Daily prayer in the Kingdom Season: 1, Friday 1 November 2024, All Saints’ Day

Saints and Martyrs … the ten martyrs of the 20th century above the West Door of Westminster Abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today in the Church Calendar is All Saints’ Day (1 November), one of the 12 Principal Feasts of the Church. This celebration in the Church Calendar dates back to Pope Gregory III (731-741), who dedicated a chapel to All Saints in Saint Peter’s in Rome on 1 November to honour ‘the holy apostles and … all saints, martyrs, and confessors, … all the just made perfect who are at rest throughout the world.’

All Saints’ Festival is being celebrated, for example, in All Saints’ Church, Margaret Street London, this evening with High Mass at 6:30 pm, when the preacher is Bishop Stephen Conway of Lincoln, and the setting is Haydn’s Missa Sancti Nicolai.

We move today from Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar to the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints’ Day and Advent. Before today begins, before having breakfast, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

Lazarus is raised from the Dead (John 11: 32-44) … a fresco in the Analpsi Church in Georgioupoli on the Greek island of Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 11: 32-44 (NRSVA):

32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. 34 He said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Lord, come and see.’ 35 Jesus began to weep. 36 So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ 37 But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’

38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 Jesus said, ‘Take away the stone.’ Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, ‘Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.’ 40 Jesus said to her, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?’ 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, ‘Father, I thank you for having heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.’ 43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’

Christ the Pantocrator surrounded by the saints in the Dome of the Church of Analipsi in Georgioupoli, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

November is a month when we traditionally remember the saints, the Communion of Saints, those we love and who are now gathered around the throne of God, those who have died and who we still love. All Saints’ Day on 1 November is one of the 12 Principal Feasts of the Church, and in many parts of the Anglican Communion tomorrow (2 November) is All Souls’ Day.

The first of the three lectionary readings for All Saints’ Day today is Revelation 7: 9-17:

9 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying,

‘Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!’

11 And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, 12 singing,

‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honour
and power and might
be to our God for ever and ever! Amen.’

13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, ‘Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?’ 14 I said to him, ‘Sir, you are the one that knows.’ Then he said to me, ‘These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

15 For this reason they are before the throne of God,
and worship him day and night within his temple,
and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.
16 They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;
the sun will not strike them,
nor any scorching heat;
17 for the Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd,
and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’

In the verses immediately before this reading, we are told:

‘Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have marked the servants of our God with a seal on their foreheads.’

4 And I heard the number of those who were sealed, one hundred and forty-four thousand, sealed out of every tribe of the people of Israel:

5 From the tribe of Judah twelve thousand sealed,
from the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Gad twelve thousand,
6 from the tribe of Asher twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand,
7 from the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Levi twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand,
8 from the tribe of Zebulun twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Joseph twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Benjamin twelve thousand sealed. (Revelation 7: 3-8)

As I said in a reflection on All Saints’ Day last year, I love the clear implication that the salvation of humanity is directly and intricately intertwined with the command, ‘Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees.’

The number 144,000 is a natural number. It is significant in many religious traditions and belief systems. The number 144,000 appears three times in the Book of Revelation, in this passage (Revelation 7: 3-8), and in two other places: Revelation 14: 1, and Revelation 14: 3-5.

The number 12 is used throughout the Bible to symbolise completeness, perfection, and God’s power. Think for a moment of the 12 tribes of Israel or 12 disciples of Christ. There are also 12 patriarchs from Seth to Noah; 12 patriarchs from Shem to Jacob; 12 spies led the way into the Promised Land; there were 12 judges from Othniel to Samuel; and King David appointed 24 groups of 12 (a total of 288) to lead music of praise in the temple (I Chronicles 25).

Exodus 39: 14 recalls there Aaron’s breastplate had 12 precious stones, ‘corresponding to the names of the sons of Israel; they were like signets, each engraved with its name, for the twelve tribe.’

The figure 12 also has symbolic significance in the New Testament. Christ promises the disciples, ‘Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel’ (Matthew 19: 28).

Saint Mark’s Gospels recalls how in one hour, Jesus heals a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years and then goes immediately to restore to life a girl who is 12 years old. The first woman is older, with a continual flow of blood, losing hr life blood; the young girl is given back her life blood and comes to life. Both touch Christ and after 12 years are restored to new life (Mark 5: 25-42).

In the Book of Revelation, Christ makes a similar promise to some who will come out of the last age of the church, known as Laodicea (which means ‘judging the people’): ‘To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne’ (Revelation 3: 21).

Revelation describes two groups of 12 (a total of 24) elders who sit around the throne of God, representing the 12 tribes in the Hebrew Bible and the 12 apostles in the New Testament (Revelation 4: 4). One vision in Revelation tells how a ‘great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars’ (Revelation 12: 1). The 12 stars above the woman’s head are a symbol of the leadership of the church (I Corinthians 11: 10).

That great city, the holy Jerusalem … had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel … the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God … has a great, high wall with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the Israelites … And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb (see Revelation 21: 10-14).

The foundation stones of the New Jerusalem (see Revelation 21: 19-20) appear to be identical to the 12 precious stones on Aaron’s breastplate (Exodus 39: 14).

The figurative use of the whole number 1,000 is also found throughout the Bible. For example, God increases the number of the Israelites 1,000 times (Deuteronomy 1: 11); God keeps the covenant to 1,000 generations (Deuteronomy 7: 9); and God owns the cattle on 1,000 hills (Psalm 50: 10). Other examples are found in Exodus 20: 6; and II Samuel 18: 12; Psalm 84: 10; and Isaiah 60: 22.

The number 12 becomes a symbol of totality, and when it is squared and multiplied by 1,000 it acquires more emphasis. With 1,000 as a multiplier of 12, the numbers 12,000 and 144,000 are imbued with a particular significance that is interpreted variously in Christianity. Some take the numbers in the Book of Revelation to be symbolic, representing all God's people throughout history in the heavenly Church.

