Praying at Christmas through poems and with USPG: 3 January 2023

‘Lost in the world’s wood / … under naked boughs / The frost comes to barb your broken vows’ – RS Thomas (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Christmas is not a season of 12 days, despite the popular Christmas song. Christmas is a 40-day season that lasts from Christmas Day (25 December) to Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation (2 February).

Throughout the 40 days of this Christmas Season, I am reflecting in these ways:

1, Reflecting on a seasonal or appropriate poem;

2, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’

As we move from celebrating Christmas and the New Year to facing the stark realities of the year ahead, my choice of a Christmas poem this morning [3 January] is ‘Song at the Year’s Turning,’ written in 1955 by the Welsh priest-poet RS Thomas, and the title poem of the collection that brought him to the attention of the wider world beyond his own Wales.

The Revd Ronald Stewart Thomas (1913-2000) is one of most important Welsh poets of the 20th century, alongside Dylan Thomas. This priest poet writes about his own people in a style that can be compared with the harsh and rugged terrain they inhabit.

John Betjeman, in his introduction to Song at the Year’s Turning (1955), the collection of Thomas’s poetry that brought him to the attention of the wider literary world – and that includes this morning’s poem – predicted Thomas would be remembered long after Betjeman was forgotten. Professor M Wynn Thomas said: ‘He was the Alexander Solzhenitsyn of Wales … He was one of the major English language and European poets of the 20th century.’

RS Thomas trained as an ordinand at Saint Michael’s College, Llandaff (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

RS Thomas was born in Cardiff in 1913, and his family moved in 1918 to Holyhead, where his father worked with a ferry boat company operating between Wales and Ireland. He studied classics at the University College of North Wales, Bangor, and studied theology at Saint Michael’s College, Llandaff, before being ordained deacon in the Church in Wales in 1936 and priest in 1937.

Between 1936 and 1978, he would serve in parishes in six different towns, acquiring first-hand knowledge of farming life and becoming familiar with a host of characters and settings for his poetry. As a curate in the mining village of Chirk in Denbighshire (1936-1940), he met his wife, Mildred (Elsi) Eldridge, an English artist. They married in 1940, and for all their married life, until Elsi died in 1991, they lived on a tiny income and lacked the comforts of modern life, largely by his choice.

From 1942 to 1954, he was the Rector of Manafon, near Welshpool in rural Montgomeryshire. There he began to study Welsh, although he later said he learnt Welsh too late in life to write poetry in it. At Manafon he published his first three volumes of poetry, The Stones of the Field, An Acre of Land and The Minister.

In 1954, he became Vicar of Saint Michael’s, Eglwysfach, in Cardiganshire (1954-1967). A year later, he achieved wider recognition as a poet and was introduced to a wider audience with his fourth book, Song at the Year’s Turning: Poems 1942-1945 (1955), a collected edition of his first three volumes, introduced by John Betjeman.

In the 1960s, he worked in a predominantly Welsh-speaking community and he later wrote two prose works in Welsh, Neb (Nobody), an autobiography written in the third person, and Blwyddyn yn Llŷn (A Year in Llŷn).

From 1967 to 1972, Thomas was the Vicar of Saint Hywyn’s, Aberdaron, at the western tip of the Llŷn Peninsula in Gwynedd, with Saint Mary, Bodferin. The Llŷn Peninsula is the point in Wales that is closest to Ireland. Finally, he was Rector of Rhiw with Llanfaelrhys (1972-1978). He retired in Easter 1978, and he and his wife moved to Y Rhiw, a beautiful part of Wales. However, their cottage was unheated and the temperature sometimes dropped below freezing.

In retirement, he became more active in politics and campaigns, and he was a strong advocate of Welsh nationalism, although he never supported Plaid Cymru. He was a keen supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and described himself as a pacifist. But he also supported the fire-bombings of English-owned holiday cottages in rural Wales, arguing: ‘What is one death against the death of the whole Welsh nation?’

His eightieth birthday was marked by the publication of Collected Poems, 1945-1990. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996, but that year the prize went to Seamus Heaney.

When he died in 2000 at the age of 87, his life and poetry were celebrated in Westminster Abbey with readings from Seamus Heaney, Andrew Motion, Gillian Clarke and John Burnside. His ashes are buried close to the door of Saint John’s Church, Porthmadog, Gwynedd.

Spiritual questioning and cultural scepticism

The beauty of the landscape is ever-present in the poems of RS Thomas, marked by spiritual questioning and cultural scepticism (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Bishop Richard Clarke has described him as ‘a rather terrifying Welsh Anglican clergyman who evidently scared the living daylights out of his parishioners but who was also, and unquestionably, one of the greatest poets in the English language over the past century.’

Thomas was not always charitable and was known for being awkward and taciturn, to the point that he was even accused of being ‘formidable, bad-tempered, and apparently humourless.’ Indeed, he admitted himself that there is a ‘lack of love for human beings’ in his poetry.

When he began to write about the Welsh countryside and its people, Thomas was influenced by Edward Thomas, Fiona Macleod, and WB Yeats. Fearing that poetry was becoming a dying art, inaccessible to those who most needed it, ‘he attempted to make spiritually minded poems relevant within, and relevant to, a science-minded, post-industrial world,’ to represent that world both in form and in content even as he rejected its machinations.

His earlier works focus on the personal stories of his parishioners, the farm labourers and working men and their wives, challenging the cosy view of the traditional pastoral poem with harsh and vivid descriptions of rural lives. The beauty of the landscape is ever-present, but it is never a compensation for the low pay or monotonous conditions of farm work.

As his poetry develops, Thomas moves from the first impact of rural life on a young curate to a more introspective examination of his own agonies and difficulties. His later poetry is marked by spiritual questioning and cultural scepticism.

Thomas’s poetry is often harsh and austere, written in plain, sombre language, with a meditative quality. He uses simple words and short nouns, in a spare, ascetic style that reflects his disenchantment with the modern world and the scientific age. His poems are filled with compassion, love, doubt, and irony. Despite the often grim nature of his subject matter, his poems are ultimately life-affirming.

Thomas the priest poet

As a priest, Thomas imbues his poetry with a consistently religious theme, often speaking of the lonely and often barren predicament of the priest, who is as isolated in his parish as Iago Prytherch – an archetypal rural Welshman found in many of his poems – is on the bare hillside.

He believes one of the important functions of poetry is to embody religious truth, and his work expresses a religious conviction uncommon in modern poetry. Archbishop Rowan Williams – also an acclaimed Welsh priest poet – says Thomas, like Soren Kierkegaard, was a ‘great articulator of uneasy faith.’

