07 January 2013

In Prosperity and Adversity – a short story

The following short story was first published in True to Type: A Collection of Short Stories by Journalists in the Irish Times, edited by Fergus Brogan (Dublin: Irish Times Books and Sugarloaf Publications, 1991).

The 18 short stories in this collection were written by Maeve Binchy, Deaglán de Bréadún, Fergus Brogan, Declan Burke-Kennedy, Patrick Comerford, Joe Culley, Mary Cummins, Kieran Fagan, Brendan Glacken, Tom Glennon, Mary Maher, Seamus Martin, Mary Morrissy, Eugene McEldowney, Noel McFarlane, Padraig O’Morain, Arthur Reynolds and Paddy Woodworth.

The book, published in December 1991, was introduced by Dick Walsh and was illustrated with cartoons by Martyn Turner. The book was dedicated to the memory of our late colleague, the Revd Stephen Hilliard, who was murdered in Rathdrum Rectory, Co Wicklow, on 9 January 1990. All proceeds from the sale of the book were donated to the Revd Stephen Hilliard Trust Fund.


In Prosperity and Adversity

Patrick Comerford

IT must have Peter, while we were still children, who first took to calling him the White Rabbit. One given, the name stuck. That afternoon, Canon Phillips looked every bit the White Rabbit: hid thin, white hair fell limply around his pink face; his pink, shell-rimmed glasses failed to disguise his blood-shot, weak eyes; a full, long and starched white surplice almost totally covered his cassock, and a broad, creamy, white stole had been donned especially for Peter’s wedding.

The White Rabbit stood before us, squat, rigid, and drumming his right fingers on the Prayer Book he was keeping open in his left palm, occasionally muttering the opening sentences of the service, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered...,” as if rehearsing the wedding to himself, or testing to see if he could remember all the words.

“I understand the propriety of a bride wanting to be late,” he intoned, impatient that he had to interrupt himself.”Five minutes, ten at the most. But” – and he hissed as he looked at the clock at the west end of the church – “sixteen minutes seem extravagant.” Nervously, I nudged Peter; there might have been a knowing grin in his facial reply, except he was still anxious and upset.”

It all came to a climax the previous evening. As Peter’s best man, I had put a lot of thought into planning the stag night he wanted. He never took to Dublin stags in sleazy, smoky pubs that ended in disreputable night-clubs, and so he had planned for weeks to come home with my brother Rick in time for a proper night on the old town.

The Bohemian Girl ... the bar in White’s ... The Eagle Bar ... Con Macken’s and the Cape ... Jack Fane’s and Tommy Roche’s ... Rick wanted t prove there were more pubs on the Quay side of Main Street, “so they could roll the barrels off the ships straight into the basements.” But by the time we reached the Tower Bar in our pilgrimage through the pubs of the Bull Ring and the Main Street, Rick was too drunk to restate the finer points of his history lesson, and I was sure Peter was drawn and pale only because he had five too many. It wasn’t much to worry about, we had all experiences similar feelings in the rugby club on many of our more youthful weekends.

But just as I thought it was time to move on to the Commodore, Peter was missing. I slipped quietly from the bar, which Rick was grabbing solidly with his left hand as he held a fresh pint up to his mouth with his right. “Tell us, John, is it true you spent your snag tight ...?” He started to reminisce, but wasn’t even finishing his questions, and I thought Peter must be feeling sick if he had to spend that much time away from the two of us. I headed for the basement, wondering whether he had gone down to the men’s loo, but as I opened the bar door into the side hallway I could hear his quiet, sober, worried voice on the phone at the lunge door.

“Yes June, thanks... No, I understand... Please...don’t...I’m sorry, I am sorry.” Then he caught me in the corner of his eye. “I must go now, June, thanks... Yes, I do... I really am sorry.” But there was no “See you later,” no “I love you.”

Quietly, he hung up the phone, turned to me and pleaded: “John, I don’t feel like going on.” But he didn’t look into my face as he begged, almost sobbed: “Can we go back to your place? I’m not on for any more drinking.”

I poked my head back around the bar door. “Rick, follow us back up to my place, will you? Peter and I are going on ahead.”

Rick still had more than half a pint in his hand; I could take Peter away and find out what was troubling him before Rick realised it. As we headed out the side door and began to make our way up Rowe Street, Peter still looked pale. “There’s no point in going back to my place if you’re feeling like that. Do you want some fresh ir along the Quay? And you can tell me what’s bothering you.”

