Saint Peter’s Church, Eaton Square, is ‘one of the most beautiful churches’ in the ‘most expensive place in London’

Saint Peter’s Church is at the east end of Eaton Square, has been described as ‘one of the most beautiful churches in London’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

During my visit to Pimlico and Belgravia last week, I visited three interesting churches in the area: Saint Gabriel’s Church, Warwick Square; Saint Saviour’s Church, Saint George’s Square; and Saint Peter’s Church, Eaton Square. In recent years, I have also visited Saint Michael’s Church, Chester Square.

Saint Peter’s Church is at the east end of Eaton Square, which is, in fact, an oblong about one-third of a mile long and arranged around six private garden squares covering 2.5 ha of Belgravia, close to Mayfair and Knightsbridge.

Eaton Square is part of the Grosvenor Estate and takes its name from Eaton Hall in Cheshire, the principal home of the Dukes of Westminster. Its origins go back to an Act of Parliament in 1826 that allowed Lord Grosvenor – who owned most of the land that now makes up Belgravia and Mayfair – to drain the ‘open and rural space known as the Five Fields and build a new and elegant town connecting London and Chelsea’.

Saint Peter’s Church, Eaton Square, was inspired by the west portico of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis in Athens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Eaton Square was once named as the ‘most expensive place to buy property in Britain’. The residents have included former Prime Ministers Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, actor Vivien Leigh, Austrian statesman Prince Metternich, philanthropist George Peabody and the exiled and deposed former Greek royal family.

James Bond’s fictional home was also in Eaton Square, while real-life residents in the past have included the Bond actor Sean Connery, film star Rex Harrison, Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi.

No 22 was once the childhood home of John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan, who as Lord Lucan who was suspected of murdering his children’s nanny Sandra Rivett in 1974.

Inside Saint Peter’s Church, Eaton Square, rebuilt in 1990-1991 after a fire in 1987 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

If Eaton Square can be described as the ‘most expensive place to buy property in Britain’, then Saint Peter’s Church was once described in The Times ‘as one of the ost beautiful churches in London’ (19 October 1991).

Saint Peter’s is a neoclassical church designed by the architect Henry Hakewill with a hexastyle portico with six Ionic columns and a clock tower, and is a Grade II* listed building.

The architect Henry Hakewill (1771-1830) had a large practice, mostly involving English country houses. He was the architect to Rugby School, and also worked for the Radcliffe trustees in Oxford and the Middle Temple in London. His two Greek Revival buildings of note are Coed Coch (1804), a now-demolished country house in Denbighshire, Wales, and Saint Peter's Church, Eaton Square.

Saint Peter’s was first built in 1824-1827 during the early stages of the development of Eaton Square. This building burnt down, and the church was rebuilt in 1837 according to Hakewill’s drawings by Arthur William Hakewill (1808-1856) and Charles Jearrad. From its founding, Saint Peter’s, Eaton Square, was considered in Pimlico and until at least 1878 was usually recorded as Saint Peter’s, Pimlico.

Saint Peter’s was founded as a district a district church of Saint George’s, Hanover Square, in 1827, and remained so until 1844. It was the parish church of Saint Peter, Pimlico, from 1844 until 1954.

The High Altar and apse in Saint Peter’s Church, Eaton Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Saint Peter’s is built of yellow stock brick and ashlar and stone dressings. It is a basilica-style church with a pedimented west portico, a narthex, tower and cupola, rectangular nave, chancel with small north and south transepts, and flanking chapels.

The hexastyle Ionic portico has six Ionic columns and a plain entablature that are inspired by the west portico of the Erechtheion on the north side of the Acropolis in Athens. Some years earlier, William Inwood (1771-1843) in his design of Saint Pancras New Church (1822) on Euston Road had been inspired by both the Tower of the Winds in Athens, with Ionic-style pillars at the west end, and two sets of caryatids that stand above the north and south entrances to the crypt, modelled by John Charles Felix Rossi (1762-1839).

The portico of Saint Peter’s is set on four steps, surmounted by a pediment. There are pilasters at the rear angles, three tall doorways with moulded architraves, and flat cornices on carved brackets, each with a pair of doors with fielded panels.

The tower is set on a wide stylobate with a tall plinth forming a clock stage, each face with a clock. At the bell stage, a louvred round arched opening is flanked by Ionic half columns with pilasters at the angles. The cupola is set between pedimented blocks at the angles and is surmounted by a gilded metal cross.

The interior was, as so often at the time, a ‘preaching box’, with galleries along three sides and the organ and choir at the west end. The architect James Elmes (1782-1862) described the effect as ‘chaste and simple’.

The original building was a commissioners’ church, receiving a grant from the Church Building Commission towards its cost. The full cost of the building was £22,427, the equivalent to more than £2 million today, with the commission paying £5,556.

Looking towards the west end of Saint Peter’s from the apse and High Altar (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The church was enlarged in 1875, and reordered to designs by Sir Arthur Blomfield (1829-1899), who added a chancel at the east end and north and south transepts and ‘fiercely normanised’ the interior. Internally, Blomfield’s chancel and transepts are in a Romanesque Revival style, but externally they follow with Hakewill’s neoclassical style.

All of the parish of Christ Church, Broadway, and half of that of Saint Andrew’s Church, Ashley Place were merged into Saint Peter’s after they were both damaged beyond repair in the Blitz, with the other half of Saint Andrew’s parish going to Saint Stephen’s Church, Rochester Row.

The crypt with about 400 burials was cleared in 1951 and the remains were reinterred at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. Since 1954, it has been the Parish of Saint Peter, Pimlico, with Christ Church, Westminster. Choristers for the choir were provided by London Choir School until 1958, when the choir school closed.

A statue of Saint Peter in Saint Peter’s Church, Eaton Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Almost 40 years ago, an anti-Catholic arsonist set fire to the east end of the church on 20 October 1987, in the mistaken belief that the building was a Roman Catholic church. Within hours the church was engulfed. By the next day the fire was out but only the Georgian shell of the building remained. It was roofless, with most of its furnishings destroyed. The church needed total rebuilding.

The Braithwaite Partnership of architects was commissioned to completely redesign the church with a new and simpler interior, and to incorporate within the site a vicarage, offices, flats for a curate, verger and music director, a meeting hall, nursery school rooms and a large playroom for the parish youth club.

Work on the new church began at Easter 1990, and the foundation stone of the new sanctuary was laid by the Duchess of Kent on 25 September 1990 and dedicated by Bishop John Klyberg of Fulham. The rebuilding work was completed in 1991, the church reopened on 20 October 1991, the fourth anniversary of the fire, and was reconsecrated by the Bishop of London, David Hope, on 7 May 1992.

The organ in Saint Peter’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Saint Peter’s retains its grand Georgian portico but beyond that the interior is clean, bright and modern. The choir and organ are at the west end, as in the 1827 plan, but the fittings are thoroughly modern. The church is accessible and has disabled-accessible toilets.