An early poem, ‘In a Country Church,’ from Song at the Year’s Turning (1955), announces some of the themes that would dominate his later poetry:

To one kneeling down no word came,
Only the wind’s song, saddening the lips
Of the grave saints, rigid in glass;
Or the dry whisper of unseen wings,
Bats not angels, in the high roof.

Was he balked by silence? He kneeled long,
And saw love in a dark crown
Of thorns blazing, and a winter tree
Golden with fruit of a man’s body.

The opening stanza is a powerful image of silence. The only sounds come not from words but from the wind, not from the wings of angels but of bats. While there is no word from God, the poet gropes for a signal of grace and wrests from the silence a vision of a wintry image of love and crucifixion – perhaps a divine response.

Thomas returns to this theme in ‘In Church,’ a poem from his collection Pieta (1966):

Often I try
To analyze the quality
Of its silences. Is this where God hides
From my searching? I have stopped to listen,
After the few people have gone,
To the air recomposing itself
For vigil. It has waited like this
Since the stones grouped themselves about it.
These are the hard ribs
Of a body that our prayers have failed
To animate. Shadows advance
From their corners to take possession
Of places the light held
For an hour. The bats resume
Their business. The uneasiness of the pews
Ceases. There is no other sound
In the darkness but the sound of a man
Breathing, testing his faith
On emptiness, nailing his questions
One by one to an untenanted cross.

In this poem. Thomas confronts the paradox of presence and absence, faith and doubt. DZ Phillips, in RS Thomas: Poet of the Hidden God, reads the last lines as a realisation that the poet-priest ‘has to die to his old questions. It is only by dying to the old questions that wonder can come in at the right place.’

‘… and throw / on its illumined walls the shadow / of someone greater than I can understand?’ – RS Thomas (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

But did he feel lonely, isolated, or even trapped in parish ministry? He writes, in ‘The Empty Church’:

They laid this stone trap
for him, enticing him with candles,
as though he would come like some huge moth
out of the darkness to beat there.
Ah, he had burned himself
before in the human flame
and escaped, leaving the reason
torn. He will not come any more
to our lure. Why, then, do I kneel still
striking my prayers on a stone
heart? Is it in hope one
of them will ignite yet and throw
on its illumined walls the shadow
of someone greater than I can understand?

Thomas has been described as ‘not a poet of the transfiguration, of the resurrection, of human holiness,’ but as ‘a poet of the Cross, the unanswered prayer, the bleak trek through darkness.’

For Tony Brown of the University of Wales, Thomas’s emphasis remains on the cross, trusted and finally understood as ‘the ultimate demonstration of love defeating time and mortality.’ Rowan Williams concludes that ‘God, for Thomas, is both the frustration of every expectation and the only exit from despair. And that God is encountered only in the embrace of finitude.’

‘Light’s peculiar grace/ In cold splendour robes this tortured place’ – RS Thomas … the Crucifxion window in Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas Church, Beaumaris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Song at the Year’s Turning by RS Thomas

Shelley dreamed it. Now the dream decays.
The props crumble; the familiar ways
Are stale with tears trodden underfoot.
The heart’s flower withers at the root.
Bury it then, in history’s sterile dust.
The slow years shall tame your tawny lust.

Love deceived him; what is there to say
The mind brought you by a better way
To this despair? Lost in the world’s wood
You cannot stanch the bright menstrual blood.
The earth sickens; under naked boughs
The frost comes to barb your broken vows.

Is there blessing? Light’s peculiar grace
In cold splendour robes this tortured place
For strange marriage. Voices in the wind
Weave a garland where a mortal sinned.
Winter rots you; who is there to blame?
The new grass shall purge you in its flame.

‘under naked boughs / The frost comes to barb your broken vows’ … naked bows at Penmon on the eastern tip of Anglesey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

USPG Prayer Diary:

The theme in the USPG Prayer Diary this week is ‘Refugee Response in Finland.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Tuomas Mäkipää, Chaplain at Saint Nicholas’ Anglican Church in Helsinki, who tells how a USPG grant is helping to support Ukrainian refugees.

The USPG Prayer Diary invites us to pray today in these words:

Let us pray for the many volunteers working with refugees. May they be sustained in their endeavours and supported when exhaustion sets in.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

‘Light’s peculiar grace / In cold splendour robes this tortured place’ … snow above Thomas Telford’s Suspension Bridge at the Menai Straits linking Anglesey and mainland Wales (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Praying in Ordinary Time 2021: 174, former Welsh chapels, Beaumaris

A converted chapel on Church Street in Beaumaris serves many secular uses (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford


Each morning in the time in the Church Calendar known as Ordinary Time, I am reflecting in these ways:

1, photographs of a church or place of worship;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

My theme on this prayer diary for the rest of this week is cathedrals and churches in Wales. As part of my reflections and this prayer diary this morning, my photographs today (19 November 2021) are from former Welsh Chapels in Beaumaris on the island of Anglesey.

Chapel Court on Church Street, Beaumaris … many Welsh chapels had separate entrances for men and women (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

During this week in this prayer diary, I have been looking at Welsh churches and cathedrals. But, in the past, I have also wondered about Welsh Chapels, and whether the Welsh Chapel tradition is dying.

Everywhere one goes in Wales, in urban and rural areas alike, the streetscapes and the landscapes seem to be dominated by the Chapel. Large and small buildings dot the towns and the countryside, generally with two entrance doors, one for men and one for women.

They can be tiny barn-style buildings in the middle of fields filled with grazing sheep, or they can be towering, if not domineering buildings, like Bethesda, with its imposing classical façade and that gives its name to the town in North Wales that grew up around it.

Indeed, travelling through North Wales in the past, I have wondered how many of the small town and villages I passed took their Biblical-sounding names from the chapels they grew up around: Bethesda, Bethel, Carmel, Golan, Nasareth (sic), Nebo …?

The Chapel tradition and Nonconformity have been a significant influence in Wales from the 18th to the 20th centuries. The Welsh Methodist revival in the 18th century was one of the most significant religious and social movements in the history of Wales. The revival began within the Church of England in Wales, partly as a reaction to the neglect many people in Wales felt because of absentee bishops and clergy.

From the 1730s on, for two generations or more, the leading lights in the Methodist revival, including Howell Harris (1714-1773), the Revd Daniel Rowland (1711-1790) and the Revd William Williams Pantycelyn (1717-1791), remained in the Church of England, albeit on the margins. But the revival in Wales was markedly different in tone from the Methodist revival in England. In Wales, the theological emphasis was Calvinist instead of Arminian, and these Calvinist Methodists gradually built their own chapels in Wales.