Even in conversation, I often find any discussion of the number 144,000 is met by references to the belief among Jehovah’s Witnesses that exactly 144,000 faithful Christians from the year 33 AD until the present day will be resurrected to heaven as immortal spirit beings to spend eternity with God and Christ, serving as king-priests for 1,000 years. They believe all other people accepted by God will have an opportunity to live forever in a restored paradise on earth.

Popular interpretations of the number 144,00, from Jehovah’s Witnesses to literalist evangelicals and fundamentalists, miss out on the interesting poetical and mathematical richness and significance of the number 144,000.

I try to imagine how many people are needed to make up 144,000 people in any one place at any one time. When I was working as a journalist, there were conflicting claims from the police and organisers about the number of people on the streets at any protest or march. To arrive at an impartial estimate, you would count how many people passed one point in a minute, and then multiply that figure by the number of minutes it took the marchers to pass that particular place.

Of course, adjustments had to be made. There are always bottlenecks that hold up a protest for minutes on end, and marches always have gaps and trail off at the end. But, with those allowances, it was a fairly accurate way of making an impartial count.

If the Book of Revelation is finding a poetic way of describing 144,000 people passing through one particular point over one 24-hour period, that is a vast number: 6,000 people every hour, 100 people every minute, 2 or 3 people every second.

If the Book of Revelation is describing two lots of 144,000 people – one group of 144,000 standing on Mount Zion, and a second group of 144,000 before the throne – then we are talking about 288,000 people. In a 24-hour day, that would involve 12,000 people passing by every hour, or 200 every minute in a day.

The numbers 12, 60 and 144,000 are part of our cultural heritage dating back to Ancient Near East or Middle East societies. Sumerians looked to the heavens when they Invented the system of time we use to this day. It may seem curious that we divide the hours into 60 minutes and the days into 24 hours.

We use a multiple 12 rather than 10 because when the ancient Sumerians were inventing time, they did not operate on a decimal (base-10) or duodecimal (base-12) system but a sexagesimal (base-60) system.

For those ancient Sumerian innovators, who first divided the movements of the heavens into countable intervals, 60 was the perfect number. The number 60 can be divided by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30 equal parts. Moreover, ancient astronomers believed there were 360 days in a year, a number that 60 fits neatly into six times.

The Sumerian Empire may not have lasted for long. But, for more than 5,000 years, the world has continued to use its calculations when it comes delineating time.

In a burst of imagination once again on All Saints’ Day, I am thinking of the figure 144,000 in the Book of Revelation as a poetic adaptation of Ancient Near East mathematical philosophy, and 144,000 are invited into the Kingdom of God, every day since, say the year 1 CE, for the past 2024 years, the total of people involved is 291,456,000. And if there two groups of 144,000 people in the Book of Revelation, that number doubles to 582,912,000.

And if the work of salvation is retrospective, going back in time as well as forward in time, perhaps that number could be doubled to at least 1,165,824,000, but probably much, much more.

That is more people than the number of people living today.

That is more people than the number of people who have ever lived on earth.
The UN estimates that the world population in mid-2024 is almost 8.2 billion (8,184,581,231).

In research for the National Library of Medicine some years ago, C Haub asked, ‘How many people have ever lived on earth?’ Assuming a constant growth rate and birth rates of 80 per 1,000 through to 1 AD, 60 per 1,000 from 2 AD to 1750, and the low 30s per 1,000 by modern times, he concluded 105 billion people have lived on earth, of whom 5.5% are alive today.

An earlier date for the appearance of human life on earth would raise the numbers. But any figures we come to are surpassed excessively by any number of people we could ever imagine ever alive on earth.

I am overwhelmed.

God’s love embraces more people than I can ever imagine, or could ever possibly exist in time, past, present or future. God’s love is beyond measure, is beyond limit, and the saints we celebrate and rejoice with today are beyond any number I can imagine or calculation you or I can make.

All Saints’ Church in Yelvertoft, Northamptshire, was connected with the Comberford family for about a century … Henry Comberford of Lichfield Cathedral was the rector in 1546-1560 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 1 November 2024, All Saints’ Day):

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 ‘All Saints’ Day’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update by the Revd Dr Duncan Dormor, General Secretary, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 1 November 2024, All Saints’ Day) invites us to pray:

We give thanks for the communion of saints across time and space and for all who have been sources of inspiration and encouragement to us in our Christian faith.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
you have knit together your elect
in one communion and fellowship
in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord:
grant us grace so to follow your blessed saints
in all virtuous and godly living
that we may come to those inexpressible joys
that you have prepared for those who truly love you;
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, the source of all holiness and giver of all good things:
may we who have shared at this table
as strangers and pilgrims here on earth
be welcomed with all your saints
to the heavenly feast on the day of your kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God of holiness,
your glory is proclaimed in every age:
as we rejoice in the faith of your saints,
inspire us to follow their example
with boldness and joy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

All Saints’ Church, Calverton, near Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire, dates from the 12th century and was rebuilt in 1818 and 1824 (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 architect from Cork who designed the GPO in Kuching for the Brooke family

The General Post Office in Kuching is an outstanding example of the mixed and cosmopolitan architectural legacy of the city (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

The General Post Office in Kuching is an outstanding example of the mixed and cosmopolitan architectural legacy of the city and one of the reminders of the days when the Brooke family ruled as the ‘White Rajahs’ of Sarawak.

The GPO is a highly visible part of the city’s architectural grandeur, stands on Jalan Tun Haji Openg, on the corner with Carpenter Street, and close to both Saint Thomas’s Cathedral and Padang Merdeka, the main square in the heart of Kuching.

Although it was built in 1931, it looks like an early 19th century public building, with its neo-classical grandeur and its Corinthian columns – the only building in Sarawak in this style.

This elegant neo-classical masterpiece was designed by the Irish-born architect Denis Santry (1879-1960) of Swan and Maclaren Architects Singapore, the same architectural practice that designed Saint Thomas’s Anglican Cathedral in Kuching.

