an attempt was made to burn Kilpeacon Rectory. Canon Charles Atkinson, who was also precentor of Limerick, may have been singled out because he had been an army chaplain during the First World War. Bishop White visited Kilpeacon the following Sunday and urged calm, saying that Church of Ireland members were ‘law-respecting, God-fearing’ people who showed their patriotism in ‘their frank and loyal acceptance of a new form of Government.’10 In the days that followed, the pavilion of the Limerick Protestant Young Men’s Association (LPYMA) in Farranshone was burnt to the ground, bullets were fired through the windows of its premises on O’Connell Street, and an attempt was made to bomb the building.11 Protestants in Limerick called a public meeting on 4 April 1922 to express their disgust at sectarian outrages in Belfast. The meeting was chaired by Sir Charles Barrington, who – despite the earlier murder of his daughter in May 1921 – praised the toleration shown to Protestants in Limerick and insisted that they ‘had thrived’ in a Catholic community. William Waller declared that Protestants – ‘a small, a very small, minority’ − carried on their daily lives without interference. Their sentiments were echoed by Captain James O’Grady Delmege, who declared that Protestants in Limerick had ‘received nothing but kindness, courtesy and goodwill at the hands of their fellow-countrymen.’12

Brave efforts were made to continue, not only with church-going, but also with the social life of church members. The LPYMA felt confident enough to hold a sports day at its Ennis Road grounds on 27 April 1922 ‘after the lapse of some years.’13 That weekend, however, the diocesan curate, the Revd Ralph Harbord, was shot and seriously wounded on the steps of his father’s rectory in west Cork. In a sermon the following Sunday, White referred to this shooting, and the related murders of thirteen Protestants in the Dunmanway area, as a ‘grim reminder’ of the helplessness of ‘scattered, disarmed members of the Church of Ireland in the South of Ireland.’14

As the new state found its feet, the Diocese of Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe reflected the general mood throughout southern dioceses, eager to express loyalty to the new Irish Free State, yet anxious to see an end to violence. In the diocesan report of 19 June 1922, the diocesan auditor, C.H. Fitt, noted that ‘Nation and Church’ had been ‘passing through’ a ‘great crisis and change’, but his report pledged the loyalty of the church to ‘the new state’ and its commitment to ‘the welfare of all the people in our beloved native land.’15 When the diocesan synod met in the Diocesan Hall in Pery Square on 5 July 1922, disruptions to transport prevented a full attendance and the synod struggled to find a quorum. In his address, Bishop White declared: ‘We meet today in great anxiety about public affairs and in a city which is in the hands of opposing bands of armed men.’ White claimed that the Church of Ireland in Limerick had lost up to 60 per cent of its members ‘and many churches are now half empty.’ As a consequence, parishes were amalgamated and fewer curates were employed. ‘Ireland is losing many of her best, most patriotic, and most progressive citizens, who are forced to leave their native land by economic causes or by political and religious intolerance.’ The financial reports showed that collections and subscriptions were falling off, reflecting that economic and numerical decline.16

First World War memorial by Conor O’Brien, St Mary’s Cathedral (courtesy: Patrick Comerford)

War and memory

In the aftermath of the War of Independence and the Civil War, the diocesan report for 1923 noted that the year ‘began in strife and disorder’, but ‘happily ended in peace’ and with a ‘general improvement of the civic life of the country.’17 By 1924, the Diocesan Council was giving ‘thanks to Almighty God for His providential guidance’ and the ‘quietness and peace’ that allowed church life to continue.18

At his diocesan synod in 1923, White lamented the ‘hundreds of industrious Protestant Irish men and women’ who had left ‘because they felt that they were not welcome here, and that satisfactory careers could not be secured for their boys and girls in their own country’. If this hinted at sectarian undertones, White also added that ‘anything like a Protestant exodus would be deplored by our present rulers’.19 But the Protestant exodus continued. Prominent among those who left was Sir Charles Barrington, who never returned; he sold Glenstal Castle in 1926 and died in Hampshire in 1943, aged ninety-three. Ordinary families suffered the greatest haemorrhage: by 1926, the Church of Ireland population in Limerick city had dropped by 55.4 per cent from the figure in 1911, the Methodist population had declined by 51 per cent, and the Presbyterians had fallen by 82.6 per cent.

