The interior of the Irish Jewish Museum in a former synagogue on Walworth Road, off the South Circular Road, and close to Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’
Patrick Comerford
Opening hymn:
The God of Abraham Praise (Irish Church Hymnal, 323)
Introduction
During your time here, you spend much of your time examining Jewish spirituality as it is presented to us in the Old Testament or in the New Testament, time looking at the spirituality of Jesus as a Jew, and some time – particularly in my tutorial group this year and last year – debating the clash of spiritualities in the Johannine writings and what is meant there by the Jews.
But recent and contemporary Jewish spirituality needs to be understood on its own terms as a modern current in spirituality and one that can both challenge and enrich us.
In our studies of the Scriptures, we sometimes forget that Judaism continued to grow and develop, and that there have been continuing, growing and evolving Jewish spiritualities over the past 20 centuries. An awareness of that will enrich our understanding of the traditions from which Christianity has grown, and contribute towards our own spiritualities.
The Jewish contribution to Western culture cannot all be compartmentalised into the wanderings of Leopold Bloom in Ulysses, the movies of Woody Allen, amateur dramatic stagings of Fiddler on the Roof, the novels of Chaim Potok or James Heller, the songs of Bob Dylan, the poems of Leonard Cohen, Erich Segal’s Love Story, the politics and conflicts around Israel, or Madonna’s dabbling in the Kaballah.
But over the centuries, European civilisation and our spirituality have been challenged by, have been enriched by and have engaged with innumerable Jewish thinkers and philosophers, including:
● Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), who declared that religious faith “consists in honesty and sincerity of heart rather than in outward actions.”
● Karl Marx (1818-1883), who irreversibly changed political and social thinking.
● Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), the father figure of post-modernism, who argued: “We should stop thinking about God as someone, over there, way up there, transcendent and, what is more … capable, more than any satellite orbiting in space, of seeing into the most secret of places.” Instead, he said, we should see God as “the structure of conscience.”
Last night in Dublin, there were special commemorations for Holocaust Day. The spirituality that sustained a people and a faith through the dark night of the Holocaust must be very rich, deep and profound, and has to have something deep and beautiful to contribute to us today, and to say to us as we experience and live our lives spiritually.
There is a perception that Jewish religious activity is confined to concerns about the modern state of Israel or debates about the observation of kosher regulations. But there are other sources and strengths for the practice of Jewish spirituality today.
Any introduction to Jewish spirituality also needs to imagine the profound impact of the Holocaust on Jews collectively and on our society. And an introduction to Jewish spirituality also needs to take account of the Hasidic movement, which has influenced many writers outside its own circles.
In an addition, an introduction to eight key personalities helps to illustrate this: Martin Buber, Simone Weil, Elie Wisel, Lionel Blue, Jonathan Sacks, Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Michele Guinness and Leonard Cohen.
Personal encounter
Terenure Synagogue, Rathfarnham Road ... I was born a few doors away in 1952
I was born on Rathfarnham Road, a few doors away from the Terenure Synagogue. In my youth, I knew the streets of Little Jerusalem, off the South Circular Road and Clanbrassil Street in Dublin. There, in Little Jerusalem, my grandfather had cousins who shared a house with Lithuanian Jewish immigrants and cousins who lived two doors away from the house where James Joyce says Leopold Bloom was born.
The Irish Jewish Museum is housed in a former synagogue on Walworth Road, off the South Circular Road, in Dublin’s ‘Little Jerusalem’
Over the years, I have visited the synagogues in Dublin at Adelaide Road and Walworth Road (both now closed), Rathfarnham Road and Leicester Avenue, Rathgar, and I have written about and visited synagogues and Jewish communities in Britain, Austria, China, Greece, Hungary, Hong Kong, Italy, Romania, Turkey, and Israel/Palestine.
Hasidism and the Lubavitcher movement
Rabbis from the Chabad-Lubavitch movement pose for a group photograph in Brooklyn, New York, in 2007
The Lubavitcher movement is one of the largest Hasidic movements in Orthodox Judaism, and is based in the Crown Heights district of Brooklyn, New York. The movement runs thousands of centres around the world, including community centres, synagogues and schools. This movement has over 200,000 adherents and up to a million Jews attend or Chabad-Lubavitch services at least once a year.
Chabad is an acronym for Hebrew words meaning Wisdom, Understanding and Knowledge, while the Lubavitch movement takes its name from Lyubavichi, a Russian town that was its headquarters for over a century.
The Chabad-Lubavitch movement was founded in the late 18th century by Shneur Zalman of Liadi, who developed an intellectual system and approach to Judaism. While other Hasidic traditions focus only on the idea that “God desires the heart,” Rabbi Shneur Zalman argued that he also desires the mind, and that the heart without the mind is useless. He argued that “understanding is the mother of … fear and love of God. These are born of knowledge and profound contemplation of the greatness of God.”
Shneur Zalman was instrumental in the preservation of Hasidism within mainstream Judaism. Avrum Erlich writes that he “allowed for some of the mystically inclined Hasidim to reacquaint themselves with traditional scholarship and the significance of strict halakhic observance and behaviour, concerning which other Hasidic schools were sometimes less exacting. Shneur Zalman also provided the opportunity for traditionalists and scholars to access the Hasidic mood and its spiritual integrity without betraying their traditional scholarly allegiances.”
Shneur Zalman emphasised that mysticism without Talmudic study was worthless – even dangerous. He taught that Torah must be studied joyously – studying without joy is frowned upon. He provided a metaphor: when a mitzvah (commandment) is fulfilled an angel is created. But if the mitzvah was joyless then the angel too will be dispirited.
