Memories of my eldest brother, Stephen Comerford, who died a week before Christmas, 55 years ago

Stephen Edward Comerford, born on 22 August 1946, died 50 years ago on 18 December 1970

Patrick Comerford

Tomorrow (18 December) marks the fifty-fifth anniversary of the death of my eldest brother, Stephen Edward Comerford, who died in Durham, North Carolina, at the age of 24 on 18 December 1970.

Now that I am in my mid-70s, five or six years is hardly an age gap between people of my generation. But they mark a major chasm when you are a child, and that gap was compounded by the fact that he was the eldest child in the family and I was the fourth of six.

Steve was born in Dublin on 22 August 1946. He was named after our father, Stephen Edward Comerford (1918-2004), who in turn was named after our grandfather, also named Stephen Edward Comerford (1867-1921). The name Stephen had come into the Bunclody branch of the family because our grandfather was born on 28 December, three days after Christmas Day and two days after Saint Stephen’s Day.

As small children, we were all separated, going to different members and friends of the extended family: Steve was packed off to our grandmother Maria (Crowley) Murphy (1882-1957) and aunt Margaret (Murphy) Barrett (1920-2014) in Millstreet, Co Cork, while I went to George and Paggy Kerr in Dublin and the extended Hallinan family in Cappoquin, Co Waterford.

The accent Steve acquired in Millstreet brought him the nickname ‘Corky’ in his primary school when he returned to Dublin. By the time I was going to primary school, he was already at boarding school.

The Wexford historian Brendan Culliton, later the President of both the Wexford Historical Society and Wexford Wanderers Rugby Club, has remembered him as his friend throughout their shared years in primary school. ‘We were two of the ‘brainboxes’,’ he recalled some years ago. ‘In those days, we were two to a desk and I had the privilege of sharing a desk with Stephen for the whole of that year.’

He told me, ‘Stephen was very well read and was a pleasure to sit beside. He was one of the quieter members of the class, but I can remember the interesting chats we had on every subject under the sun. Before Christmas that year, we had shared what present we hoped to get. I am sure my interests at the time didn’t move far from Meccano and Just William. Stephen told me he had asked for books on history. That struck me as a bit odd, but if that was what he wanted, then that was him.

‘After Christmas, he brought in two bound copies of Carty’s History of Ireland to show me. I remember the covers were green, and plain. Other classmates would have been dismissive of books like these as a ‘Christmas present’. What, after all, was wrong with Dan Dare or Billy Bunter? But what struck me most was that Stephen was thrilled to show off these treasures. He was genuinely happy and, to me that was the important thing.’

Brendan Culliton was a year younger and stayed back a year. ‘So, when I went to Gormanston, Stephen was a year ahead of me. He was also in a different Clann / House, so our paths didn’t cross that often. However, when we did meet, a short greeting was never enough. I always recall there being real substance to the conversation.’

Stephen and I both went to Gormanston, but the five- or six-year gap was so wide that by the time I arrived, although there were teachers who remembered him, no-one in my year had ever come across him. We are also in different houses or clanns, and so any memories were few and rarely shared.

Yet, he was remembered for his achievements in maths and sciences, his fluency in the Irish language, and for his interests in chess, swimming and, to a lesser degree, golf. He taught himself the harmonica, and I remember his efforts to teach me to play chess – a pleasure that remains. But our academic and sporting interests seldom overlapped.

While I was at Gormanston, he was studying at University College Galway and at University College Dublin. When Brendan Culliton arrived in UCD, he recalled, they ‘encountered each other now and then around Earlsfort Terrace and, when we did, it was always cause for surprisingly lengthy conversations … There is no question that he was very intelligent and hugely talented. He was also genuine and sincere.’

By the time I left Gormanston in 1969, Stephen had completed his BSc and MSc degrees. We spent some time together that summer, sometimes going for meals together in Rathmines. I remember how we sat up together to watch the first moon landing on the night of 20 July 1969.

But by then he was moving to the US and Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, where he was a PhD candidate. I cannot recall that we ever met again. I was training to be a chartered surveyor with Jones Lang Wootton and working on a BSc in estate management with the College of Estate Management, then part of the University of Reading.

A colleague from his post-graduate days in Duke spoke of Stephen as ‘unfailingly courteous, and inclined to dress in jacket and tie … He gave the dining room a touch of class … dressed to the nines and carrying a rolled up umbrella.’ Perhaps he had retained a hint of that Cork accent he picked up in Millstreet as a child. ‘ We all had accents, but Stephen’s was a delight.’

He died on 18 December 1970, aged 24, and is buried in Maplewood Cemetery, Durham, North Carolina. The news of his death came in a chilling ’phone call in the middle of the night, seven days before Christmas, just days after my father’s birthday. Steve’s wrapped Christmas presents for his parents and each of his brothers and sisters arrived in the post a few days later, but by then the Christmas tree and the decorations had come down, and the Christmas lights had been switched off. It seems Christmas was cancelled that year.

The depths of a mother’s grief are unfathomable, I never fully understood or appreciated the ways my parents continued to suffer ever after, and at the time I never found ways to explain to friends and colleagues how I felt.

Brendan Culliton told me five years ago that when he heard of Stephen’s death it ‘was sad news then. It’s still sad news today.’

The Annals of Irish Mathematics and Mathematicians includes his name in the Gallery of Irish Mathematicians. He would have been 80 at his next birthday on 22 August 2026.

May his memory be a blessing ז״ל

A Christmas-time photograph of Steve visiting Santa as a child

Rashida Jones goes down memory lane in search of her Irish Jewish ancestors in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’

The Irish Jewish Museum is housed in the former synagogue on Walworth Road in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Earlier this month, during a family visit to Dublin, I was staying in Rathmines, close to Portobello and the Grand Canal, and I took time each day to stroll through the streets of ‘Little Jerusalem’, between the South Circular Road and the Canal, between Kelly’s Corner and Clanbrassil Street.

I was looking for streets and houses where many members of the extended Comerford family – cousins of my grandfather and my father – had lived in the first half of the last century, searching out the family home of artists like Harry Kernoff, and reminiscing and recalling memories of the Bretzel, the last kosher bakery on Lennox Street, and the small synagogues of ‘Little Jerusalem’ that I remember from the days when I played in these street as a schoolboy in the early 1960s, including the small and pious shuls on Lennox Street, Walworth Road and Saint Kevin’s Parade.

The combination of family history, Jewish history, genealogy, childhood memories and local history that are brought together in this one small area are a heady mixture that I find stimulating and exciting.