Out of this movement, the Revd Thomas Charles (1755-1814), a former Anglican priest, was a leading figure in the separation from the Church of England in 1811, when ministers were ordained in Bala, close to Frongoch, and in Llandeilo. The divisions were formalised when the Calvinistic Methodist Presbyterian Church of Wales was established in 1823.

But the 18th century revival also benefitted the older, non-conformist or dissenting churches, including the Baptists and the Congregationalists, who experienced fresh growth. As a result, Wales was a predominantly nonconformist country by the mid-19th century.

The 19th century was the golden age of Welsh nonconformity, and the villages and towns that grew up around the new chapels became citadels of dissent. A census in 1851 showed that 80% of those who attended a place of worship on Census Sunday in Wales were Nonconformists.

A second popular revival began in 1859, a spread mainly through the Welsh language. By the 1880s, the Welsh chapels were experiencing their golden age. Chapels were built in confident architectural styles, in sharp contrast to the severe and austere styles of earlier chapels.

By the 1880s, over 350,000 men and women were members of one of the four main Nonconformist denominations, with many more adherents who went to chapel on Sundays. There was yet another Welsh revival in 1904-1905 when at least 100,000 people declared they had become Christians.

As they grew in numbers and became more confident, the chapels were often heard as one voice as they spoke out against social conditions, despite their denominational differences.

The Calvinistic Methodists were the largest of the denominations in numerical terms, and their greatest strength was in rural Wales, including Anglesey. The Congregationalists, usually known in Wales as Independents, were especially strong in south Wale. The Baptists were more concentrated, primarily in Glamorgan and Carmarthenshire, but also in Pembrokeshire. The Wesleyan Methodists were not particularly strong in Wales and were found more often in English-speaking places.

But the ‘chapel’ label was applied in Wales to many other traditions too, including the Unitarians and even, at times, the Quakers.

By and large, the chapel tradition was a conservative dimension of Welsh life. Sabbatarianism was often extreme, so that public houses remained closed in many parts of Wales until very late in the last century. Women were often marginalised in the chapels and denied any positions of responsibility, rivalry was rife between neighbouring chapels, and many denominations suffered from internal divisions and schisms.

But the chapels also inspired choirs, choral festivals and community activities, developed schools and educational facilities, and played a significant role in the rise of the Liberal Party in Wales.

But recent decades have seen a gradual decline of Christianity throughout Wales. Walking through the streets of Beaumaris, Bangor and other parts of North Wales, I have wondered how severe is the decline in the Welsh Chapel tradition?

It is a tradition that I have an abiding affection for. As a 19-year-old with a fresh enthusiasm for my Christian faith, I spent a weekend in Chester on my way between Lichfield and Dublin, and on that Sunday morning, visiting a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist chapel, I was taught the only three words in Welsh, the only phrase, I have ever learned in Welsh: Duw cariad yw, ‘God is love.’

In Beaumaris, on the one street, I have noticed how at least two former citadels from the Welsh Chapel tradition have been converted in recent years to serve non-religious functions.

Chapel Court, on the corner of Church Street and Margaret Street, was built in 1871-1876 as the English Presbyterian Church in Beaumaris. But the chapel closed in 1992, and the building was converted into flats and holiday apartments 20 years ago in 1996.

Further down Church Street, the Forum on 6 Church Street, opposite the George and Dragon, was once a chapel but has been converted into a number of commercial units, including the Triple 8 Coffee Shop, the Penny Farthing traditional sweet shop and Little Jack’s Gift Shop.

Nearby, the Capel Seion Welsh Congregational Church was built on the corner of Steeple Lane and Chapel Street in 1821. It replaced an earlier Capel Seion, which was built in 1784 and was the earliest non-conformist foundation in Beaumaris. But Capel Seion (Zion Chapel) closed some years ago too and it too has been converted into housing. But it was once a typical, almost classical Welsh Chapel, built in the Italianate style.

The round-headed central doorway has Tuscan pilasters with a moulded arch and keystone, and double fielded-panel doors with radial-glazed overlights. Inside, the entrance vestibule has plastered round arches on consoles to gallery stairs to the right and left, with moulded newel and plain balusters. The main chapel had a panelled plaster ceiling with ornate moulded ribs and ceiling roses. There was a three-sided gallery, a tall pulpit and cast-iron Corinthian columns.

The Welsh Chapel tradition has made rich contributions to the wider Church through its enthusiastic hymns and songs.

I would cringe to think that visitors to Ireland might judge the state of the health of the Church by looking at closed churches dotting the countryside or former churches in our towns and cities that have been converted into shops, garages, restaurants and showrooms. But if the Welsh Chapel Tradition is dying, it will be a loss to the whole wider church.

Chapel Court on Church Street, Beaumaris … built as the English Presbyterian Church but now divided in apartments (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 19: 45-48 (NRSVA):

45 Then he [Jesus] entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; 46 and he said, ‘It is written,

“My house shall be a house of prayer”;
but you have made it a den of robbers.’

47 Every day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him; 48 but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard.

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (19 November 2021) invites us to pray:

Let us pray for the Church in the Province of the West Indies, comprised of eight dioceses across the Caribbean.

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

The former Capel Seion was a Welsh Congregational Church but has been converted to housing (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Praying in Ordinary Time 2021: 172, Saint Seiriol’s Church and Penmon Priory

Penmon Priory … the former cloisters are enclosed by the former refectory (left), the former prior’s house (centre) and Saint Seiriol’s Priory Church (right) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Each morning in the time in the Church Calendar known as Ordinary Time, I am reflecting in these ways:

1, photographs of a church or place of worship;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

My theme on this prayer diary for the rest of this week is cathedrals and churches in Wales. As part of my reflections and this prayer diary this morning, my photographs today (17 November 2021) are from Saint Seiriol’s Church and Penmon Priory on the island of Anglesey.

The chancel of the Priory Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I went to the ends of Anglesey earlier this week to visit one of the earliest Christian sites in Wales. On the recommendation of the Rector of Beaumaris, the Revd Neil Fairlamb two of us travelled out east to the edge of the island.

Pemon is a short drive of only 5 km (3 miles) east from Beaumaris, and its name in Welsh means the end of Anglesey (pen, promontory; and Môn, Anglesey). It is at the eastern tip of Anglesey, looking out towards Snowdonia on the other side of the Menai Straits and out to the Irish Sea.

Penmon limestone was used to build Birmingham Town Hall and in rebuilding Liverpool and Manchester after World War II. The stone was also used in building the Menai Suspension Bridge (1826) and the Britannia Bridge (1850).