The apse behind the altar is decorated entirely in gold mosaic. Around the side of the apse, part of the 1873 sanctuary that survived the fire can be seen, and also a side chapel now used as the vestry office, complete with stained glass.

Saint Peter’s has been described as ‘a serene sanctuary amidst the bustling cityscape … providing solace and spiritual nourishment for both residents and visitors.’ It is a venue for celebrated classical concerts in spring and autumn, and is known as a venue for society weddings. Lord Lucan’s daughter, the barrister Lady Camilla Bingham, and Michael Bloch were married in the church in 1998.

Saint Peter’s stands in the inclusive Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Church of England and serves a diverse community across Belgravia, Victoria, and Pimlico, with services using both the Book of Common Prayer and Common Worship. Father Jonathan Kester has been the Vicar of Saint Peter’s since 2022; the other clergy include Father Carlos Remotti-Breton, assistant curate, and Father Herbert Bennett, honorary associate priest.

The foyer and welcome area in the narthex in Saint Peter’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

• Sunday Services are: 8 am, Holy Communion (Book of Common Prayer); 9:30 am, Family Eucharist; 11 am, Choral Eucharist. A Parish Eucharist at 10:30 am replaces the Family Eucharist and Choral Eucharist on some Sundays. Weekday services are: 8 am, Morning Prayer (except Wednesdays); 5 pm, Evening Prayer; 8 am Wednesdays, the Eucharist; 12.30 pm, Monday to Friday, the Eucharist.

Saint Peter’s is in the inclusive Anglo-Catholic tradition and serves a diverse community in Belgravia, Victoria, and Pimlico (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Some memories from Harold’s Cross ten years after my mother’s death

No 201 Harold’s Cross Road, the birthplace of the Quaker abolitionist and philanthropist Richard Allen (1803–1886), has been restored (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Like many journalists, I was always aware of ‘campaign journalism’. It was a complimentary label when it was applied to journalists with the Sunday Times ‘Insight’ Team, journalists like Paul Foot, John Pilger or Bob Fisk, or many campaign journalists with newspapers such as the Guardian, the Observer and The Irish Times.

There are differences between reporting, analysis, comment, opinion-writing, consciousness raising and campaigning journalism. But when does it spill over into or descend into propaganda and political manipulation?

I suppose I have engaged in a form of campaign journalism and blogging in my support for the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum to their proper home in Athens.

In another way, I have been campaigning, I suppose, in writing about the deterioration of the former home of the Quaker abolitionist and philanthropist Richard Allen (1803-1886) in Harold’s Cross, Dublin.

I had been familiar with this house in my childhood – my mother even sent me ‘for messages’ as a child in the 1960s to Healy’s, the grocery shop that was once attached to the house that later became Westbank Orphanage or the Protestant Girls’ Orphanage.

I had written since 2013 about the sad neglect and decay of this constituent part of the architectural heritage of Harold’s Cross and Dublin 6. So, ten years later, when I visited Harold’s Cross briefly before Christmas, it was a personal pleasure to see the house had been restored carefully.

To my surprise, the heritage contractors PMac, the Harold’s Cross-based masonry, cleaning and maintenance business involved in the restoration work on behalf of Aspect Design, asked my permission to use some of my photographs on their website, illustrating the ‘before’ and ‘after’ state of this Georgian house.

I rarely agree to commercial or business pages using my photographs online. I figure than a business should pay a photographer to do their work, and I should not deprive professional photographers of potential commissions. However, in this case I was so impressed of the work that I immediately said yes. Ten years of ‘campaign blogging’ had borne its fruit.

I suggested that, in return, PMac should make a donation to an appropriate local charity. They willingly agreed, and quickly told me they are organising a coffee morning in the coming months in aid of the Hospice in Harold’s Cross.

There was an added emotional poignancy to this, because it is ten years ago today since my mother, died in the Hospice in Harold’s Cross, on 20 May 2014.

Ellen Comerford (née Murphy) was born in Millstreet, Co Cork, on 10 February 1919 and went to boarding school in Mountrath, Co Laois

Ellen Comerford (née Murphy) was 95 when she died in the Hospice in Harold’s Cross on 20 May 2014. She was born in Millstreet, Co Cork, on 10 February 1919 and went to boarding school in Mountrath, Co Laois, 20 minutes from Roscrea, Co Tipperary, where her Crowley uncles, Cornelius D Crowley (1879-1972) of Roscrea Castle and Jeremiah D Crowley (1883-1968) of Wallstown Castle, Castltownroche, had extensive business interests.

After a short time in Paris immediately before World War II, she became a civil servant in the Department of Education in Dublin. She married my father, Stephen Edward Comerford (1918-2004) in Blackrock, Co Dublin, on 8 September 1945, in the weeks immediately after World II. By then she was living in Booterstown, and her father was living in Australia.

At first, my parents lived in Bray, Co Wicklow, but they later lived in Dublin in Harold’s Cross and then, in later years, in Rathfarnham. I was the fourth of six children, born on Rathfarnham Road.

I understand how life was difficult for her. My eldest brother died on 18 December 1970 when he was only 24, and she was only 51. No mother recovers from the death of a child, no matter what age either of them is at the time.

My father died in Rathfarnham almost 20 years ago, on 27 December 2004, less than two weeks after his 86th birthday. My widowed mother survived him for almost ten years. I had not known her very well in my childhood or for much of my adult life. But I tried to get to know her better in those last 10 years, as she moved into sheltered housing first on Leeson Park and then in Rathgar.

We visited her first marriage home in Bray, her uncle’s former home at Finnstown House, Lucan, which she knew intimately when the Crowley family lived there, we occasionally had lunch together in Rathgar, Bray or Lucan, and at some stage I returned with her to Paris with a brother and a sister.

I don’t think we every properly resolved the difficulties remaining since my childhood, and I had left her home again in my teens. But, I think, today she might be pleased to know about this piece of restoration work in a part of Harold’s Cross she knew well from the 1950s to the 1970s, and to know how this has boosted the work of the Hospice in Harold’s Cross.

Ellen Comerford (née Murphy) died in the Hospice in Harold’s Cross on 20 May 2014

Praying in Ordinary Time with USPG: 19 February 2023

The Transfiguration (see Matthew 17: 1-9) … a window in a parish church in Lucan, Co Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today [19 February 2023] is the Sunday Next Before Lent. In the some parishes, this Sunday is known as Transfiguration Sunday. In the past, this Sunday was known as Quinquagesima, one of those odd-sounding Latin names once used in the Book of Common Prayer for the Sundays in Ordinary Time between Candlemas and Lent: Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Quinquagesima.

These weeks, between the end of Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, are known as Ordinary Time. We are in a time of preparation for Lent, which in turn is a preparation for Holy Week and Easter.

Later today, I hope to be in Tamworth for a lunch celebrating the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Tamworth and District Civic Society. But, before catching the train to Tamworth later this morning, I am taking some time this morning for prayer and reflection.

