10 November 2023

Daily prayers in the Kingdom Season
with USPG: (6) 10 November 2023

The Church of Saint Francis in Sorrento is near Villa Comunale park and Piazza Tasso, and dates from the eighth century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

In this time between All Saints’ Day and Advent Sunday, we are in the Kingdom Season in the Calendar of the Church of England, and the week began with the Fourth Sunday before Advent (5 November 2023).

The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (10 November) remembers Leo the Great (461), Bishop of Rome, Teacher of the Faith.

Before today begins, I am taking some time for prayer and reflection early this morning.

In recent prayer diaries on this blog, my reflections have already looked at a number of Italian cathedrals, including the cathedrals in Amalfi, Florence, Lucca, Noto, Pisa, Ravenna, Saint Peter’s Basilica and Saint John Lateran, Rome, Siena, Sorrento, Syracuse, Taormina, Torcello and Venice.

So, this week, my reflections look at some more Italian cathedrals, basilicas and churches in Bologna, San Marino, Pistoia, San Gimignano, Mestre, Sorrento and Ravello.

Throughout this week, my reflections each morning are following this pattern:

1, A reflection on an Italian cathedral or basilica;

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

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Inside the Church of Saint Francis in Sorrento, often a venue for classical musical concerts (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Chiesa e Chiostro di San Francesco, Sorrento:

Sorrento on high cliffs above the Tyrrhenian Sea is a popular tourist destination overlooking the Bay of Naples in southern Italy. It is within easy reach of Naples, Pompei, Vesuvius, the Isle of Capri and the Amalfi Coast.

In the mythology, according to the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, Sorrento was founded by Liparus, son of Ausonus, who was king of the Ausoni and the son of Ulysses and Circe. In classical times, there were temples of Athena and of the Sirens. This was the only temple of the Sirens in the Greek world, and may explain the origins of the town’s name.

During the War of Italian Unification, Sorrento was officially annexed to the new Kingdom of Italy in 1861. It became one of the most renowned tourist destinations in Italy, and famous visitors in the past have included Byron, Keats, Goethe, Nietzsche, Ibsen and Walter Scott.

The Chiesa di San Francesco is near Villa Comunale park, and just a five-minute walk from Piazza Tasso. The white stucco and modern-looking façade masks the building’s ancient history. It dates back to the eighth century, when an oratory was built on the site by Saint Antonino, the patron saint of Sorrento, who dedicated the small church to Saint Martin of Tours (feastday, 11 November).

The Franciscans transformed the place into a much larger church in the 14th century and dedicated it to Saint Francis of Assisi. To mark the seventh centenary of the death of San Francis, the church façade was updated in 1926 with a marble finish, but the beautifully carved 16th-century wooden door was retained.

Four steps lead up to the recently-restored 16th-century main door. Inside, the church has a single aisle, and there are three chapels along each side, dedicated to Saint Rita da Cascia, Mary Immaculate, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Anthony of Padua, and other saints. The painting above the High Altar shows Saint Francis receiving the stigmata and dates from 1735.

Other works of art in the church including paintings and a wooden statue of Saint Francis and the crucified Christ. The vaulted ceiling of the nave has Baroque stucco decorations. A magnificent painting In the friars’ reception room, dating from 1500 and attributed to Friar Joannes Baptista, depicts the Madonna with the Christ Child between Saint Michael the Archangel and Saint John the Baptist.

Mass on Saturday evenings is usually in English and the church is often a venue for classical musical concerts.

The municipal seat was located in the church in the late 1400s and early 1500s, and it was the venue for several meetings of the city council. The town seal and municipal documents were kept in the sacristy in the 14th century in a box that could only be opened with four different keys.

Beside the church, the Franciscan convent has cloisters with columns and arches that have a hybrid mixture of architectural styles, from the fourth to the 16th century, with Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Arabic influences.

These tranquil, secluded cloisters, with overhanging bougainvillea, colourful summer flowers and tree-shaded corners, have a quiet, contemplative environment, where trees and plants curl around the interlaced arches and snake up the stone pillars.,

The cloisters are considered to be one of Sorrento’s finest historical attractions and are often the venue for weddings, art exhibitions and concerts.

The Public Gardens of Sorrento nearby offer splendid views of the Gulf of Naples.