But, in the days that followed, I soon found myself stumbling across an old edition of the American version of the television series Who Do You Think You Are?, tracing the ancestors of the writer and actor Rashida Jones who had also lived in the streets of ‘Little Jerusalem’.

Her father was the songwriting legend Quincy Jones; her mother was the actor Peggy Lipton, who died after the programme was made. The programme concentrated on Peggy Lipton’s ancestors and brought together many of the memories that I face when I return to ‘Little Jerusalem’.

The programme was first broadcast in the US on 4 May 2012, but I had never seen it before, and I had never thought of Rashida Jones as having Irish ancestors or Jewish ancestors, still less of her having Irish Jewish ancestors who lived in ‘Little Jerusalem’.

I took part in one programme in the BBC version of Who Do You Think You Are? back in 2010, introducing the actor Dervla Kirwan to her Jewish ancestors in Dublin. Her great-grandfather, Henry Kahn, who ran a shop in Capel Street and who inspired an incident in James Joyce’s Ulysses.

That programme has been repeated and rebroadcast many times, much to my amusement. But working on the research and production, it also made me aware of the limitations of trying to encapsulate genealogical research into the short time a programme like this allows.

In the programme made for the US version of Who Do You Think You Are?, Rashida Jones learned about her Latvian-Jewish ancestors who changed their name to Benson. Initially, the programme seemed to suggest the name Benson was chosen to disguise the family’s Jewish heritage. But this was not so, and the name Benson was part of the story of her Jewish ancestors in ‘Little Jerusalem’, bringing her to the Irish Jewish Museum in the former synagogue on Walworth Road.

Rashida Jones is known for her roles in Parks and Recreation and The Social Network. She is the daughter of Quincy Jones, the renowned music producer, and Peggy Lipton, the actor known for The Mod Squad, who had already researched his family stories. But Rashida Jomes knew very little about her Jewish heritage on her mother’s side of the family.

Peggy Lipton (1946-2019) was born into a Jewish family in New York, the daughter of the artist Rita Benson and a corporate lawyer Harold Lipton (1911-1990), who married in 1941. Harold Lipton’s parents, Max Lipschitz and Alice ‘Gussie’ Goldfarb, were Jewish immigrants from Belarus, who changed their name to Lipton in the 1930s; Rita Benson was born in Dublin to Jewish parents from Latvia.



Rita Hettie Rosenberg, who later became Rita Benson, was born at 15 Victoria Street, Dublin, on 30 May 1912, the daughter of Hyman Rosenberg and Jenny Benson. Her great-great-grandparents, Benjamin Benson and Sophia Weinstein, had arrived in Ireland from Latvia, which was then in the Russian Empire.

Rita left Dublin with her sister Pearl as teenagers in 1926. The sisters who were just 13 and 18 years old. They made the journey from Ireland on their own and first stayed in New York with their uncle Elliot Benson.

Rita was still using her full name in 1936, but by 1939, when she became a US citizen, she changed her name to Rita Benson as part of the naturalisation process, and she married Harold Lipton in 1941.

Rashida visited Dublin and the Irish Jewish Museum, where the genealogist Stuart Rosenblatt, who spent decades compiling Jewish records in Ireland, presented her with her grandmother’s birth certificate, showing Rita was born on 15 May 1912 to Hyman and Jeannie Rosenberg.

At the time of the 1911 census, Hyman Rosenberg was 29, a tailor, who was born in Russia, Jeannie was 26, and they were living on Dufferin Avenue, with a son and daughter, Pearl (3) and Harold (2).

Jeannie Benson and Hyman Rosenberg were married Hyman in Dublin in 1906. Jeannie was born in Manchester. Her parents – Rashida’s great-great-grandparents – were Sophia Weinstein and Benjamin Benson. Benjamin was born in the Russian Empire ca 1839, settled in Ireland and worked as a Hebrew teacher.

Sophia and Benjamin Benson appear in the 1911 Irish census, living with Sophia in Peyton’s Cottages, Dublin, and they are recorded as speaking Hebrew. He was 72 and a Hebrew teacher, she was 67. They had been married for 53 years, and they were the parents of nine children, four of whom were still living. A photograph of Benjamin Benson in the archives show him in formal dress, complete with a top hat.

Rashida’s journey continued from Dublin to Latvia in search of Benjamin Benson’s family. Latvian military enlistment records from 1871 show Benjamin’s father, Shlomo, lived in Hasenpoth, now Aizpute, a small town in western Latvia that was then part of the Russian Empire.

The Latvian records include a residence permit from 1834 for Shlomo even before he had a surname. At the time, Jews were being forced by law to accept fixed surnames, and so Benson became the official family name.

Tragically, those family members who stayed behind in Latvia faced a much darker fate and were murdered in the Holocaust. Ghetto housing lists, passport applications and residency registers documented their lives before World War II – and, in some cases, how abruptly those lives came to an end.

They were forced into the Riga Ghetto during the Nazi occupation, and on 30 November and 8 December 1941, over 25,000 Latvian Jews were marched to the Rumbula Forest and murdered. The episode closed with Rashida and Peggy visiting the Rumbula Forest Memorial, with its large menorah and engraved memorial stones.

The Bretzel on Lennox Street was once run by the brothers Sidney and George Benson (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

But programmes like this are made for popular audiences, and often cannot go into great detail. I found myself asking why, when Rashida Jones was visiting the Irish Jewish Museum on Walworth Road, she was not brought around the corner to see the house at 15 Victoria Street where the Rosenberg family lived and where Rita Benson was born.

Or they could have visited the former home of the Rosenberg family on Dufferin Avenue, off the South Circular Road and close to Greenville Hall, once one of the largest synagogues in Dublin until in closed in 1984.

I would have been interested too in knowing too which Benson and Rosenberg families she may be related to.

Some members of the Rosenberg family changed their name to Ross. The Benson families in ‘Little Jerusalem’ included the brothers Sidney and George Benson and who ran the Bretzel Bakery on Lennox Street as Bensons.

The late Asher Benson (1921-2006) took part in the Battle of Cable Street on 4 October 1936. He was the driving force in setting up the Irish Jewish Museum, and was the author of Jewish Dublin, Portraits of Life by the Liffey, published posthumously in 2007. His sons the travel agents Alan and Gerry Benson were key figures in the Jewish community in Dublin. My friend Alan, who was once president of the Jewish Representative Council, died in 2014

Scenes of Rashida Jones eating challah in the Bretzel on Lennox Street, or knocking on doors in Victoria Street and Dufferin Avenue would have enriched more of my memories of ‘Little Jerusalem’.