Saint Seiriol’s Church at Penmon may be part of the oldest remaining Christian building in Wales. According to tradition, a community grew up at Penmon around a monastery (clas) established in the early sixth century by Saint Seiriol on land provided by his brother, Saint Einion, King of Llyn.

Two friends, Saint Seiriol and Saint Cybi, founded monasteries at opposite ends of Anglesey. Saint Cybi’s monastery was on the north-west tip of the Anglesey at the heart of what is now Holyhead, whose Welsh name Caergybi recalls the saint. Saint Seiriol set up his monastery at Penmon, at the eastern tip of the island.

According to folklore, these two saints met weekly near Llanerchymedd, near the centre of the island. Saint Cybi would walk from Holyhead, facing the rising sun in the morning and the setting sun in the evening. Saint Seiriol, travelling in the opposite direction, had the sun to his back during his journey. And so they were known as Cybi the Dark, because he was tanned on his journey, and Seiriol the Fair.

Although Saint Seiriol later moved offshore to a hermitage on Puffin Island, Saint Seiriol’s Monastery prospered and grew in size. By the 10th century, the monastery had a wooden church building, and two crosses that probably stood at the entrance to the monastery complex.

After Penmon was destroyed during Viking raids in 971, the church was rebuilt in stone, and Penmon survived the initial Norman invasion of Gwynedd between 1081 and 1100, when it was defended by Prince Gruffudd ap Cynan of Gwynedd.

During the 12th century, the Priory Church was rebuilt in stone under Gruffudd ap Cynan and Owain Gwynedd, from 1120 to 1123, and the oldest parts of the Priory Church today date from 1140. This is the most complete building of its age in north-west Wales.

In the 13th century, under Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, the monasteries in Wales were reorganised under the Augustinian rule. Penmon became an Augustinian priory, the church was enlarged and new conventual buildings were built.

Penmon Priory expanded and survived the English conquest of Wales during the reign of King Edward I. There are records for the election of Priors back to 1306, when Iowerth the Prior is named.

The dining hall was on the first floor, with a cellar below and dormitory above. In the 16th century, a kitchen and a warming house were added at the east of the building. The eastern range of buildings has gone, but the southern one, containing the refectory with a dormitory above, still stands.

Llywelyn Fawr and his successors made the church wealthy with generous grants of land. However, in the period immediately before the Reformation, Penmon Priory was already in decline, and by 1536 the community included only the Prior and two other members.

At the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the priory was dissolved in 1538, and the buildings and land became the property of the Bulkeley family of Beaumaris, a prominent local family who used most of the land for a deer park and built the dovecote near the church.

However, the church survived the Reformation and Saint Seiriol’s Church, which was the centrepiece of the monastery, remained in use. Much of the church was rebuilt in 1855, and the chancel now serves as the parish church, while the transepts and nave remain part of the church complex.

The church has a typical cruciform arrangement. The nave, which is the oldest part, was completed ca 1140. The transepts and the tower were built in 1160-1170, and the chancel was added in 1220-1240 during the rule of Llywelyn ap Iorwerth (Llywelyn the Great), who convinced the monasteries in North Wales to reorganise under the Augustinian Order.

A refectory was built around this time, with a large dining hall, cellars and a dormitory. This three-storey building is now roofless.

The building between the refectory and the south transept was the prior’s house, probably built in the 16th century. It is now a private house. The area in the middle was the cloister, and there may at one time have been another building on the eastern side, enclosing the cloister.

Inside the church, the nave is quite plain, with small, high windows. The squat, conical tower is a well-known landmark. At ground level, the crossing has richly carved pillars and Romanesque arches. The decorative work suggests skills that may have come from Ireland.

The south transept is embellished with a blind arcade of chevron-decorated Romanesque arches. A series of carved stones found during restoration have been reset in the south transept, where the small window contains fragments of mediaeval glass.

The three-light East Window in the Chancel of Penmon Priory Church depicts the Ascension and dates from 1912. The centre window depicts Christ in glory, holding the chalice and the host, with rays of light emanating from the wounds in his hands and feet. He is surrounded by the symbols of the four evangelists.

This window, with its Anglo-Catholic sacramental imagery, was given in 1912 in memory of Henry Owen Williams and his wife Sarah (Holborn) of Tre-Castell, near Beaumaris, by their children. Their children included the Revd Raymond Owen Williams, who was presented to the Vicarage of Fisherton Delamere in Wiltshire by Athelstan Riley (1858—1945), the Anglo-Catholic hymn writer and hymn translator.

In the left-hand light window, Sarah Williams is shown with the women and children being blessed by Christ. Henry Williams is depicted in the right-hand light, in a scene depicting the blessing and distribution of the loaves and fishes.

Fragments of the original East Window in the Priory Church can be seen in a small stained glass window that is the east window of the south transept. This window depicts the Priory’s founder, Saint Seiriol, watching Saint Christopher carrying the Christ Child across a river.

The head of Saint Christopher, his right hand, Christ’s orb, and the right hand of Saint Seiriol with parts of his staff are mediaeval. These were worked into a new window ca 1855 by David Evans (1793-1861), who imitated mediaeval styles in the remaining work in the window. A second window by Evans in the Priory Church from the same time shows Saint Catherine and a bishop.

David Evans was born at Llanllwchaiarn near Newtown. He worked in partnership with Sir John Betton of Shrewsbury (1765-1849) from 1815 as Betton & Evans, and I am familiar with some of their windows in Lichfield Cathedral (1819).

Evans retained the name of the firm after Betton retired in 1825. Examples of Evans’s work in Wales can also be seen in Bangor Cathedral, including three of the Evangelists – Saint Luke, Saint Matthew and Saint Mark – three prophets, Aaron, Moses and David, and three Epistle writers, Saint Peter, Saint John and Saint Paul.

The church also shelters two 10th century High Crosses that once stood at the entrance to the mediaeval monastery, as well as a decorated font that also survived the Viking raids in the late tenth century.

The larger cross in the nave is badly weathered having stood outside in the deer park until 1977. It is almost complete except for about 30 cm between the top of the shaft and the head. The cross has inter-lacing decorative patterns and a pictorial scene showing the temptations of Saint Anthony, as well as a probable hunting scene.

The smaller cross, in the south transept, is much less weathered. One arm of the cross was cut off when it was used as a lintel for the refectory windows. The cross is mainly decorated with knot-work along with two animal heads on the sides, and has a modern stone base.

The baptismal font at the end of the nave is decorated with three panels of very similar fret decoration, and originally may have been the base of another, third High Cross. It too has a modern base.

