Patrick Comerford
We have come to the end of Lent and Holy Week. Yesterday was Good Friday (29 March 2024) and tomorrow is Easter Day (31 March 2024).
Throughout Lent this year, I have taken time each morning to reflect on the lives of early, pre-Reformation English saints commemorated in Common Worship.
Later this evening, I hope to be involved in the Easter Vigil Mass prayers in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford.
But, before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, A reflection on two early, pre-Reformation English saints;
2, today’s Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
Early English pre-Reformation saints: 46, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe
Julian of Norwich is remembered in Common Worship as a Spiritual Writer on 8 May and Margery Kempe is remembered as a Mystic on 9 November.
On 8 May 1373, when she was 30 years old and suffering from what was considered to be a terminal illness, a woman of Norwich, whose own name is unrecorded, experienced a series of 16 visions, that revealed aspects of the love of God. Following her recovery. She spent the next 20 years of her life pondering their meaning and recorded her conclusions in The Revelations of Divine Love, which became the first book written by a woman in English.
At some point in her life, she became an anchorite attached to the Church of Saint Julian in Norwich, which I visited earlier this week. She became known by the name of Julian to later generations. She died ca 1417.
Margery Kempe was born in Bishop’s Lynn, now King’s Lynn, in Norfolk in the late 14th century and was a contemporary of Julian of Norwich. She received many visions, several of them of the holy family, one of the most regular being of the crucifixion. She also had conversations with the saints. She was much sought after as a visionary, was endlessly in trouble with the Church, rebuked by the Archbishop, and was more than once imprisoned.
Following the messages in her visions, she went on pilgrimage to many holy places, including Walsingham, Canterbury, Compostela, Rome and Jerusalem, often setting out penniless. She was blessed with the gift of tears and seems to have been favoured with singular signs of Christ’s love, whereby for long periods she enjoyed consciousness of a close communion with him and developed a strong compassion for the sins of the world.
Her autobiography, The Book of Margery Kempe, recounts her remarkable life, and is often thought of as the oldest example of an autobiography in the English language. She died in the mid-15th century.
John 19: 38-42 (NRSVA):
38 After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. 39 Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. 40 They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. 41 Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. 42 And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.
Today’s Prayers (Saturday 30 March 2024):
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 ‘Holy Week Reflection.’ This theme was introduced last Sunday by the Revd Canon Dr Peniel Rajkumar, Theologian and Director of Global Mission, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (30 March 2024) invites us to pray in these words:
Lord, may we be active members of the community and welcome the stranger into our churches.
The Collect:
Grant, Lord,
that we who are baptized into the death
of your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
may continually put to death our evil desires
and be buried with him;
and that through the grave and gate of death
we may pass to our joyful resurrection;
through his merits,
who died and was buried and rose again for us,
your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
In the depths of our isolation
we cry to you, Lord God:
give light in our darkness
and bring us out of the prison of our despair;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday: Walter Hilton of Thurgarton
Tomorrow: Easter Day
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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