A statue of Saint Francis of Assisi in the cloister gardens beside the church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 16: 13-19 (NRSVA):

13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ 14 And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ 15 He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ 16 Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ 17 And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’

The cloisters are one of Sorrento’s finest historical attractions and often the venue for weddings, art exhibitions and concerts (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 10 November 2023):

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), is ‘Community Health Programmes’. This theme was introduced on Sunday.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (10 November 2023) invites us to pray in these words:

Let us pray for community health programmes, both in Bangladesh and across the Anglican Communion. For the healing and care they provide.

The cloisters have columns and arches with a hybrid mixture of architectural styles (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect:

God our Father,
who made your servant Leo strong in the defence of the faith:
fill your Church with the spirit of truth
that, guided by humility and governed by love,
she may prevail against the powers of evil;
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:

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 we may come with Leo to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

The Piazza Tasso is at the heart of life for most tourists in Sorrento (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

Sorrento sits on high cliffs above the Tyrrhenian Sea and is a popular tourist destination overlooking the Bay of Naples (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘Whitsun Weddings’ and
Philip Larkin’s train
journey with a ‘frail
travelling coincidence’

Philip Larkin ‘… this frail / travelling coincidence; and what it held / Stood ready to be loosed with all the power / That being changed can give’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

Philip Larkin is one of Britain's most popular poets, despite controversy about his personal life and opinions, and despite his reputation for being dour and grumpy. In 2003, almost two decades after his death, he was chosen as ‘the nation’s best-loved poet.’

Despite Larkin’s misogynist and often racist views, his crude and cruel turn of phrase, and his sometimes right-wing opinions, his poetry is down-to-earth and authentic, and speaks frankly about life and the human condition.

I have long been interested in his family connections with Lichfield, and to an extent his connections with Coventry and Belfast, and I have written about him occasionally for magazines. With his many and often serial affairs and dalliances, it is difficult to think of him as a romantic, and certainly not as a romantic poet. Yet ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ is one of his best-known poems gives the title to one of his most successful collections.

As we travelled in and out of London by train last Friday and Saturday, we were more than a little self-conscious, wondering what a coincidence it would be should anyone would notice how we were dressed or what we were about in the way that Larkin noticed wedding couples and wedding parties 60 years ago during the train journey he describes in that poem.

The Whitsun Weddings, a collection of 32 poems by Philip Larkin, was first published by Faber in London on 28 February 1964. It was a commercial success by the standards of poetry publication, with the first 4,000 copies sold within two months. That volume cemented Larkin’s reputation and includes many of his best-known poems, including ‘The Whitsun Weddings’, ‘Days’, ‘Mr Bleaney’, ‘MCMXIV’, and ‘An Arundel Tomb’.

‘The Whitsun Weddings’ was written and rewritten and finally published in this collection in 1964. This is one of three poems that Larkin wrote about train journeys, and it is one of his’s longest poems. He describes a stopping-train journey southwards from Kingston upon Hull, where he was a librarian at the university, to London on a hot Whit Saturday afternoon.

It has always been supposed the poem was based on an actual train journey Larkin took in 1955 on Whitsun Saturday, a day that at the time was popular for weddings. However, there was a rail strike that weekend, and John Osborne of the University of Hull, author of Radical Larkin, points out that this particular journey is unlikely. Instead, Larkin’s letters refer to two journeys that may have been conflated in the poem: one to Grantham, that was not at Whitsun but when there were some weddings; and one to London, that was not at Whitsun, and when there were no weddings.

The narrator in the poem describes the scenery and smells of the countryside and towns that the largely empty train passes through. The train’s windows are open because of the heat, and gradually he becomes aware of bustle on the platforms at each station, eventually realising that this is the noise and actions of wedding parties that are seeing off couples who are boarding the train.

He notes the different classes of people involved, each with their own responses to the occasion: the fathers, the uncles, the children, the unmarried female family members. He imagines the venues where the wedding receptions have been held.

As the train continues on into London, the afternoon shadows lengthen and rain begins to fall, and his reflections turn to the permanence of what the newly-weds have done. The significance of this is huge for them, and seems to give Larkin an ultimately disappointing message, suggested by the poem’s final phrase.

The Whitsun Weddings, by Philip Larkin:

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river’s level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn’t notice what a noise
The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
The interest of what’s happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
And went on reading. Once we started, though,
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event
Waving goodbye
To something that survived it. Struck, I leant
More promptly out next time, more curiously,
And saw it all again in different terms:
The fathers with broad belts under their suits
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
Yes, from cafés
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days
Were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
Just what it saw departing: children frowned
At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical;
The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
At a religious wounding. Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say
I nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl—and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.