In these days of Ordinary Time before Ash Wednesday later this week (22 February), I am reflecting in these ways each morning:

1, reflecting on a saint or interesting person in the life of the Church;

2, one of the lectionary readings of the day;

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

For my reflection this morning, I am reading John Keble’s poem, ‘Quinquagesima Sunday,’ recalling the traditional name once used for the Sunday before Lent.

John Keble (1792-1866) … his poems in ‘The Christian Year’ include ‘Quinquagesima Sunday’

John Keble (1792-1866) was an Anglican priest and poet, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement. He was born on Saint Mark’s Day, 25 April 1792, in Fairford, Gloucestershire, where his father, the Revd John Keble, a former Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was Vicar of Coln St Aldwyn’s.

John Keble studied at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and in 1810, at the age of 18, he graduated with a double first in classics and mathematics. In 1811, He became a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, in 1811 and was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Oxford on Trinity Sunday 1815, and priest in 1816.

He published The Christian Year in 1827. He wrote the poems to restore a deep feeling for the Church Year among Anglicans, and it received such great acclaim that its became the most popular volume of verse in the 19th century. One of the most popular poems in The Christian Year is the well-known hymn, ‘New every morning.’

The Christian Year went into 95 editions in his lifetime, and by the time the copyright expired in 1873, over 375,000 copies had been sold in Britain and 158 editions had been published.

The success of The Christian Year led to Keble being appointed Professor of Poetry in Oxford University (1831-1841).

His ‘Assize Sermon’ in Saint Mary’s University Church in 1833 was the spark that ignited the Oxford Movement. In 1835 he was appointed Vicar of Hursley, Hampshire, where he settled down to family life and remained for the rest of his life as a parish priest at All Saints’ Church.

He edited an edition of Richard Hooker’s works in 1836. The most important of his prose writings, however, was his treatise on Eucharistic Adoration.

John Keble died on 29 March 1866 at the age of 74. Within three years of his death, Keble College was established at Oxford ‘to give an education in strict fidelity to the Church of England.’

‘What but the gentle rainbow’s gleam, / Soothing the wearied sight, / That cannot bear the solar beam, / With soft undazzling light?’ (John Keble) … a rainbow in Callan, Co Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Quinquagesima Sunday by John Keble:

Sweet Dove! the softest, steadiest plume,
In all the sunbright sky,
Brightening in ever-changeful bloom
As breezes change on high; –

Sweet Leaf! the pledge of peace and mirth,
“Long sought, and lately won,”
Blessed increase of reviving Earth,
When first it felt the Sun; –

Sweet Rainbow! pride of summer days,
High set at Heaven’s command,
Though into drear and dusky haze
Thou melt on either hand; –

Dear tokens of a pardoning God,
We hail ye, one and all,
As when our fathers walked abroad,
Freed from their twelvemonth’s thrall.
How joyful from the imprisoning ark
On the green earth they spring!
Not blither, after showers, the lark
Mounts up with glistening wing.

So home-bound sailors spring to shore,
Two oceans safely past;
So happy souls, when life is o’er,
Plunge in this empyreal vast.

What wins their first and fondest gaze
In all the blissful field,
And keeps it through a thousand days?
Love face to face revealed:

Love imaged in that cordial look
Our Lord in Eden bends
On souls that sin and earth forsook
In time to die His friends.

And what most welcome and serene
Dawns on the Patriarch’s eye,
In all the emerging hills so green,
In all the brightening sky?

What but the gentle rainbow’s gleam,
Soothing the wearied sight,
That cannot bear the solar beam,
With soft undazzling light?

Lord, if our fathers turned to Thee
With such adoring gaze,
Wondering frail man Thy light should see
Without Thy scorching blaze;

Where is our love, and where our hearts,
We who have seen Thy Son,
Have tried Thy Spirit’s winning arts,
And yet we are not won?

The Son of God in radiance beamed
Too bright for us to scan,
But we may face the rays that streamed
From the mild Son of Man.

There, parted into rainbow hues,
In sweet harmonious strife
We see celestial love diffuse
Its light o’er Jesus’ life.

God, by His bow, vouchsafes to write
This truth in Heaven above:
As every lovely hue is Light,
So every grace is Love.

The Transfiguration (see Matthew 17: 1-9) … a window in Saint Nicholas Church, Galway (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 17: 1-9 (NRSVA):

1 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. 2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. 3 Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. 4 Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ 5 While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ 6 When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. 7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’ 8 And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, ‘Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’

‘The Son of God in radiance beamed / Too bright for us to scan, / But we may face the rays that streamed / From the mild Son of Man’ (John Keble) … an icon of the Transfiguration in the church in Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

USPG Prayer Diary:

The theme in the USPG Prayer Diary this week is ‘Social Justice in Sierra Leone.’

The Anglican Diocese of Freetown and the North in Sierra Leone joins with its neighbours around the world to mark World Day of Social Justice. Around the globe, millions of people are prohibited from living a fair life. In Sierra Leone, a country that has seen civil war, many of its people are without homes, jobs, healthcare, nutrition and more. It must be the responsibility of the privileged to ensure that a just world is created where social justice is a norm for all. As God’s word teaches us, social justice is mandatory. We are called to love our neighbour as ourselves. (Matthew 22: 39) This means eliminating poverty and illiteracy, and any form of discrimination that violates human rights and prevents human flourishing.

The Church in Sierra Leone prays that its government and people will follow the teachings of the Bible and ‘give justice to the weak and the fatherless’ and ‘maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute’. (Psalm 82: 3) Its Livelihoods Recovery, Youth and Governance programme for young people in agriculture, aquaculture and food processing, sponsored by USPG, is underpinned by its determination to pursue justice for all. The Church prays that, being made in the image and likeness of God, Sierra Leoneans will learn to treat each other with love, that they will have equal access to justice and all will be able to share in the country’s resources.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 19 February, the Sunday next before Lent) invites us to pray in these words:

God of Justice,
let justice roll down like water
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream,
in the name of Jesus,
our guide and our peace.

Collect:

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.

Post Communion:

Holy God,
we see your glory in the face of Jesus Christ:
may we who are partakers at his table
reflect his life in word and deed,
that all the world may know his power to change and save.
This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.

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

Praying with USPG and the hymns of Vaughan Williams: Saturday 6 August 2022

The Transfiguration in an icon in the parish church in the hill-side village of Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose music is celebrated throughout this year’s Proms season.

In my prayer diary for these weeks I am reflecting in these ways:

1, One of the readings for the morning;

2, Reflecting on a hymn or another piece of music by Vaughan Williams, often drawing, admittedly, on previous postings on the composer;

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

The Transfiguration in a poster from the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge

Today marks the 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. As President of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), I have recorded a message for Irish CND’s Hiroshima Day commemoration in Merrion Square Day. Later in the evening, I hope to attend the Hiroshima Commemorations at the Japanese Peace Pagoda by Willen Lake in Milton Keynes.

In the Church calendar, today (6 August) traditionally marks the Feast of the Transfiguration.

The Gospel reading for the Feast of the Transfiguration today is:

Luke 9: 28-36 (NRSVA):

28 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 30 Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. 31 They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32 Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33 Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’—not knowing what he said. 34 While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. 35 Then from the cloud came a voice that said, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!’ 36 When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen.