Denis Santry was both an architect and cartoonist. As well as the Post Office in Kuching, he designed several prominent structures in Singapore, including the Sultan Mosque and the Cenotaph.

Santry was born in Cork on 14 May 1879, the son of Ellen and Denis Santry, a carpenter and joiner. He served his apprenticeship to his father as a cabinetmaker and then studied at the Cork Municipal School of Art (1894-1896) and the Crawford School of Art, Cork (1895). In 1897, he was articled to the architect James Finbarre McMullen (1859-1933), whose best-known work is the Honan Chapel at University College Cork (1914-1916).

Santry then studied at the Royal College of Art in London (1897-1898) under a Lane scholarship. There he won the Queen’s Prize for freehand drawing. After graduating, he returned to McMullen’s office and worked there for the next two years.

Santry moved to South Africa in 1901 due to ill health. He worked at Tully & Waters, an architectural practice in Cape Town (1901-1902), and then with the architect William Patrick Henry Black (1867-1922). His cartoons began appearing in 1903 in local newspapers and magazines with the pseudonym ‘Adam’. He married Madeline Hegarty in 1904.

Later, Santry moved to Johannesburg where he worked with the Sunday Times and the Rand Daily Mail as a cartoonist, and also become a pioneer of animated cartoons in South Africa.

Th GPO in Kuching was designed by the Irish-born architect Denis Santry (1879-1960) of Swan and Maclaren Architects Singapore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Santry moved to Singapore in 1918 and joined Swan & Maclaren as a partner. There he was the architect of several prominent buildings and monuments, including the Sultan Mosque, the Cenotaph, the Maritime Building, the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Building and the Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist Church. He was the first president of the Saint Patrick’s Society Singapore, was a frequent contributor to the Straits Produce, a satirical magazine, and helped to found the Singapore Society of Architects and the Institute of Architects of Malaya.

After designing the GPO in Kuching, Santry retired to England in 1934 but he returned to South Africa in 1940. After World War II, he resumed his practice as a result of lost income caused by the Japanese occupation of Malaya. He died in Durban on 14 April 1960.

His magnificent GPO in Kuching has remained in continuous use as the General Post Office since it was completed in 1932, almost a century ago. This architectural marvel, approximately 100 ft in length, is a remarkable sight to behold.

The building was commissioned by Charles Vyner, the third Rajah of Sarawak. Its neoclassical façade was quite a contrast to the style of buildings favoured by James Brooke and Charles Brooke, the first and second Rajah.

The site of Santry’s post office was once a police station and also the Rajah’s stables, where the Rajah’s the horses were fed, watered and groomed, with a coach house, hay loft and harness room, and surrounded by areca palms. The stables were part of an era when horses were reserved for the elite, but the new post office symbolised the city’s transition into modernity in the decade immediately before World War II.

The GPO also served as a telegram service centre and the Kuching branch of the Chartered Bank, and for a time an annexe behind the building served as the office of the Land and Survey Department. Some 3,300 mailboxes were installed in the post office to provide mail receiving services for people who did not have correspondence addresses.

The coat-of-arms of the Brooke family as the Rajahs of Sarawak displayed on the GPO in Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The façade of the GPO has semi-circular arches, intricately adorned column capitals, and friezes, showcasing a blend of form and function. Deep parapet walls hide the pitched roof, the colonnaded portico serves as a corridor, while the rear of the building is simple and austere.

The grandeur of the building is further accentuated by 12 towering Corinthian columns standing proudly at the main entrance, reaching heights of 30 ft. In the pediment above the Corinthian columns, the coat-of-arms of the Brooke family is a reminder of an era of benevolent rule that stood outside the British colonial system. Other buildings that have survived from the reign of Sir Charles Vyner Brooke include the Old Courthouse and the Astana.

The Brooke motto, part of the heraldic decoration, proclaims: Dum Spiro Spero, ‘While I breathe, I hope.’ It is also the motto of many places and organisations, including the State of South Carolina, and of many other families, including the Hoare baronets of Annabella, Co Cork, the Cotter baronets of Rockforest, Co Cork, the Viscounts Dillon, and the Sharp and Sharpe families.

The sense of dum spiro spero is found in the writings of the Greek poet Theocritus (3rd Century BCE), who wrote: ‘While there’s life there’s hope, and only the dead have none.’ That sentiment seems to have become common by the time of Cicero (106-43 BCE), who wrote to Atticus: ‘As in the case of a sick man one says, ‘While there is life there is hope’ [dum anima est, spes esse], so, as long as Pompey was in Italy, I did not cease to hope.’

The grandeur of the GPO is enhanced by 12 towering Corinthian columns (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Ten years after the GPO was built, however, hope may seemed to come to end for many in Kuching when the Japanese invaded on Christmas Eve 1941. The capture of the city was notified to the British Far East Command in Singapre with a pithy, single-line telegram sent from the GPO that declared: ‘Pussy’s in the Well.’

Kuching became Kyuchin in Japanese, and in July 1942 the Chartered Bank in Kuching was converted into a branch of the Yokohama Specie Bank.

Despite invasion, war, the end of the Brooke era, and the subsequent end of British colonialism, the GPO has continued to survive in Kuching in an era that sees traditional postal services being replaced, by digital alternatives such as emails, instant messaging, and online banking and communications.

The Sarawak state government has considered applying to have the post office listed as a UNESCO heritage site. The building remains a cherished symbol of Kuching’s heritage, its architectural splendour is a reminder of a bygone era.

The GPO remains an integral part of Kuching’s architectural heritage and a reminder of a bygone era (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024: 173, Thursday 31 October 2024

‘How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings’ (Luke 13: 34) … a painting of Grey’s Guest House on Achill Island, Co Mayo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We come to the end of Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar today. The week began with the Last Sunday after Trinity (27 October 2024). The Church Calendar in many parts of the Church today remembers Martin Luther (1483-1546), Reformer. This is also Hallowe’en or the Eve of All Saints’ Day. The Kingdom Season begins tomorrow with All Saints’ Day (1 November 2024) and continues until Advent Sunday (1 December 2024).