Zekher Tzadik Livrakha, זכר צדיק לברכה (May the memory of the righteous be a blessing)

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 98, Friday 15 August 2025, the Blessed Virgin Mary

The icon of the Dormition by Alexandra Kaouki in the old town of Rethymnon in Crete

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Eighth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VIII). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship lists today simply and plainly as ‘the Blessed Virgin Mary’, without specifying what aspect of her life or death is being commemorated.

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

The icon of the Dormition of the Theotokos or the Virgin Mary in the Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Luke 1: 46-55 (NRSVA):

46 And Mary said,

‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
48 for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
50 His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

The Virgin Mary depicted in the Dormition of the Theotokos, an icon in the Greek Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Reflection:

It was my privilege in Crete some years ago to watch a new icon on this theme in Orthodoxy being shaped and created by Alexandra Kaouki, perhaps the most talented and innovative iconographer in Crete today, as she worked in her studio, then below the Venetian Fortezza in the old town of Rethymnon.

She was creating this new icon for the Church of Our Lady of the Angels, or the Little Church of Our Lady (Mikri Panagia), on a small square in the old town. It was a careful, slow, step-by-step work in progress, based on El Greco’s celebrated icon. But, as her work progressed, Alexandra made what she describes as ‘necessary corrections’ to allow her to ‘entirely follow the Byzantine rules.’

The best-known version of this icon is by El Greco, or Doménikos Theotokópoulos (1541-1614), created in Crete probably before 1567. Alexandra and I discussed why El Greco places three candelabra in front of the bier. Perhaps he is using them as a Trinitarian symbol. However, Alexandra has returned to the traditional depiction of only one to remain true to Byzantine traditions.

How many of the Twelve should be depicted?

Should Saint Thomas be shown, or was he too late?

Why did she omit stories from later developments in the tradition, yet introduce women?

Alexandra completed her icon in time for the Feast of the Dormition in Rethymnon on 15 August that year.

The icon of the Dormition of the Theotokos or Virgin Mary usually bears the lettering Η Κοιμησις τησ Θεοτοκου, or ‘the falling asleep of the Theotokos’.

In the Calendar of the Orthodox Church, the Feast of the Dormition (Κοίμησις) or the Falling Asleep of the Theotokos, the Virgin Mary is on 15 August. For Roman Catholics, it is the Feast of the Assumption.

In his guidebook, The Holy Land, the late Jerome Murphy-O’Connor points out that two places in Jerusalem are traditionally associated with the end of the Virgin Mary’s earthly life: a monastery on Mount Zion is the traditional site of her death or falling asleep; and the basilica in the Garden of Gethsemane is said to be the site of her tomb.

Since the end of the 19th century, however, Mereyama, 8 km east of Selçuk, near ancient Ephesus and the coastal resort of Kuşadasi, has been venerated by many Roman Catholics as the site of her last earthly home. This tradition is based not on tradition or history, but on the writings of an 18th century German nun and visionary, Sister Catherine Emmerich, who never left her own country, and the interpretation of her visions by some late 19th century French Lazarist priests who were living in Smyrna (Izmir). The pilgrim industry was boosted by a papal visit in 1967.

The Feast of the Dormition is one of the Twelve Great Feasts of the Orthodox Church. However, this belief has never been formally defined as dogma by the Orthodox Church.

The Orthodox Church teaches that the Virgin Mary died a natural death, like any human being; that her soul was received by Christ when she died; and that her body was resurrected on the third day after her burial and was taken up into heaven, so that her tomb was found empty on the third day.

The death or Dormition of Mary is not recorded in the New Testament. Hippolytus of Thebes, writing in the seventh or eighth century, claims in his partially preserved chronology to the New Testament that the Virgin Mary lived for 11 years after the death of Jesus and died in the year 41 CE.

On the other hand, Roman Catholic teaching says she was ‘assumed’ into heaven in bodily form. Some Roman Catholics agree with the Orthodox that this happened after her death, while others hold that she did not experience death. In his dogmatic definition of the Assumption in 1950, Pope Pius XII appears to leave open the question of whether or not she actually underwent death and even alludes to the fact of her death at least five times.

In the Orthodox tradition, Mary died as all people die, for she had a mortal human nature like all of us. The Orthodox Church teaches that Mary was subject to being saved from the trials, sufferings, and death of this world by Christ. Having died truly, she was raised by him and she already takes part in the eternal life that is promised to all who ‘hear the word of God and keep it’ (Luke 11: 27-28). But what happens to Mary happens to all who imitate her holy life of humility, obedience and love.

In the Orthodox tradition, it is said that after the Day of Pentecost, the Theotokos remained in Jerusalem with the infant Church, living in the house of Saint John the Evangelist. That tradition says she was in her 50s at the time of her death. As the early Christians stood around her deathbed, she commended her spirit to God, and tradition says Christ then descended from Heaven, taking up her soul in his arms. The apostles sang funeral hymns in her honour and carried her body to a tomb in Cedron near Gethsemane. When a man tried to interrupt their solemn procession, an angel came and cut off his hands, but he was healed later.

The story says that the Apostle Thomas arrived on the third day and wished to see the Virgin Mary for the last time. The stone was rolled back, and an empty tomb was discovered. Orthodox tradition says that the Theotokos was resurrected bodily and taken to heaven, and teaches that the same reward awaits all the righteous on the Last Day.

Icons of the Dormition date from the 10th century. In traditional icons of the Dormition, the Theotokos is shown on the funeral bier. Christ, who is standing behind her, has come to receive his mother’s soul into heaven. In his left arm, he holds her as an infant in white, symbolising the soul of the Theotokos reborn in her glory in heaven.

Greek icons of the Dormition follow a 1,000-year-old tradition that some say dates back to early texts.

Behind the bier, Christ stands robed in white and – as in icons of the Transfiguration, the Resurrection and the Last Judgment – he appears surrounded by the aureole, or elongated halo, depicting the Light of his Divinity and signifying his heavenly glory.

Christ receives the soul of the Mother of God, but here the imagery reverses the traditional picture of mother and son, as he holds her soul, like a child, in his arms.

The Twelve Apostles are present; sometimes they are shown twice: grouped around the bier, and transported to the scene on clouds accompanied by angels. The Apostles are usually seen on either side of the bier – the group on the left led by Saint Peter, who stands at the head of the bier; the group on the right led by Saint Paul, who stands at the foot of the bier.

Many icons include four early Christian writers, identified by their bishops’ robes decorated with crosses – James, Dionysios the Areopagite, Hierotheos and Timotheos of Ephesus. In the background, mourning women are a reminder of the women who wept when they met Christ carrying his cross to Calvary, or the women who arrived at his tomb early on Easter morning ready to anoint his dead body.