The Monastery of the Transfiguration or Great Meteoron in Meteora, northern Greece (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s reflection: ‘Jerusalem, thou City blest’

Ralph Vaughan Williams was the composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores, a collector of English folk music and song. With Percy Dearmer, he co-edited the English Hymnal, in which he included many folk song arrangements as hymn tunes, and several of his own original compositions.

This morning [6 August 2022], I have chosen the hymn ‘Jerusalem, thou City blest,’ which is set to the tune ‘Newbury’ in the New English Hymnal (No 228).

Yesterday, I was reflecting on the hymn, ‘There is no moment of my life,’ by the late Father William Brian Foley (1919-2000), which is set to this tune by Vaughan Williams in the Irish Church Hymnal (No 19). But he first harmonised ‘Newbury’ for the English Hymnal in 1906, and set it to ‘The Maker of the sun and moon’ by Laurence Housman (1865-1959).

This tune is one of the many folk melodies arranged by Vaughan Williams. He found it in a collection published by Miss MG Arkwright in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society. There it was used for a Christmas carol, ‘There’s six good days set in a week,’ also known as the ‘Hampshire Mummers’ Carol.’

‘Jerusalem, thou City blest’ is similar to a hymn with the same name written by the Revd Edward Caswall (1814-1878), but this hymn is attributed to the Editors of the New English Hymnal, where it first appears.

The New English Hymnal, published in 1986 by the Canterbury Press, is the successor to the 1906 English Hymnal. Its general editor was the then chairman of the English Hymnal Company, George Timms, and the musical editor was Anthony Caesar, assisted by Arthur Hutchings, Christopher Dearnley and Michael Fleming.

The English Hymnal (1906) was edited by Percy Dearmer and Vaughan Williams, and was seen as the musical companion to Dearmer’s practical guide to liturgy, The Parson’s Handbook.

‘The music is intended to be essentially congregational in character …’ Vaughan Williams said in the opening words of his preface. The high quality of the music is due largely to his work as musical editor. The standard of the arrangements and original compositions made it one of the most influential hymnals of the last century. The hymnal included the first printing of several arrangements and hymn settings by Vaughan Williams.

Today’s hymn is particularly recommended for holy days, and is suitable for the Feast of the Transfiguration, apart from verse 6, which is suitable for a saint’s day.

Jerusalem, thou City blest,
Fair home of God’s elect!
No sun, in all his radiance bright,
Thy glory could reflect.

In thee no sickness may be seen,
No hurt, no ache, no sore;
In thee there us no dreads of death,
But life for evermore.

The blessed saints, who’ve run the race,
With glory there are crowned;
No tongue can tell, nor heart conceive
What joys in thee they’ve found.

God is their sun, and Christ their light,
They see him face to face;
The Spirit’s perfect bond of love
Doth every heart embrace.

O happy ones, in heaven who dwell,
Pour forth for us your prayer,
That God our Father through his Son,
May bring us with you there.

And praise and honour be to him
Whom earth and heaven obey,
For that blest saint whose festival
Doth glorify this day.

The Transfiguration depicted in a fresco in the Analipsi Church (Resurrection) in Georgioupoli, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayer:

The Collect:

Father in heaven,
whose Son Jesus Christ was wonderfully transfigured
before chosen witnesses upon the holy mountain,
and spoke of the exodus he would accomplish at Jerusalem:
give us strength so to hear his voice and bear our cross
that in the world to come we may see him as he is;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

At the annual conference of the USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) in High Leigh last week, we were updated on the work of USPG’s partners in Ukraine, Russia and with USPG’s partners with Ukrainian refugees. The theme in the USPG prayer diary this week has been ‘Refugee Support in Poland,’ and was introduced by the Revd David Brown, Chaplain of the Anglican Church in Poland.

Saturday 6 August 2022 (The Transfiguration of Our Lord):

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

Today we celebrate the completely human, completely divine nature of Jesus. We give thanks that He came down to be with us, perfection in our midst.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

The Transfiguration depicted in a stained-glass window in a church in Lucan, Co Dublin (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

How does God see us? And how do we see God?

The Transfiguration depicted in a stained-glass window in the Collegiate Church of Saint Nicholas, Galway (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Sunday 14 February 2021,

The Sunday before Lent, Transfiguration Sunday

10 a.m.: The Parish Eucharist

The Readings: II Kings 2: 1-12; Psalm 50: 1-6; Mark 9: 2-9.

The Transfiguration depicted in a stained-glass window in a church in Lucan, Co Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

The two Sundays before Lent have special themes outside the cycle of readings in Ordinary Time. Last Sunday, the Second Sunday before Lent focusses on Creation, while the Sunday before Lent is Transfiguration Sunday.

The Transfiguration is described in the three Synoptic Gospels (see Matthew 17: 1-9; Mark 9: 2-8; Luke 9: 28-36), and all three accounts are very similar in wording.

Christ is the focus of the Transfiguration, but who are the other principle characters in this story?

This is an encounter with God as the Trinity; it is a reminder with the presence of Moses and Elijah that Christ is the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets; it is a meeting of past, present and future; and it is a reminder of how frail is our humanity in the responses of the three Disciples present, Peter, James and John.

The Transfiguration is a reminder that God has created us in God’s image and likeness, that in Christ’s Incarnation, God took on our image and likeness, and that now we are called once again to take on the image and likeness of God.

In a lecture in Cambridge ten years ago [2011], I heard Metropolitan Kallistos [Ware], the pre-eminent Orthodox theologian in England, speak of the Transfiguration as a disclosure not only of what God is but of what we are. It reminds us of our beginning, but also reminds us of the possibilities and the potentials of what it is to become like God once again.

But is the response of the disciples to the Transfiguration one that we should imitate or emulate?

As they hear the voice of God, they fall down in terror, they are overcome by fear, they are made speechless.

They are immobilised and when they think of acting, look at what they want to do: they want to put up three booths, or tents, or dwelling places, in which they can keep Jesus and Moses and Elijah. It is as if, frightened of the new, they want to fall back on the old certainties.

It is as if they want to contain God, to capture God, to keep God in a place where they can be assured of the old certainties, to turn God into a god that they can contain, capture and control. They want to put God in a box, to keep God in a box.

And, so often, instead of wanting to be in the image and likeness of God, people want God to be in our image and likeness, doing our bidding rather than listening to what God wants of us.

Seeking to capture God, to make God a captive and to control God, are strong religious instincts throughout history. In the 20th century, Hitler used the German Churches to control the people of Germany. In more recent years, the simple faith of many American people has been hijacked to support extreme politics in a land that once prided itself on the separation of state and religion.

This is what Professor Rachel S Mikva of Chicago Theological Seminary describes as ‘dangerous religious ideas’ (Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Deep Roots of Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Penguin, 2020).

