Today (1 May 2021) is Staffordshire Day.
To mark Staffordshire Day this year, this is a collection of some churches in Lichfield and the surrounding area (click on each photograph for a full-screen view):
COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
01 May 2021
Marking ‘Staffordshire Day’ with
photographs of Lichfield churches
Today (1 May 2021) is Staffordshire Day.
To mark Staffordshire Day this year, this is a collection of some churches in Lichfield and the surrounding area (click on each photograph for a full-screen view):
Praying in Lent and Easter 2021:
74, Monastery of Arkadi, Crete
Patrick Comerford
During the Season of Easter this year, I am continuing my theme from Lent, taking some time each morning to reflect in these ways:
1, photographs 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).
This week is Holy Week in the Orthodox Church, tomorrow (2 May) is Easter Day, and this year also (2021) marks the 200th anniversary of Greek War of Independence. My photographs this morning (1 May 2021) are from the Monastery of Arkadia in Crete, which is closely identified by people in Crete with the struggle for Greek Independence.
Arkadi stands on a fertile plateau in the foothills of Psilorítis, 23 km south-east of Rethymnon. I regularly visit this monastery when I am staying in Rethymnon, and it is a pleasant journey from Platanes up through the bright mountain villages of Adele, Pigi, Loutra, Pigi and Kirianna, taking about half an hour through olive groves and vineyards, and along the side of the Arkadi Gorge.
The main church or katholikon dates back to the 16th century but shows Roman, Venetian, Renaissance and Baroque elements in its architecture. This church is unusual with its two aisles, and is dedicated to both the Transfiguration and to Saint Constantine and Saint Helen.
Since the 16th century, the monastery has been a centre for the sciences, art and learning. The church was built in 1587, replacing a smaller church dating from the 13th century. The façade, which was designed in renaissance style, was influenced by the work of the architects Sebastiano Serlio and Andrea Palladio.
The monastery has a special place in the heart of all Cretans because of its role in the Cretan resistance against Ottoman rule. During the Cretan revolt in 1866, 943 Greek people, mostly women and children, sought refuge in the besieged monastery. After a three-day battle, they blew up barrels of gunpowder, choosing to death rather than surrender.
Today there only three monks living in the monastery. But despite the constant arrival of tourists and visitors and the dwindling number of monks, this remains a working monastery.
A new museum opened in Arkadi in 2016. Although most visitors want to see display items that tell the story of the horrific events over a century and a half ago, the museum includes books from the monastery library, icons, the liturgical items, vestments, stoles, patens, chalices and crosses.
Most of the items come from smaller monastic houses (metochia) and chapels that were once dependencies of Arkadi. They date from 1629 to the mid-19th century, and the earliest are fine examples of the Late Cretan School.
Arkadi once had a rich monastic library, but only a fragment of this collection have survived. Some of the volumes on display have elaborate covers, and many were produced on printing presses in Venice, which shows how the connection between Crete and Venice continued long after the Ottoman Turks captured Crete in the 17th century.
Embroidered inscriptions on the liturgical vestments include the names of abbots, priests and deacons. They show an interesting mixture of western and eastern traditions: the monks used purple silk textiles as the background for Byzantine-style flat embroidery and western-style relief embroidery created with gold and silver wire and thread and gold or silver-wrapped cord. The iconography followed the Byzantine tradition, while the decorative motifs and details were inspired by western art.
The new museum is housed on the ground floor of the south-west wing of the monastery. This is one of the oldest parts of the monastery buildings, and was originally used for storing wine and olive oil.
Arkadi once featured on the Greek 100 Drachmai banknote, and the monastery’s image has been restored to popular currency with the issue of 750,000 new €2 coins in Greece in 2016 to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the destruction of Arkadi in 1866.
One side of the coin shows the monastery with inscriptions bearing its name and the name of Greece in Greek, along with the monogram of the artist George Stamatopoulos.
The journey back down from Arkadi has taken me through the villages of Roupes and Nea Magnisia, which takes its name from the classical Greek city near Ephesus in western Anatolia. The village was founded by Greek-speaking refugees, expelled from present-day Manisa, about 65 km north-east of Smyrna in Turkey in the 1920s – a reminder that the conflicts that almost destroyed Arkadia in 1866 continued for decades after.
John 14: 1-14 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said,] 1 ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. 4 And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ 5 Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ 6 Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’
8 Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ 9 Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. 12 Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.’
Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary:
The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (1 May 2021, Saint Philip and Saint James) invites us to pray:
Let us give thanks for the life and works of the apostles Philip and James.
Yesterday’s reflection
Continued tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
‘Rejoicing became mourning,
a great light became a deep darkness’
Patrick Comerford
A stampede claimed the lives of at least 44 people, including small children, at a Lag B’Omer festival in Meron in northern Israel last night, and more than 150 people were injured. This is a deeply saddening and horrific loss of life among worshippers.