More recently, his descendant, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), sought to unite the mundane aspects of the world with the aspect of godliness in the world. He emphasised the concept of creating an abode for God in this world. He felt that the world was not a contradiction to the word of God, and it was to be embraced rather than shunned.
Martin Buber
Martin Buber (1878-1965), right, was a leading Austrian-born Israeli philosopher, translator, and educator. Martin Buber was born in Vienna, where he spent much of his childhood. Reading Kant, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche inspired him to study in philosophy, and his doctoral work was on Jakob Böhme, the German Lutheran pietist who influenced the Anglican mystic William Law and John Wesley. He resigned from the University of Frankfurt am Main after Hitler came to power in 1933. When he was banned from lecturing he moved to Jerusalem and died there in 1965.
Buber’s evocative, sometimes poetic writing style has marked the major themes in his work: the re-telling of Hasidic tales, Biblical commentary, and metaphysical dialogue.
He saw the Zionist movement as having the potential for social and spiritual enrichment. But he also admired how Hasidic communities brought their religious beliefs into their daily life and culture, and published collected stories of two Hasidic founding figures, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, and the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism.
He valued the emphasis in the Hasidic tradition on community, inter-personal life, and meaning in common activities. For Buber, the Hasidic ideal was a life lived in the unconditional presence of God, where there was no distinct separation between daily habits and religious experience. This was a major influence on Buber’s philosophy of anthropology, which considered the basis of human existence as dialogical.
In 1923, he wrote his famous essay on existence, Ich und Du (later published in English as I and Thou). In I and Thou, he introduced his thesis on human existence. He argues there that a person is at all times engaged with the world in one of two modes of being: one of dialogue (Ich-Du) or one of monologue (Ich-Es). Ich-Du (“I-Thou”) is a relationship that stresses the mutual, holistic existence of two beings. It is an encounter in which infinity and universality are made actual, rather than being merely concepts.
Buber describes God as the eternal “Du,” and so one key Ich-Du relationship Buber identifies is that between a human being and God. He argues that this is the only way it is possible to interact with God, and that an Ich-Du relationship with anything or anyone connects in some way with the eternal relation to God.
On the other hand, in an Ich-Es relationship there is no actual meeting. Instead, the “I” confronts and treats the being in its presence as an object. The Ich-Es relationship, therefore, is a relationship with oneself; it is not a dialogue, but a monologue. In the Ich-Es relationship, an individual treats other things, including people, as objects to be used and experienced. Essentially, this form of objectivity relates to the world in terms of the self – how an object can serve the individual’s interest.
Buber argues that human life consists of an oscillation between Ich-Du and Ich-Es, and that Ich-Du experiences are few and far between. Buber argues that Ich-Es relations – even between human beings – devalue not only those who exist, but the meaning of all existence.
Simone Weil
Simone Weil (1909-1943), right, was a French philosopher, Christian mystic and social activist, who was born in Paris into an agnostic Jewish family. She wrote extensively with both insight and breadth about the political movements she was a part involved in and later about spiritual mysticism. Her biographer Gabriella Fiori says she was “a moral genius in the orbit of ethics, a genius of immense revolutionary range.”
Despite her youthful pacifism, she fought in the Spanish Civil War. After clumsily burning herself over a cooking fire, she left Spain to recuperate in Assisi, and there, in the church where Saint Francis of Assisi had prayed, she had an experience of religious ecstasy in 1937, leading her to pray for the first time in her life.
She had another, more powerful revelation a year later, and from 1938 on, her writings became more mystical and spiritual. She thought of becoming a Roman Catholic, but declined to be baptised until the very end of her life – a decision she explained in her book Waiting for God. During World War II, she joined the French Resistance.
After a lifetime of illness and frailty, she died in August 1943 in Ashford, Kent, at the age of 34. The 1952 book Gravity and Grace consists of passages selected from her notebooks.
Weil does not regard the world as a debased creation, but as a direct expression of God’s love – although she also recognises it as a place of evil, affliction, and sees the brutal mixture of chance and necessity. This juxtaposition leads her to produce an unusual form of Christian theodicy.
Weil also writes on why she believes spirituality is necessary for dealing with social and political problems, and says the soul needs food just as the body needs food.
Elie Weisel
Elie Wiesel (born 1928) is a Romanian-born modern Jewish novelist, political activist, and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of over 40 books. His best-known book, Night (1958) describes his Holocaust experiences in several concentration camps: “I was the accuser, God the accused. My eyes were open and I was alone – terribly alone in a world without God and without man.”
Elie Wiesel was the son of an Orthodox Jewish grocer and the grandson of a Hasidic farmer. In 1944, the family was confined to the ghetto and then deported to Auschwitz. From Auschwitz, they were sent to Buchenwald, where his father was murdered.
In one searing passing in Night, he recalls “the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky,” and says: “Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever … Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God himself. Never.”
After World War II, he moved first to France, where he was persuaded him to write about his Holocaust experiences, and then to New York.
In 1955, Wiesel he moved to the US, where he has written over 40 books and was instrumental in the building of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. In 1986, he received the Nobel Peace Prize for speaking out against violence, repression, and racism. His writing is considered among the most important in Holocaust literature, and he is credited by some with giving the term “Holocaust” its present meaning.
His statement, “... to remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all ...”, stands as a succinct summary of his views on life and serves as the driving force of his work.