The cherubim in blue, the seraphim in red and the golden stars in these icons refer to the hierarchy of cosmic powers. Archangels are present in the foreground in the lower left and right corners. In the centre foreground, the Archangel Michael threatens the non-believing Jephonias who dared to touch her bier in an attempt to disrupt her funeral. The story is told that his hands were cut off but that later they were miraculously restored when he repented, was converted to Christianity, and was baptised.

In Greece, this celebration is called ‘Little Easter’ or ‘Summer Easter’, indicating the significance of the Dormition in Orthodox faith and in the church calendar. The day is marked with many festivals in villages and towns throughout the country, and this is the name day for many, including Maria, Mario, Panagiotis, Panagiota, Despina, Parthena, Miriam and Mariam. A common greeting today is Καλή Παναγία

In the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship, 15 August is marked simply as ‘The Blessed Virgin Mary’, without any indication of any event in her life or any commemoration.

A reflection in the parish leaflet in Stony Stratford and Calverton last year described the Assumption as ‘a powerful reminder that like her we have all been promised a share in the Resurrection of the Lord.’ It added that our celebration ‘is a sign of hope for us as we face death which seems to be the end of everything that is good in our lives.’

Καλή Παναγία

A detail in the icon of the Dormition of the Theotokos or the Virgin Mary in the Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 15 August 2025, the Blessed Virgin Mary):

The theme this week (10 to 16 August) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Serving God in the Gulf’ (pp 26-27). This theme was introduced last Sunday with reflections from Joyaline Rajamani, Administrator at the Church of the Epiphany, Doha, Anglican Church in Qatar.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (15 August 2025, the Blessed Virgin Mary) invites us to pray reflecting on these words:

Pray in light of Luke 1: 45 ‘Blessed is she who had faith that the Lord's promises would be fulfilled.’ All generations shall call her blessed.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
who looked upon the lowliness of the Blessed Virgin Mary
and chose her to be the mother of your only Son:
grant that we who are redeemed by his blood
may share with her in the glory of your eternal kingdom;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

God most high,
whose handmaid bore the Word made flesh:
we thank you that in this sacrament of our redemption
you visit us with your Holy Spirit
and overshadow us by your power;
strengthen us to walk with Mary the joyful path of obedience
and so to bring forth the fruits of holiness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

In my prayers this morning I am also remembering Father Louis Brennan, who died last Tuesday (12 August) at the age of 95, and whose funeral takes place alter this morning in the Franciscan Church, Merchants’ Quay, Dublin, followed by burial at Shanganagh Cemetery. He was my most outstanding and inspiring teacher when I was at school in Gormanston College, Co Meath, in the 1960s.

He became the Rector of Gormanston, and was later Minister Provincial of the Franciscan Province of Ireland, Definitor General of the Order, and Secretary General of the Order, and later he was the Provincial Definitor, then Vicar Provincial and Secretary of the Province. He moved to Collegio San Isidoro in Rome in 2005. Louis returned to Ireland in 2020, and later lived in Cork and in Dalkey.

He encouraged me to write, stimulated my interest in poetry and literature, and got me involved in drama, choirs and charity work. His parting advice to our year included to value respect over popularity, and to read Strumpet City. His Franciscan values were one of the greatest gifts he could give me, yet he let me know later in life how he was proud of my achievements as a journalist. I am sure the year of 1969 will be well represented at his Funeral Mass later this morning.

Christ holding his mother’s soul wrapped like a new-born baby … a detail from Alexandra Kaouki’s icon of the Dormition as it neared completion in Rethymnon

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

An icon depicting the Dormition of the Virgin Mary in the Church of Aghiou Philippou in Athens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 84, Friday 1 August 2025, Lammas Day

Jesus Unrolls the Book in the Synagogue (Jésus dans la synagogue déroule le livre), James Tissot (1831-1902), Brooklyn Museum (see Matthew 13: 54)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church, and the week began with the Sixth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VI, 27 July 2025). We have reached the beginning of a new month today.

In many places, in the past, 1 August was known as Lammas, from an Old English word hlāfmæsse, meaning loaf-mass, or as Loaf Mass Day. The name originates from the word ‘loaf’ in reference to bread and ‘Mass’ in reference to the Eucharist. It is a festival to mark the blessing of the First Fruits of harvest, with a loaf of bread being brought to the church for this purpose. Lammastide falls at the halfway point between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox.

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

Jesus in the Synagogue, as imagined by the Northern Ireland-born artist Greg Olsen

Matthew 13: 54-58 (NRSVA):

54 He came to his home town and began to teach the people in their synagogue, so that they were astounded and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power? 55 Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? 56 And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?’ 57 And they took offence at him. But Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honour except in their own country and in their own house.’ 58 And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.

Stained glass windows in my old school chapel at Gormanston College, Co Meath (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This morning’s reflection:

Where do you call home, and where do feel most at home?

I have been living for more than three years now in Stony Stratford, on the north-west fringes of Milton Keynes and by the River Ouse, which separates Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.

But I was born on Rathfarnham Road in Dublin, spent parts of my childhood in West Waterford and in Dublin, went to school in Dublin and in Co Meath, began working as a journalist in Lichfield, lived in my early adult years in Wexford, I have lived in different houses in south Dublin from late 1974 until 2017, and I spent five years in parish ministry in west Limerick and north Kerry before moving here.

I have studied in Reading, Dublin, Maynooth, Tokyo, Cambridge and London.

If you were to ask me where I am from, I may look puzzled and sound incoherent as I try to reply. Yet, in my sleep and in my mind’s eye, I still wander easily through the many houses where I have lived and through the classrooms and lecture rooms of the many schools and colleges where I have studied.

I wonder how Jesus would have answered a question like that? He was born in Bethlehem, he spent his early days as a refugee in Egypt, Joseph and Mary seem to have grown up in the small town of Nazareth, they returned there after Jesus’ birth and their exile in Egypt, and he spent his childhood there.

Eventually, though, Jesus moved to the more populated town of Capernaum on the shores of the Sea of Galilee (see Matthew 9: 1; John 2: 12). He would go on to spend the last period of his ministry in Jerusalem, and was executed outside the city walls.

In this morning’s reading, Jesus returns to visit his ‘home town’, which may have been Nazareth or Capernaum.

In Saint Luke’s Gospel, when he returns to Nazareth, the people try to kill him (see Luke 4: 16-29). This morning’s reading appears to describe a separate occasions.

Both Nazareth and Capernaum, like most towns in that region at that time, had a synagogue. It was common for visiting rabbis to be invited to speak in the synagogue when in town. Jesus did so in Nazareth and Capernaum, and did some miracles there, perhaps of healing, though not do many (Matthew 13: 58).