‘Rejoicing became mourning, a great light became a deep darkness,’ a pilgrim told television news last night.
The pilgrimage was the first large religious gathering of its kind to be held legally since Israel lifted nearly all coronavirus restrictions. It may be one of the worst peacetime tragedies in Israel’s history, with the death toll similar to the number of people killed in a forest fire in 2010.
Lag BaOmer or Lag B’Omer (לַ״ג בָּעוֹמֶר) began last night (29 April 2021) and comes to end at sunset this evening (30 April 2021). This is a Jewish religious holiday celebrated on the 33rd day of the Counting of the Omer, which occurs on the 18th day of the Hebrew month of Iyar.
It is traditional to observe some customs of mourning during the days between Pesach (Passover) and Shavuot – the days of Sefiras haOmer – and to have a festive day on either the 33rd day of the Omer, which began last night, or for Sephardim on the 34th, which begins tonight (30 April).
This minor holiday – known for bonfires, weddings and haircuts – takes place about a month after Passover. This is a break from the semi-mourning of the Omer, and key aspects of Lag B’omer include holding Jewish weddings – it is the one day during the Omer when Jewish law permits them – lighting bonfires, and the pilgrimage to the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in Meron, where the bonfire was part of last night’s tragedy, and which is marked by all-night prayer, mystical songs and dance.
According to some traditions, this day marks the hillula or anniversary of the death of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai or ‘the Rashbi,’ a Mishnaic sage and leading disciple of Rabbi Akiva in the 2nd century CE, and the day on which he revealed the deepest secrets of kabbalah in the form of the Zohar (Book of Splendour, literally ‘radiance’), a landmark text of Jewish mysticism.
Historians now suggest, however, that the association of Lag BaOmer with the death of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai may be based on a printer’s error. Another tradition says Lag BaOmer is a day of celebration recalling the end of a plague that killed Rabbi Akiva’s 24,000 disciples.
Some authorities attribute the joy of Lag BaOmer to the belief that the manna that fed the people in the wilderness during the Exodus first appeared on the 18th of Iyar.
Although its origins are uncertain, Lag BaOmer has become a minor holiday. While the Counting of the Omer is a semi-mourning period between Pesach and Shavuot, all restrictions of mourning are lifted on this day. As a result, weddings, parties, listening to music, and haircuts are commonly scheduled to coincide with this day among Ashkenazi Jews.
Families go on picnics and outings; children go out to the fields with their teachers with bows and rubber-tipped arrows – a possible reminder of the war battles of Akiva’s students – and plant trees. It is customary to light bonfires, to symbolise the light Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai brought into the world. And many couples arrange their wedding for this day.
Tachanun, the prayer for special God’s mercy on one’s behalf, is not said on days with a festive character, including Lag BaOmer. It is said that when God is showing one a ‘smiling face,’ so to speak, as he does on holidays, there is no need to ask for special mercy.
Unrelated to Rabbi Shimon, the kabbalists also give a mystical interpretation to the Omer period as a time of spiritual cleansing and preparation for receiving the Torah on Shavuot. The days and weeks of counting, they say, represent various combinations of the sefirot, the divine emanations, whose contemplation ultimately leads to purity of mind and soul. The sombreness of this period reflects the seriousness of its spiritual pursuits.
Sephardic Jews call this holiday Lag LaOmer, which means ‘33rd [day] of the Omer,’ as opposed to Lag BaOmer. The Sephardi custom is to continue mourning practices through the 33rd day of the Omer and celebrate on the 34th day of the Omer, or LaD BaOmer (ל״ד בעומר), which falls tomorrow (1 May).
There is a tradition that Jewish boys do not get their first haircut until they are three years old, and some parents wait to time this occasions for their boys on the minor holiday of Lag BaOmer. Perhaps this tradition reflects the Biblical teaching that one may not eat the fruit that grows on a tree for the first three years (see Leviticus 19: 23). But the custom is usually traced back to Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572), the 16th-century founder of the Lurianic School of Kabbalah, who assigned special mystical value to the ear-locks.
I have gone without a haircut for many weeks now, due to the pandemic lockdown restrictions. But, in my reflections this Friday evening, rather than dwelling any further on the length of my hair, I am pondering some sayings associated with Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who has a particular association with this minor holiday:
‘To deceive anyone by words is worse than cheating him out of money.’
‘He who lets arrogance get the better of him is like the heathen worshipping idols.’
In the Ethics of Our Fathers, he says, ‘There are three crowns: the crown of the Torah, the crown of priesthood, and the crown of royalty; but the crown of a good name excels above them all.’
Shabbat Shalom
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