14 October 2023

Daily prayers in Ordinary Time
with USPG: (139) 14 October 2023

Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary … designed by JJ McCarthy, with a High Altar and reredos by John Hardman of Birmingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and tomorrow is the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIX, 15 October 2023).

My priorities later today may well be the Rugby World Cup quarter final between Ireland and South Africa. But, before today begins, I am taking some time early this morning for prayer and reflection.

The Church recently celebrated Saint Michael and All Angels last month (29 September). So my reflections each morning for the past three weeks have continued the Michaelmas theme in this way:

1, A reflection on a church named after Saint Michael or his depiction in Church Art;

2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary … designed by JJ McCarthy and added to by Ashlin and Coleman (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary:

Saint Michael’s Church on Saint Michael’s Street in Tipperary is an impressive building designed by the celebrated church architect, James Joseph McCarthy (1817-1882), built in 1855-1861 by Doolins of Dublin, and added to half a century later by Ashlin and Coleman.

The church spire is visible from every road approaching the town, and there is fine craftsmanship throughout the church, representing the best of church architecture and decoration in the traditions introduced to Ireland by AWN Pugin.

The size, style and composition of the church is an illustration of the sense of the power of the Roman Catholic Church at the time.

The church was designed by JJ McCarthy in the Early English style for the Parish Priest of Tipperary, Father James Howley, and was built by Doolins of Dublin at an estimated cost of £7,000.

McCarthy claimed Pugin’s mantle and his great works include the Cathedral of the Assumption, Thurles, Co Tipperary, the Church of Our Lady, Ballingarry, Co Limerick, Saint Macartan’s Cathedral, Monaghan, Saint Mary’s Church, Rathkeale, Co Limerick, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, SS Peter and Paul Church, Kilmallock, Co Limerick, the Capuchin Church, Church Street, Dublin, and the College Chapel, Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Co Kildare.

The church was consecrated in November 1861. Its spire is visible from every approach road. Fine craftsmanship is seen throughout the building, in the quality of the stonework and stone carving, and the detailing of the various elevations.

The reredos by John Hardman & Co of Birmingham is an impressive artistic achievement, and the interior is also enhanced by the stone carving at the organ gallery and the attractive glazed screen.

This cruciform-plan, gable-fronted church includes a five-bay nave with side aisles, three-bay transepts, a two-bay chancel, a three-bay projecting porch, a mortuary chapel added ca 1915, a three-stage bell tower with a spire, a lean-to porch on the north side and a sacristy at the north-east.

The broached octagonal spire on the tower has metal cross finial and trefoil and pointed vent-lights with louvres. There are carved limestone crenellations and spires at the octagonal engaged columns on the porch. There are necked dressed limestone walls, limestone dressings, and buttresses at the corners of the church, at the lower two stages of the tower and between the windows of the side aisles. There is a plinth course and moulded string courses at the porch.

A carved limestone statue of Saint Michael the Archangel stands in a gabled niche at the front of the bell tower. Throughout the church there are pointed-arch window openings throughout the church, including a five-light window at the west front, a trefoil-headed five-light east window, three-light windows in the gables of the transepts, two-light windows in the side aisles and the front of the tower, and single-light windows in other parts of the church, with hood mouldings on the windows at the front.

The porch has paired pointed-arch windows with hood-mouldings and engaged colonnettes, and a hexafoil window over the central entrance door, with a moulded limestone surround.

John Hardman & Co of Birmingham, who worked on many of Pugin’s churches, designed the High Altar with an ornate carved marble reredos in 1860. The reredos is an impressive artistic achievement, At the time, the altar was said to be ‘the largest and most elaborate erected in the United Kingdom since the Reformation.’

There are side altars, with figure sculptures, an ornate carved marble pointed segmental arcade at organ gallery with trefoil arcading details on the parapet and polished granite columns.

The boarded timber ceiling and braced truss roof are supported on cut stone corbels in the nave walls. Other details inside the church include pitch pine confessionals and pews, and the timber and stucco Stations of the Cross.

Ashlin and Coleman made a number of additions in 1914, including a new front porch and mortuary chapel commissioned by Canon Arthur Ryan, parish priest of Tipperary in 1903-1922. The mosaic work on the sanctuary walls and floor was completed by Ludwig Oppenheimer in 1915.

Canon Ryan was a staunch supporter of John Redmond and encouraged Irish involvement in World War I in support of achieving Irish Home Rule.

During the Christmas season in 1916, Canon Ryan travelled throughout the Western Front in Flanders, visiting and ministering to regiments of the 16th Irish Division on the battlefields.

His niece Philomena was the wife of Major John Carlon Markes of the Leinster Regiment, who was killed in action at the Battle of the Somme on 19 July 1916, aged 36. Major Markes is commemorated in the stained glass World War I Memorial Window in the side Chapel of Adoration, to the right of the High Altar.

A window in a side chapel depicts Saint Luke, the patron saint of physicians, and is dedicated to the memory of Dr John F O’Halloran, who died in 1969.

A window depicting Saint Luke the physician is dedicated to the memory of a local doctor, John F O’Halloran (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 11: 27-28 (NRSVA):

27 While he was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’ 28 But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’

The sanctuary in Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayer (Saturday 14 October 2023):

Today’s Prayer:

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘After the Storm.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (14 October 2023) invites us to pray in these words:

We pray for all those supporting the relief and rebuilding in areas affected by natural disasters. May people see the light of your love from those who seek to help those in dire need.