All three pieces belong to a school of sculpture that absorbed stylistic traits from northern English, Viking and Irish art. They date from the late tenth or early 11th centuries, perhaps from the relatively peaceful reign of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn, and the sculptors who created them may have had close connections with Cheshire.

Below the church, Saint Seiriol’s Well was believed to have healing powers. The well is at the end of a path past a fish pond built by the monks. The well is enclosed within a small building, most of which is brick from 18th century rebuilding work, although the flooring and lower parts of the wall are probably older.

It is said that the lower stone walls near the well were part of Saint Seiriol’s church in the sixth century. If so, this would make it the oldest remaining Christian building in Wales.

Sir Richard Bulkeley of Beaumaris, who owned the monastery lands after the dissolution, built the dovecote near the church ca 1600. The dovecote was built to house pigeons, who were valued for their eggs and meat. The square building has a large domed roof with a cupola that allowed the birds to fly in and out. Inside, there were 1,000 nesting boxes. A pillar in the centre of the dovecote supported a revolving ladder that gave access to the nesting boxes.

Penmon was one of the settings in The Fever (2004), a film starring Vanessa Redgrave and Angelina Jolie. Filming took place at the Priory and the dovecote was used to depict a deserted church. Penmon Priory has also been used for the BBC programme Songs of Praise, and for filming the television show Danger Man (1960) starring Patrick McGoohan.

Penmon Priory is now part of the Rectorial benefice of Beaumaris in the Diocese of Bangor. Penmon Priory remains the finest and most complete example of a church of its period in Gwynedd, and is worth going to the ends of Anglesey to see and explore.

Saint Seiriol’s Church survived the Reformation and remains in use as the parish church of Penmon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 19: 11-28 (NRSVA):

11 As they were listening to this, he went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. 12 So he said, ‘A nobleman went to a distant country to get royal power for himself and then return. 13 He summoned ten of his slaves, and gave them ten pounds, and said to them, “Do business with these until I come back.” 14 But the citizens of his country hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, “We do not want this man to rule over us.” 15 When he returned, having received royal power, he ordered these slaves, to whom he had given the money, to be summoned so that he might find out what they had gained by trading. 16 The first came forward and said, “Lord, your pound has made ten more pounds.” 17 He said to him, “Well done, good slave! Because you have been trustworthy in a very small thing, take charge of ten cities.” 18 Then the second came, saying, “Lord, your pound has made five pounds.” 19 He said to him, “And you, rule over five cities.” 20 Then the other came, saying, “Lord, here is your pound. I wrapped it up in a piece of cloth, 21 for I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man; you take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.” 22 He said to him, “I will judge you by your own words, you wicked slave! You knew, did you, that I was a harsh man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? 23 Why then did you not put my money into the bank? Then when I returned, I could have collected it with interest.” 24 He said to the bystanders, “Take the pound from him and give it to the one who has ten pounds.” 25 (And they said to him, “Lord, he has ten pounds!”) 26 “I tell you, to all those who have, more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. 27 But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence”.’

28 After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem.

The Romanesque arches linking the crossing with the chancel and the south transept (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (17 November 2021) invites us to pray:

We pray for the Diocese of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, their Sunday School ministry and their Chaplaincy programme.

The larger cross in the nave (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Saint Seiriol’s Well may include parts of the oldest remaining Christian building in Wales (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

The three-light East Window was given in memory of Sarah and Henry Owen Williams in 1912 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Christopher and Saint Seiriol … a window by David Evans (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Praying in Ordinary Time 2021: 171, Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas, Beaumaris

The mediaeval Church of Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas, the 14th century parish church in Beaumaris on the Island of Anglesey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This looks like a busy day, with a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Church of Ireland expected to last for most of the morning.

Each morning in the time in the Church Calendar known as Ordinary Time, I am reflecting in these ways:

1, photographs of a church or place of worship;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

My theme on this prayer diary for the rest of this week is cathedrals and churches in Wales. As part of my reflections and this prayer diary this morning, my photographs today (16 November 2021) are of the Church of Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas, the 14th century parish church in Beaumaris.

Inside the Church of Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas in Beaumaris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Church of Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas, the parish church in Beaumaris on the Island of Anglesey, is a Grade I listed building, and was first built ca 1330 to serve the newly-founded town.

The parish church is in the heart of the mediaeval town, in a large churchyard with Church Street to the east and Steeple Lane to the west. It was built to serve the burgesses of the walled town soon after Beaumaris Castle was built.

Parts of the church were built at different times: the oldest parts are the nave and aisles, and the west tower, all of which date to the 14th century, while the chancel was rebuilt around 1500 in Perpendicular style. The west tower is of four stages, with a battlemented parapet. The upper section was remodelled in the early 19th century. The north vestry and south porch are probably 19th century. The exterior is mainly Perpendicular.

Inside the south porch, the stone tomb of Princess Joan of Wales (Princess Siwan) is much older than the church itself. Princess Joan was an illegitimate daughter of King John of England, and in the late 12th century, when she was still only 15 – some accounts say she was only 12 – she was married to Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, or Llywelyn the Great, then Prince of Wales.

At first it was a successful marriage, by all accounts. But in 1230 she was found in bed with a Norman knight, William de Braose. Llewelyn had William hanged, and Joan was exiled for a year at Garth Celyn. Llewelyn eventually forgave her, and Joan returned to court in 1231.

When she died in February 1237, Joan was buried at the Franciscan Friary that her husband had founded in Llanfaes, just north of Beaumaris and within sight of his palace at Abergwyngregyn.

However, when Llewelyn died three years later in 1240, he was not buried with Joan. Instead, he was buried at Aberconwy Abbey, to which he had retired during the last few years of his life.

At the Reformation and the dissolution of the monastic houses, the Friary at Llanfaes was suppressed in 1537. For years, Joan’s tomb was lost. Centuries later, it was found in Beaumaris, being used as a water trough for horses. It was rescued and moved into the parish church in Beaumaris.

The slab is elaborately decorated with a floriate design. Her hands are drawn together, palms outwards, in a position of prayer. At her feet is a wyvern, a mythical mediaeval heraldic bird of prey, twisting to bite its tail.

At the west end of the north aisle is the impressive alabaster altar tomb of William Bulkeley, who died in 1490, and his wife Elin, daughter of Gwilym ap Gruffydd of Penrhyn. The tomb is made of Midlands alabaster, probably from the area around Derby and Nottingham, and the alabaster figures of William and Elin are side-by-side. William is wearing a light helmet, and his feet are resting on an heraldic lion. Around its base, the tomb is decorated with figures representing bishops and saints, including Saint Christopher.