In a recent ‘Opinion’ column for USA Today, she argues that ‘Religion is a dangerous business.’ In the wake of the Capitol insurrection in Washington last month, she tries to go beyond the revulsion all of us must feel when white Christian nationalism turns violent, and she draws attention to the ‘substantial number of Christians who plan to take the country for Jesus another way.’

The Christian right is ‘distorting the very meaning of religious freedom,’ she writes. There is the obvious danger we have all seen on news channels in the past month or two, with extremists who call themselves Christians ‘ready to bring on the apocalypse.’

But she warns of ‘a more resilient threat’ posed by people who claim the mantle of being Christians and who are ‘embedded throughout the governing institutions in the US – courts, military, legislatures, agencies and the police.’ In her words, they pose a real threat ‘to religious pluralism in the United States.’

She argues cogently for the need for ‘consciousness of the vital self-critical dimensions of faith,’ and says: ‘Whatever one’s spiritual life stance, we are choosing in every moment whether its power will be wielded for harm or for blessing.’

Power for harm; or power for blessing.

Do we want to keep God in a box as a power for harm; or do we really want to see God being God, and empowering us to be a power for blessing in the world?

I see this as the first great challenge posed by the Transfiguration.

And the second is like it: to see humanity as Christ in the Transfiguration would see us and would have us see each other.

Do I, so often, put people in a box in a way that denies they are made in the image and likeness of God? That they are called to become, once again, like God in Christ … what the Orthodox call ‘deification’ …?

Every time I dismiss someone because of their social background, where they were born, their gender, sexuality, ethnicity or parentage, I am making these differences more important than the way God sees them: made in God’s image and likeness, and holding, embodying the light of God in Christ.

Because those characteristics, those traits, are not self-chosen; they come at birth, we do not ask for them, you might say they are God-given. For indeed, God sees us in God’s own image and likeness, God sees in each one of us the potential to reflect the light of Christ in the Transfiguration.

Let’s not box God in: Let God be God, and let’s stop trying to control him by using him to our political and social advantage.

Let’s stop categorising people so we marginalise them instead of seeing them in God’s image and likeness.

For, when we love God and love others, we see the light of God in them and, hopefully, they see the light of God in us.

When she was the guest chaplain in the House of Representatives in 1995, Rabbi Rachel Mikva included these thoughts in her prayers:

However passionately we may cling to our vision of truth,
we must never fail to recognise your image, God,
reflected in the face of the other …

Ultimately, we stand before you,
naked of power or possessions,
seeking only to understand your will
and do it with a whole heart …

God, we pray that our words and our deeds
may be for Your sake,
bringing healing to our world
and wholeness to all those whose lives we touch.

Amen. אָמֵן׃

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

The Transfiguration in an icon in the parish church in the hill-side village of Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 9: 2-9 (NRSVA):

2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5 Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ 6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ 8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

The Transfiguration depicted in a fresco in the Analipsi Church (Resurrection) in Georgioupoli, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Liturgical Colour: White (Transfiguration Sunday)

Penitential Kyries:

Your unfailing kindness, O Lord, is in the heavens,
and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

Your righteousness is like the strong mountains,
and your justice as the great deep.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

For with you is the well of life:
and in your light shall we see light.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

The Collect of the Day:

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 and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

A Collect appropriate for Saint Valentine’s Day:

Lord, you have taught us
that all our doings without love are nothing worth:
Send your Holy Spirit
and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love,
the true bond of peace and of all virtues,
without which whoever lives is counted dead before you.
Grant this for your only Son Jesus Christ’s sake.
(Book of Common Prayer, p 141).

Introduction to the Peace:

Christ will transfigure our human body
and give it a form like that of his own glorious body.
We are the Body of Christ. We share his peace.
(cf Philippians 3: 21, 1 Corinthians 11: 27, Romans 5: 1)

Preface:

Through Jesus Christ our Lord,
whose divine glory shone forth upon the holy mountain
before chosen witnesses of his majesty;
when your own voice from heaven
proclaimed him your beloved Son:

Post Communion Prayer:

Holy God
we see your glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
May we who are partakers at his table
reflect his life in word and deed,
that all the world may know
his power to change and save.
This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.

A Concluding Prayer on Saint Valentine’s Day:

Help us to share in Christ’s ministry
of love and service to one another;
through the same Jesus Christ our Lord,
who in the unity of the Holy Spirit
is one with you for ever. Amen.
(Book of Common Prayer, p 141).

Blessing:

The God of all grace,
who called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus,
establish, strengthen and settle you in the faith:

The Transfiguration in a poster from the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge

Hymns:

325, Be still, for the presence of the Lord, the Holy One, is here (CD 20)
643, Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart

The Monastery of the Transfiguration or Great Meteoron in Meteora, northern Greece (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

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

A Comerford family that moved from Portarlington to Kilmainham

Saint Michael’s Church, Portarlington, built in 1839-1842 … nine Comerford children were baptised in Portarlington between 1857 and 1874 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

I am currently continuing research into a branch of the Comerford family that originated in Portarlington, Co Laois, and that later lived in the Kilmainham and Inchicore areas of Dublin. I plan eventually to migrate this research over to my Comerford family genealogical site after I have found out more about this branch of the family.

Edward Comerford, metal caster and iron moulder, of Portarlington, married Mary Byrne. They were the parents of at least nine children:

1, Mary, baptised Portarlington, April 1857.
2, Edward Comerford (1858-1938), baptised Portarlington 1858, of whom next.
3, Thomas Comerford, baptised Portarlington, September 1860.
4, Christopher Comerford, baptised Portarlington December 1862.
5, Patrick Comerford, born March 1865, baptised Portarlington, April 1865.
6, Catherine, born 21 August 1867, baptised Portarlington, September 1867.
7, Joseph Comerford (1869- ), born 23 October 1869, baptised Portarlington, of whom after his brother Edward.
8, Francis Comerford, baptised April 1872.
9, Anne, baptised Portarlington May 1874.

Mary Conway married Edward Comerford in Saint James’s Church, Dublin, in 1880

The first-named son:

Edward Comerford (1858-1938), iron moulder, Great Southern and Western Railways, Inchicore, Dublin. Born Portarlington, November 1858. Living at 35 Kilmainham (1880), Richmond Road, Kilmainham (1884), 2 Saint Mary’s Terrace, Inchicore (1886-1888), 4 Woodfield Cottages, Inchicore (1890), 31 Phoenix Street, Kilmainham (1892), 25 Phoenix Street (1894-1898), 19 Abercorn Terrace, Dublin (1900-1911). He married Mary Conway, daughter of John Conway, smith, and his wife Mary of 34 Kilmainham, on 17 September 1880, in Saint James’s Church, Dublin (witnesses, James McDonald, Margaret Conway).

Edward Comerford died on 26 May 1938 at Our Lady’s Hospice, Dublin; his widow Mary died on 11 March 1942 at 3 Wharton Terrace, Harold’s Cross; they are buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.

