Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and the week began with the Fourth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity IV, 13 July 2025). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Osmund (1099), Bishop of Salisbury.
Later today, I hope to attend Evensong 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.
Matthew 11: 25-27 (NRSVA):
25 At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’
Today’s Reflection:
At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.’ – (Matthew 11: 25)
In today’s short Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Matthew 11: 25-27), Christ thanks the Father for choosing the simple and uneducated (‘infants’) over ‘the wise and the intelligent.’ Christ is the Father’s representative, and those who know the Father know him because of Christ.
The Liturgical Calendar of the Episcopal Church in the US honours the ‘Righteous’ on 16 July. The date may have been chosen because it is a day before the presumed anniversary of the execution of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg on 17 July 1947 while he was a prisoner at Lubyanka Prison.
The Righteous Among the Nations is an honorific used at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem for non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis.
The term originates with the concept of ‘righteous gentiles’, a term used in rabbinical Judaism for non-Jews who abide by the Seven Laws of Noah.
When Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, was founded in 1953, one of its tasks was to remember the ‘Righteous among the Nations’, who are also offered honorary citizenship of Israel.
So far, about 25,000 people from 45 countries are recognised in this way.
The only Irish woman on this list is Mary Elmes from Cork, who risked her life to save Jewish children from the Nazi gas chambers. The children she rescued include Michael Freund, a boy of five, and his two-year-old little brother, Ronald Friend, who went on to become a Professor of Psychology at Stony Brook, New York.
Mary Elmes was born in 1908 and was educated in Trinity College Dublin, the London School of Economics and in Geneva. She joined the London University Ambulance Unit in February 1937, and worked in a children’s hospital during the Spanish Civil War.
In 1939, she joined thousands of refugees fleeing Spain across the Pyrenees into France. There she continued her work with the Quakers, and provided food supplies and school books for children.
When the Nazis started taking people on trains from France to concentration camps, Mary Elmes and the Quakers started a campaign to move children under the age of 16 to children’s colonies. Under this ruse, she transported many children across the border, hiding them in her car and driving them high into the Pyrenees. We shall probably never know how many children were saved by ‘Miss Mary,’ as she was known.
She was arrested in January 1943 and was held for six months in a prison near Paris. After the war, she married Roger Danjou, they settled in France and they were the parents of two children. She made frequent return visits to Cork before she died in 2002. She never sought special recognition and even declined the Légion d’Honneur. Her bravery was eventually recognised by Yad Vashem in 2013.
The Psalm at the Eucharist today (Psalm 103: 1-7) promises justice in a world that is suffering injustice and oppression:
The Lord works vindication
and justice for all who are oppressed (verse 6).
We are about to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in 1945. But war is an every-day reality for children, women and non-combatant men throughout the world today – in particular, I have the people of Ukraine and Russia and the people of the Middle East, the people of Gaza, Palestine and Israel, in my prayers this morning.
Who speaks out today for the victims of racism, war and genocide?
Who speaks out today for the children who are the innocent victims of the failed politics of adults?
Who speaks out these days for the children being ‘disappeared’ and the families being broken up on a daily basis by ICE and Homeland Security throughout the United States?
In the Collect today we pray:
O God, the protector of all who trust in you,
without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy:
increase and multiply upon us your mercy …
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 16 July 2025):
The theme this week (13 to 19 July) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Shaping the Future: Africa Six.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update from Fran Mate, Senior Regional Manager: Africa, USPG.
The USPG prayer diary today (Wednesday 16 July 2025) invites us to pray
Almighty God, guide USPG and all who support women’s leadership in the Church, that they may walk faithfully alongside those they serve.
The Collect:
O God, the protector of all who trust in you,
without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy:
increase and multiply upon us your mercy;
that with you as our ruler and guide
we may so pass through things temporal
that we lose not our hold on things eternal;
grant this, heavenly Father,
for our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Eternal God,
comfort of the afflicted and healer of the broken,
you have fed us at the table of life and hope:
teach us the ways of gentleness and peace,
that all the world may acknowledge
the kingdom of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Gracious Father,
by the obedience of Jesus
you brought salvation to our wayward world:
draw us into harmony with your will,
that we may find all things restored in him,
our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Yesterday’s reflections
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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