William Bulkeley was deputy constable of Beaumaris Castle and the ancestor of Archbishop Lancelot Bulkeley of Dublin and the Bulkeley family of Old Bawn House near Tallaght.

The church also has a unique collection of misericords dating from the late 15th and early 16th century, although eight are replacements made in 1902. These carved misericords decorate the undersides of the seats in the choir stalls. Many of the misericords carry a moral message, but others simply depict scenes from daily life.

The faces of the carvings are finely detailed and are the work of skilled craftsmen. It is likely the old misericords came from the friary at Llanfaes when it was dissolved. They include a bearded pope, a woman balancing two pints on her head, a woman in a crown with a wimple and a hood, a woman with a crown of roses on her head and another of two working women.

There is an amusing carving of a woman with a pair of tankards filled with ale balanced on her head. Perhaps she was a real person who brought drinks to the woodcarvers as they worked.

The East Window by Clayton and Bell … note the Crucified Christ has no beard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The church also has a large collection of interesting stained-glass windows.

The original East Window of mediaeval glass was destroyed by the Puritans during the Cromwellian era in the mid-17th century. The East Window, by Clayton and Bell, commemorates Richard Gerard Wellesley Williams-Bulkeley, killed in 1918 during World War I. An interesting detail in this Crucifixion scene is that Christ has no beard.

The window in the east wall of the south aisle, depicting the Adoration of the Christ Child by the Shepherds, with Saint David and Saint Nicholas on each side, is by Charles Eamer Kempe (1904).

The three-light window in the south wall of the chancel shows the Virgin and Child with Archangels and Magi. This window (1923) is the work Kempe’s pupil, John CN Bewsey. In the top portion of the window, the three panels show the Virgin Mary standing with the Christ Child close to her bosom, and the Archangel Gabriel and the Archangel Michael; the lower portion depicts the Virgin Mary sitting or enthroned, with the Christ Child on her lap and the Wise Men presenting their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh (see Matthew 2: 11). Madonna.

Many of the other furnishings, including the font and pews, date from a major restoration carried out in 1902. Members of the Bulkeley family are commemorated in the chancel and the sanctuary, including the last Viscount Bulkeley, a generous benefactor of the church, who died in 1822.

The window depicting the Adoration of the Christ Child by the Shepherds, with Saint David and Saint Nicholas on each side, is by Charles Eamer Kempe (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 19: 1-10 (NRSVA):

1 He entered Jericho and was passing through it. 2 A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. 3 He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. 5 When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ 6 So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. 7 All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’ 8 Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ 9 Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’

The three-light window showing the Virgin and Child with the Archangels and the Magi (1923) by John CN Bewsey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (16 November 2021, International Day of Tolerance) invites us to pray:

Let us pray for a more tolerant world, in which difference is celebrated and experience is valued.

The stone tomb of Princess Joan of Wales inside the south porch (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)


Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

The alabaster altar tomb of William and Elin Bulkeley (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

The misericords in Beaumaris date from the late 15th and early 16th century (Photographs: Patrick Comerford)

In Lent, what does it mean to deny ourselves, take up the Cross and follow Christ?

‘Let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’ (Mark 8: 34) … Simon of Cyrene takes up the Cross, Station 5 in the Stations of the Cross in the chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Sunday 28 February 2021

The Second Sunday in Lent

10 a.m.: The Parish Eucharist

The Readings: Genesis 17: 1-7 and 15-16; Psalm 22: 23-31; Mark 8: 31-38.

There is a link to the readings HERE.

How many of us are continuing on the Lenten journey? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

May I speak to you in the name of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Lent in Ireland is traditionally a time for making resolutions – resolutions that are often like New Year’s resolutions. We start out well, giving up drink, or sweets, or smoking or chocolate – at least for the first week or two.

But now that we are into the second week of Lent, I imagine many Lenten resolutions are forgotten already, just like New Year’s resolutions.

How many of us can remember what your New Year’s resolution was this year?

And if we can remember it, have we stuck to it?

How many of us are continuing on the Lenten journey?

How many of us probably feel that the pandemic lockdown is enough without even thinking of doing something extra for Lent?

When we start doing the things associated with New Year’s resolutions or Lenten discipline, we often start doing them, not as spiritual disciplines, but to reshape, remould ourselves in an image and likeness that I imagine I or my friends are going to find more acceptable.

Then, when we fail, when we go back to our old habits, how often we feel precisely that – that I’m a failure, that I am worth a little less in the eyes of others, that I’m not quite as close to perfection as I thought I might be

And we are constantly reminded in advertising and through the media of the need to be perfect. If only I drove this car, had that new DVD player for home viewings, cooked in that well-stocked kitchen, or drank that tempting new wine or beer, then I would be closer to others seeing me like a perfect Greek god.

Yet the readings this morning are a call to put aside the struggle to conform to outside demands and pressures, and instead to journey in faith with God.

The story of Abraham, Sarah and Isaac (Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16) is deeply interwoven with the story of Joseph, Mary and Jesus. We too can laugh with God, for we have been incorporated into a covenantal relationship with God as God’s children.

We are to be a people who are peaceful and a blessing to all. We are to be a people who go out and who find God in the world. We are a people who have a covenant with God, who see God at work in the world, and who show this to the world.

This story is also a counter-balance to those tendencies that overemphasise personal salvation. The story of salvation is not about a personal covenant but about God’s covenant with a whole family, that expands to a whole people, and that then widens out to the whole of humanity.

There are no individual, solo Christians; we are always in partnership with God and with others who are invited into that covenant.

In the Gospel reading (Mark 8: 31-38), we meet Christ with the disciples on the journey from Bethsaida to the villages of Caesarea Philippi (Mark 8: 27), in today’s Golan Heights.

To their dismay, Christ speaks openly about his imminent death and resurrection. He then describes true discipleship: first, a disciple must renounce self-centeredness (verse 34) and follow him. Those who are prepared to give even their lives for his sake and for the sake of spreading the good news (verse 35) will find true life. But those who opt for material well-being deny their true selves and lose out (verses 35-37).

There is a cost to discipleship, but the challenge to take up the Cross and to follow Christ is open to the crowd, not just to the disciples, is open to Gentiles and not just Jews, is open to all (see verses 34-38).

God in Christ has come to enfold humanity. The cross will not stop the proclamation of the Good News, nor will it keep salvation history from breaking into the cosmos.

So often, in the face of criticism, the Christian response is either to shut down or to retreat to a different understanding of God and Jesus. But Christ tells the people that if they want to follow him on the journey, there is a cost to discipleship.