Jürgen Moltmann, in The Crucified God, was the first theologian to adapt Wiesel’s graphic and horrific story of a Jewish boy hung by the Nazis along with two men in a camp. It took half an hour for the youth to die and, as the men of the camp watched his torment, one asked: “Where is God now?” Wiesel heard a voice within him answer: “Where is he? He is here. He is hanging there on the gallows.”
While Wiesel interpreted his inner voice as expressing what has now become disbelief in a loving and just God, Moltmann used the story to argue for a God who suffers in union with those who suffer.
Jonathan Sacks
Dr Jonathan Henry Sacks, right, is the (Orthodox) Chief Rabbi in Britain, and is a well-known spokesman for the Jewish community, as a frequent guest on television and radio shows, and for his regular newspaper columns. Dr Sacks stirred controversy in the Jewish community some years ago when he refused to attend the funeral service of the Reform Rabbi Hugo Gryn and wrote a private letter in Hebrew that suggested that Reform Jews are “dividers of the faith.”
On the other hand, a group of rabbis have accused Dr Sacks of heresy in his book The Dignity of Difference, in which he seems to imply that Judaism is not the absolute truth. He amended the next edition of the book, but refused to recall earlier editions. Some rabbis have also condemned him for engaging in dialogue with Christians.
In the1990 BBC Reith lectures (published in 1991 as The Persistence of Faith), he argued that faiths must remain open to criticism, and while keeping alive their separate communities must contribute to national debates and moral issues.
Sacks also engages positively with Hasidic seeing the Lubavitcher spirituality as “bridging the gap between spiritual insight and daily behaviour [that] had always been a problem for Jewish mysticism.”
Lionel Blue
Rabbi Lionel Blue, right, is an English Reform rabbi from the East End of London, a journalist and broadcaster, and the first openly gay British rabbi. He is well known for his wry, gentle sense of humour on A Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4.
Through those contributions to A Thought for the Day over the past 25 years, he has given hundreds of thousands of listeners their daily ration of spirituality and religion, and has bridged the gap between not only Judaism but all religion and the demands of the secular world.
“Well good morning Sue and good morning John and good morning everybody” is a typical opening for A Thought for the Day. He has said: “I don’t believe death is the end. This world is like a corridor, like a departure lounge in an airport. You make yourself comfortable and get to know people – then your number comes up and you’re called.”
Dan Cohn-Sherbok
Dan Cohn-Sherbok is a Reform rabbi and Professor of Jewish Theology at the University of Wales in Lampeter. Contrary to the official position of Reform Judaism, he is sympathetic to Messianic Judaism and Secular Humanistic Judaism, and is interested in Jewish-Buddhist and Jewish-Christian dialogue.
He argues that today Judaism is pluriform in nature, that it no longer has an over-arching authority that can determine correct belief and practice, so that the Jewish community has splintered into a variety of groups, ranging from the strictly Orthodox to the most liberal, with some groups borrowing in a syncretistic way from other religious traditions.
In The Crucified Jew (1992), he challenges Christians to face up to 2,000 years of anti-Semitism. In Glimpses of God (1994), he invites a variety of writers, Jewish and Christian, to say whether we can find a glimpse of God in the everyday life.
Michele Guinness
And we come full circle with Michele Guinness, right, who bridges Judaism and Anglicanism in her own life story. A vicar’s wife and a broadcaster for many years, she has written eight books and is a regular contributor to television, newspapers and magazines.
In her best-selling book, Child of the Covenant (1985), Michele Guinness talks about making sense of being both Jewish and Christian. She grew up in a traditional Jewish family, observing all its rituals and culture. An encounter with a Christian raised many questions for her, and she turned to the Bible for the answers. She was baptised a Christian, but argued that as a member of the Church of England she never lost her sense of being Jewish, and she continues to practice many aspects of her Jewish faith. She tells of a Jewish girl rediscovering her roots by finding Christ. As she came face-to-face with Christ as the Messiah, she tried to make sense of being both Jewish and Christian.
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen in the O2 in Dublin last year (Photograph: The Irish Times/Dave Meehan)
I’m not going to spend much time discussing Leonard Cohen. Let me say, I have been a fan of his since the late 1960s, and first became a fan through reading his poetry.
There is more to Leonard Cohen’s spirituality than Hallelujah. Like most Jews, he has been irrevocably changed by entering into the shared, post-Holocaust experience. Like many Jews, he has tried to balance between a critical and an ambivalent attitude to the religious teachings of Judaism, but he has never abandoned it.
His poetry and his lyrics are deeply influenced by Hasidic ideas too, and even when he is apparently at his most bawdy he remains deeply mystical and spiritually challenging.
These days, all his concerts close with him singing his poem, “If it be your will” – itself a deeply moving prayer.
Closing music:
Leonard Cohen: “If it be your will”
Handout 1:
“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.
“Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.
“Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.
“Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.
“Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God himself.
“Never.” – Elie Wiesel, Night.
Handout 2:
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.
Handout 3: Hymn 323
The God of Abraham praise,
who reigns enthroned above;
ancient of everlasting days,
and God of love;
to him uplift your voice,
at whose supreme command
from earth we rise, and seek the joys
at his right hand.
He by himself has sworn,
I on his oath depend;
I shall on eagle’s wings upborne,
to heaven ascend:
I shall behold his face,
I shall his power adore,
and sing the wonders of his grace
for evermore.
There dwells the Lord, our King,
the Lord, our righteousness,
triumphant o’er the world and sin,
the Prince of peace;
on Zion’s sacred height
his kingdom he maintains,
and, glorious with his saints in light,
for ever reigns.