They were the parents of at least 13 children:

1, Margaret (1883-1883), born at 3 Saint James’s Place, Inchicore, 3 January 1883, died 5 January 1883.
2, Ellen Christina (1884-1957), born Richmond Road, Kilmainham, 17 January 1884; ‘tailoress.’ She married on 12 January 1910 Richard Cullen (1875-1947), bookbinder, of 10 Turvey Avenue, Kilmainham, in Goldenbridge Church, Dublin (witnesses Daniel Joseph O’Neill, Catherine Comerford). They lived at 3 Tyrconnell Street. Richard died 10 November 1947; Ellen died 14 March 1957. They are buried in Old Lucan Cemetery.
3, Catherine (‘Kitty’), born at 2 Saint Mary’s Terrace, Inchicore, 11 April 1886; she married twice.
4, Elizabeth (‘Lily’), born at 2 Saint Mary’s Terrace, Inchicore, 1 June 1888, married on 23 November 1910 Henry Baldwin, fitter, of 19 Abercorn Terrace, son of John Baldwin, fish merchant, in Saint James’s Church (witnesses John Comerford, Kathleen Gallagher). The family lived in Santry. They were the parents of nine children, including two who died young: Ned, aged 3, and Margaret (‘Moggy’), as well as: Cissie (Mary), unmarried; Charlotte (‘Lottie’), married Jimmy Devlin; Kitty (lived in Oldham), married Joe Thornton; Lily (lived in Leyland), married Mick Kane; and Doreen, married Patrick O’Malley.
5, John (‘Johnny’) Joseph Comerford, born 4 Woodfield Cottages, Inchicore, 16 April 1890; he later lived in Drumcondra.
6, Edward (‘Eddie’) Comerford, born 31 Phoenix Street, Kilmainham, 5 April 1892. He married Maggie Clarke, and lived at 19 Abercorn Terrace. He died in the 1970s. They had no children.
7, Anne (1894-1895), born 25 Phoenix Street, 10 May 1894, died 26 August 1895, buried Kilmainham.
8, Patrick (‘Paddy’) James Comerford (1896-1966). He was born 14 March 1896, 25 Phoenix Street, Kilmainham; he married Josephine Reilly (born 1896) and they lived in Mount Brown, Kilmainham, Dublin. He died on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1966, and is buried in Bluebell Cemetery. Their children include two daughters: Rosaleen, who died in 1997; and Anne.
9, Jeanette Frances (1898-1900), born 27 February 1898, 25 Phoenix Street; died 27 June 1900, 19 Abercorn Terrace; buried in Glasnevin.
10, Margaret Anne (1900-1909), born 18 March 1900, died 25 April 1909, 19 Abercorn Terrace; buried in Glasnevin.
11, Michael (‘Mick’) Thomas Comerford, born 8 March 1902, 19 Abercorn Terrace.
12, William (‘Bill’) Laurence Comerford, born 2 February 1904, 19 Abercorn Terrace.
13, Alfred (‘Alfie’) Bernard Comerford (1906-1941), ‘machinist’, born 25 April 1906, 19 Abercorn Terrace, died 10 September 1941, buried Bluebell Cemetery.

Ellen Christina Comerford and Richard Cullen were married in 1910

One of Edward Comerford's younger brothers was:

Joseph Comerford (1869- ). He was born on 23 October 1869, and baptised in Portarlington. He moved to Dublin and married Margaret Murray, daughter of John Murray, a labourer, on 22 June 1896 in Saint Audeon’s Church, Dublin. They lived at 12 Thomas Davis Street, Dublin. Their children included:

Joseph Patrick Comerford (1901- ), who was born at 12 Thomas Davis Street on 7 December 1901. He took part in the Easter Rising in 1916. He married Mary Morrissey, machinist, daughter of Patrick Morrissey of 39 South Earl Street, were married in Saint Catherine’s Church, Dublin, on 2 June 1926 (witnesses: Daniel Morrissey and Margaret Comerford). Their children included:

1, Joe Comerford (deceased), a taxi driver.
2, Madge, a seamstress who married Tony Clabby. She died at the age of 46 and was the mother of five children, including the singer Imelda Mary Higham (born Imelda Mary Clabby 10 July 1974), professionally known as Imelda May

Joseph Comerford and Mary (née Morrissey) … grandparents of the singer Imelda May

Last updated: 26 October 2020

Transfiguration can and does occur ‘just around the corner,’ in the midst of … imperfection

The Transfiguration ... a stained-glass window in the Collegiate Church of Saint Nicholas, Galway (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Sunday 23 February 2020, The Sunday before Lent

11.30 a.m.: Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, Co Limerick, The Parish Eucharist (Holy Communion 2)

The Readings: Exodus 24: 12-18; Psalm 2 or 99; II Peter 1: 16-21; Matthew 17: 1-9.

The Transfiguration … a window in a parish church in Lucan, Co Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

This morning’s Gospel reading challenges us to hear God’s word, to see God as God would us to see God, and to see ourselves as God sees us.

Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a high mountain, by themselves. What were they expecting?

They have been with Christ for some time, but have they had an encounter yet with the Living God?

What did they think God was like?

Whatever they thought of God before this, it certainly was not an encounter or an experience they were expecting.

They have an encounter with the Living God, who within God’s own single existence is also community: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

God the Father is heard speaking, ‘This is my Son, the beloved.’

God the Holy Spirit is experienced as the cloud hovers the whole scene.

God the Son is revealed to be the living Christ in a way that they had never seen him before.

What do you think God looks like?

God is not some, monolithic, totem-like idol, who needs sacrifices and seeks vengeance, who makes crushing demands on people.

Instead, God is community.

This is also the God of Creation.

Think of how we heard last week as we looked at the Creation story, how the Spirit of God swept across the creation like the wind.

This is the God of promises and covenants.

Think of how the Ten Commandments are given to Moses on the top of Mount Sinai, how Elijah has an encounter with the God of promises in the cleft in the mountainside.

This is the God who fulfils all the promises of the covenant: here is Moses on one side.

This is the God who fulfils all the promises of the prophets: here is Elijah on the other side.

This is a God who calls us to action.

Peter, James and John fall to the ground, full of fear, immobilised.

But Christ calls them back to reality: ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’

The reality is, of course, that if Jesus is seen by Peter, James and John as they should really see them, then God sees them as they really are too.

How often do see ourselves as we really are?

When you look in the mirror, do you see yourself as you really are?

None of us knows – not even the most self-aware among us truly knows – how others see us.

I’m too fat … I’m too thin … I’m too short … I’m too lanky … they all think I’m too young, too immature, too old, beyond it.

And sometimes we just allow people to project onto us, and we start living according to how we think they think of me.

What do you see in the mirror?

Do you really see yourself?

Or do you see the image others project onto you?

Yet, one of the great psychological insights in last week’s Creation story is that we are, each one of us is, made in God’s image and likeness.

Not just a replica … or a photocopy … a true image and likeness.

When you look in the mirror in the morning, do you see God’s image and likeness.

What we think others think we are like causes so many problems: we eat too little or eat too much in response; we stop exercising or take too much exercise so that we have no time for the people who matter; we end up with eating disorders and anxiety problems and even depressed.