We are challenged on this Second Sunday in Lent to take up our cross and follow Christ on that journey.

Christianity cannot be reduced to an individual mental or philosophical decision. It is a journey with Christ and with not only the disciples but with the crowd, the many, who are also invited to join that journey.

If Saint Peter knew what was ahead of him, perhaps he might have been even stronger in rebuking Christ in this Gospel reading. But the triumph comes not in getting what we want, not in engineering things so that God gives us what we desire and wish for, so that we get a Jesus who does the things we want him to do. The triumph comes in a few weeks’ time, at Easter, in the Resurrection.

True discipleship and true prayer mean making God’s priorities my priorities: the poor, the sick, the imprisoned, the isolated, the marginalised, the victims, the unloved. If that is difficult, nobody said that being a Christian was going to be easy, that being a Christian would not cost anything.

As the German martyr and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer might have put it, being a disciple means having to pay the cost of discipleship. There is no cheap Christianity and there is no cheap grace.

Pope Francis puts it another way.

He asks, ‘Do you want to fast this Lent?’

And then, he answers:

Fast from hurting words and say kind words.

Fast from sadness and be filled with gratitude.

Fast from anger and be filled with patience.

Fast from pessimism and be filled with hope.

Fast from worries and have trust in God.

Fast from complaints; contemplate simplicity.

Fast from pressures and be prayerful.

Fast from bitterness; fill your hearts with joy.

Fast from selfishness and be compassionate.

Fast from grudges and be reconciled.

Fast from words; be silent and listen.

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen, Amen.

‘Let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’ (Mark 8: 34) … the Byzantine-style crucifix by Laurence King (1907-1981) in the crypt of Saint Mary le Bow on Cheapside in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 8: 31-38 (NRSVA):

31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’

Simon of Cyrene takes up the Cross and follows Christ … Station 5 in the Stations of the Cross in Saint Mel’s Cathedral, Longford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Liturgical colour: Violet.

The canticle Gloria is omitted in Lent.

Penitential Kyries:

In the wilderness we find your grace:
you love us with an everlasting love.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

There is none but you to uphold our cause;
our sin cries out and our guilt is great.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Heal us, O Lord, and we shall be healed;
Restore us and we shall know your joy.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

The Collect of the Day:

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.

The Lenten Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing that you have made
and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent:
Create and make in us new and contrite hearts
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may receive from you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Introduction to the Peace:

Being justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 5: 1, 2)

Preface:

Through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who was in every way tempted as we are yet did not sin;
by whose grace we are able to overcome all our temptations:

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Creator of heaven and earth,
we thank you for these holy mysteries
given us by our Lord Jesus Christ,
by which we receive your grace
and are assured of your love,
which is through him now and for ever.

Blessing:

Christ give you grace to grow in holiness,
to deny yourselves,
and to take up your cross and follow him:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer distinguishes between cheap grace and costly grace, and reminds us of the ‘Cost of Discipleship’

Hymns:

93, I danced in the morning when the world was begun
599, ‘Take up thy cross’, the Saviour said (CD 34)

‘Take up thy cross’, the Saviour said (Hymn 599) … the East Window in the Church of Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas, Beaumaris on the Isle of Anglesey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

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

‘I danced in the morning when the world was begun’ (Hymn 599) … dancing in the square in front of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and Saint Eulalia, Barcelona, on Easter morning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Following the Stations of the Cross in Lent 29: Millstreet 12: Jesus dies on the cross

Station 12 at Saint John’s Well, Millstreet, Co Cork … Jesus dies on the cross (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

In my meditations and reflections in Lent this year, I am being guided by the Stations of the Cross from three locations. The idea for this series of morning Lenten meditations came from reading about Peter Walker’s new exhibition, ‘Imagining the Crucifixion,’ inspired by the Stations of the Cross, which opened in Lichfield Cathedral a month ago and continues throughout Lent.

Throughout Lent, my meditations each morning are inspired by three sets of Stations of the Cross that I have found either inspiring or unusual. They are the stations in Saint Mel’s Cathedral, Longford, at Saint John’s Well on a mountainside near Millstreet, Co Cork, and in the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield.

In my meditations, I am drawing on portions of the Stabat Mater, the 12th century hymn of the Crucifixion (‘At the cross her station keeping’) attributed to the Franciscan poet Jacopone da Todi. Some prayers are traditional, some are from the Book of Common Prayer, and other meditations and prayers are by Canon Frank Logue and the Revd Victoria Logue of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia.

For these two weeks, I am looking at the 14 Stations of the Cross at Saint John’s Well in a forested area on the slopes of Mushera, outside Millstreet in north Co Cork and close to the Cork/Kerry border.

Saint John’s Well is 8 or 9 km south-east of Millstreet, on the slopes of Mushera, on the Aubane side of the mountain, opposite the entrance to Millstreet Country Park. The Stations date from 1984 and were designed by Liam Cosgrave and Sons, Sculptors, of Blackpool, Cork.

Millstreet 12, Jesus dies on the cross

In the twelfth station by Liam Cosgrave in Millstreet, Christ is abandoned by all but for his Mother and the Beloved Disciple. The dark clouds that we saw above in the previous station have now descended.

The three stakes depicted by Liam Cosgrave and used to keep the cross in place at the base could also be a reminder of the Trinity.

Five years ago, the Cuban artist Erik Ravelo stirred controversy with a work he called as The untouchables. He used six photographs of children crucified, each for a different reason and a clear message,as he sought to reaffirm the right of children to be protected and the need to report abuse they suffer, especially in countries such as Brazil, Syria, Thailand, the US and Japan.

The first image refers to paedophilia in the Vatican, the second to child sexual abuse in tourism in Thailand, the third to the war in Syria, the fourth to the trafficking of organs on the black market, the fifth linking the free availability of weapons in the US to school shooting, and the sixth image linking obesity to the multinational fast food companies. Another version has a panel linking children’s deaths to nuclear disasters.

His work caused controversy, and has been taken down by Facebook from his own page and deleted from several repostings.

But why were people more offended by Erik Ravelo’s work than by the causes of child abuse and child deaths that he pointed to?

Where do you see the innocent Christ being crucified by the sins of others in today’s world?

From Stabat Mater:

Lord Jesus, crucified, have mercy on us!
Let me share with thee His pain,
Who for all our sins was slain,
Who for me in torments died.

Meditation:

Despised. Rejected.
Eloi, Eloi, Lama sabachthani?
My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?
Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.
From top to bottom the veil in the Temple is torn in two.