The God who reigns on high,
the great archangels sing,
and “Holy, holy, holy,” cry,
“Almighty King!
who was and is the same,
and evermore shall be:
Jehovah, Father, great I AM,
we worship thee!”
The whole triumphant host
give thanks to God on high;
“Hail, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!”
they ever cry.
Hail, Abraham's God and mine!
I join the heavenly lays;
all might and majesty are thine,
and endless praise.
Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, Dublin. This essay is based on notes for a seminar with B.Th. and M.Th. students on 1 February 2010.
01 February 2010
Saint Brigid: providing refuge for those under fire
Saint Brigid ... a modern icon
Patrick Comerford
Saint Brigid, 1 February 2010, 8.30 a.m., The Eucharist:
Hosea 6: 1-4; Psalm 134; I John 1: 1-4; John 10: 7-16
May I speak to you in the name of + the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Last week, a feature writer in The Irish Times bemoaned the fact that the name Brigid is no longer as popular as it once was. Despite the popularity of Bridget Jones’s Diary, few mothers or fathers today seem willing to call their daughters Brigid, let alone Bride, or even Biddy.
Saint Brigid, who we remember today, is one of the three patrons of Ireland, alongside Saint Patrick and Saint Columba. Yet, there are so many legends about Brigid, and she has been hijacked by so many pedlars of New Age Celtic Spirituality, it is difficult to separate myth from fact. And so, the lectionary compilers must have been really at the end of their creative tethers to provide our readings for this day.
So let me tell you a story. One evening, over 100 years ago, a vicar’s son – who was abandoning his legal profession and becoming a writer – was walking back to his father’s vicarage at Saint Bride’s in London.
At a junction near Fleet Street, he bumped into another man, and as they stared into each other’s face, the two men realised they were doubles, completely similar in features and physiques.
The young writer was disturbed. What if they had got mixed up? What if that stranger returned to the vicarage, and the budding young writer, in his stead, headed out to the suburbs, rus in urbe, each taking on the other’s life?
Back at Saint Bride’s Vicarage, Anthony Hope [Hawkins] sat up all night, concocted a new fantasy country, Ruritania, and penned his romantic, swash-buckling novel, The Prisoner of Zenda.
As a writer and as Vicar of Saint Bride’s, Anthony Hope’s father, the Revd Edwards Comerford Hawkins, had developed the tradition of Saint Bride’s providing a spiritual home and refuge for journalists and writers. After the church was gutted by firebombs during the Blitz in 1940, it was rebuilt at the expense of newspaper proprietors and journalists.
Over the last two or three decades, the press has abandoned Fleet Street, moving out to Wapping, Canary Wharf, the South Bank and Kensington. But Saint Bride’s remains at the heart of press and media life in London, and the church is still a frequent venue for baptisms, weddings and funerals for journalists and their families.
There were constant vigils in Saint Bride’s in the 1980s and 1990s, for John McCarthy, Terry Anderson and other journalists held hostage in Lebanon. When four young journalists were hacked to death in Somalia in 1993, Saint Bride’s was the appropriate place for the Service of Thanksgiving for their lives and work. The journalists’ altar in the north aisle – where those vigils were held – is dedicated to those who have lost their lives in the task of bringing us the news and bringing us the truth.
Saint Bride’s is a distinctive sight on London’s skyline, clearly visible throughout the City. At 69 meters, it is the second tallest of Wren’s London churches: only Saint Paul’s Cathedral has a higher pinnacle.
This church is the seventh on the site, one of the most ancient in London. One tradition says the first church was founded by Saint Brigid herself. But it is more likely that it was built by Irish monks who were missionaries in England when the Middle Saxons were converted in the seventh century.
The steeple of Saint Bride's, Fleet Street ... inspired the tiered wedding cake (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The famous tiered spire of Saint Bride’s inspired the original design for tiered wedding cakes. The design uses four octagonal stages of diminishing height capped with an obelisk that terminates in a ball and vane.
So Saint Bride’s, the most famous church named after the Irish saint, has its roots in Irish mission work, has a romantic connection with weddings and brides, and has provided pastoral care, comfort and inspiration for writers, journalists and novelists across the generations.
But its ministry and mission cannot be unique. Those who bring us news, good and bad, must know they can find comfort, succour and support in the Church. You may feel at times in your parish ministry that your parishioners are your priority. But they are not your sole responsibility.
The Good Shepherd makes a priority of the one lost sheep. At times the Vicars of Saint Bride’s may have been tempted to dismiss the demands of journalists and writers, or those who wanted the romantic setting of the wedding-cake church for their own weddings, as petty or even irritating.
But listening to the needs of the world, listening to the voices of those on the margins or even outside the Church, taking time to pray for those who are marginalised or in danger because of their work – especially at crisis and crucial moments in their lives – is a vital part of our mission.
And when we look others in the face honestly and lovingly, we may find not only that we are looking in the face of people who are just like us, but that we are looking into the face of Christ and that the Good Shepherd is looking straight back at us, calling us to walk on with him, in search of his sheep, to take on his life.
And so may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
Collect:
Father,
by the leadership of your blessed servant Brigid
you strengthened the Church in this land:
As we give you thanks for her life of devoted service,
inspire us with new life and light,
and give us perseverance to serve you all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Post Communion Prayer
God of truth,
whose Wisdom set her table and invited us to eat
the bread and drink the wine of the kingdom.