We doubled back silently, passed on down Church Lane between Saint Iberius and the Foresters’ Hall, and down the side of the car park. Peter said nothing as we crossed over the road onto the wooden-works and the trainline and began to make our way down the Quays. It was still bright, and orange streaks were beginning to break through the evening clouds over the harbour. The only sounds as we walked along Commercial Quay and Custom House Quay were a few passing cars, the birds hovering on the harbour water, and a handful of children playing around the ropes of the Guillemot moored against the Quay Wall.

We reached the Crescent before I started to ask any questions. “Well Pete, what’s the problem? Has June got butterflies? Is she having second thoughts?”

“Well, no, not exactly.”

“Not exactly? So there is a problem?”

“Well, of sorts. Look, you’ll stand beside me tomorrow, John, won’t you?”

“What do you think I am?” I asked. “Is there some problem between you and June? Do you want me to run you over to her place in the car?”

“No, no don’t, please.”

“It’ll only take ten or fifteen minutes.”

“No,” he insisted.

Now we were facing each other in the car park beside the gas works in Trinity Street, opposite the Talbot, and I still hadn’t rumbled what was wrong. “Look Peter, if you and June have some problem, you’d better sort it out now. Because, tomorrow is going to be too late.”

I wasn’t prepared for what he said next: “John, we have talked it out. We’re not getting married.” He looked away from me and out towards the Ballast Bank and the breakwater. “Not tomorrow. Not ever.”


I PEERED down at the mud in the Crescent as Peter told me a story I had never prepared myself to hear. On the way down from Dublin with Rick, it had dawned on him slowly that although he and June were the best of friends, “I just couldn’t honestly say I was in love. I had to face up to that before it was too late.”

With arms swinging slowly, limply, over the rusty rails, he went on to explain his absence once we had arrived in the Tower Bar. “By then, I had plucked up enough courage to ring her an explain that although I liked her a lot, that I would always see her as a really close friend, I knew I wasn’t ready to go ahead with getting married, not now and not with her.”

I wanted to ask him if he was just suffering from pre-marital jitters, but he continued to talk without any prompting.

“I told her I was sorry, and that I couldn’t think of how to apologise. And you know what? She just told me she understood. She promised we’d stay friends, and said she’s look after explaining everything to her family later on. That, and sending back our wedding presents as well.”

“What then?”

“Oh, we’ll meet back in Dublin next week and sort all that out – what to do about the deposit and the builders, keeping on the flat, and all those things. She just asked me for one favour before then.”

“And what’s that?” I asked, torn between my cynicism, my anger, my feelings about how lost and lonely June must have been that evening, and my loyalty to Peter.

“She wanted to know would we keep it quiet, and just turn up in Church tomorrow afternoon.”

“She what?” I didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”

“Well, she pointed out that if started trying to call off the wedding now, at this time of the night, everyone would panic, and we’d have to explain to her mother that I’d called it off. There’s be a row, and we’d have t wait months before sorting things out with the bank and the house. And she’d always have the reputation of being jilted.”

That was typical of Peter – practical down to the last detail, whatever the emotional feelings. I felt more sorry for June than for Peter, even if he was my cousin.”

“Well,” I suggested with resigned if sorry feelings, “I suppose it’s much easier for a man to say he was left at the altar because she had bad nerves, than it is for someone like June to live with the name of being a jilted woman.”

“Exactly, that’s just how June put it. She said we could just turn up in St Machta’s, pretend nothing’s happened, and when the car arrived at her house she’d tell her mother she couldn’t go through with it, pretend she’d been having second thoughts for a long time, that sort of thing.”

I thought Peter was being a coward, leaving all that for June to carry with her for the next eighteen hours, but all I could blurt out was: “The White Rabbit will be ripping mad.”

“I know. June said he’d told her she could be late, five minutes late, but no more. She says when it comes to twenty past, you can tell Canon Phillips she mustn’t be coming. She knows his bad temper will be enough to let him believe the whole thing should be called off.”

Now he had to put an extra burden on me too. But soon I was thinking: “Poor Peter.” I hadn’t realised what he’d been going through. But from the way he told it, it sounded as if June was a better friend than either Rick or I had been to him since we were children.