The reaction to Jesus’ teaching and his miracles was one of astonishment and rejection, and his own people asked where he got this wisdom and the ability to do these mighty works.

If, as an adult, you live far away from home, what do you do when you return home? Do you return home for Christmas, or family events such as weddings and funerals?

Do you visit family members … ageing parents, uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins? Have they changed much since you left? Do they think you have changed much?

Do you walk past the old family home? Do you wonder how the families who now live there have changed the rooms inside? Do you want to see inside your own former bedroom, or regret the front garden has been changed to make way for car parking spaces?

Do you visit your old school? Do you contact old school friends or old teachers? Have they changed much since you left? Do they accept who you have become?

Do you visit the church you knew as a child or teenager, or your old school chapel? Has it changed much – not just in the clergy who are there, but in its layout and design, in its style of worship and the ways in which it emphasises its teachings?

My school year from Gormanston in 1969 meet up every now and then, and met again for lunch in Dublin last September. We shared memories of members of our year who have died since we left, including Tom Lappin and John McCarthy who died last year. It was not only yet another opportunity to meet each other but also to find out how we had been getting on over the previous 55 years, and to affirm one another and renew friendships.

But so often, sadly, we want to tie people to the memories we have of them in the past, memories that may have been distorted over the years, and that can no longer be placed back in their original contexts.

And too often, we know from our life experiences, that assumptions and prejudices can blind us to truth. When we think we know something, or someone, we tend to favour those expectations over new information.

Many, many people in the world think they already know all about Jesus. Many, however – including those who claim to be closest to often – often know very little about him, continue in their assumptions and prejudices, and are offended when they are presented with the truth (Matthew 13: 57).

My old school at Gormanston College, Co Meath … has your old school changed since you left? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 1 August 2025):

The theme this week (27 to 2 August) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Reunited at Last’. This theme was introduced yesterday with a programme update from Raja Moses, Programme Coordinator, Diocese of Durgapur, Church of North India.

The USPG prayer diary today (Friday 1 August 2025) invites us to pray:

Lord, just like the landlord and AHT team, please bless those who step forward to help. Grant courage to act against injustice.

The Collect:

Merciful God,
you have prepared for those who love you
such good things as pass our understanding:
pour into our hearts such love toward you
that we, loving you in all things and above all things,
may obtain your promises,
which exceed all that we can desire;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

God of our pilgrimage,
you have led us to the living water:
refresh and sustain us
as we go forward on our journey,
in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Creator God,
you made us all in your image:
may we discern you in all that we see,
and serve you in all that we do;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

At No 18 High Street, Wexford, I had the whole top floor of the house – all two rooms – to myself … in my sleep, I still wander easily through the many houses I have lived in (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024: 146, Friday 4 October 2024

A sculpture at Gormanston College, Co Meath, marking the 800th anniversary of the birth of Saint Francis of Assisi in 1982 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. The week began with the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVIII), and the Church Calendar today celebrates Saint Francis of Assisi (1226), Friar, Deacon, Founder of the Friars Minor.

Today is also the last day of Creationtide or the Season of Creation in the Church Calendar, which began on 1 September, the beginning of the Church Year in the Orthodox Church, and ends on the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi.

I have a busy day ahead, including a dental appointment in Stony Stratford early this afternoon. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

A mediaeval carved statue of Saint Francis of Assisi in the ruins of the Franciscan Friary in Askeaton, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 12: 22-34 (NRSVA):

22 He said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. 24 Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! 25 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 26 If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? 27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 28 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you – you of little faith! 29 And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. 30 For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31 Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

32 ‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’

Rosh Hashanah traditions include round challah bread studded with raisins and apples dipped in honey that symbolise wishes for a sweet year

‘The Birthday of the Universe’

Rosh Hashanah (רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה‎), the Jewish New Year, celebrates the birthday of the universe, the day God created Adam and Eve. This year, Rosh Hashanah 5785 began on Wednesday evening at sundown on the eve of Tishrei 1 (2 October 2024) and ends this evening after nightfall on Tishrei 2 (4 October 2024). Together with Kol Nidrei next Friday (11 October) and Yom Kippur (Saturday 12 October), this is part of the Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe or High Holidays, and the 10 Days of Repentance.

Most synagogues and Jewish communities held Erev Rosh Hashanah services on Wednesday and Rosh Hashanah services yesterday (Thursday). The central observance of Rosh Hashanah is blowing the shofar (ram’s horn), normally blown in synagogues as part of today’s services.

Rosh Hashanah traditions include round challah bread studded with raisins and apples dipped in honey, as well as other foods that symbolise wishes for a sweet year. Other Rosh Hashanah observances include candle lighting in the evenings and refraining from creative work.

Today is the second day of Rosh Hashanah, when the services are very similar to the day before, except that the Torah reading and haftarah are different. Instead of readings about the births of Isaac and Samuel, the readings are about the binding of Isaac and God’s love for us, and certain piyyutim (liturgical poems) in the repetition of the Amidah are changed.

Rosh Hashanah leads right into Shabbat, so people not make Havdalah this Friday night. Instead, they just make Havdalah on Saturday night after Shabbat has ended.

A mediaeval carved statue of Saint Francis of Assisi in the ruins of the Franciscan Friary in Ennis, Co Clare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

I spent much of last Friday afternoon with former schoolfriends, celebrating 55 years since we left school at Gormanston College in Co Meath. Over 30 or more 70-somethings gathered together for a long and lingering lunch in Peploe’s restaurant at Saint Stephen’s Green, Dublin, at a lunch organised mainly by Frank Hunt and Russell Shannon.

We last gathered for a lunch like this five years ago, in 2019, when we marked 50 years since leaving Gormanston. There were sad but grateful memories of those who could not join us for lunch, and we remembered those we know who died in the past year, including John McCarthy and Tom Lappin. But the afternoon was also filled with memories of what were largely happy school days, and how well we were prepared to go out into the world. Some of us also remembered, with gratitude, the Franciscan values that were added on to us by the friars at Gormanston in the 1960s.

Today is the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi. This day is popular for blessing the animals and also marks the end of ‘Creation Time’ in many parts of the Church.

I was reminded of Saint Francis and his values when I lived close to the Friary in Wexford, during my time at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, which was founded on the site of a Franciscan friary, and throughout my five years when I lived in Askeaton, Co Limerick, as priest-in-charge of the Rathkeale Group of Parishes, and regularly visited the ruins of the Franciscan friary and its beautiful cloisters, with a mediaeval carved image of Saint Francis of Assisi.