Prayers:

Lamb that was slain, as you cried out to your Father from the cross we learned how deep was your suffering, how complete was your sense of abandonment. Be present with us when others betray us or forsake us that we may find ourselves in your eyes and not theirs. This we pray in the name of Jesus, our crucified Lord, the King of Glory, the King of Peace. Amen.

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you.
Because by your holy cross You have redeemed the world.

As Jesus hung on the cross, he forgave the soldiers who had crucified him, and prayed for his mother and friends. Jesus wanted all of us to be able to live forever with God, so he gave all he had for us.

Jesus, let me take a few moments now to consider your love for me. Help me thank you for your willingness to go to your death for me. Help me express my love for you!

A prayer before walking to the next station:

Holy God,
Holy and mighty Holy immortal one,
Have mercy on us.

Tomorrow: Station 13: Jesus is taken from the cross.

Yesterday’s reflection

The Crucifixion in the East Window in the Church of Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas, the 14th century parish church in Beaumaris on the island of Anglesey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A May Day walk by an old railway line with swallows, Aristotle and a light sabre

The old railway line and railway station south of Askeaton, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

There is an aphorism that ‘one swallow does not a summer make.’ The saying is based on an observation by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics (Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια):

‘The good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue, or if there be several human excellences or virtues, in conformity with the best and most perfect among them. One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day; similarly, neither can one day or brief time of happiness does not make one blessed and happy’ (Nicomachean Ethics, I.7.1098a).

But May Day is supposed to be the first day of summer, and there was a large cluster of swallows – a dozen or more – swirling and swooping across the fields and roads as I walked out of Askeaton this afternoon, passing the old quarry and the Kingspan factory, walking on south through fields of green, with grazing cattle and horses, as far as the old railway station and the old railway line.

The former railway station building south of Askeaton, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

The detached former railway station building, now in use as a house, was built around 1857. It is a three-bay, single-storey block with a gable-fronted projecting single-bay one-and-half-storey west bay, and a lean-to to the west of the elevation. There is a gabled outbuilding to the west of the building.

There is still an old station platform to the south of the building, and the old railway track is still in position to the south of the platform, a square-profile water tower and a double-height machinery shed to the west of the station building.

This station house was in use on the Limerick to Foynes railway line until 2003, with a resident station master. The building retains its original form and is characteristic of railway stations of the early Victorian period.

Like the old Harcourt Street line in Dublin, this railway line could be renovated with some imagination, and as a suburban railway line from Limerick, like the DART or the Luas in Dublin, it could breathe new life into this part of west Limerick, and to Limerick city too.

Meeting a horse and rider on the way back into Askeaton this afternoon (Photograph: Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Walking back into Askeaton, I basked in the early summer sunshine, enjoying the company of horses and swallows, I recalled past May Days spent in Beaumaris, Portmeirion and Llfair PG in Wales last year, in Madrid in 2009, and in Bucharest in 1991. And I recalled too that today, as well as being May Day and the first day of summer, is also the Feast of Saint Philip and James in the Anglican calendar, although they are celebrated on 3 May in the Calendar of the Roman Catholic Church.

Saint Philip and Saint James appear in the list of the twelve apostles in the first three Gospels but are frequently confused with other early saints who share their names. In Saint John’s Gospel, Saint Philip has a more prominent rôle, being the third of the apostles to be called by Christ and then himself bringing his friend Nathanael to the Lord.

Saint Philip is the spokesman for the other apostles who are questioning the capacity for feeding the 5,000 and, at the Last Supper, enters into a sort of dialogue with Christ that leads to the Farewell Discourses in the Fourth Gospel. Saint James is said to be the son of Alphaeus, and is often known as ‘James the Less’ to distinguish him. He may also be the ‘James the Younger’ who, in Saint Mark’s Gospel, is a witness to the Crucifixion.

They are celebrated on the same day because the church in Rome, where their relics rest, was dedicated on this day in the year 560.

An ancient inscription shows the Basilica of the Twelve Apostles in Rome had an earlier dedication to Philip and James. In Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure (III, ii, 204), a child’s age is given as ‘a year and a quarter old, come Philip and Jacob,’ meaning, ‘a year and a quarter old on the first of next May, the feast of Philip and James.’

There is Pip ’n Jay Church in Bristol, whose official dedication is to these two saints as Saint Philip and Saint Jacob. But this day has also given us the word ‘popinjay’ for a vain or conceited person or ‘fop.’

Yet, despite the cultural legacy they have left us, the Philip and James we remember today are, to a great degree, small-bit players – almost anonymous or forgotten – in the New Testament, and in the Church calendar.

The Western Church commemorates James the Greater on 25 July, James the Brother of the Lord on 23 or 25 October, but James the Less has no day for himself, he shares it with Philip, on 1 May. Philip the Apostle, who has to share this commemoration, is frequently confused with Philip the Deacon (Acts 6: 7; 8: 5-40; 21: 8 ff) – but Philip the Deacon has his own day on 6 June or 11 October. Indeed, apart from sharing a day, Philip and James have also been transferred this year because yesterday was Ascension Day.

The James we remember today is James, the Son of Alphaeus. We know nothing about this James, apart from the fact that Jesus called him to be one of the 12. He is not James, the Brother of the Lord, later Bishop of Jerusalem and the traditional author of the Letter of James. Nor is he James the son of Zebedee, also an apostle and known as James the Greater. He appears on lists of the 12 – usually in the ninth place – but is never mentioned otherwise.

Yet, despite the near-anonymity of James and the weaknesses in Philip, these two became foundation pillars in the Church. They display total human helplessness yet become apostles who bring the Good News into the world. Indeed, from the very beginning, Philip has an oft-forgotten role in bringing people to Christ. Perhaps because he had a Greek name, some Gentile proselytes came and asked him to introduce them to Christ.

We see in James and Philip, ordinary, weak, everyday human men who, nevertheless, became pillars of the Church at its very foundation.

Perhaps because they are often seen as such ordinary, even weak, men among the apostles, I was surprised the week before last to see that in his statue on the West Front of Lichfield Cathedral, Saint James the Less appears to be holding a light sabre.

But no, he has not declared ‘Jedi’ as his religion on the census returns. He is, in fact, holding a book and club, which are his traditional symbols, but the copper handle of the broom has changed in colour with the weather – another reminder that summer is on the way.

Saint James the Less with his ‘light sabre’ on the west façade of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Collect:

Almighty Father,
whom truly to know is eternal life:
teach us to know your Son Jesus Christ
as the way, the truth, and the life;
that we may follow the steps of your holy apostles
Philip and James,
and walk steadfastly in the way that leads to your glory;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.