Help us to lay aside all foolishness
and to live and walk in the way of insight,
that in fellowship with all your saints
we may come to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This sermon was preached at Eucharist in the institute chapel on Saint Brigid’s Day, 1 February 2010
Patrick Comerford
Saint Brigid, 1 February 2010, 8.30 a.m., The Eucharist:
Hosea 6: 1-4; Psalm 134; I John 1: 1-4; John 10: 7-16
May I speak to you in the name of + the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Last week, a feature writer in The Irish Times bemoaned the fact that the name Brigid is no longer as popular as it once was. Despite the popularity of Bridget Jones’s Diary, few mothers or fathers today seem willing to call their daughters Brigid, let alone Bride, or even Biddy.
Saint Brigid, who we remember today, is one of the three patrons of Ireland, alongside Saint Patrick and Saint Columba. Yet, there are so many legends about Brigid, and she has been hijacked by so many pedlars of New Age Celtic Spirituality, it is difficult to separate myth from fact. And so, the lectionary compilers must have been really at the end of their creative tethers to provide our readings for this day.
So let me tell you a story. One evening, over 100 years ago, a vicar’s son – who was abandoning his legal profession and becoming a writer – was walking back to his father’s vicarage at Saint Bride’s in London.
At a junction near Fleet Street, he bumped into another man, and as they stared into each other’s face, the two men realised they were doubles, completely similar in features and physiques.
The young writer was disturbed. What if they had got mixed up? What if that stranger returned to the vicarage, and the budding young writer, in his stead, headed out to the suburbs, rus in urbe, each taking on the other’s life?
Back at Saint Bride’s Vicarage, Anthony Hope [Hawkins] sat up all night, concocted a new fantasy country, Ruritania, and penned his romantic, swash-buckling novel, The Prisoner of Zenda.
As a writer and as Vicar of Saint Bride’s, Anthony Hope’s father, the Revd Edwards Comerford Hawkins, had developed the tradition of Saint Bride’s providing a spiritual home and refuge for journalists and writers. After the church was gutted by firebombs during the Blitz in 1940, it was rebuilt at the expense of newspaper proprietors and journalists.
Over the last two or three decades, the press has abandoned Fleet Street, moving out to Wapping, Canary Wharf, the South Bank and Kensington. But Saint Bride’s remains at the heart of press and media life in London, and the church is still a frequent venue for baptisms, weddings and funerals for journalists and their families.
There were constant vigils in Saint Bride’s in the 1980s and 1990s, for John McCarthy, Terry Anderson and other journalists held hostage in Lebanon. When four young journalists were hacked to death in Somalia in 1993, Saint Bride’s was the appropriate place for the Service of Thanksgiving for their lives and work. The journalists’ altar in the north aisle – where those vigils were held – is dedicated to those who have lost their lives in the task of bringing us the news and bringing us the truth.
Saint Bride’s is a distinctive sight on London’s skyline, clearly visible throughout the City. At 69 meters, it is the second tallest of Wren’s London churches: only Saint Paul’s Cathedral has a higher pinnacle.
This church is the seventh on the site, one of the most ancient in London. One tradition says the first church was founded by Saint Brigid herself. But it is more likely that it was built by Irish monks who were missionaries in England when the Middle Saxons were converted in the seventh century.
The steeple of Saint Bride's, Fleet Street ... inspired the tiered wedding cake (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The famous tiered spire of Saint Bride’s inspired the original design for tiered wedding cakes. The design uses four octagonal stages of diminishing height capped with an obelisk that terminates in a ball and vane.
So Saint Bride’s, the most famous church named after the Irish saint, has its roots in Irish mission work, has a romantic connection with weddings and brides, and has provided pastoral care, comfort and inspiration for writers, journalists and novelists across the generations.
But its ministry and mission cannot be unique. Those who bring us news, good and bad, must know they can find comfort, succour and support in the Church. You may feel at times in your parish ministry that your parishioners are your priority. But they are not your sole responsibility.
The Good Shepherd makes a priority of the one lost sheep. At times the Vicars of Saint Bride’s may have been tempted to dismiss the demands of journalists and writers, or those who wanted the romantic setting of the wedding-cake church for their own weddings, as petty or even irritating.
But listening to the needs of the world, listening to the voices of those on the margins or even outside the Church, taking time to pray for those who are marginalised or in danger because of their work – especially at crisis and crucial moments in their lives – is a vital part of our mission.
And when we look others in the face honestly and lovingly, we may find not only that we are looking in the face of people who are just like us, but that we are looking into the face of Christ and that the Good Shepherd is looking straight back at us, calling us to walk on with him, in search of his sheep, to take on his life.
And so may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
Collect:
Father,
by the leadership of your blessed servant Brigid
you strengthened the Church in this land:
As we give you thanks for her life of devoted service,
inspire us with new life and light,
and give us perseverance to serve you all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Post Communion Prayer
God of truth,
whose Wisdom set her table and invited us to eat
the bread and drink the wine of the kingdom.
Help us to lay aside all foolishness
and to live and walk in the way of insight,
that in fellowship with all your saints
we may come to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This sermon was preached at Eucharist in the institute chapel on Saint Brigid’s Day, 1 February 2010
Saint Basil and a beach walk on Bull Island
Christ Church Cathedral, basking in today’s late January sunshine before the Candlemas procession (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)
Patrick Comerford
We are coming to the end of the Christmas and Epiphany season in the church. After the Cathedral Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral this morning [31 January], I crossed the River Liffey to the northside of the inner city and the Greek Orthodox Church in Arbour Hill. I had been invited by the President of the Hellenic Community of Ireland, Dr Thomae Kakouli-Duarte, to be part of the Greek Community in Dublin for the cutting of the Vasilopita (βασιλόπιτα), or Saint Basil’s Cake.
