Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. We have come to the beginning of a new month and the beginning of the meteorological Spring. Tomorrow is the Sunday before Lent (2 March 2025), and Lent begins next week on Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025).
Today, the calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship celebrates Saint David (ca 601), Bishop of Menevia and Patron of Wales. There is a break in the Six Nations championship this weekend, and so there are no international rugby matches this afternoon. But, as this is the first Saturday of the month, I hope to drop in this morning to Το Στεκι Μας (‘Our Place’), the Greek café at the Swinfen Harris Church Hall in Stony Stratford.
Before this day begins though, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, 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.
Mark 10: 13-16 (NRSVA):
13 People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14 But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. 15 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’ 16 And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.
Today’s Reflection:
In the Orthodox Church, the final Sunday before Lent is known as Cheesefare Sunday and also as Forgiveness Sunday. After the dismissal at Vespers this evening, the priest stands beside the analogion of lectern, or before the ambon, the steps leading up to the icon screen. The people come up one by one and venerate the icon, after which each person makes a prostration before the priest, saying, ‘Forgive me, a sinner.’
The priest also makes a prostration before each, saying, ‘God forgives. Forgive me.’ The person responds, ‘God forgives’, and receives a blessing from the priest. Meanwhile, the choir sings quietly the irmoi of the Paschal Canon, or else the Paschal Stichera. After receiving the priest’s blessing, people also ask forgiveness of one other.
This morning’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Mark 10: 13-16) in the lectionary as adapted for use in the Church of England echoes a similar story just a few verses earlier (see Mark 9: 36-37), which we read on Tuesday (25 February 2025).
These stories are easily trivialised. They are not just about being childlike in an almost Victorian way that romanticises childhood. But, in fact, they are about the dignity and worth of children.
I hear few sermons or discussions in churches about the exclusion, demeaning exploitation, abuse, violation, enslavement, or killing of children. The extent of abuse of children, teenagers and young adults throughout the Church is shocking, vile and revolting. The front-page report in the current edition of the Church Times this weekend reveals that ten members of the clergy in the Church of England, including two bishops, could be subject to disciplinary proceedings in connection with the abuse perpetrated by John Smyth.
They include Archbishop George Carey and Bishop Paul Carey, two prominent evangelicals, and figures whose names have been linked with the Scripture Union, the Church Mission Society and Zambezi Ministries, all leading evangelical bodies, and prominewnt evangelical chuches including All Souls’ Church, Langham Place, and Saint Aldate’s, Oxford. The Makin Report must demand more introspection and self-examination among conservative evangeicals, who too often deflect from their own deeply probelmatic issues by being vocal about other debates about sexuality, including divorce and remarriage and same-gender marriagegender-related issues such as the ordination of women.
A Victorian romantic image of childhood needs to be balanced with a challenge to the continuing Victorian experiences of many children, listening to the cries of children in the slums, in the sweat shops and in the brothels, to the cries of children behind the bedroom doors of respectability, and to the children who were abused within the boundaries of Church activities.
And, in the Orthodox tradition of Forgiveness Sunday, there are many priests, bishops and church-based organisations who need to kneel before the people humbly, saying, ‘God forgives. Forgive me.’
Today’s Prayers (Saturday 1 March 2025, Saint David’s Day):
This week has marked the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 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), was ‘A Grain of Wheat.’ This theme was introduced last Sunday with a Programme Update by the Revd Dr Nevsky Everett, chaplain of the Church of the Resurrection, Bucharest, Romania.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 1 March 2025, Saint David’s Day and Zero Discrimination Day) invites us to pray:
‘Be joyful, keep your faith and your creed, and do the little things’. Today, as we remember David, patron saint of Wales, let us pray to God who calls people in every generation to be faithful witnesses to his son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
who called your servant David
to be a faithful and wise steward of your mysteries
for the people of Wales:
in your mercy, grant that,
following his purity of life and zeal for the gospel of Christ,
we may with him receive the crown of everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
God, shepherd of your people,
whose servant David revealed the loving service of Christ
in his ministry as a pastor of your people:
by this eucharist in which we share
awaken within us the love of Christ
and keep us faithful to our Christian calling;
through him who laid down his life for us,
but is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.
Collect on the Eve of the Sunday before Lent:
Almighty Father,
whose Son was revealed in majesty
before he suffered death upon the cross:
give us grace to perceive his glory,
that we may be strengthened to suffer with him
and be changed into his likeness, from glory to glory;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
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
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