Before the day begins, before having breakfast, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings’ (Luke 13: 34) … farmyard hens in Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 13: 31-35 (NRSVA):

31 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’ 32 He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33 Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem.” 34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35 See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”.’

‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem … How often have I desired to gather your children together’ (Luke 13: 34) … the city of Jerusalem depicted on a tile in a restaurant in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

In my private meditations and prayers, I often reflect on words from Samuel Johnson from Lichfield, who compiled the first English-language dictionary but who is also often regarded as one of the great Anglican saints of the 18th century. Thinking about the stars at night, the great tragedies in the world and the unbounded love of God, Dr Johnson once wrote:

‘The pensive man at one time walks ‘unseen’ to muse at midnight, and at another hears the sullen curfew. If the weather drives him home he sits in a room lighted only by ‘glowing embers’; or by a lonely lamp outwatches the North Star to discover the habitation of separate souls, and varies the shades of meditation by contemplating the magnificent or pathetick scenes of tragick and epick poetry.’

Sometimes, I have found as I stood presiding at or celebrating the Holy Communion or the Eucharist that I am taken aback by intense feelings of the love of God.

On one memorable occasion, this happened to me as I was using the ‘Prayer of Humble Access’ at the fraction, when we were breaking the Bread of Communion at the invitation.

It is a prayer that has gone out of fashion in many parishes, but it is a reminder that we come to the Table or the Altar not because of our own goodness, not in spite of our own sinfulness, but because of the overflowing mercy and grace that God gives us freely and with unlimited bounty:

We do not presume to come to this your table,
merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness
but in your manifold and great mercies.
We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table.
But you art the same Lord,
whose nature is always to have mercy.
Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ,
and to drink his blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body,
and our souls washed through his most precious blood,
and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

I was taken aback and was conscious of the love of God unexpectedly as I came to those words: ‘We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table.’

What flashed across my mind was a video clip that had gone viral at that time on YouTube and social media, of two small, frail abandoned children caught up in Syria’s bloody civil war, fending for themselves by picking up crumbs of bread from the street to eat.

These two homeless mites, who are braver than any groups fighting or waging war in Syria, told the camera crew: ‘We go to sleep hungry, we wake up hungry.’

They have been separated from their parents. At the time, the Anglican mission agency, USPG, was working with the plight of Syrian refugees in Lesvos and Athens and other parts of Greece.

In that video clip, the 10-year-old girl said she had been collecting bread crumbs off the street with her brother because their area of Damascus, al-Hajar, has been under siege for more than 15 months.

‘If we had food, you wouldn’t have seen us here,’ she said.

But their final message to the world that had abandoned them was: ‘May you be happy and blessed with what God has given you!’

Europe takes pity on children like this when we see them on YouTube or on the 9 o’clock news. But when they land on our shores in the Aegean Islands in Greece, or make their way up through central Europe and cross the Channel into England, we deem them not worthy to gather up the crumbs under our table.

I have looked at this video clip again and again since then. And I think of the image of Christ in our Gospel reading this morning:

‘How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’ (Luke 13: 34)

The children of the world are the future of the world. It does not matter whose children they are. It does not matter how many of them there are: whether they are two children searching for crumbs that I am not worthy to gather up, or small enough to be gathered in by a loving parent, or are countless in numbers like the stars, they are all embraced in the love of the loving and living God. They are all heirs to God’s promises.

And how we respond to them, how I respond to them, shows them what I think, what we think, of God and how much we believe in his promises.



Today’s Prayers (Thursday 31 October 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 ‘All Saints’ Day’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update by the Revd Dr Duncan Dormor, General Secretary, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 31 October 2024) invites us to pray:

We give thanks for the rich diversity of the Church across the world – for all we can learn from one another and our different cultures.

The Collect:

Blessed Lord,
who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:
help us so to hear them,
to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them
that, through patience, and the comfort of your holy word,
we may embrace and for ever hold fast
the hope of everlasting life,
which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ,
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 all grace,
your Son Jesus Christ fed the hungry
with the bread of his life
and the word of his kingdom:
renew your people with your heavenly grace,
and in all our weakness
sustain us by your true and living bread;
who is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Additional Collect:

Merciful God,
teach us to be faithful in change and uncertainty,
that trusting in your word
and obeying your will
we may enter the unfailing joy of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of All Saints’ Day:

Almighty God,
you have knit together your elect
in one communion and fellowship
in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord:
grant us grace so to follow your blessed saints
in all virtuous and godly living
that we may come to those inexpressible joys
that you have prepared for those who truly love you;
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.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

‘We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table’ (the Prayer of Humble Access) … preparing bread for the Eucharist early on a Sunday morning (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 former ‘Pink Mosque’ with its golden domes and gilded cupolas, is a landmark in Kuching

The Kuching Mosque (Masjid Bandaraya Kuching) has golden domes and gilded cupolas, and its walls were once rendered in pink (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

The Kuching Mosque (Masjid Bandaraya Kuching) is a landmark building in Kuching. It is also affectionately known as the Masjid Lama, the ‘Old Mosque’ or ‘Old State Mosque’ and stands on a low hill overlooking the Sarawak River.

With its Mughal-style golden onion domes and its gilded cupolas, it is one of the city’s most striking landmarks. I am told it was even more striking at sunset until recent years when its walls were painted a unique rose-pink colour.

The Kuching Mosque served as the state mosque for many years until 1990, when a new and larger state mosque was built in Petra Jaya on the north side of the river.

The present mosque was built in 1968 to replace an original wooden building erected in 1852, although the first mosque on the site was erected in 1840, making it the oldest site of a mosque in Kuching, and contemporaneous with the arrival in Kuching in 1838 of the White Rajah of Sarawak, Sir James Brooke (1803-1868).