Cutting the Vasilopita (βασιλόπιτα) in the Greek Orthodox Church in Dublin on 31 January (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)
Greeks traditionally eat Vasilopita, a cake in which a gold coin has been baked, on 1 January. Saint Basil, whose feast day falls on 1 January, has a Santa-like place in Greek lore. Many private or public institutions – such as societies, clubs, workplaces, companies, and so on – cut their Vasilopita at another time between New Year’s Day and the beginning of the Great Lent, and those celebrations range from impromptu potluck gatherings to formal receptions or balls.
Traditionally, the cake is served in a sequence: the first piece is set aside for Saint Basil, one of the “Three Hierarchs”; the second piece is for the home; and the rest of the cake is then handed out amongst family members, from oldest to youngest. Today’s cake was blessed by Father Irenaeu Craciun and cut by the new Greek Ambassador to Ireland, with Dr Thomae Kakouli-Duarte presiding elegantly over the proceedings.
The iconostasis in the Greek Orthodox Church in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)
A gold coin is wrapped and hidden in the cake by slipping it into the dough before baking, and whoever finds the coin in their slice is said promised a lucky year. I didn’t find the coin, but I felt blessed to be handed the priest’s slice by my friend Stella and felt honoured that the Greek Community in Dublin asked me to their celebrations today, which was also the day after the Feast of the Three Hierarchs [30 January].
Dr Thomae Kakouli-Duarte President of the Hellenic Community of Ireland and Mike Youlton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)
The Three Holy Hierarchs
The Three Holy Hierarchs
The Three Holy Hierarchs (Οι Τρείς Ιεράρχες) are Saint Basil the Great (Saint Basil of Caesarea), Saint Gregory the Theologian (Saint Gregory of Nazianzus) and Saint John Chrysostom. These three highly influential bishops from the Early Church played pivotal roles in shaping our theology.
In 11th century Constantinople, there were disputes about which of the three hierarchs was the greatest. Some argued that Saint Basil was superior to the other two because of his explanations of Christian faith and his monastic example. Those who argued for Saint John Chrysostom countered that the “Golden Mouthed” (Χρυσόστομος) Patriarch of Constantinople was unmatched in both eloquence and in bringing sinners to repentance. Those who preferred Saint Gregory the Theologian pointed to the majesty, purity and profundity of his sermons and his defence of the faith against the Arian heresy.
All three have separate feast days in January: Saint Basil on 1 January, Saint Gregory on 25 January, and Saint John Chrysostom on 27 January. Eastern Orthodox tradition says the three hierarchs appeared together in 1084 in a vision to Saint John Mauropous of Euchaita and said that they were equal before God: “There are no divisions among us, and no opposition to one another.” As a result, around 1100 the Emperor Alexios Komnenos declared 30 January a feast day commemorating all three in common.
Beach walk on Bull Island
After sharing the Vasilopita with my Greek friends, I headed off for my weekly beach walk. This afternoon I headed to the Bull Island, off the north coast in Dublin Bay. The Bull Island is only 5 km long and 1 km wide but has a long, sandy beach, Dollymount Strand, that stretches the entire length 5 km length of the island, running parallel to the shore at Clontarf, Dollymouny, Raheny and Kilbarrack, and facing Sutton and Howth at its northern end.
The island is linked to the mainland both by the Bull Bridge, a one-lane wooden road bridge at the southern end, opposite Clontarf and Dollymount, and by a broad causeway at Raheny further north.
Dollymount Strand is not as clean and as attractive as some of my favourite beaches further north – such as Bettystown, Laytown, Skerries, Loughshinny, Rush, Portrane, Donabate, Malahide and Portmarnock – but it was easy to get to in the middle of a very busy Sunday’s packed. Because it is so close to the city centre, it is a popular place.
In the past, many Dubliners learned to drive at low tide on the firm flat sandy foreshore in “Dollier” – but I noticed this afternoon that it has been blocked off to motor traffic. Perhaps this has created the safety that makes Bull Island so popular today with kite-surfers.
Kite surfing in the winter sunshine on Bull Island (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)
Bird life on the island has been protected by legislation since the 1930s, and since 1988 it has been a designated national nature reserve. It has been listed by UNESCO as a biosphere reserve.
Apart from two golf clubhouses and a Sea Scout den, the island has just a few residents. In 1955, Dublin Corporation acquired the entire island from the Royal Dublin Golf Club, apart from the club itself, having bought out the interests of the Howth Estate.
The bulk of the island now makes up the largest park owned by the city. However, the North Bull Wall, the breakwater beyond it, and the wooden bridge to it are owned by the Dublin Port Company. Each year, the bridge is closed at least one day each year to protect the port company’s rights, and so the bridge will be closed this Tuesday and Wednesday to all motor traffic.
An accidental island
I imagine few people know that the island and the beach are relatively recent and inadvertent results of human intervention in Dublin Bay.
For centuries, Dublin Bay had a long-running problem with silting, particularly at the mouth of the Liffey. After years of primitive dredging had failed, a more effective attempt to maintain a clear channel began in 1715 when the first piles were driven to make the Great South Wall.
When it became obvious that the South Wall was not solving the silting problem, building a North Bull Wall was proposed, and the Dublin Port authorities commissioned studies to look at the feasibility of a project like this.