It’s not because we are self-obsessed. Quite often, it’s simply we just want to be like everyone else. We want to be accepted, we want to be loved, we want to be normal … whatever normal might mean.

We want others to see us as ‘normal.’

But when God looks at you, God is looking in the mirror. God is seeing God’s own image and likeness.

When these three disciples see the threefold God, they are frightened. When they hear God’s voice, are covered in the cloud and see the Transfigured Jesus, they are immobilised, frightened into being unable to move.

But if God the Father can say, ‘This is my Son, the beloved; with him I am well pleased,’ then, because of the Creation, because of Christ, can also look at you and me and say, ‘This is my Son, the beloved; with him I am well pleased … This is my daughter, the beloved; with her I am well pleased.’

At a lecture in Cambridge some years ago [2011], I heard Metropolitan Kallistos [Ware], the pre-eminent Orthodox theologian in England, speak of the Transfiguration as a disclosure not only of what God is but of what we are. The Transfiguration looks back to the beginning, but also looks forward to the end, to the final glory of Christ’s second coming, because through the incarnation Christ raises our human nature to a new level, opens new possibilities.

The Incarnation is a new beginning for us as the human race, and in the Transfiguration we see not only our human nature at the beginning, but as it can be in and through Christ at the end, he told us.

But with the Transfiguration comes the invitation to bear the cross with Christ. Peter, James and John are with Christ on Mount Tabor, and they are with him in Gethsemane. We must understand the Passion of Christ and the Transfiguration in the light of each other, not as two separate mysteries, but aspects of the one single mystery. Mount Tabor and Mount Calvary go together; and glory and suffering go together.

If we are to become part of the Transfiguration, we cannot leave our cross behind. If we are to bring the secular, fallen world into the glory of Christ, that has to be through self-emptying (κένωσις, kenosis), cross-bearing and suffering. There is no answer to secularism that does not take account of the Cross, as well as taking account of the Transfiguration and the Resurrection.

Metropolitan Kalistos reminded us of the story from Leo Tolstoy, Three Questions. The central figure is set a task of answering three questions:

What is the most important time?

The most important time is now, the past is gone, and the future does not exist yet.

Who is the most important person?

The person who is with you at this very instant.

What is the most important task?

‘This task is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!’

The light that shone from Christ on the mountaintop is not a physical and created light, but an eternal and uncreated light, a divine light, the light of the Godhead, the light of the Holy Trinity.

The experience on Mount Tabor confirms Saint Peter’s confession of faith which reveals Christ as the Son of the Living God. Yet Christ remains fully human as ever he was, as fully human as you or me, and his humanity is not abolished. But the Godhead shines through his body and from it.

In Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead. But at other points in his life, the glory is hidden beneath the veil of his flesh. What we see in Christ on Mount Tabor is human nature, our human nature, taken up into God and filled with the light of God. ‘So, this should be our attitude to the secular world,’ Metropolitan Kallistos said.

Or, as the Revd Dr Kenneth Leech (1939-2015), the Anglican ‘slum priest’ in the East End of London, once said: ‘Transfiguration can and does occur “just around the corner,” occurs in the midst of perplexity, imperfection, and disastrous misunderstanding.’

Metropolitan Kallistos spoke that day of the Transfiguration as a disclosure not only of what God is but of what we are. The Transfiguration looks back to the beginning, but also looks forward to the end, opening new possibilities.

The Transfiguration shows us what we can be in and through Christ, he told us.

In secular life, there is a temptation to accept our human nature as it is now. But the Transfiguration of Christ offers the opportunity to look at ourselves not only as we are now, but to take stock of what happened in the past that made us so, and to grasp the promise of what we can be in the future.

The Transfiguration reminds us of how God sees us in God’s own image and likeness, sees us for who we were, who we are and who we are going to be, no matter how others see us, no matter how others dismiss us.

The Transfiguration is a challenge to remember always that we are made in the image and likeness of God. And, no matter what others say about you, how others judge you, how others gossip or talk about you, how others treat you, God sees your potential, God sees in you God’s own image and likeness, God knows you are beautiful inside and loves you, loves you for ever, as though you are God’s only child. You are his beloved child in whom he is well pleased.

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

The Transfiguration … an icon in the parish church in Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 17: 1-9:

1 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. 2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. 3 Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. 4 Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ 5 While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ 6 When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. 7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’ 8 And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, ‘Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’

The Transfiguration … an icon by Adrienne Lord in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Liturgical Colour: White.

Penitential Kyries:

Your unfailing kindness, O Lord, is in the heavens,
and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

Your righteousness is like the strong mountains,
and your justice as the great deep.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

For with you is the well of life:
and in your light shall we see light.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

The Collect of the Day:

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 and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Introduction to the Peace:

Christ will transfigure our human body
and give it a form like that of his own glorious body.
We are the Body of Christ. We share his peace.

(cf Philippians 3: 21, 1 Corinthians 11: 27, Romans 5: 1)

Preface:

Through Jesus Christ our Lord,
whose divine glory shone forth upon the holy mountain
before chosen witnesses of his majesty;
when your own voice from heaven
proclaimed him your beloved Son:

The Post Communion Prayer:

Holy God
we see your glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
May we who are partakers at his table
reflect his life in word and deed,
that all the world may know
his power to change and save.
This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Blessing:

The God of all grace,
who called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus,
establish, strengthen and settle you in the faith:

Hymns:

52, Christ whose glory fills the skies (CD 4)
325, Be still, for the presence of the Lord (CD 20)
634, Love divine, all loves excelling (CD 36)

The Transfiguration … a fresco in the Church of the Four Martyrs in Rethymnon, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

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

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

The Transfiguration reminds us that God sees us in God’s own image and likeness

The Transfiguration … a window in a parish church in Lucan, Co Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Sunday 23 February 2020, The Sunday before Lent

9.30 a.m.: Castletown Church, Co Limerick, Morning Prayer 2

The Readings: Exodus 24: 12-18; Psalm 2 or 99; II Peter 1: 16-21; Matthew 17: 1-9.

The Transfiguration … a stained-glass window in the Collegiate Church of Saint Nicholas, Galway (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

This morning’s Gospel reading challenges us to hear God’s word, to see God as God would us to see God, and to see ourselves as God sees us.

Jesus takes Peter, James and John up a high mountain, by themselves. What were they expecting?

They have been with Christ for some time, but have they had an encounter yet with the Living God?

What did they think God was like?

Whatever they thought of God before this, it certainly was not an encounter or an experience they were expecting.

They have an encounter with the Living God, who within God’s own single existence is also community: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

God the Father is heard speaking, ‘This is my Son, the beloved.’

God the Holy Spirit is experienced as the cloud hovers the whole scene.

God the Son is revealed to be the living Christ in a way that they had never seen him before.

What do you think God looks like?

God is not some, monolithic, totem-like idol, who needs sacrifices and seeks vengeance, who makes crushing demands on people.

Instead, God is community.

This is also the God of Creation.

Think of how we heard last week as we looked at the Creation story, how the Spirit of God swept across the creation like the wind.