The sufferings of laity and clergy alike were seldom spoken of. Noone was ever charged with Peter Switzer’s murder, and his youngest sister Eliza died in 1927 at the age of seventy-five, bringing to an end their branch of the Switzer family. The sectarian undercurrents remained for a decade or more after independence. During a wave of sectarian attacks that swept across Ireland in the summer of 1935, an estimated crowd of 200−300 young men attacked churches and Protestant-owned shops and homes in Limerick on Saturday night, 20 July 1935, including Trinity Episcopal Church on Catherine Street and St Michael’s Church of Ireland on Pery Square, the homes of Canon Thomas Abbot and Archdeacon John Waller, the LPYMA building, the Gospel Hall, the Diocesan Hall, and the Masonic Club, and they attempted to set fire to the Presbyterian Church on Henry Street.20 St Peter and St Paul Church, the Church of Ireland parish church in Kilmallock, was destroyed in an arson attack the following night, while the windows of the local rector’s home were smashed along with those of a Protestant-owned shop. No-one was ever convicted or jailed for the attacks.21

Mary Spring Rice died in a sanatorium in Wales in 1924. When her body was brought back for burial in the Church of Ireland churchyard in Foynes, she was given a guard of honour by the local IRA, the Gaelic League, and trade unionists.22 But the role played by a few other members of the Church of Ireland in the War of Independence was forgotten by their co-religionists and their neighbours alike. Conor O’Brien failed to get elected to the Senate in 1925 and spent his later years in semi-isolation on Foynes Island, where he died in 1952. Sir Thomas Myles had become a colonel in the Royal Army Medical Corps on the outbreak of the First World War and an honorary surgeon to King George V; he died in 1937 in the Richmond Hospital, Dublin, where he spent much of his career.

In the decades that followed, as churches continued to close, every effort was made to ensure that their war memorials were not lost. The memorials in Christ Church Methodist Church, Limerick, for example, include a war memorial with six names salvaged from the Presbyterian Church on Henry Street when it closed. When Rathkeale Methodist Church closed, the war memorial was moved to Ballingrane Methodist Church near Adare.

To this day, the war memorials in many churches in all three denominations remain the focus for Remembrance Sunday services each November. Yet, only one Church of Ireland churchyard in County Limerick has memorials to members of the Church of Ireland who supported the nationalist cause. A plaque on the gate leading into Mount Trenchard churchyard near Foynes was unveiled in 2014: ‘In memory of Conor O’Brien, Kitty O’Brien, George Cahill, Mary Spring Rice, Thomas Fitzsimons, Sir Thomas Myles. Go ndéana Dia trócaire orthú. Limerick men and women who imported rifles for the Irish Volunteers, July 1914.’ The church at Mount Trenchard had been long closed by 2014, however, and all that remained standing was the church tower. Perhaps the determination to keep open other churches in places such as Castletown and Kilmallock reflects, not only the piety and commitment of their parishioners, but an inherited and inbuilt yet unspoken determination not to concede to the sectarian attacks of previous decades.

Memorial to Limerick members of the Howth and Kilcoole gun running team, Mount Trenchard churchyard, Foynes. Mary Spring Rice and Conor O’Brien are buried within (courtesy: Patrick Comerford)

Notes

1. See, for example, Church of Ireland Gazette, 10 March, 16 June 1922.
2. Valerie Jones, Rebel Prods: The forgotten story of Protestant radical nationalists and the 1916 Rising (Dublin, 2016), passim.
3. Limerick Chronicle, 27 June 1916.
4. Representative Church Body Library, Dublin (RCB Library), D13 Limerick, Ardfert & Killaloe Diocesan Records, 1693–2008: 13/6, Diocesan Report, 1920, p 33.
5. John Lucey, ‘The shooting of Peter Switzer’, North Munster Antiquarian Journal, 53 (2013), pp 237-240.
6. Church of Ireland Gazette, 3 February 1922.
7. Ibid., 10 February 1922.
8. Ibid., 10 March 1922.
9. See Ibid., 10 March, 16 June 1922.
10. Ibid., 7 April 1922.
11. Thomas Keane, ‘Class, religion and society in Limerick city, 1922–1939’ (PhD thesis, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, 2015), pp 54-6.
12. Ibid, pp 54-55; Brian Hughes, ‘Unionists and loyalists in Limerick, 1922–23’ in Seán William Gannon (ed.), The inevitable conflict: Essays on the Civil War in County Limerick (Limerick, 2022), p. 94; Limerick Chronicle, 5 April 1922; Irish Times, 5 April 1922.
13. Church of Ireland Gazette, 5 May 1922.
14. Ibid., 10 May 1922.
15. RCB Library, D13/13/6, Diocesan Report, 1921, p 4.
16. Church of Ireland Gazette, 28 July 1922.
17. RCB Library, D13/13/6, Diocesan Report, 1923, pp 3-4.
18. RCB Library, D13/13/6, Diocesan Report, 1924, p 4.
19. Church of Ireland Gazette, 22 June 1923.
20. Limerick Leader, 9 January 2010. The primary context for these attacks was an outbreak of sectarian attacks against Catholics in Northern Ireland following that year’s 12 July celebrations.
21. Irish Times, 22 July 1935; Limerick Leader, 27 July 1935.
22. Jones, Rebel Prods, p. 90.

