Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. This week began with the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVII, 27 September 2026) and today is the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels (29 September 2026). Many churches are holding special events to mark this day. In Pusey House, Oxford, the preacher at Evensong and High Mass this evening is my friend, the Revd Dr Jonathan Lewis-Jong, Vicar of Saint Mary Magdalene Church, Oxford. Later this evening, I plan to write about my visit to the Church of Saint Michael and All Angels in New Marston, Oxford.
Meanwhile, this morning, before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
John 4: 47-51 (NRSVA):
47 When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ 48 Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you come to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ 49 Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ 50 Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.’ 51 And he said to him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’
Today’s Reflections:
Like many people, I never cease to be fascinated by the Caryatids that make Saint Pancras Church facing Euston Station in London a unique and captivating church. But I wonder how many pass by in the daily commute and miss the opportunity to appreciate Emily Young’s ‘Archangel Michael The Protector’ in the church gardens.
I stopped to look again at ‘Archangel Michael The Protector’ yesterday between train journeys to and from Euston when I was meeting a long-standing friend for coffee. This sculpture in onyx and can be viewed in the church grounds from Upper Woburn Place, around the corner from Euston Road. An inscription on a plaque between the sculpture and the railings reads: ‘In memory of the victims of the 7th July 2005 bombings and all victims of violence. ‘I will lift up my eyes unto the hills’ Psalm 121.’
Nothing moves in this image, a silent reminder of what is being commemorated in the sculpture. Because Saint Michael’s face has only one eye, and this is closed, some critics have wondered whether the quotation is ill-chosen. But the full context is provided in Psalm 121: 1-2:
1 I lift up my eyes to the hills –
from where will my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.
The London bombings over 20 years ago on 7 July 2005, often referred to as 7/7, were a series of four co-ordinated suicide attacks that targeted commuters on the public transport system in the morning rush hour.
Three homemade bombs packed into backpacks were detonated in quick succession on Underground trains on the Circle line near Aldgate and at Edgware Road, and on the Piccadilly line near Russell Square; later, a fourth bomb went off on a bus in Tavistock Square, near Upper Woburn Place and Saint Pancras Church.
Apart from the four bombers, 52 people of 18 different nationalities were killed and more than 700 people were injured in the attacks. It was Britain’s deadliest terrorist incident since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 near Lockerbie, and the first Islamist suicide attack in the UK.
Emily Young has been described as ‘Britain’s foremost female stone sculptor’ and ‘Britain’s greatest living stone sculptor.’ On different occasions, as I have strolled through London, I stopped and taken time at an open-air exhibition at ENO Southbank of works by Emily Young.
A number of her works have formed a sculpture trail or garden at the NEO Bankside development on South Bank in ‘Emily Young: Sculptor Trail.’ The exhibition was both a continuation and a broadening of her presence on the South Bank, echoing three large-scale works on long-loan facing the Tate Modern from NEO Bankside.
Emily Young’s sculptures of five angel heads in stone stand on five columns in Saint Paul’s Churchyard, London. The sequence of heads are mounted on columns under the arcade of a new classical-inspired building to the north west side of Saint Paul's, redeveloped as part of the redesign of Paternoster Square at the top of Ludgate Hill.
Her five angels’ heads are placed dramatically on columns in the arcade of Juxon House and almost face the west front of Saint Paul’s Cathedral.
Emily Young’s works are instantly recognisable and accessible. She deals in spectacular lumps of stone – quartzite, onyx, marble, alabaster – to which she gives an identity by carving a face but leaving the remainder of the rock displayed in its raw, craggy intensity, as if the face had grown or evolved organically. The Financial Times says: ‘Her sculptures meditate on time, nature, memory, man’s relationship to the Earth.’
Emily Young was born in London in 1951 into a family of writers, artists and politicians. Her grandmother, the sculptor Kathleen Scott (1878-1947), was a colleague of Auguste Rodin, and the widow of the Polar explorer, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, ‘Scott of the Antarctic’. Her works include a statue of Edward Smith, the captain of the Titanic, now in Beacon Park, Lichfield. She later married Emily Young’s paternal grandfather, the politician and writer Edward Hilton Young, 1st Lord Kennet.
Emily Young’s father, Wayland Hilton Young, 2nd Lord Kennet, was also a politician, conservationist and writer. Her mother was the writer and commentator Elizabeth Young; her uncle was the ornithologist, conservationist and painter, Sir Peter Scott.
She was still a student when she achieved fame (or notoriety) in 1971 as the inspiration for the Pink Floyd song See Emily Play written by Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. But the song had earlier origins in the 1960s. She was 15 when she met Syd Barrett at the London Free School in 1965. ‘I used to go there because there were a lot of Beat philosophers and poets around,’ she said many years later. ‘There were fundraising concerts with The Pink Floyd Sound, as they were then called. I was more keen on poets than rockers. I was educating myself. I was a seeker. I wanted to meet everyone and take every drug.’