Apart from figures in the Biblical figures, Saint Francis may be the most popular saint in the Church, and he is loved in the all the churches.

He has inspired Pope Francis, who took the saint’s name when he was elected Pope in 2013. Like Saint Francis, Pope Francis washes the feet of women prisoners each year on Maundy Thursday and he has visited a soup kitchen in Assisi.

Saint Francis was born in Assisi in Italy around 1181, and he was baptised with the name Giovanni (for Saint John the Baptist). But his father changed the boy’s name to Francesco because he liked France.

As a young boy and a teenager, Francesco di Bernardone was a rebel. He dressed oddly, spent much of his time alone and quarrelled with his father.

His father expected him to take over the family business. But young Francis was too much of a rebel. All that began to change when he was taken prisoner in 1202 during a war. When he was freed, he was seriously ill, and while he was recovering he had a dream in which he was told ‘to follow the Master, not the man.’

He turned to prayer, penance and almsgiving. One day while praying, he said, God called him to ‘repair my house.’ In 1206, he sold some valuable cloth from his father’s shops to rebuild a run-down church of San Damiano.

His father dragged the young man before the religious authorities, and that was that, finally, for Francis and his father.

Francis turned his back on all that wealth, became a friar, put his complete trust in God, and made his home in an abandoned church. He wore simple clothes, looked after the lepers, made friends with social outcasts and embraced a life of no possessions.

Others joined him, and so began the story of the Franciscans.

Saint Francis is said to have once told his followers, ‘Preach the gospel, and if necessary, use words.’ In other words, people are more likely to see what we believe in what we do rather than believe us because of what we say.

The widely known ‘Prayer of Saint Francis’ has also been attributed to Saint Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is discord, union;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.

Saint Francis celebrated God’s creation, and his most famous poem is his ‘Canticle of the Sun.’ He also organised the first Crib to celebrate Christmas.

Two years before his death, the Franciscan friars first arrived in England 800 years ago, in 1224, and soon spread to Ireland.

Saint Francis was 44 when he died on the evening of 3 October 1226. By then, his order had spread throughout western Christendom.

Last Friday, I recalled 78 names from my school year in Gormanston in 1969, and already 15 have died – almost 1 in 5 or 20 per cent. Our class year remembered with affection last week are:

William Barrett, + Hillary Barry, Michael Bolger, Brian Brady, Aidan Brosnan, + Derek Browne, Henry Browne, Peter Burke, Patrick Cassidy, Seamus Claffey,

Patrick Comerford, Justin Connolly, Breen Coyne, Thomas Delaney, David Dennehy, Michael Dervan, Gerald Dick, Frank Domoney, Paul Egan, + Donal Geaney,

Michael Geraghty, John Grogan, Richard Hayes, Michael Hickey, Liam Holmes, John Horgan, Frank Hunt, Stephen Kane, + Paul Keatings, Noel Keaveney,

Thomas Keenan, Bernard Kelly, John Kelly, David Kerrigan, + Tom Lappin, Malachy Larkin, + Cyril Lynch, David Lynch, Liam Lynch, + John McCarthy,

Alfred McCrann, Brian McCutcheon, Harold McGahern, Pat McGowan, + Donal McGrath, + Joe McGuinness, + Niall McMahon, Kieran McNamee, James Madden, Seamus Moloney,

Francis Moran, + James Moran, Peter Morgan, + Raymond Murphy, Paul Nolan, Kevin O’Brien, Dermot O’Callaghan, Dessie O’Connor, William O’Connor, James O’Dea,

Dermot O’Donoghue, + Tim O’Driscoll, Dermott O’Flanagan, Joseph O’Keeffe, Donal O’Mahony, + Michéal O Morain, Sean O’Meara, Joe O’Neill, John O’Reilly, George Pratt,

Dermot Rainey, Sean Regan, Noel Reilly, Russell Shannon, Paul Smith, + Maurice Sweeney, Donagh Tierney, Michael Walsh.

Gormanston College, Co Meath … in among the 6C year on 27 June 1969, 55 years ago

Today’s Prayers (Friday 4 October 2024, Saint Francis of Assisi):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘One God: many languages.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday in reflections by Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 4 October 2024, Saint Francis of Assisi) invites us to pray:

We give thanks to all who facilitate translation. Opening dialogues and building relationships between people and churches of different languages.

The Collect:

O God, you ever delight to reveal yourself
to the childlike and lowly of heart:
grant that, following the example of the blessed Francis,
we may count the wisdom of this world as foolishness
and know only Jesus Christ and him crucified,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Merciful God,
who gave such grace to your servant Francis
that he served you with singleness of heart
and loved you above all things:
help us, whose communion with you
has been renewed in this sacrament,
to forsake all that holds us back from following Christ
and to grow into his likeness from glory to glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Saint Francis at the gates into Gormanston College, Co Meath (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 year of 1969 remembers Gormanston 55 years later at lunch in Peploe’s in Dublin Dublin last week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024: 139, Friday 27 September 2024

When is it appropriate to be silent? (see Luke 9: 21) … an icon of Christ the Blessed Silence

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVII). Today is one of the Ember Days in September. The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (27 September) remembers Vincent de Paul (1660), Founder of the Congregation of the Mission (Lazarists).

I am on the way to Birmingham, to catch a flight to Dublin for lunch today that is planned as a reunion 55 years later of my school year. We were the Sixth Year in Gormanston College, Co Meath, in 1969. Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

When is it appropriate to be silent? (see Luke 9: 21) … an icon of Christ the Blessed Silence

Luke 9: 18-22 (NRSVA):

18 Once when Jesus was praying alone, with only the disciples near him, he asked them, ‘Who do the crowds say that I am?’ 19 They answered, ‘John the Baptist; but others, Elijah; and still others, that one of the ancient prophets has arisen.’ 20 He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered, ‘The Messiah of God.’

21 He sternly ordered and commanded them not to tell anyone, 22 saying, ‘The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.’

When is it appropriate to be silent? (see Luke 9: 21) … an icon of Christ the Blessed Silence

Today’s Reflection:

In today’s Gospel reading, after his profound confession of faith, Saint Peter is ‘sternly ordered and commanded them not to tell anyone.’ This is in sharp contrast to the response to this confession of faith in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, when Christ tells Saint Peter: ‘I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church …’ (Matthew 16: 18, NRSVA).

When is it appropriate to be silent and not speak out?

In Saint Mark’s Gospel, when Bartimaeus the blind beggar realises he is in the presence of Christ outside the gates of Jericho, ‘many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly’ (Mark 10: 48).