Contributor’s Note:

The Revd Canon Professor Patrick Comerford was Precentor of St Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, and priest-in-charge of the Rathkeale Group of Parishes (2017–22), including Rathkeale, Askeaton, Castletown, and Tarbert. He is a former adjunct assistant professor in Trinity College, Dublin and a former Irish Times journalist. He now lives in retirement in England. www.patrickcomerford. Com

• ‘Church-goers in Limerick During War and Revolution’ is Chapter 6 (pp 83-89) in Dr Seán William Gannon and Dr Brian Hughes (eds), Histories of Protestant Limerick, 1912–1923 (Limerick: Limerick City and County Council, 2023, ISBN 978-1-999-6911-6)

‘Histories of Protestant Limerick, 1912–1923’ … published in recent days in Limerick

Daily prayers in Advent with
Leonard Cohen and USPG:
(10) 12 December 2023

‘Now Suzanne … leads you to the river … And the sun pours down … on our lady of the harbour’ (Leonard Cohen) … fishing boats tied up in Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the countdown to Christmas in the Church. Sunday was the Second Sunday of Advent (10 December 2023), and there are just 13 days to go to Christmas.

Throughout Advent this year, my reflections each day include a poem or song by Leonard Cohen. These Advent reflections are following this pattern:

1, A reflection on a poem or song by Leonard Cohen;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

‘When they got into the boat, the wind ceased’ (Matthew 14: 32) … a gondolier on the Grand Canal in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 10, ‘Suzanne’:

As I was preparing this morning’s Advent reflection, reading and prayers, the Gospel reading for the Eucharist today (Matthew 14: 13-36) constantly brought me back to Leonard Cohen’s poem and song ‘Suzanne’, with its images of lovers walking by rivers and harbours and of Jesus walking on the water, knowing ‘only drowning men could see him’

‘Suzanne’ is a haunting composition and over the years has become one of the best known works by the Canadian poet singer and songwriter Leonard Cohen, who was born in 1934.

Like many of Leonard Cohen’s songs, ‘Suzanne’ began as poem. Cohen published his first book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956) at the age of 22. This was followed by The Spice-Box of Earth (1961), Flowers for Hitler (1964), and his novels The Favourite Game (1963) and Beautiful Losers (1966).

‘Suzanne’ was first published in 1966 as the poem ‘Suzanne Takes You Down’ in his third poetry collection, Parasites of Heaven (1966). Judy Collins recorded ‘Suzanne’ for her album In My Life, released in November 1966. A year later, Cohen included the song as the first track on Side A of his debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, released on 27 December 1967.

The album’s front cover depicts a sepia tint photo of Leonard Cohen. The back cover of the album is a Mexican religious picture of the Anima Sola depicted as a woman breaking free of her chains surrounded by flames and gazing towards heaven. In a Rolling Stone interview, he described the image as ‘the triumph of the spirit over matter. The spirit being that beautiful woman breaking out of the chains and the fire and prison.’

‘Suzanne’ was released as a single in 1968, but only reached the charts after he died in 2016.

Suzanne has become one of the most covered songs in Cohen’s catalogue. Far Out and American Songwriter ranked the song No 4 and No 2, respectively, on their lists of the 10 greatest Leonard Cohen songs. In 2021, it was ranked at No 284 on Rolling Stone’s ‘Top 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.’

Leonard Cohen had a lengthy relationship with the Los Angeles artist Suzanne Elrod in the 1970s. But he later said ‘cowardice’ and ‘fear’ prevented him from ever marrying her. They had two children, Adam (born in 1972) and Lorca (born in 1974), a daughter named after the poet Federico García Lorca.

Leonard Cohen and Suzanne Elrod had split by 1979. But contrary to popular belief, ‘Suzanne’, which one of his best-known songs, refers not to Suzanne Elrod, but to the dancer Suzanne Verdal, the former wife of his friend, the Québécois sculptor Armand Vaillancourt.

The song’s brilliance lies in its pairing of a spare, hypnotic melody with evocative lyrics:

Now Suzanne takes you down
To her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know she’s half crazy
.

In Cohen’s version, first recorded on his 1968 album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, the mood is underscored by a lilting female chorus and Cohen’s own subtle, insistent guitar playing. Cohen recalls ‘Suzanne,’ the enigmatic title figure, who wears ‘rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters.’