Inside the Kuching Mosque (Masjid Bandaraya Kuching), also known as the ‘Old Mosque’ or Old State Mosque (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The mosque was founded by a local leader known as the Pangeran who had been appointed by the Sultan of Brunei. Pangeran Indera Mahkota was born Pangeran Mohd Salleh, and was better known by his title Pangeran than by his name.

He was educated in Batavia in present-day Jakarta, with further studies in Holland. He was summoned back by the sultan ca 1820 as the Governor of Sarawak, and first founded Kuching on a site previously known as Lidah Tanah. Indera Mahkota was said to be an educated, sophisiticated and talented man, and an orator, poet and skillful politician, as James Brooke acknowledged in his diary.

Brooke’s private secretary, Sir Spenser St John (1825-1910), later the British Consul-General in Brunei, thought the Pangeran was ‘the most talented man I met in Borneo’.

The Pangeran knew the promise by the Sultan of Brunei to cede Sarawak to Brooke would weaken Brunei. He devised plans to get rid of Brooke, and convinced the sultan to delay handing over power. In response, Brooke attacked the royal palace at Kuching and threatened to release all his cannons and guns unless he was ratified as the Governor of Sarawak. However, his vilification by Brooke court historians continues to obscure the achievements of the Pangeran.

Inside the central dome of the mosque, which shows strong Mughal influences (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

At first, the small hillside mosque founded by the Pangeran was a basic building on the edge of the town centre, near the shophouses and bazaar. As Kuching grew, the mosque became a focal point of the city, but a larger Muslim needed a bigger mosque. The Malay leader at that time, Dato Patinggi Ali, began a fundraising drive in 1847 to build a new mosque. He was a key figure in the resistance by Sarawak Malays resistance to the rule of the Sultan of Brunei in the 1830s and became one of the first supporters of the Brooke Raj.

A bigger mosque was built later with one of his family members, Dato Patinggi Haj Abdul Gapur, appointed as the first Imam.

The mosque was modified in 1880, using modern building materials that were readily available in Kuching, including bricks and cement, and the changes included a new concrete building and floor materials.

A high drum-pointed dome was added on top of the roof in 1932, with the help of the Brooke government and the local Malay leaders. The dome sits on an elevated base with clerestory windows.

By the 1950s, there were demands for a bigger mosque in Kuching. The first Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman, suggested building a new mosque instead of modifying the current mosque, and he laid the foundation stone for a new building in 1966. The old building was blown up using dynamite, and Malaysia’s Federal Government provided additional funding for building the new mosque.

The mosque has a main central onion-shaped dome, flanked by four smaller domes and instead of a detached minaret there are six smaller attached minarets (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The architectural design of the present mosque includes a main central onion-shaped dome, a design that shows strong Mughal influence. It is flanked by four smaller domes that sit on an open elevated place. It has no detached minaret, and instead, there are six smaller attached minarets, each surmounted by cupolas and onion-shaped domes.

There are modern-style crenelations on the parapet wall with a series of crescent-moon finials on top of the pilasters.

The main central onion-shaped dome is made out of lightweight metal in a golden yellow colour. It indicates the main prayer area below and expresses the importance or grandeur of the building in its setting.

The interior space is lit by natural lighting through glass windows and louvered blocks. The qibla or front wall is marked with a blind arch featuring the 99 names of Allah inscribed on a teak wood tile. Here too are the mihrab niche, with a timber minbar platform to its right.

A domed pavilion near the main entrance to the mosque (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

A domed pavilion near the main entrance is perched on a terrazzo-clad platform, with three leading steps, up to the main prayer hall, and two more steps to the upper female prayer gallery. The cemetery and gravestones surrounding the mosque and filling the slopes of the hillside form an unusual feature.

The mosque was under renovation until recently, but it is open to visitors once again and while I was visiting last week a small group of four Mormon missionaries were being welcomed on a small guided tour.

During the recent renovations, the once rose-pink walls were rendered in white. But with its golden domes and gilded cupolas it remains an impressive site overlooking the Sarawak River and the waterfront, and ‘Old Mosque’ is still the main mosque on the south side of Kuching.

The cemetery and gravestones surrounding the mosque filling the slopes of the hillside overlooking the Sarawak River (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024: 172, Wednesday 30 October 2024

‘Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last’ (Luke 13: 30) … ‘Punchestown Conyngham Cup, 1872, The Double’, John Sturgess (1840-1908), one of a set of four coloured aquatints (1874)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and the week began with the Last Sunday after Trinity (27 October 2024).

Before the day begins, before having breakfast, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last’ (Luke 13: 30) … being bowled out first allowed me to enjoy the match … an old postcard seen in Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 13: 22-30 (NRSVA):

22 Jesus went through one town and village after another, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. 23 Someone asked him, ‘Lord, will only a few be saved?’ He said to them, 24 ‘Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. 25 When once the owner of the house has got up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, “Lord, open to us”, then in reply he will say to you, “I do not know where you come from.” 26 Then you will begin to say, “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.” 27 But he will say, “I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evildoers!” 28 There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out. 29 Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God. 30 Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.’

‘Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able’ (Luke 13: 24) … the ‘Holy Door’ in Saint Joseph’s Cathedral, Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Reflection:

Like many of the shophouses in this part of Kuching, the entrance to our flat is through a narrow door and up narrow steep stairs. And we are so high up above the street, that we cannot hear anyone knocking at the door below.

A few weeks ago, in our Sunday Gospel reading, we read how the disciples James and John wanted to be in the ‘in-gang’, to be the first ones in the door, to be picked for the first team, and to have the best seats.

I never made it to the first team in sports at school, perhaps to the disappointment of my parents, and to the reluctant acceptance of my teachers, who always told me I never reached my potential, either intellectually or physically.

That still did not stop from enjoying sports later in life. I tried valiantly, but failed to tog out for Wexford Wanderers when I was in my early 20s, and I still tried to play cricket with the Irish Times team when I was in my early 40s, but was mercifully bowled out immediately.

