Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and today is the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVIII) and the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels (29 September).
Later this morning, I hope to be present at the Parish Eucharist in the Church of Saint Mary and Saint Giles in Stony Stratford, which is also the Harvest Eucharist. But this morning, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
John 4: 47-51 (NRSVA):
47 When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ 48 Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you come to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ 49 Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ 50 Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.’ 51 And he said to him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’
Today’s Reflection:
There are few references to Saint Michael in the Bible (Daniel 10: 13, 21, 12: 1; Jude 9; Revelation 12: 7-9; see also Revelation 20: 1-3). Yet he has inspired great works in our culture, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to Jacob Epstein’s powerful sculpture at Coventry Cathedral.
But culturally, this has been an important day for the Church: the beginning of terms, the end of the harvest season, the settling of accounts. It is the beginning of autumn, and we were told as children not to pick blackberries after this day.
In all our imagery, in all our poetry, Saint Michael is depicted and seen as crushing or slaying Satan, often Satan as a dragon.
Our ideas of dragons are also culturally conditioned. For the Chinese, dragons symbolise gift and blessing, and represent the majesty of the imperial household.
In most European languages, the word for a dragon is derived from the same Greek word used for a serpent. In European folklore and mythology, legendary dragons have symbolised danger and evil. We are warned in the Greek classics against sowing dragon’s teeth.
Most of us in life meet our own dragons and know how they are going to ensnare us if we do not face them and slay them.
Because of the Blitz during World War II, the poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) spent some of his late teen and early adult years living with his father’s family, close to Saint Michael’s Church on Greenhill in Lichfield, where generations of the Larkin family are buried. On the north wall of the church, in a large, looming sculpted image, Saint Michael is crushing the dragon under his feet.
Memories of this image and this churchyard may have inspired the imagery in at least two poems written by Larkin some years later. In his poem ‘At the chiming of light upon sleep’, first drafted on this day 78 years ago [29 September 1946], Larkin links Michaelmas and a lost paradise with chances and opportunities he failed to take in his youth.
In his poem ‘To Failure,’ written a year before he moved to Belfast, Larkin realises that failure does not come ‘dramatically, with dragons / that rear up with my life between their paws.’ Failure comes with more subtlety in those wasted opportunities and lost chances.
Throughout life, we have your own dragons to slay. We must not mistake them for old friends. We have opportunities and chances to do that, and as the days pass quicker than we can count, we can find you have wasted those opportunities and lost those chances.
We must get to know our dragons. But we must also pay heed to the opportunities that pass far too quickly. And take the opportunities we are presented with, like Nathanael waiting beneath the fig tree, to prepare for the next stage in life and ministry.
Even when there appear to be few dramatic conflicts with our inner dragons, in the years to come we may regret not paying attention to the little opportunities, the minor details of life. We may not notice the changes, the days passing more quickly, and the years pass by.
Philip Larkin writes:
It is these sunless afternoons, I find,
Install you at my elbow like a bore.
The chestnut trees are caked with silence. I’m
Aware the days pass quicker than before,
Smell staler too. And once they fall behind
They look like ruin. (You have been here some time.)
Sitting under his tree, Nathanael was aware of the opportunities and did not allow them to pass him by. And when we seize these opportunities we may find ourselves ready to ‘see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’ (John 1: 51).
Today’s Prayers (Sunday 29 September 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), is ‘One God: many languages.’ This theme is introduced today in reflections by Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG:
Whenever we share the Eucharist together in the USPG office, staff are invited to say the Lord’s Prayer in a language of their choice. Together we pray to the God of all nations unlimited by language: ‘Our Father in heaven … laat u Naam geheilig word … venha o teu reino …’ I’m reminded at such times of God’s power to unite believers across the world, something USPG mirrors in its aim to make connections between the churches of the Anglican Communion.
Although the origins of Anglicanism are resoundingly British, being Anglican does not equate to being English. The Bible is God’s Word to us and is something that everyone should be able to understand for themselves. There is power in encountering Jesus through scripture in your own language. After all, how do the crowd react to the fluency of the apostles at Pentecost? In amazement and astonishment.
This prayer diary is now available in two languages, and we hope to continue to grow this portfolio. Find out more: uspg.org.uk/pray
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 29 September 2024) invites us to pray in these words:
Everlasting God, you have ordained and constituted the ministries of angels and mortals in a wonderful order. Grant that as your holy angels always serve you in heaven, so, at your command, they may help and defend us on earth. Through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, Amen.
The Collect:
Everlasting God,
you have ordained and constituted
the ministries of angels and mortals in a wonderful order:
grant that as your holy angels always serve you in heaven,
so, at your command,
they may help and defend us on earth;
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:
Lord of heaven,
in this eucharist you have brought us near
to an innumerable company of angels
and to the spirits of the saints made perfect:
as in this food of our earthly pilgrimage
we have shared their fellowship,
so may we come to share their joy in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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
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