28 February 2021

Praying in Lent and Easter 2021:
12, Mount Melleray (1), Cappoquin

Inside the public church in Mount Melleray Abbey, Cappoquin, Co Waterford, facing the east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During Lent and Easter this year, I am taking some time each morning to reflect in these ways:

1, a photograph of a church or place of worship that has been significant in my spiritual life;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society, Partners in the Gospel).

Today is the Second Sunday in Lent (28 February 2021). This week I am offering photographs from seven churches I recall from my childhood. This morning’s photographs are from the public church in Mount Melleray Abbey, which was the next farm to my grandmother’s farm near Cappoquin, Co Waterford.

Mark 8: 31-38 (NRSVA):

31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’

Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary:

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (28 February 2021), the Second Sunday in Lent, prays:

Almighty and loving God,
may your constant peace abound in our hearts.
Help us, that we may commit to being agents of your peace
throughout the world.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Inside the public church in Mount Melleray Abbey, facing the west end (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

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