But are there times when words are not enough, when words are simply not appropriate?

As I look forward to today’s Gormanston reunion, I am reminded of a saying attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi: ‘Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary use words.’

There are moments when actions speak louder than words, and when our lifestyle and discipleship offer far better sermons than anything we may say in a sermon.

There are moments to cry out loudly in the presence of God, and there are moments when silence is so appropriate.

So, in my prayers and silent reflections this morning, my thoughts turned to the icon of Christ the Blessed Silence, an icon found in some traditions in the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches, but that is not so well known outside Orthodoxy.

In this icon, Christ is portrayed as a youthful figure looking like a winged angel, his hands crossed against his chest, sometimes wearing a bishop’s mitre and dressed in a sakkos (σάκκος), the vestment worn by Orthodox bishops. In most of these icons, Christ is shown with an eight-pointed, shining nimbus.

The icon of Christ the Blessed Silence represents his sacrifice, through his young face and crossed hands, and his ecclesiastic mission in his attire. His angel-like face and the wings point to his ministry. In some of these icons, Christ is bareheaded, in others he wears the crown of a bishop, to show that he is both the Great High Priest and the King of Kings. In some icons of Christ the Blessed Silence, Christ holds the cross, spear and sponge of the Crucifixion.

The tradition of icons of Christ the Blessed Silence developed in the 14th and 15th centuries on Mount Athos, in Greece and in the Balkans. In Greece it was associated in Greece with the tradition of Hesychia. This Blessed Silence of Christ associates this icon with the hesychasts in the Eastern Orthodox tradition – the Greek ἡσυχία (hesychia) is a word for silence or quiet.

This icon is known in Russian as Spas Blagoe Molchanie or the Saviour of the Blessed Silence, and even as the Angel of Great Counsel. The earliest icon in this tradition in mediaeval Rus dates from the late 15th century. Christ is portrayed on the iconostasis or icon screen in the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Kremlin in Moscow, above the entrance to the sanctuary and dates from ca 1482 or perhaps later (1514-1515).

This image was widespread in the 17th century, and it is found special reverence in the 18th and 19th centuries among the Old Believers in Russia. Many of these icons were confiscated from the Old Believers and kept in archives in St Petersburg.

The icon of Christ the Blessed Silence Saviour is one of the few types in which Christ is represented in the form of an angel. In these icons, Christ is young and without a beard, looking like an angel or messenger, the angel of the blessed silence.

The sacred silence of Christ in this icon is also associated with the Christ who was born in time to be the Suffering Servant who died in Silence. In the traditional interpretations of Isaiah, the Suffering Servant passages are associated with the crucifixion of Jesus:

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth. (Isaiah 53: 7)

So, the suffering Christ was silent, and Christ the Angel of Great Counsel is the Son of God begotten in the Silence of Eternity.

Isaiah also says:

He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street (Isaiah 42: 2).

These icons often also bear inscriptions from another passage in Isaiah:

The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. (Isaiah 11: 2)

Sometimes Christ holds in his hand a scroll that reads: ‘You are the God of Peace, Father of Mercies, the Angel of Great Counsel.’ These words are in Irmos 5 in the Liturgy of the Nativity:

O God of peace and Father of mercies
Thou has sent to us the Angel of Great Counsel who grants us peace.
So we are guided to the light of the knowledge of God.
Waking early from the night we praise Thee, O Lover of men.

Traditionally, the words of Isaiah 9: 6 are associated with the birth of Christ and the Nativity narratives. They are best known in the English-speaking world because of their use in the libretto by Charles Jennens for Handel’s oratorio Messiah:

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given:
and the government shall be upon his shoulder:
and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor,
The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Jennens was drawing on the text of the Authorised Version or King James Version of the Bible, which reflects the Hebrew text of the Bible as it was known in the 17th century. However, early Christians knew the Biblical texts not in Hebrew, but in the Greek of the Septuagint. In Greek, Isaiah 9: 6 reads somewhat differently:

The ‘Messenger of Great Counsel’ (Ο Μεγάλης Βουλής Άγγελος) in the Septuagint may also be understood as the ‘Angel of Great Counsel.’ Greek versions of the icon of the Angel of Great Counsel sometimes include the inscription:

ἐγὼ γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐξῆλθον καὶ ἥκω:
οὐδὲ γὰρ ἀπ’ ἐμαυτοῦ ἐλήλυθα, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνός με ἀπέστειλεν.

For I came from God and now I am here.
I did not come on my own, but he sent me (John 8: 42).

As I think of the icon of Christ the Blessed Silence, I think too of the Logos begotten from God in Eternity and of the birth of the Christ Child in time. He is the one who was, who is and who is to come, the one to cry out loud to and the one in whose presence we should be silent too.

I have said with humour and full sincerity that when my coffin is being taken into the church at my funeral (later than sooner, I hope), that I want to hear Leonard Cohen’s ‘If it be your will’ … and when my coffin is being carried out I want to hear his ‘Dance me to the end of love.’

So often I want to be in control. I want to control the agenda, I want to control conversations, I want to control discussions. And I particularly want to control the words I use, the words others are going to hear me say.

And so, I am humbled at times when I listen to Leonard Cohen’s song, ‘If it be your will.’

Leonard Cohen ended many of those concerts singing this poem, which for me is about submission to God’s will, accepting God’s will, leaving God in control of my spirit:

Leonard Cohen sings of his nearly complete subjection to the divine will.

If he is told to be silent, he will be silent; if he is told to sing, he will sing.

If he is allowed to express his true voice (‘if a voice be true’), he will sing in praise of God from ‘this broken hill’ … from Calvary?

The mercy of God, the compassion of God, the love of God, redeems the burning hearts in hell … if it is God’s will.

Leonard Cohen’s great hope in this will leads to prayer, to the one who can ‘make us well’ if we devote ourselves to God, pray to God, sing to God. But he still prays to God to act on behalf of the suffering.

Cajoling God in song and poetry, Cohen says God has the power to ‘end this night’ of the darkness of the human condition, in which people are dressed in only dirty ‘rags of light’ that are fragmented, that are not fully whole and illuminated.

In this song, I imagine Christ on the cross as he speaks to God the Father as his agony comes to its close:

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before.

The broken hill is Golgotha where he has been crucified, the rugged and rocky Mount of Calvary.

‘Let the rivers fill’ may refer to the water of his thirst, the water of his sweat, the water that streams from his side, the waters of baptism, the Living Water that will never leave us to thirst.

If it be your will
To make us well
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell.