‘Suzanne’ was inspired by Cohen’s platonic relationship with Suzanne Verdal and the lyrics describe the rituals that they enjoyed when they met. She would invite him to visit her apartment by the harbour in Montreal, where she would serve him Constant Comment tea, and feed him ‘oranges that come all the way from China.’

Together, they savoured the beautiful view of the St Lawrence River from her waterfront apartment in Montreal, and they would walk around Old Montreal past the Church of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, where sailors were blessed before heading out to sea.

Other details speak of a romantic longing that, seemingly, remained unfulfilled:

And you want to travel with her
and you want to travel blind …
for you’ve touched her perfect body
with your mind.


The hunger these two gifted people had for one another illuminates the lyrics, giving them a spark that seems to resonate from the inside. On a human level, the song is about the mysterious forces that bring people together and, then, just as inexplicably, move them apart. ‘Suzanne’ can be heard or read as a statement of human frailty, representing a special moment in time, created by two people whose mutual attraction was not fulfilled in a physical sense, but still fulfilled in an emotional, deeper, way.

Verdal went on to travel the world, going from Montreal to France to Texas, and, finally, by the early 1990s, to Los Angeles, where she worked as a choreographer. Cohen said in a BBC interview in 1994 that he only imagined having sex with her, as there was neither the opportunity nor inclination to actually go through with it.

A fall and injury ended her career as a dancer. By 2006, she was living in a converted truck in Venice Beach, California. That year she told a CBC interview that she had ‘put the boundaries’ on the relationship with Cohen. She said then that they never had a sexual relationship, contrary to what some interpretations of the song suggest: ‘Somehow, I didn’t want to spoil that preciousness, that infinite respect that I had for him … I felt that a sexual encounter might demean it somehow.’

Despite beginning as a story of love and infatuation, Suzanne turns to a religious theme in the second verse:

And Jesus was a sailor
when he walked upon the water …


His ‘lonely wooden tower’ is, of course, the cross. Cohen is so fascinated by Jesus that he writes:

And you want to travel with him
you want to travel blind
and you think maybe you’ll trust him
for he’s touched your perfect body
with his mind.

The stanza ends in the most tragic and cryptic lines of the poem, as the voice returns to a third person of Jesus:

But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone


This must refer to the crucifixion and the burial. He was ‘forsaken almost human.’ Despite being divine he is also human.

‘She is wearing rags and feathers / From Salvation Army counters’ (Leonard Cohen) … the Salvation Army shop on Market Street in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Leonard Cohen, Suzanne:

Suzanne takes you down
To her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she’s half-crazy
But that’s why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you’ve always been her lover

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said ‘All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them’
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you’ll trust him
For he’s touched your perfect body with his mind

Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know you can trust her
For she’s touched your perfect body with her mind.

‘Peace. Be still’ … Christ calming the storm … the Cameron window in Saint Seiriol’s Priory Church, Penmon, Anglesey … see Matthew 14: 22-33 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 14: 13-36 (NRSVA):

13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14 When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. 15 When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’ 16 Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’ 17 They replied, ‘We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.’ 18 And he said, ‘Bring them here to me.’ 19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20 And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. 21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

22 Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. 23 And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, 24 but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. 25 And early in the morning he came walking towards them on the lake. 26 But when the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear. 27 But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’

28 Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ 29 He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came towards Jesus. 30 But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ 31 Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ 32 When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. 33 And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’

34 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret. 35 After the people of that place recognized him, they sent word throughout the region and brought all who were sick to him, 36 and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

‘We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish’ (Matthew 14: 17) … five loaves in a basket in Hindley’s bread shop in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 12 December 2023):

The theme this week in the new edition of ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The Faith of Advent.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (12 December 2023) invites us to pray as we reflect on these words:

Lord, we pray for unwavering faith as we journey through the season of Advent and as we approach the beginning of the new year.

‘And she feeds you tea and oranges / That come all the way from China’ (Leonard Cohen) … oranges on a market stall in Bologna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect:

O Lord, raise up, we pray, your power
and come among us,
and with great might succour us;
that whereas, through our sins and wickedness
we are grievously hindered
in running the race that is set before us,
your bountiful grace and mercy
may speedily help and deliver us;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
to whom with you and the Holy Spirit,
be honour and glory, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Father in heaven,
who sent your Son to redeem the world
and will send him again to be our judge:
give us grace so to imitate him
in the humility and purity of his first coming
that, when he comes again,
we may be ready to greet him
with joyful love and firm faith;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Almighty God,
purify our hearts and minds,
that when your Son Jesus Christ comes again
as judge and saviour
we may be ready to receive him,
who is our Lord and our God.

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