“Let’s go back to the Tower Bar and collect Rick,” I said. And Peter made a last request: “Not a word to Rick either, please.”

When we found Rick, he was deep in conversation about election promises, the trade union movement, and the collation. None of it made sense, and he hardly even noticed we’d been gone for 40 minutes. “I want to go on to the Commodore,” he protested. “I won’t finish drinking until we reach the Stone Bridge. Or even better, the Talbot Hotel.” He was triumphant, but he left calmly and mildly when we insisted it was time to go. It was dark as all three of us headed up Rowe Street and back to my place.


HAVING crossed the front of the church and crossed it again at least four times in as many minutes, Canon Phillips was back in front of us again. This time his patience had turned to anger, and his face was flushed with rage.

“Well, does the groom have anything to say for himself or his bride? It’s now getting after twenty past and I can’t see why I should be left standing all afternoon. I’m a retired man now, you know. I’m only doing this as a special favour for your family. Has the best many anything to say in your defence?”

I looked at Peter, who was beginning to relax. I could see relief in his eyes as he began to accept that June was not turning up. What a friend he had in her. Few men have wives who are friends like that, I thought, as I looked at the White Rabbit and began to speak up for Peter.

“Er, eh, Canon Phillips, I think I should... ”

“Should nothing my man,” he quipped back, looking straight down the nave. Rick still had a hangover and noticed nothing, but Peter and I were stunned as we turned our heads in disbelief. There, hand looped trough her brother’s arm, steadily making her way up though the pews, was June.

Before we could even turn back and catch each other’s eye, the organist was playing and Canon Phillips assumed a glad voice and feigned informality as he started to intone from his Prayer Book: “Dearly beloved, we gathered together in the sight of God, and in the face of this Congregation, to join together this Man, Peter, and this Woman, June, in holy...”


Photographs of Wexford: Patrick Comerford

Two weeks of study with the Benedictine monks of Ealing Abbey

Ealing Abbey is the first Benedictine abbey in Greater London since the Reformation (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I spent two weeks at Ealing Abbey a few months ago, following the daily cycle of prayer with the monks in the abbey, with the psalms, canticles, antiphonies, Scripture readings and prayers.

During those two weeks, I was reminded each day of the shared tradition in the Benedictine offices and the Anglican offices of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer.

Benedictine prayer became more accessible in popular culture in 2005 when the BBC screened the television series, The Monastery, in which the then Abbot of Worth Abbey, Abbot Christopher Jamison, guided five modern men (and three million viewers) into a new approach to life at Worth Abbey in Sussex.

Since then, Dom Christopher’s best-selling books, Finding Sanctuary (2007) and Finding Happiness (2008), offer readers similar opportunities. He points out that no matter how hard we work, being too busy is not inevitable. Silence and contemplation are not just for monks and nuns, they are natural parts of life.

Studying liturgy and Latin

Saint Benedict’s Abbey in Ealing is one of the largest in Britain and the main work of the monks is parochial and pastoral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Ealing Abbey began life as Ealing Priory almost a century ago in 1916. When it became Ealing Abbey in 1955, it was the first Benedictine abbey in Greater London since the Reformation.

The Benedictine Study and Arts Centre at Overton House, in the grounds of Ealing Abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I was there for two weeks to study Liturgy in the Institutum Liturgicum, based in the Benedictine Study and Arts Centre, under the guidance of Dom Ephrem Carr, President of the Pontifical Liturgical Institute at Sant’Anselmo in Rome and Professor of Eastern Liturgies at the Patristic Institute, the Augustinianum, also in Rome.

I also attend classes in Liturgical Latin with Dom Daniel McCarthy, head of liturgy at the Institutum Liturgicum and a former lecturer in liturgy at the Pontifical Beda College in Rome.

Ealing Abbey … space for reflection and study for two weeks (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

During that time, I studied Eucharistic texts or anaphora from the first four centuries of the Church, paying particular attention to the Apostolic Tradition, the Testamentum Domini, and the Apostolic Constitution, and comparing them with the Eucharistic prayers in The Book of Common Prayer of the Church of Ireland (2004).

Cultural and cricket

There was a warm welcome from the monks of Ealing Abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I was reminded at Ealing Abbey that Benedictine spirituality approaches life through an ordering by daily prayer that is biblical and reflective. At its base, Benedictine spirituality is grounded in a commitment to “the Benedictine Promise” – an approach to spiritual life that values “Stability, Obedience, and Conversion of Life.”