Admiral William Bligh – more famous for his role in the Mutiny on the Bounty and as the inept Governor of New South Wales – surveyed Dublin Bay for the Ballast Board, and in 1801 pointed out the potential of the North Bull sandbank.
A wooden bridge – the first Bull Bridge – was built in 1819 to facilitate building a stone wall, based on a design by George Halpin. Work on the Bull Wall started in 1820 and was completed by 1825, at a cost of £95,000.
Over the next half century, the natural tidal effects created by the walls deepened the entry to the Liffey, depositing much of the silt scoured from the river course on the North Bull. A true island was emerging, and Dubliners were attracted out to the growing beach. The visitors grew in number after horse tram services started running to Clontarf in 1873, and rose even further when a full tram line to Howth opened in 1900, with stops in the Clontarf and Dollymount area.
A growing island
As the number of visitors grew, the island continued to grow too, from the Bull Wall towards Howth Head.
In 1889, the Royal Dublin Golf Club, which was then based in Sutton, was given permission by Colonel Vernon and the Dublin Port and Docks Board to lay out a new golf course at the city end of the island and to build a new clubhouse.
The new Bull Bridge, built in 1906-1907, is still standing over a century later. During World War I, the island was used for military training – there was a firing range, trench warfare practice, while the Royal Dublin Golf Club’s clubhouse became officers’ quarters. Local people were upset at the damage to the clubhouse and the course. They held discussions with the Royal Dublin and with Lady Ardilaun, and formed a new golf club, named Saint Anne’s in honour of the Guinness estate.
The island continues to grow, and some say there is a possibility that within the next half-century it could merge with the mainland at Red Rock in Sutton, forming a lagoon, changing the make-up of the area’s wildlife, and leaving two dinghy sailing clubs landlocked.
Candlemas Procession
From Dollymount, I headed back into the city centre, and had a late lunch in La Dolce Vita, a new Italian wine bar that has opened up within the past month in Cow Lane in Temple Bar.
The Chapter House in Christ Christ Church Cathedral, in the afternoon sunlight (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
At 5 p.m., we brought the Christmas and Epiphany season to an end in Christ Church Cathedral with the Candlemas Procession.
We ended in the baptistery, where we extinguished our candles as we prayed:
Here we now stand near the place of baptism.
Help us, who are marked with the cross,
to share the Lord’s death and resurrection.
Here we turn from Christ’s birth to his passion.
Help us, for whom Lent is near,
to enter deeply into the Easter mystery.
Here we bless one another in your name.
Help us, who now go in peace,
to shine with your light in the world.
Thanks be to God! Amen.
We dispersed in silence. Outside it was dark.
The fourth and last Sunday after the Epiphany had been a beautiful day.
Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin
Patrick Comerford
We are coming to the end of the Christmas and Epiphany season in the church. After the Cathedral Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral this morning [31 January], I crossed the River Liffey to the northside of the inner city and the Greek Orthodox Church in Arbour Hill. I had been invited by the President of the Hellenic Community of Ireland, Dr Thomae Kakouli-Duarte, to be part of the Greek Community in Dublin for the cutting of the Vasilopita (βασιλόπιτα), or Saint Basil’s Cake.
Cutting the Vasilopita (βασιλόπιτα) in the Greek Orthodox Church in Dublin on 31 January (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)
Greeks traditionally eat Vasilopita, a cake in which a gold coin has been baked, on 1 January. Saint Basil, whose feast day falls on 1 January, has a Santa-like place in Greek lore. Many private or public institutions – such as societies, clubs, workplaces, companies, and so on – cut their Vasilopita at another time between New Year’s Day and the beginning of the Great Lent, and those celebrations range from impromptu potluck gatherings to formal receptions or balls.
Traditionally, the cake is served in a sequence: the first piece is set aside for Saint Basil, one of the “Three Hierarchs”; the second piece is for the home; and the rest of the cake is then handed out amongst family members, from oldest to youngest. Today’s cake was blessed by Father Irenaeu Craciun and cut by the new Greek Ambassador to Ireland, with Dr Thomae Kakouli-Duarte presiding elegantly over the proceedings.
The iconostasis in the Greek Orthodox Church in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)
A gold coin is wrapped and hidden in the cake by slipping it into the dough before baking, and whoever finds the coin in their slice is said promised a lucky year. I didn’t find the coin, but I felt blessed to be handed the priest’s slice by my friend Stella and felt honoured that the Greek Community in Dublin asked me to their celebrations today, which was also the day after the Feast of the Three Hierarchs [30 January].
Dr Thomae Kakouli-Duarte President of the Hellenic Community of Ireland and Mike Youlton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)
The Three Holy Hierarchs
The Three Holy Hierarchs
The Three Holy Hierarchs (Οι Τρείς Ιεράρχες) are Saint Basil the Great (Saint Basil of Caesarea), Saint Gregory the Theologian (Saint Gregory of Nazianzus) and Saint John Chrysostom. These three highly influential bishops from the Early Church played pivotal roles in shaping our theology.
In 11th century Constantinople, there were disputes about which of the three hierarchs was the greatest. Some argued that Saint Basil was superior to the other two because of his explanations of Christian faith and his monastic example. Those who argued for Saint John Chrysostom countered that the “Golden Mouthed” (Χρυσόστομος) Patriarch of Constantinople was unmatched in both eloquence and in bringing sinners to repentance. Those who preferred Saint Gregory the Theologian pointed to the majesty, purity and profundity of his sermons and his defence of the faith against the Arian heresy.
