Patrick Comerford
Lent began this week with Ash Wednesday, and tomorrow is the First Sunday in Lent (Lent I). After our marathon journey that began in Heathrow on Ash Wednesday (18 February) and that included stopovers and connections in Muscat and Kuala Lumpur, we are settling into our flat in Kuching today.
As I wake this morning, I wonder whether I am going to find a suitable place later today to see the Six Nations Championship fixtures between England and Ireland (14:10 Irish and British time) and Wales and Scotland (16:40). In any event, I am looking forward to dinner with friends and extended and family in the Sarawak Club in Kuching this evening.
But, even before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Luke 5: 27-32 (NRSVA):
27 After this he went out and saw a tax-collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ 28 And he got up, left everything, and followed him.
29 Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax-collectors and others sitting at the table with them. 30 The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax-collectors and sinners?’ 31 Jesus answered, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; 32 I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.’
Today’s Reflections:
In the Gospel reading at the Eucharist yesterday (Matthew 9: 14-15), Christ discussed the question about fasting put to him by the disciples of John the Baptist. The same question comes up again in today’s reading (Luke 5: 27-32) in the response to the lavish banquet Levi arranges in his house to welcome Jesus. It is especially relevant during Lent, which we are supposed to mark with ‘prayer, fasting, and self-denial’, and I suppose I ought to reflect on it in before this evening’s dinner in the Sarawak Club.
However, the difference between the welcome Jesus receives from Levi and the large crowd of tax-collectors and sinners at the banquet on one hand, and on the other hand, the criticism levied at him by those who complain about this eating and drinking reminds me of ‘Indifference’, or ‘When Jesus came to Birmingham,’ a poem by the priest-poet Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy (‘Woodbine Willie’).
Woodbine Willie wrote this poem while he was a chaplain during World War I. He felt God’s heartbeat for people and ministered faithfully, through practical love and through his poetry, to the ordinary soldiers living through ‘hell on earth’ in the trenches.
In this poem, Kennedy compares the behaviour of Christ’s contemporaries with our behaviour today towards the stranger and the outcast, and challenges us in Lent to consider whether we are following Christ to Golgotha.
Kennedy once wrote: ‘We have taught our people to use prayer too much as a means of comfort – not in the original and heroic sense of uplifting, inspiring, strengthening, but in the more modern and baser sense of soothing sorrow, dulling pain, and drying tears – the comfort of the cushion, not the comfort of the Cross.’
Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy was given his nickname ‘Woodbine Willie’ during World War I because of his reputation for giving Woodbine cigarettes along with pastoral and spiritual support to injured and dying soldiers.He was born in Leeds in 1883, the seventh of nine children born to Jeanette Anketell and William Studdert Kennedy, a vicar in Leeds. His family came from Co Limerick, Co Clare and Clonfert, Co Galway, places I know well from my parish and cathedral ministry. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School and then went to Trinity College Dublin, where he received a degree in classics and divinity in 1904.
After a year’s training for ordination, he was appointed a curate in Rugby. He was appointed Vicar of Saint Paul’s, Worcester, in 1914. On the outbreak of World War I later that year, he volunteered as a chaplain on the Western Front, and it was there he was given the nickname ‘Woodbine Willie.’
In 1917, he ran into ‘No Man’s Land’ at the Messines Ridge, to help the wounded during an attack on the German frontline. For his bravery, he was decorated with the Military Cross.
His poems about his war-time experiences were published in Rough Rhymes of a Padre (1918), and More Rough Rhymes (1919).
But during the war, he was also converted to Christian Socialism and pacifism, which influenced his books Lies (1919), Democracy and the Dog-Collar (1921) – which included chapters such as ‘The Church Is Not a Movement but a Mob,’ ‘Capitalism is Nothing But Greed, Grab, and Profit-Mongering,’ and ‘So-Called Religious Education Worse than Useless’ – Food for the Fed Up (1921), The Wicket Gate (1923) and The Word and the Work (1925).
After the war, he was appointed to the Church of Saint Edmund, King and Martyr, in Lombard Street, London. But he soon moved to work for the Industrial Christian Fellowship, travelling throughout Britain on speaking tours.
He addressed the Anglo-Catholic Congress in London in July 1923, when he said:
‘It is not enough to make the devotional life our main concern, and allow an occasional lecture or preachment on social matters to be added as a make-weight. The social life must be brought right into the heart of our devotion, and our devotion right into the heart of our social life. There is only one spiritual life, and that is the sacramental life – sacramental in its fullest, its widest, and its deepest sense, which means the consecration of the whole man and all his human relationships to God.
‘There must be free and open passage between the sanctuary and the street. We must destroy within ourselves our present feeling that we descend to a lower level when we leave the song of the angels and the archangels and begin to study economic conditions, questions of wages, hours and housing. It is hard, very hard, but it must be done. It must be done not only for the sake of the street, but for the sake of the sanctuary, too. If the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament obscures the Omnipresence of God in the world, then the Sacrament is idolatrous, and our worship is actual sin, for all sin at its roots is the denial of the Omnipresence of God.
‘I have been to Mass in churches where I felt it was sinful – sinful because there was no passion for social righteousness behind it. When ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make long prayers I will not hear you; your hands are full of blood … Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Seek judgement. Relieve the oppressed. Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
‘Remember that medieval ritual was a natural expression of medieval life, which, at any rate, tried to consecrate all things to God – tried to build the Kingdom of God on earth, and dedicated all arts and crafts, all human activities to him. In that setting it meant much; apart from that setting it means nothing, and worse than nothing – it is a hollow mockery. The way out is not to destroy ritual, but to restore righteousness, and make our flaming colours the banners of a Church militant here on earth …’
Woodbine Willie was taken ill on one of his speaking tours and he died in Liverpool 97 years ago on 8 March 1929.
Indifference, by GA Studdert Kennedy
When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary;
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.
When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed Him by.
They would not hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die;
For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain.
Still Jesus cried, ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do,’
And still it rained the winter rain that drenched Him through and through;
The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall, and cried for Calvary.
Today’s Prayers (Saturday 21 February 2026):
The theme this week (15-20 February 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been: ‘Look to the Amazon!’ (pp 28-29). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by the Most Revd Marinez Bassotto, Bishop of Amazonia and Archbishop of the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 21 February 2026, International Mother Language Day) invites us to pray:
God of all peoples, bless the preservation of language and culture. May communities celebrate and pass on their heritage, strengthening identity and pride for future generations.
The Collect:
Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing that you have made
and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent:
create and make in us new and contrite hearts
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may receive from you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ 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:
Almighty God,
you have given your only Son to be for us
both a sacrifice for sin
and also an example of godly life:
give us grace
that we may always most thankfully receive
these his inestimable gifts,
and also daily endeavour
to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Holy God,
our lives are laid open before you:
rescue us from the chaos of sin
and through the death of your Son
bring us healing and make us whole
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Collect on the Eve of Lent I:
Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness,
and was tempted as we are, yet without sin:
give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your Spirit;
and, as you know our weakness,
so may we know your power to save;
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.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