The Benedictine motto is: “Ora et Labora.” This does not present prayer and work as two distinct things, but holds prayer and work together. For Saint Benedict, the spiritual life and the physical life are inseparable. As he says: “Orare est laborare, laborare est orare, to pray is to work, to work is to pray.”

The Benedictine offices and the Anglican offices of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer have a shared tradition (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

There was an old cutting from the Daily Telegraph on the desk in my room in Ealing Abbey that says the Benedictine tradition is so rooted in English life and culture that: “Some claim to see the Benedictine spirit in the rules of Cricket.”

Saint Augustine of Canterbury, who became the first Archbishop of Canterbury (597-604) and who is considered the “Apostle to the English” and a founder of the English Church, was a Benedictine monk. At least 16 of the Archbishops of Canterbury between the year 960 and the Reformation were Benedictine monks, including Dunstan (960-978), Lanfranc (1070-1089) and Anselm (1093-1109), and another four were Archbishops of York.

In addition, Benedictine monks who were bishops in Ireland included John Stokes, Bishop of Kilmore, who was a Suffragan Bishop in Lichfield in 1407; John Chourles, who was Bishop of Dromore (1410-1433), but spent most of his time as a Suffragan Bishop in Canterbury (1420-1433); Robert Mulfield, a Cistercian monk of Meaux, who was Bishop of Killaloe but spent all that time as a suffragan in the Diocese of Lichfield (1418-1440); and Robert Blyth, Abbot of Thorney and Bishop of Down and Connor, who was a suffragan bishop in the Diocese of Ely (1520-1541).

A shared spirituality

Ealing Abbey began life as Ealing Priory almost a century ago in 1916 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

At least 18 of the Reformation bishops were Benedictine or Cistercian monks. It is no surprise then to hear again that it is often said that he Anglican Reformation made the essentials of Benedictine spirituality and prayer life immediately accessible through The Book of Common Prayer.

The church historian Peter Anson believed that Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s great work of genius was in condensing the traditional Benedictine scheme of hours into the two offices of Matins and Evensong. In this way, Anglicanism is a kind of generalised monastic community, with The Book of Common Prayer preserving the foundations of monastic prayer.

The stillness and quietness of the abbey gardens make it easy to forget that Heathrow Airport is only a few miles away (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The basic principles that shape The Book of Common Prayer are Benedictine in spirit. The Book of Common Prayer retains the framework of choral worship but simplified so that ordinary people can share in the daily office and the daily psalms.

Grapes on the vines outside the monks’ dining room (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The spirituality of the Rule of Saint Benedict is built on three key elements that form the substance of the Book of Common Prayer: the community Eucharist, the divine office, and personal prayer with biblical, patristic and liturgical strands woven together.

The Anglican Benedictine monk and theologian, Dom Bede Thomas Mudge, once argued that the Benedictine spirit is at the root of the Anglican way of prayer in a very pronounced way. The example and influence of the Benedictine monastery, with its rhythm of the daily office and the Eucharist; the tradition of learning and lectio divina; and the family relationship among an Abbot and his community, have influenced the pattern of Anglican spirituality.

By the 17th century, John Bramhall, the restoration Archbishop of Armagh, was lamenting the dissolution of the monasteries. Later, many Benedictine houses were founded throughout the Anglican Communion in the 19th century.

Today, there are more than half a dozen Anglican communities and houses in England who also follow the Rule of Saint Benedict, including Edgware Abbey, Malling Abbey, Saint Benedict’s Priory in Salisbury, Costock Convent, Mucknell Abbey, Alton Abbey and Saint Hilda’s Priory, Whitby.

Reviving familial ties

Dom James Leachman, a monk of Ealing Abbey, Director of the Institutum Liturgicam, and Professor of Liturgy at the Pontifical Institute of Liturgy in Sant’Anselmo, Rome, says the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches are “two vigorous traditions” on these islands that “nourish the life of learning and prayer of millions of Christians.”

Writing in the Benedictine Yearbook, he says: “Both traditions find shared and deep root in British and Irish soil and in the history of our islands ... we are constantly present to each other.”

Benedictines have not forgotten their familial and historical ties with many cathedrals throughout the Church of England.