All three have separate feast days in January: Saint Basil on 1 January, Saint Gregory on 25 January, and Saint John Chrysostom on 27 January. Eastern Orthodox tradition says the three hierarchs appeared together in 1084 in a vision to Saint John Mauropous of Euchaita and said that they were equal before God: “There are no divisions among us, and no opposition to one another.” As a result, around 1100 the Emperor Alexios Komnenos declared 30 January a feast day commemorating all three in common.
Beach walk on Bull Island
After sharing the Vasilopita with my Greek friends, I headed off for my weekly beach walk. This afternoon I headed to the Bull Island, off the north coast in Dublin Bay. The Bull Island is only 5 km long and 1 km wide but has a long, sandy beach, Dollymount Strand, that stretches the entire length 5 km length of the island, running parallel to the shore at Clontarf, Dollymouny, Raheny and Kilbarrack, and facing Sutton and Howth at its northern end.
The island is linked to the mainland both by the Bull Bridge, a one-lane wooden road bridge at the southern end, opposite Clontarf and Dollymount, and by a broad causeway at Raheny further north.
Dollymount Strand is not as clean and as attractive as some of my favourite beaches further north – such as Bettystown, Laytown, Skerries, Loughshinny, Rush, Portrane, Donabate, Malahide and Portmarnock – but it was easy to get to in the middle of a very busy Sunday’s packed. Because it is so close to the city centre, it is a popular place.
In the past, many Dubliners learned to drive at low tide on the firm flat sandy foreshore in “Dollier” – but I noticed this afternoon that it has been blocked off to motor traffic. Perhaps this has created the safety that makes Bull Island so popular today with kite-surfers.
Kite surfing in the winter sunshine on Bull Island (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)
Bird life on the island has been protected by legislation since the 1930s, and since 1988 it has been a designated national nature reserve. It has been listed by UNESCO as a biosphere reserve.
Apart from two golf clubhouses and a Sea Scout den, the island has just a few residents. In 1955, Dublin Corporation acquired the entire island from the Royal Dublin Golf Club, apart from the club itself, having bought out the interests of the Howth Estate.
The bulk of the island now makes up the largest park owned by the city. However, the North Bull Wall, the breakwater beyond it, and the wooden bridge to it are owned by the Dublin Port Company. Each year, the bridge is closed at least one day each year to protect the port company’s rights, and so the bridge will be closed this Tuesday and Wednesday to all motor traffic.
An accidental island
I imagine few people know that the island and the beach are relatively recent and inadvertent results of human intervention in Dublin Bay.
For centuries, Dublin Bay had a long-running problem with silting, particularly at the mouth of the Liffey. After years of primitive dredging had failed, a more effective attempt to maintain a clear channel began in 1715 when the first piles were driven to make the Great South Wall.
When it became obvious that the South Wall was not solving the silting problem, building a North Bull Wall was proposed, and the Dublin Port authorities commissioned studies to look at the feasibility of a project like this.
Admiral William Bligh – more famous for his role in the Mutiny on the Bounty and as the inept Governor of New South Wales – surveyed Dublin Bay for the Ballast Board, and in 1801 pointed out the potential of the North Bull sandbank.
A wooden bridge – the first Bull Bridge – was built in 1819 to facilitate building a stone wall, based on a design by George Halpin. Work on the Bull Wall started in 1820 and was completed by 1825, at a cost of £95,000.
Over the next half century, the natural tidal effects created by the walls deepened the entry to the Liffey, depositing much of the silt scoured from the river course on the North Bull. A true island was emerging, and Dubliners were attracted out to the growing beach. The visitors grew in number after horse tram services started running to Clontarf in 1873, and rose even further when a full tram line to Howth opened in 1900, with stops in the Clontarf and Dollymount area.
A growing island
As the number of visitors grew, the island continued to grow too, from the Bull Wall towards Howth Head.
In 1889, the Royal Dublin Golf Club, which was then based in Sutton, was given permission by Colonel Vernon and the Dublin Port and Docks Board to lay out a new golf course at the city end of the island and to build a new clubhouse.
The new Bull Bridge, built in 1906-1907, is still standing over a century later. During World War I, the island was used for military training – there was a firing range, trench warfare practice, while the Royal Dublin Golf Club’s clubhouse became officers’ quarters. Local people were upset at the damage to the clubhouse and the course. They held discussions with the Royal Dublin and with Lady Ardilaun, and formed a new golf club, named Saint Anne’s in honour of the Guinness estate.
The island continues to grow, and some say there is a possibility that within the next half-century it could merge with the mainland at Red Rock in Sutton, forming a lagoon, changing the make-up of the area’s wildlife, and leaving two dinghy sailing clubs landlocked.
Candlemas Procession
From Dollymount, I headed back into the city centre, and had a late lunch in La Dolce Vita, a new Italian wine bar that has opened up within the past month in Cow Lane in Temple Bar.
The Chapter House in Christ Christ Church Cathedral, in the afternoon sunlight (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
At 5 p.m., we brought the Christmas and Epiphany season to an end in Christ Church Cathedral with the Candlemas Procession.
We ended in the baptistery, where we extinguished our candles as we prayed:
Here we now stand near the place of baptism.
Help us, who are marked with the cross,
to share the Lord’s death and resurrection.
Here we turn from Christ’s birth to his passion.
Help us, for whom Lent is near,
to enter deeply into the Easter mystery.
Here we bless one another in your name.
Help us, who now go in peace,
to shine with your light in the world.
Thanks be to God! Amen.
We dispersed in silence. Outside it was dark.
The fourth and last Sunday after the Epiphany had been a beautiful day.
Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin
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