My experiences at trying to play cricket in middle age reminded me of an old postcard I once saw in Cambridge: being bowled out at an early stage allowed me to enjoy watching the rest of a game.

I still remember my father trying to teach me to row when I was 15. But I was too late in years when I got to study at Cambridge, nor was I there long enough, to think about taking up rowing.

But that does not dull my enthusiasm for rugby, soccer, cricket and rowing.

It sounds glib to say now, but it should never be about winning, but about taking part, and how we take part, whether it is with enthusiasm and honesty on one hand, or, on the other, half-heartedly or, even worse, determined to win at the expense of others who deserve recognition.

The saying ‘It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game’ is often attributed to the American sportsman and coach Grantland Rice (1880-1954), who was a highly regarded sports writer who was known for his eloquent and philosophical approach to sports journalism.

Rice emphasised the importance of integrity, sportsmanship, and character over mere victory.

Winners get the medals and get to write biographies that are published. But, as I found out at a second-hand book stall at a charity sale, few people want to buy the memoirs of Michele Smith or Lance Armstrong.

Even among the best sellers, Jeffrey Archer’s real character was thinly veiled in some of the Freudian choices for the titles of his blockbusters. First Among Equals (1984) betrays many of Archer’s own pretensions and lies about his life. The title of his The Eleventh Commandment (1998) refers to the rule, ‘Thou Shalt Not Get Caught’ – but Archer was eventually caught and jailed for perjury and many critics accuse him of plagiarism.

I hope I have learned in life, not to worry about coming first or last, or how I have performed when I have been chosen or selected. To be among the saints and the disciples should be good enough, and I hope never to be jealous of the achievements or recognition of others, for ‘people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God’ (Luke 13: 29).

Fact or Fiction? Winners get the medals and write their biographies … but who reads the biographies of cheats and liars? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 30 October 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 ‘All Saints’ Day’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update by the Revd Dr Duncan Dormor, General Secretary, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 30 October 2024) invites us to pray:

Let us pray for archbishops and senior leaders across the Anglican Communion. Grant them wisdom and discernment as they guide the Church and its people.

The Collect:

Blessed Lord,
who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:
help us so to hear them,
to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them
that, through patience, and the comfort of your holy word,
we may embrace and for ever hold fast
the hope of everlasting life,
which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ,
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 all grace,
your Son Jesus Christ fed the hungry
with the bread of his life
and the word of his kingdom:
renew your people with your heavenly grace,
and in all our weakness
sustain us by your true and living bread;
who is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Additional Collect:

Merciful God,
teach us to be faithful in change and uncertainty,
that trusting in your word
and obeying your will
we may enter the unfailing joy of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

‘Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last’ (Luke 13: 30) … my lack of skills never dulled my enthusiasm for Cricket (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

Nicholas Comberford and one of the earliest English-language maps of Borneo, made in 1665

Nicholas Comerford’s map of the East Indies, made in 1665, may be the earliest English-map showing Borneo, including Kuching and Sarawak (© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)

Patrick Comerford

Inevitably, once I had arrived in Kuching, I started searching for Comerford family links in the past with Kuching, in Sarawak, or in Borneo, or in Malaysia.

We arrived in Kuching two weeks ago (15 October 2024), but in the two weeks since I have found very little about any Comerford presence here before me as I trawl the internet and pored over academic papers, news reports and the historical research of others in the past.

There wis the occasional academic paper with a Comerford co-author, but none of them amounted to a long-standing connection with this part of south-east Asia. There is an Australian racing commentator, also called Patrick Comerford, who has worked here occasionally, but he has also worked in Singapore as well as Abu Dhabi and other parts of the Middle East. Once again, though, there were no long-standing associations.

I extended my research a little further in Malaysia and found Comerfords who had been here on business trips or who had on-off business connections with Malaysia as part of their interests in south-east Asia. In my initial searches I could find no Comerford involved in colonial administration, no Comerford involved in rubber plantations, oil exploration, or missionary engagement in Malaysia, or in the Brooke administration in Sarawak.

I even wondered whether there was a possibility that the Brooke family, one-time Rajahs of Sarawak, were related to Comberford Brooke (1675-1711), who lived at Madeley, Shropshire, and Comberford Hall, Staffordshire, and who was also known as ‘Mr Brooke of Cumberford’ and ‘Captain Cumberford’.

He was living with his sisters and his grandmother, Catherine Comberford, at Comberford Hall in 1705. He became an English Jacobite and a captain in the German Regiment of Saar. But he maintained regular contact with his family and friends, and as Comberford Brooke of Comberford he made his will in 1711.

Comberford Brooke married Rose Austen, daughter of Sir John Austen of Bexley, Kent. But his descendants in the male line came to an end with the death of his only son Basil Brooke, who died in 1727, and the line of descent of these Comberfords and Brookes passed into the Smitheman, Edwardes, Giffard, Salughter and Mostyn family.

A portrait of Basil Brooke, Comberford Brooke’s son, painted in 1727 … I could find no links with the Brookes of Sarawak (Photograph courtesy Paul and Kathy Schaefer, Fairfield, Iowa)

The legacy of the Brooke family can be seen throughout Kuching to this day. But it does not include a descent from the Comberford family of Comberford Hall.

And then I remembered the work of the Nicholas Comberford or Comerford, the 17th century mapmaker in London, who worked in Radcliffe and Stepney.

Returning to the work of Nicholas Comberford, I also returned to the paper I wrote 25 years ago in the Old Kilkenny Review, the Journal of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society (‘From India to Brazil: Nicholas Comerford, a seventeenth-century Kilkenny-born cartographer’, 1999, pp 92-102).

Nicholas Comerford’s maps charted the world from the East Indies and India to Brazil and the coast of North America. However, unlike the other members of the Thames School, he was not an Englishman, but a Kilkenny-born Irishman, who, as well as being overlooked until recently by cartographers and art historians alike, has been overlooked too in his native county.