Inside Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary … there is fine craftsmanship throughout the church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
increase in us your gift of faith
that, forsaking what lies behind
and reaching out to that which is before,
we may run the way of your commandments
and win the crown of everlasting joy;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

We praise and thank you, O Christ, for this sacred feast:
for here we receive you,
here the memory of your passion is renewed,
here our minds are filled with grace,
and here a pledge of future glory is given,
when we shall feast at that table where you reign
with all your saints for ever.

Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary … the High Altar and reredos were designed by John Hardman & Co (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Looking west in Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary (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

The gallery and organ in Saint Michael’s Church, Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Anne Frank’s sculpture
in the British Library
is a reminder that
antisemitism is alive

The sculpture of Anne Frank by Doreen Kern in the British Library (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

The death toll from the Hamas assault last weekend has risen to over 1,300 people in Israel and 1,500 dead in Gaza. According to the World Jewish Congress, this is the largest number of Jewish people killed – because they are Jewish – in any one single day since the Holocaust.

Teenagers, children and infants are among the dead and the hostages in Israel, all on Simchat Torah, a day that should have been filled with rejoicing and celebrations in all Jewish communities. But the attack also came on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War in 1973, which I am old enough to remember in detail.

It is only a short while since I visited the British Library in London to see the bronze bust of Anne Frank by the sculptor Doreen Kern. Some weeks before, I had found the Anne Frank tree in the library courtyard, planted 25 years ago on 12 June 1998 and now difficult to find.

The sculpture of Anne Frank was commissioned to commemorate the 70th anniversary of her birth on 12 June 1929. When she died in Bergen Belsen in 1945, Anne Frank was as young as many of the young people taken hostage or murdered last weekend.

Annelies Marie (‘Anne’) Frank (1929-1945) is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Her diary has become one of the world’s most widely read books, and it has been the basis of several plays and films. Her diary documents her experiences hiding during Nazi Germany’s occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.

Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt am Main in Germany and lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The Frank family moved from Germany to Amsterdam in 1933, the year the Nazis gained power in Germany. By early 1940, the family was trapped in Amsterdam by the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.

Anne Frank was a German national officially until 1941, when she lost her nationality under the anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany.

As the Nazi persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the family went into hiding in the hidden rooms in the office building of Anne’s father, Otto Frank. They were betrayed after two years and were transported to concentration camps. Anne and her sister Margot were eventually transferred to the Bergen-Belsen, where they both died of typhus in February or March 1945.

Otto Frank, the only surviving member of the family, returned to Amsterdam after World War II to find that Anne’s diary had been saved. Her diary, which was given to Anne on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life from 12 June 1942 to 1 August 1944.

Otto Frank’s efforts led to the publication of her diary in 1947. It was translated from Dutch and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl. It has since been translated into many languages.

Doreen Kern had help from Anne’s step-sister Eva Schloss and her step-mother while she was working on her bronze bust of Anne Frank. The piece was placed at the British Library on the 70th anniversary of Anne’s birth, on 12 June 1999. It was a gift of Richard and Yvonne Sherrington.

Doreen Kern (1931-2021), who lived in Edgware, was a sculptor in bronze. She acquired her technical knowledge while working at the Morris Singer Foundry, and she also studied at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute. She showed at Bristol Cathedral, London University, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, Waterloo Fine Arts, and widely abroad, and also did consultancy work for the British Museum.

The inscription on the base of the sculpture reads: ‘Anne Frank, 1929-1945, Sculptor Doreen Kern’. An inscription on a nearby plaque reads: ‘Anne Frank 1929-1945, “A triumph of the spirit.” To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the birth of Anne Frank 12 June 1999. Gift of Yvonne and Richard Sherrington. Sculptor: Doreen Kern.’

There is also a life size bust of Anne Frank by Doreen Kern in the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. A second copy was made for a museum in Israel.

Doreen Kern’s sculpture of Anne Frank stood in the forecourt of the British Library in 1999 and stood there until 2003. However, it was subjected to vandalism, and when it was repaired it was moved to the lower ground area, near the cloakroom.

The crisis in Gaza demands a humanitarian and compassionate international response, that it is unquestionable.

But the cruelty and barbarity of last weekend’s attacks in Israel were cruel and barbarous beyond words. Babies were maimed and beheaded, elderly people were burned to death. People who tried to hide like Anne Frank in secure rooms were burned out of their homes. The sad irony is lost on many commentators that the residents of the kibbutz that was attacked were committed to peaceful solutions and negotations, and many were involved in working actively for peace and for Palestinian rights.

Revenge and retribution or ‘collective punishment’ have no moral underpinning, and are contrary to all principles of international law. Nor can anyone be silent in the face of the kidapping or slaughter of innocent civilians, whether they are people or cramped into a tighly-controlled and overpopulated tiny strip of land, or the young people enjoying a weekend music festival, elderly peace activists who have retired to a rural kibbutz that they thought was their idyll, or babies sleeping peacefully. We need to avoid terms like ‘innocent casulaties.’ In any conflict, all civilians are innocent. There should never be such a phrase as the ‘wrong person in the wrong place.’ All of us have a right to live in peace, without the threat of violence, hatred, racism, revenge, retribition, antisemitism or murder.

I have not been silent when it comes to the Nethanyahu government’s police and actions in Gaza. I am vocal in condemning Nethhanyu’s corruption and his efforts to destroy the democratic, judicial and legal structures of Israel. I have long been committed to and active in both Jewish-Christian and Christian-Muslim dialogue. But the events of the past week are a heart-breaking reminder, and also an alert, that antisemitism is rife and that we must always separate it from any political programme or cause.

Antisemitism is always a hate crime, it is always racist, and it can never be extended any understanding, under any pretext.

May their memories forever be a blessing, זיכרונם לברכה זיכרונן לברכה

Shabbat Shalom.

Anne Frank depicted in a mural in Berlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)