As a young woman, Emily Young worked primarily as a painter while she was studying at Chelsea School of Art in 1968 and later at Central Saint Martins. She travelled around the world in the late 1960s and 1970s, spending time in the US, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, France, Italy, Africa, South America, the Middle East and China, encountering a variety of cultures and developing her experiences of art.
In the early 1980s, she abandoned painting and turned to carving, sourcing stone from all over the world. Travelling from a London childhood, to a European education, to a life lived as an artist round the world, she began to interact with the timeless quality of stone to produce breath-taking sculptures of luminous intensity and great beauty.
As well as marble, she carves in semi-precious stone – agate, alabaster, lapis lazuli. These not only reflect and refract the light – but glow with a passionate intensity (as Winged Golden Onyx Head), revealing the hidden crystalline structure of the material and the subtle layers the time has laid down, showing the liquid qualities of hard rock.
The primary objective of her sculpture is to bring the natural beauty and energy of stone to the fore. Her sculptures have unique characters because each stone has an individual geological history and geographical source. Her approach allows the viewer to comprehend a deep grounding across time, land and cultures. She combines traditional carving skills with technology to produce work that is both contemporary and ancient, with a unique, serious and poetic presence.
Emily Young now divides her time between her studios in London and Italy. Her permanent installations and public collections can be seen in many places, including Saint Paul’s Churchyard, Saint Pancras Church, NEO Bankside, and the Imperial War Museum in London; La Defense, Paris; Salisbury Cathedral, Wiltshire; the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; and the Cloister of Madonna Dell’Orto, Venice.
After years of being feted as ‘Britain’s foremost female stone sculptor,’ the art critic of the Financial Times called her ‘Britain’s greatest living stone sculptor.’ The Daily Telegraph has written: ‘Emily Young has inherited the mantle as Britain’s greatest female stone sculptor from Dame Barbara Hepworth.’
She recently explained: ‘So my work is a kind of temple activity now, devotional; when I work a piece of stone, the mineral occlusions of the past are revealed, the layers of sediment unpeeled; I may open in one knock something that took millions of years to form: dusts settling, water dripping, forces pushing, minerals growing – material and geological revelations: the story of time on Earth shows here, sometimes startling, always beautiful.’
She told an interviewer: ‘I carve in stone the fierce need in millions of us to retrieve some semblance of dignity for the human race in its place on Earth. We can show ourselves to posterity as a primitive and brutal life form – that what we are best at is rapacity, greed, and wilful ignorance, and we can also show that we are creatures of great love for our whole planet, that everyone of us is a worshipper in her temple of life.’
The American composer Fran Schultz, who lives in Howell, New Jersey, said some years ago that my writing about Emily Young’s angels have inspired her composition and recording, ‘How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin.’
Fran describes the composition as in the genre of rock, instrumental and digital electronic music. The musical instruments include a Steinway Grand Piano, Oak Piano Dream Synthesiser, Stutter Stack and Classic D6.
She is generous on her website when she extends ‘special thanks to Patrick Comerford for his writing and his allowing me use of his photos.’ She said she wrote ‘How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin’ because of my ‘inspirational writing.’
She added: ‘I also enjoyed reading all the links he provided about the artist, Emily Young, his thoughts and quotes by her. I thank him very much for letting me make use of his photographs for this piece of music and to the artist Emily Young for making them.’
She continued: ‘The connection point for me in his writing was immediate in his succinct and direct insightful recognition of such questions and in my seeing how in social media distracts us into questions that are essentially “A metaphor for wasting time discussing trivial topics that have no practical value, or asking questions whose answers hold no practical value, or asking questions whose answers hold no consequence, at times when we have more urgent concerns to debate”.’
She was unexpectedly generous when she said my ‘writing has many layers of depth to it that I particularly am drawn to in the subjects of architecture, sculptures, history, theology, questions, the deeper meaning of things and the beauty of things we might not have noticed or fully appreciated before. I love his thoughtful responses to the questions and what brought those very questions up upon reflecting the sculptures made by Emily Young as he was taking a walk in London … and taking photos. Hope you enjoy his writing and enjoy my music too!’
She then offered a link to my website and my article of 25 February 2023, ‘Emily Young’s Five Angels on Columns,’ HERE.
You can listen to Fran Schultz’s composition, ‘How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin’, HERE.
Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 29 September 2026, Saint Michael and All Angels):
In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, from 27 September to 3 October 2026 (pp 42-43), is ‘Power of Language’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a reflection by Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 29 September 2026, Saint Michael and All Angels) invites us to pray:
Lord God, through the example of Saint Michael, defend and guide those who work for reconciliation. Give them courage so every voice may be heard and every community united in peace.
The Collect:
Everlasting God,
you have ordained and constituted
the ministries of angels and mortals in a wonderful order:
grant that as your holy angels always serve you in heaven,
so, at your command,
they may help and defend us on earth;
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:
Lord of heaven,
in this eucharist you have brought us near
to an innumerable company of angels
and to the spirits of the saints made perfect:
as in this food of our earthly pilgrimage
we have shared their fellowship,
so may we come to share their joy in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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