Nicholas may well have been the first person to create English-language maps that show Borneo, including the area that is now Sarawak and the place where Kuching would later develop.

Two versions of his colourful map, East Indies, have survived. They are both on vellum and similar in every detail apart from their size, including the materials and colours Nicholas used, his spelling of place names and the inscriptions: ‘Nicholas Cumberford dwelling at the Signe of the Platt neare the weste end of the School House in Ratcliffe, 1665’.

The larger version, measuring 70.5 cm x 55.5 cm, is in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London; the smaller version, measuring 40 cm x 32 cm, is in the Braga Special Map Collection of the National Library of Australia. The map in Greenwich is a single sheet Portulan made of vellum and mounted on two hinged boards, each 70.5 cm x 27.5 cm. The signature reads: ‘Made by Nicholas Comberford dwelling at the signe of the platt neare the west end of the school house in Ratcliffe anno 1665.’

Nicholas Comberford’s smaller map in the National Library of Australia is in colour, measuring 40 x 32 cm, with a similar inscription and also dated Ratcliffe, 1665.

Borneo is at the very centre of these two maps, and it is possible to identity the location on the map where Kuching later developed. Other places included in the maps include the West Pacific, Malaya, Sumatra, Siam, China, Taiwan, Japan, New Guinea, Timor, the Philippines and north-west Australia. Cambodia is named as Camboea an seems to include Laos and Vietnam; Java is identified as Iava Maior; the Philippines as Laphillpinia, and Korea as Coray. A clear line indicates the Equator.

Inside Saint Dunstan’s Parish Church, Stepney, facing east … Nicholas Comberford and Mary Kithen were married here on 10 June 1624 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Nicholas Comberford was a leading member of the Thames School of chart makers who drew manuscript plane charts on vellum. Although he lived most of his working life in Stepney and Wapping, he was born in Kilkenny. He was a member of the Drapers’ Company all his life. His maps charted the world from the East Indies and India to Brazil and the North coast of America.

But in the 1650s, at the height of his career, he was poor and was paid little for his work. Although he had charted much of the world, he never travelled much further than the journey from Kilkenny to London, a journey that he appears to have regretted in the closing days of his life, when he longed to return to Ireland once more.

Part of the difficulty in the past in identifying Nicholas Comerford as a member of the Kilkenny family arises because many English map cataloguers have spelled his name Comberford, leading to confusion and his identification with the Staffordshire family. Nor was the historian of the Diocese of Ossory, William Carrigan, aware of Nicholas Comberford, his important contribution to 17th-century life, and his place in the Inchiholohan or Castleinch branch of the family. The manuscripts relevant to tracing Nicholas Comerford’s life were not published and available to readers until after Carrigan’s four volumes were published in 1905.

Nicholas Comberford’s father was Nicholas Comerford, the ‘King’s Gaoler’ at Kilkenny, and he was a grandson of Garret Comerford of Inshilholan (Inchiolohan or Castleinch). Garret Comerford (1550-1604) was the Queen’s Attorney-at-Laws for Connaught, MP for Callan, Second Baron of the Exchequer and Chief Justice of Munster. Just a year before his death, Garret was the third or fourth richest person with lands in Co Cork.

Nicholas Comberford’s father is the third son named in Garret Comerford’s will and was the ‘King’s Gaoler’ at Kilkenny. Nicholas Comberford the mapmaker was probably born in Kilkenny ca 1600. He moved to London in his teens, long before 1620, and settled in Stepney, where a number of Comberfords were living for a few generations. They may have been Irish cousins, or members of the Comberford family from Staffordshire, who would have accepted him as kin; in either case, they probably made it easy for him to find a place to live, and to find an apprenticeship with the Company of Drapers as a ‘plat-maker’ or map-maker.

The coat-of-arms of the Drapers’ Company at Drapers’ Hall … Nicholas Comberford was a member of the livery company founded in 1361 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

As Nicholas Commerford or Comberford, he was apprenticed to the mapmaker John Daniel in the Drapers’ Company school of portolan chart makers. John Daniel was the first draper-chartmaker of the Company of Drapers, and Nicholas completed his apprenticeship with him in 1620.

As Nicholas Commerford, he married Mary Kithen of Ratcliffe in Saint Dunstan’s Parish Church, Stepney, on 10 June 1624, when he is described as a ‘Draper.’ He continued to live in the parish, where he was ‘of the precincts of St Katherine,’ was active in parish life, and is recorded as attending a vestry meeting in 1645. In the parish records, he is described as a draper and is named variously as Nicholas Cumberford and Commerford. At the February 1645 Vestry, there were no less than 11 captains from Ratcliffe and Limehouse among an attendance of 30 parishioners.

Later, when he was living in London, Nicholas would tell visitors from Ireland that his kindred had many good estates in Ireland, but they also included a priest who by then was in Spain, and another who was a drunk and who robbed him. The priest in Spain may have been either Thomas Comerford (1583-1636) or James Comerford (1583-1640), two of his three Jesuit uncles who were sons of Garret Comerford. He may have been unaware that his second cousin, Patrick Comerford, had become Bishop of Waterford and Lismore.

According to his signature on most of his maps and charts, Nicholas Comberford lived at Radcliffe in Stepney, although a visitor in 1655 says he lived in Wapping. We are left with a very full description of Comberford’s living conditions and family circumstances from an almost mocking account of a visit to him contained in a letter from that visitor, William Dobbyns, to his cousin John (later Sir John) Percivale, written on 17 December 1655.

Dobbyns and his friends located a ‘rich’ uncle, who turned out to be Nicholas Comberford, the poor mapmaker, who had left Kilkenny and who was now living in squalor.