The Dominican theologian Timothy Radcliffe says: ‘We must wait for the resurrection to break the silence of the tomb.’ We must speak up when it is necessary, and to have the courage to speak is ‘ultimately founded upon the courage to listen.’

Leonard Cohen, If it be your will:

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

When is it appropriate to be silent? (see Luke 9: 21) … an icon of Christ the Blessed Silence

Today’s Prayers (Friday 27 September 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Our God is Able.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday in reflections by the Revd Thanduxolo Noketshe, priest in charge at Saint Mary and Christ Church, Diocese of North East Caribbean and Aruba, Province of the West Indies.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 27 September 2024) invites us to pray:

Let us pray for the work and mission of the Diocese of Port Elizabeth in South Africa.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you:
pour your love into our hearts and draw us to yourself,
and so bring us at last to your heavenly city
where we shall see you face to face;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Lord, we pray that your grace
may always precede and follow us,
and make us continually to be given to all good works;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect, for the ministry of all Christian people:

Almighty and everlasting God,
by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church
is governed and sanctified:
hear our prayer which we offer for all your faithful people,
that in their vocation and ministry
they may serve you in holiness and truth
to the glory of your name;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

The school chapel in Gormanston was said to have been inspired by Coventry Cathedral … the year of 1969 meets for lunch in Dublin today (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


‘If It Be Your Will’ … Leonard Cohen and The Webb Sisters, Live in London

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024: 85, Friday 2 August 2024

Jesus Unrolls the Book in the Synagogue (Jésus dans la synagogue déroule le livre), James Tissot (1831-1902), Brooklyn Museum (see Matthew 13: 54)

Patrick Comerford

We continue in Ordinary Time in the Church today (2 August 2024), and the week began with the Ninth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity IX).

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

Jesus in the Synagogue, as imagined by the Northern Ireland-born artist Greg Olsen

Matthew 13: 54-58 (NRSVA):

54 He came to his home town and began to teach the people in their synagogue, so that they were astounded and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power? 55 Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? 56 And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?’ 57 And they took offence at him. But Jesus said to them, ‘Prophets are not without honour except in their own country and in their own house.’ 58 And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.

Stained glass windows in my old school chapel at Gormanston College, Co Meath (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This morning’s reflection:

Where do you call home, and where do feel most at home?

I have been living for more than two years now in Stony Stratford, on the north-west fringes of Milton Keynes and by the River Ouse, which separates Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire.

But I was born on Rathfarnham Road in Dublin, spent parts of my childhood in West Waterford and in Dublin, went to school in Dublin and in Co Meath, began working as a journalist in Lichfield, lived in my early adult years in Wexford, I have lived in different houses in south Dublin from late 1974 until 2017, and I moved spent five years in parish ministry in west Limerick and north Kerry before moving here.

I have studied in Reading, Dublin, Maynooth, Tokyo, Cambridge and London.

If you were to ask me where I am from, I may look puzzled and sound incoherent as I try to reply. Yet, in my sleep, I still wander easily through the many houses I have lived in and through the classrooms and lecture rooms of the many schools and colleges where I have studied.

I wonder how Jesus would have answered a question like that? He was born in Bethlehem, he spent his early days as a refugee in Egypt, Joseph and Mary seem to have grown up in the small town of Nazareth, they returned there after Jesus’ birth and their exile in Egypt, and he spent his childhood there.

Eventually, though, Jesus moved to the more populated town of Capernaum on the shores of the Sea of Galilee (see Matthew 9: 1; John 2: 12). He would go on to spend the last period of his ministry in Jerusalem, and was executed outside the city walls.

In this morning’s reading, Jesus returns to visit his ‘home town’, which may have been Nazareth or Capernaum.

In Saint Luke’s Gospel, when he returns to Nazareth, the people try to kill him (see Luke 4: 16-29). This morning’s reading appears to describe a separate occasions.

Both Nazareth and Capernaum, like most towns in that region at that time, had a synagogue. It was common for visiting rabbis to be invited to speak in the synagogue when in town. Jesus did so in Nazareth and Capernaum, and did some miracles there, perhaps of healing, though not do many (Matthew 13: 58).

The reaction to Jesus’ teaching and his miracles was one of astonishment and rejection, and his own people asked where he got this wisdom and the ability to do these mighty works.

If, as an adult, you live far away from home, what do you do when you return home? Do you return home for Christmas, or family events such as weddings and funerals?

Do you visit family members … ageing parents, uncles, aunts, siblings, cousins? Have they changed much since you left? Do they think you have changed much?

Do you walk past the old family home? Do you wonder how the families who now live there have changed the rooms inside? Do you want to see inside your own former bedroom, or regret the front garden has been changed to make way for car parking spaces?

Do you visit your old school? Do you contact old school friends or old teachers? Have they changed much since you left? Do they accept who you have become?

Do you visit the church you knew as a child or teenager, or your old school chapel? Has it changed much – not just in the clergy who are there, but in its layout and design, in its style of worship and the ways in which it emphasises its teachings?

My school year from Gormanston in 1969 are planning to meet for lunch in Dublin next month. I expect most of us are going to share memories of members of our year who have died since we left, including Tom Lappin and John McCarthy who died this year. It is not only yet another opportunity to meet each other but also to and find out how we have been getting on over the past 55 years, and to affirm one another and renew friendships.

But so often, sadly, we want to tie people to the memories we have of them in the past, memories that may have been distorted over the years, and that can no longer be placed back in their original contexts.

And too often, we know from our life experiences, assumptions and prejudices can blind us to truth. When we think we know something, or someone, we tend to favour those expectations over new information.

Many, many people in the world think they already know all about Jesus. Many, however – including those who claim to be closest to often – often know very little about him, continue in their assumptions and prejudices, and are offended when they presented with the truth (Matthew 13: 57).

My old school at Gormanston College, Co Meath … has your old school changed since you left? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 2 August 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Fighting and Preventing Human Trafficking in Durgapur.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a reflection by the Revd Davidson Solanki, Regional Manager for Asia and Middle East, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 2 August 2024) invites us to pray:

Let us pray for those who work to rescue and restore trafficked and abused women, children and men. Please give them the courage and determination to persevere in their efforts.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
who sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church:
open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love and joy and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

Holy Father,
who gathered us here around the table of your Son
to share this meal with the whole household of God:
in that new world where you reveal the fullness of your peace,
gather people of every race and language
to share in the eternal banquet of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Gracious Father,
revive your Church in our day,
and make her holy, strong and faithful,
for your glory’s sake
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

At No 18 High Street, Wexford, I had the whole top floor of the house – all two rooms – to myself … in my sleep, I still wander easily through the many houses I have lived in (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

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