This is the God of promises and covenants.

Think of how the Ten Commandments are given to Moses on the top of Mount Sinai, how Elijah has an encounter with the God of promises in the cleft in the mountainside.

This is the God who fulfils all the promises of the covenant: here is Moses on one side.

This is the God who fulfils all the promises of the prophets: here is Elijah on the other side.

This is a God who calls us to action.

Peter, James and John fall to the ground, full of fear, immobilised.

But Christ calls them back to reality: ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’

The reality is, of course, that if Jesus is seen by Peter, James and John as they should really see them, then God sees them as they really are too.

How often do see ourselves as we really are?

When you look in the mirror, do you see yourself as you really are?

None of us knows – not even the most self-aware among us truly knows – how others see us.

I’m too fat … I’m too thin … I’m too short … I’m too lanky … they all think I’m too young, too immature, too old, beyond it.

And sometimes we just allow people to project onto us, and we start living according to how we think they think of me.

What do you see in the mirror?

Do you really see yourself?

Or do you see the image others project onto you?

Yet, one of the great psychological insights in last week’s Creation story is that we are, each one of us is, made in God’s image and likeness.

Not just a replica … or a photocopy … a true image and likeness.

When you look in the mirror in the morning, do you see God’s image and likeness.

What we think others think we are like causes so many problems: we eat too little or eat too much in response; we stop exercising or take too much exercise so that we have no time for the people who matter; we end up with eating disorders and anxiety problems and even depressed.

It’s not because we are self-obsessed. Quite often, it’s simply we just want to be like everyone else. We want to be accepted, we want to be loved, we want to be normal … whatever normal might mean.

We want others to see us as ‘normal.’

But when God looks at you, God is looking in the mirror. God is seeing God’s own image and likeness.

When these three disciples see the threefold God, they are frightened. When they hear God’s voice, are covered in the cloud and see the Transfigured Jesus, they are immobilised, frightened into being unable to move.

But if God the Father can say, ‘This is my Son, the beloved; with him I am well pleased,’ then, because of the Creation, because of Christ, can also look at you and me and say, ‘This is my Son, the beloved; with him I am well pleased … This is my daughter, the beloved; with her I am well pleased.’

At a lecture in Cambridge some years ago [2011], I heard Metropolitan Kallistos [Ware], the pre-eminent Orthodox theologian in England, speak of the Transfiguration as a disclosure not only of what God is but of what we are. The Transfiguration looks back to the beginning, but also looks forward to the end, to the final glory of Christ’s second coming, because through the incarnation Christ raises our human nature to a new level, opens new possibilities.

The Incarnation is a new beginning for us as the human race, and in the Transfiguration we see not only our human nature at the beginning, but as it can be in and through Christ at the end, he told us.

But with the Transfiguration comes the invitation to bear the cross with Christ. Peter, James and John are with Christ on Mount Tabor, and they are with him in Gethsemane. We must understand the Passion of Christ and the Transfiguration in the light of each other, not as two separate mysteries, but aspects of the one single mystery. Mount Tabor and Mount Calvary go together; and glory and suffering go together.

If we are to become part of the Transfiguration, we cannot leave our cross behind. If we are to bring the secular, fallen world into the glory of Christ, that has to be through self-emptying (κένωσις, kenosis), cross-bearing and suffering. There is no answer to secularism that does not take account of the Cross, as well as taking account of the Transfiguration and the Resurrection.

Metropolitan Kalistos reminded us of the story from Leo Tolstoy, Three Questions. The central figure is set a task of answering three questions:

What is the most important time?

The most important time is now, the past is gone, and the future does not exist yet.

Who is the most important person?

The person who is with you at this very instant.

What is the most important task?

‘This task is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!’

The light that shone from Christ on the mountaintop is not a physical and created light, but an eternal and uncreated light, a divine light, the light of the Godhead, the light of the Holy Trinity.

The experience on Mount Tabor confirms Saint Peter’s confession of faith which reveals Christ as the Son of the Living God. Yet Christ remains fully human as ever he was, as fully human as you or me, and his humanity is not abolished. But the Godhead shines through his body and from it.

In Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead. But at other points in his life, the glory is hidden beneath the veil of his flesh. What we see in Christ on Mount Tabor is human nature, our human nature, taken up into God and filled with the light of God. ‘So, this should be our attitude to the secular world,’ Metropolitan Kallistos said.

Or, as the Revd Dr Kenneth Leech (1939-2015), the Anglican ‘slum priest’ in the East End of London, once said: ‘Transfiguration can and does occur “just around the corner,” occurs in the midst of perplexity, imperfection, and disastrous misunderstanding.’

Metropolitan Kallistos spoke that day of the Transfiguration as a disclosure not only of what God is but of what we are. The Transfiguration looks back to the beginning, but also looks forward to the end, opening new possibilities.

The Transfiguration shows us what we can be in and through Christ, he told us.

In secular life, there is a temptation to accept our human nature as it is now. But the Transfiguration of Christ offers the opportunity to look at ourselves not only as we are now, but to take stock of what happened in the past that made us so, and to grasp the promise of what we can be in the future.

The Transfiguration reminds us of how God sees us in God’s own image and likeness, sees us for who we were, who we are and who we are going to be, no matter how others see us, no matter how others dismiss us.

The Transfiguration is a challenge to remember always that we are made in the image and likeness of God. And, no matter what others say about you, how others judge you, how others gossip or talk about you, how others treat you, God sees your potential, God sees in you God’s own image and likeness, God knows you are beautiful inside and loves you, loves you for ever, as though you are God’s only child. You are his beloved child in whom he is well pleased.

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

The Transfiguration … an icon in the parish church in Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 17: 1-9:

1 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. 2 And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. 3 Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. 4 Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ 5 While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ 6 When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. 7 But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’ 8 And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, ‘Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’

The Transfiguration … an icon by Adrienne Lord in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Liturgical Colour: White.

Penitential Kyries:

Your unfailing kindness, O Lord, is in the heavens,
and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

Your righteousness is like the strong mountains,
and your justice as the great deep.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

For with you is the well of life:
and in your light shall we see light.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

The Collect of the Day:

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 and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Collect of the Word:

O God,
in the transfiguration of your Son,
you confirmed the mysteries of the faith
by the witness of Moses and Elijah,
and in the voice from the cloud
you foreshadowed our adoption as your children:
make us, with Christ, heirs of your glory,
and bring us to enjoy its fullness,
through the same Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

Introduction to the Peace:

Christ will transfigure our human body
and give it a form like that of his own glorious body.
We are the Body of Christ. We share his peace.

(cf Philippians 3: 21, 1 Corinthians 11: 27, Romans 5: 1)

Blessing:

The God of all grace,
who called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus,
establish, strengthen and settle you in the faith:

Hymns:

52, Christ whose glory fills the skies (CD 4)
325, Be still, for the presence of the Lord (CD 20)
634, Love divine, all loves excelling (CD 36)

The Transfiguration … a fresco in the Church of the Four Martyrs in Rethymnon, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

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

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