Nicholas is mentioned by Samuel Pepys in his diary in 1663. Yet, at the height of his career in the 1650s, Nicholas was poor and was paid little for his work. Nicholas worked in a garret in the house in Wapping, and was paid 25 shillings for a map that would take about three weeks to make. His works remained unclaimed until the mid-20th century. In recent years, he has been fully identified as a member of the group of London chart makers now called the Thames School.

In all, 28 of his charts have been recoded. The British Museum Library collection in London includes seven charts, dating between 1647 and 1665, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London, has seven Comberford maps, there are five Comberford maps or charts in the Sterling National Library in Yale University, the University of Kansas has four, and there is one each in the New York Public Library, the Antigua Museum, the National Library of Australia, Lincoln Cathedral and the Bodleian Library in Oxford, which has what is probably his last traceable map, dated 1670.

He was working until 1670, but I have traced no further works by Nicholas Comerford after 1670. He died in 1673 in his early 70s, still living in poverty in Wapping. The historic and artistic importance of his work and the work of other members of the ‘Thames School’ have come to be appreciated only in recent years, and his work has come to the attention of many scholars.

‘East Indies’ by Nicholas Comberford of Ratcliffe, 1665 (Braga Collection, National Library of Australia)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024: 171, Tuesday 29 October 2024

‘The kingdom of heaven … is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened’ (Luke 13: 20-21) … three trays of bread in a baker’s shop in Bologna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and the week began with the Last Sunday after Trinity (27 October 2024). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today recalls James Hannington (1847-1885), Bishop of Eastern Equatorial Africa, Martyr in Uganda.

Before the day begins, before having breakfast, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘The kingdom of heaven … is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened’ (Luke 13: 20-21) … varieties of bread on a stall in a market in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 13: 18-21 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 18 He said therefore, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? 19 It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.’

20 And again he said, ‘To what should I compare the kingdom of God? 21 It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’

‘World’s Smallest Seed,’ 40”x30” oil/canvas, by James B Janknegt

Today’s Reflection:

Have you ever found yourself lost for words when it comes to describing a beautiful place you have visited?

If you have ever been to the Bay of Naples or Sorrento, how would you describe what you have seen to someone who has never travelled very far beyond where they live?

You might try comparing the first glimpse of Vesuvius with looking at Carrigtwohill, Croagh Patrick or the Great Sugarloaf … but that hardly describes the experience of climbing the rocky path, looking into the caldera, or the experience of the sulphuric smell.

You might want to compare the Bay of Naples with the vista in Dingle Bay or across Dublin Bay from the Dart passing through Killiney … but does that reflect the majestic scope of any one of these views?

You might want to compare the church domes of Venice or the Greek islands with the great copper dome in Rathmines … but that goes nowhere near describing the intricate artwork on those Italian domes or the impact on the Greek skyline.

You might compare the inside of the duomo in Florence with the inside of your favourite parish church … but you know you are getting nowhere near what you want to say.

And as for Capri … what other island conveys the romantic allure of Capri.

Comparisons never match the beauty of any of the places that offer us a snatch or glimpse of heaven.

And yet, we know that the photographs on our phones, no matter how good they seem to be when we are taking them, never do justice to the places we have been when we get back home.

We risk becoming bores either by trying to use inadequate words or inadequate images to describe experiences that we can never truly share with people unless they go there, unless they have been there too.

I suppose that helps to a degree to understand why Jesus keeps on trying to grasp at images that might help the Disciples and help us to understand what the Kingdom of God is like.

Christ tries to offer us a taste of the kingdom in this reading, as he continues to speak in parables. The two parables in this reading – the Parable of the Mustard Seed and the Parable of the Yeast - are really similes that must have seemed incredible on the day because of Christ’s use of exaggeration and hyperbole.

A mustard seed is very small, but it grows into a large shrub, rather than a tree. Birds do not nest in it.

Bread made with three measures of flour would feed 100 people, so once again we have hyperbole. The Kingdom of God Kingdom will grow from small beginnings to something beyond our measure or imagination.

We have a romantic imagination that confuses gardens with Paradise, and Paradise with the Kingdom of Heaven. But perhaps that is a good starting point, because I have a number of places where I find myself saying constantly: ‘This is a little snatch of heaven.’ They include:

• the road from Cappoquin out to my grandmother’s farm in West Waterford.

• the train journey from outside Ferns to Wexford, along the banks of the River Slaney.

• the view from Stowe Pool across to Lichfield Cathedral at sunset.

walking along Cross in Hand Lane on the north fringe of Lichfield.

• the Backs in Cambridge.

• sunset at the Fortezza in Rethymnon on the Greek island of Crete.

• the sights and sounds on some of the many beaches I like to walk on in Ireland and in Greece.

I could go on. The Kingdom of Heaven must be so like so many of these places where I find myself constantly praising God and thanking God for creation.

But … but it’s not just that. And I start thinking that Christ does more than just paint a scene when he describes the kingdom of heaven.

Later today, you might challenge yourself to think of three places, three gifts in God’s creation, that offer glimpses of the Kingdom of Heaven, and to think of three actions that symbolise Christ’s invitation into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Give thanks for these small seeds or fistfuls of yeast, and share them with someone you love and cherish.

An evening’s walk in winter along Cross in Hand Lane in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 29 October 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 ‘All Saints’ Day’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update by the Revd Dr Duncan Dormor, General Secretary, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 29 October 2024) invites us to pray:

Lord, we pray for churches across the Anglican Communion. May they continue to flourish as they seek to praise your name.

The Collect:

Most merciful God,
who strengthened your Church by the steadfast courage
of your martyr James Hannington:
grant that we also,
thankfully remembering his victory of faith,
may overcome what is evil
and glorify your holy name;
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 our redeemer,
whose Church was strengthened by the blood of your martyr James Hannington:
so bind us, in life and death, to Christ’s sacrifice
that our lives, broken and offered with his,
may carry his death and proclaim his resurrection in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

‘The kingdom of God … is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden’ (Luke 13: 18-10) … the Mustard Seed is a restaurant in a country house setting in Ballingarry, Co Limerick (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