The Benedictine cathedral priories, like all the religious houses in England, were dissolved during the reign of Henry VIII. But before the dissolution, there were nine Benedictine cathedral priories in England: Canterbury, Winchester, Worcester, Durham, Norwich, Rochester, Ely and Coventry and Bath. Others before that had included Sherborne, Bath Abbey and Westminster Abbey.

Many of the cathedral deans and chapters are keen to stress their Benedictine roots, some of them holding “Benedictine weeks” with groups of monks, led by the Roman Catholic Benedictine monk who holds the titular position of cathedral prior, residing in the cathedral for the week to sing the office and give a programme of lectures.

A centre for thinking

Ealing Abbey is just half an hour from Heathrow Airport, and the idea of a monastery close to a busy airport and in heart of suburban London seems a contradiction in terms to many. But Saint Benedict’s Abbey in Ealing is one of the largest in Britain and the main work of the monks is parochial work.

The monastery was founded in 1897 from Downside Abbey as a parish, at the invitation of the then Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Vaughan. Building work on the church began two years later, and the school was started by Dom Sebastian Cave in 1902.

Saint Benedict’s School was started in 1902 … old boys include the former Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Patten (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

As well as running courses on liturgy and Benedictine prayer and spirituality at the liturgy institute and the Benedictine Study and Arts Centre, the monks of Ealing also run a school, with about 600 pupils in the senior school and 230 in the junior school.

Working in the book-lined Scriptorium … once the research workplace of the Biblical scholar Dom Bernard Orchard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Scriptorium, where I attended my Liturgy seminars, was once the research workplace of the Biblical scholar, Dom Bernard Orchard (1910-2006). The extensive gardens at the side and behind the house have a variety of trees, including a banana tree and an olive tree.

The gardens of Ealing Abbey are friendly to the bees and the birds and the wildlife (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The gardens are friendly to wildlife, and no insecticides are used on the plants and trees, and there is labyrinth on the north lawn, which in quiet moments provides space for prayer and meditation.

Ealing Abbey has been the home at times for many notable monks, including Dom David Knowles, the monastic historian and later Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge, who lived there from 1933 to 1939 while he was working on his magnum opus, The Monastic Order in England.

Dom Cuthbert Butler (1858-1934) also lived at Ealing following his retirement as Abbot of Downside from 1922. His books included critical editions of the Lausiac History of Palladius and The Rule of Saint Benedict, and he was the author of Western Mysticism, Life of Archbishop Ullathorne, and History of the Vatican Council.

The labyrinth on the north lawn at Overton House provides space for prayer and meditation in quiet moments (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Dom John Main (1926-1982), who wrote and lectured widely on Christian meditation, was a monk at Ealing in 1959-1970 and 1974-1977. He graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 1954, and taught law there from 1956 to 1959 before joining Ealing Abbey, and he was ordained priest here in 1963. He was strongly influenced by the writings of the Desert Father John Cassian, and he began his Christian meditation group at Ealing Abbey in 1975.

John Main’s teaching methods are now used throughout the world, and those who have acknowledged his influence include the former President, Mary McAleese, Archbishop Rowan Williams and Metropolitan Kallistos Ware.

Influencing a new archbishop

The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop Justin Welby, told a recent news conference at Lambeth Palace that he has been influenced by Benedictine spirituality, and has said that the Benedictine and Franciscan orders within Anglicanism, along with Roman Catholic social teaching have influenced his spiritual formation.

He has been a Benedictine Oblate for 15 years and his spiritual director is a Benedictine monk. He is expected to be enthroned as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury in Canterbury Cathedral and the successor of Saint Augustine the Benedictine on 21 March next.

The Benedictine link with Anglicanism continues.

The gardens at Overton House have a variety of trees, including a banana tree and an olive tree (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A prayer of Saint Benedict:

Gracious and Holy Father,
Give us wisdom to perceive you,
Intelligence to understand you,
Diligence to seek you,
Patience to wait for you,
Vision to behold you,
A heart to meditate on you,
A life to proclaim you,
Through the power of the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ, Our Lord.
Amen.


Canon Patrick Comerford is lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This essay was first published in the Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough) and the Diocesan Magazine (Cashel and Ossory) in January 2013.

Patrick Comerford receives certificates from Dom Ephrem Carr and Dom James Leachman (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)