Patrick Comerford
We are in the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints’ Day and Advent, and this week began with the Second Sunday before Advent. The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (22 November) remembers Saint Cecilia (ca 230), Martyr at Rome and the patron saint of musicians.
Later today we hope to attend the Choral Evensong in Southwark Cathedral in memory of Ian Keatley, the Director of Music who died suddenly in August 2024. I first got to know Ian when he was the Director of Music in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, and he warmly welcomed us to Southwark Cathedral last year when we were making our wedding arrangements. It seems appropriate that this memorial service should take place on Saint Cecilia’s Day.
Meanwhile, before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read 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.
Luke 19: 45-48 (NRSVA):
45 Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; 46 and he said, ‘It is written,
“My house shall be a house of prayer”;
but you have made it a den of robbers.’
47 Every day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him; 48 but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard.
Today’s reflection:
Do you have problems with prayer, with praying?
It can be difficult, and difficult for priests too.
When we are ordained as priests, we are told in the Ordinal that we are to lead God’s people in prayer, but we are also charged by the bishop to be diligent in prayer, in the reading of Scripture and in study.
But being told to do something, and actually doing it, are two very different things.
There are times when prayer is not easy, prayer can is often difficult for every one of us, and it is easy to be distracted.
Because the Church knew at an early stage that prayer could be difficult for all of us some of the time, and for some of us all the time, early and mediaeval churches were decorated to take account of our distractions, to catch us unaware of our distractions, and to bring us back to the reasons we find ourselves in church.
We can be distracted on a Sunday morning by the presence of other people, by thoughts that bring us back to the problems of the past week, by worries and anxieties about the coming week, by the weather outside, by traffic and noises outside the church, even by noises and people inside the church.
When we are distracted in prayer, we stop listening to God. But, frankly, one of the big distractions in prayer can be the feeling that God is not listening to us.
And the same thing can happen when we try to pray at home, in the privacy of our own homes or rooms.
In the past, many churches were decorated with frescoes and icons. Many Reformers objected to this as idolatry, and wanted to remove some, sometimes even all images from churches.
But the inspiration for those early church decorators was to call people back to prayer and the Bible, and to lift up their hearts and minds to God.
The bottom, ground level of the frescoes in a church were of earthly scenes. As our eyes moved up, we moved through the stories of saints, prophets and martyrs, through New Testament scenes, to events in the life of Christ, and finally, in the dome to Christ enthroned in splendour, as the Pantocrator or ruler of all, surrounded by the heavenly host of angels and the four evangelists.
Once, as I was a preparing for a seminar with students, I asked my sons when they were still children to close their eyes, to think of a church they knew, and to say what was the first thing they would see when they walked in.
One said, ‘The backs of people.’ It said a lot about how children can find some churches cold and unwelcoming.
The other said ‘Jesus.’
I thought he was pulling my leg and that he knew the reason for my little exercise.
But, no, he reminded me of how he held my hand as a small child as we walked into a dark church in a small village on a Greek island. He recalled how in the darkness his eyes were drawn up to the light streaming through the small windows in the dome, and he was startled by the image of Christ, lit up by the rays of sunshine and looking down lovingly on the two of us, father and son.
Would that everyone who came into our churches could say that the first thing they see is Jesus, rather than the backs of people.
Historically, Anglicans tried to undo the iconoclasm of over-zealous, small-minded reformers by providing a visual focus when our minds wander during prayer. This could be in stained glass windows or in a large painting behind or above the altar.
One traditional Anglican way of catching the eyes of the distracted was to place a number of boards in the chancel area, two decorated with the Ten Commandments and one on each side of these, with the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed.
These boards recognised that we can be bored by sermons and distracted in prayer. But they allowed people to learn the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, and so to learn to pray and to grow in faith and discipleship. And they allowed us to bring our focus back to why we were in church and to return to prayer.
Many of these boards survive in the Wren churches throughout London, and I know of at least three in Ireland: Kenure Church in Rush, north Co Dublin; Saint Carthage’s Cathedral, Lismore, Co Waterford; and Saint Nicholas Church, Adare, Co Limerick.
The frescoes, icons and Stations of the Cross in other churches serve the same purpose. They are positive distractions when our minds and our eyes are tempted to wander in prayer and in worship.
But there are negative distractions too.
Do not get me wrong, please. I never find children a distraction in church. Children should be as comfortable in church on a Sunday morning as they ought to be in their grannies’ on a Sunday afternoon.
But there are negative distractions that take our eyes and our minds away from where they should be on Sunday morning: what’s happening around us; the sounds outside. The first hit for the Saw Doctors was a song with a crude description of how a young man is distracted by a young woman at Sunday Mass. But it was ever so.
I cannot imagine that the only conversation that Mary and Joseph had when they brought the Child Jesus to the Temple was holy talk with Simeon and Anna.
In the Temple in Jerusalem, when they came together on high holy days and holidays, of course they stopped and joked and chatted, and consoled and congratulated one another as they caught up on the latest news.
It was building up community, the family of God. In churches today, our social chit-chat, before and after, is not just mere gossip or a distraction, but builds up the Body of Christ. This is positive distraction.
But in the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today, Christ is dealing with negative distractions, a whole package, a whole collection of negative distractions.
The Ten Commandments are the summary of our relationships with God and with one another. They summarise the purpose and direction of worship and prayer, and they summarise and express the core values of community relations. Christ’s action in the Gospel reading is a reaction to how those values have been abused and set aside for personal gain in a place that is supposed to be at the heart of these relationships.
In the outer court of the Temple, he finds a thriving market, where visitors can buy the animals needed for sacrifice and change coins with images of Caesar as a god for coins that are acceptable as Temple tax.
He must have known that Mary and Joseph had to change coins and to buy their turtle doves when they brought him in their arms to the Temple.
The Prophet Jeremiah had said that impurity would destroy the value of the Temple in God’s eyes, and it would ‘become a den of robbers’ in his sight (Jeremiah 7: 11).
All classes of people, indeed all the nations of the earth, should be able to worship God, the prophets had declared, so that ‘there shall no longer be traders in the house of the Lord’ (see Zechariah 14: 21; Isaiah 56: 7; Tobit 14: 5-7).
Christ’s action in this reading is not a mere outburst of temper, but the energy of righteousness being used to confront people whose business and sharp practice have become distractions from prayer and worship.
It is not those who are praying, or those who are distracted from prayer, that he wants to hear what he has to say, but those who have no time for prayer at all and instead are there to make quick profits out of money changing and large profits out of selling animals who distract or even deter those who should feel welcome to worship of God, and to meet one another. For the love of God and the love of others is the summary of the law of Moses.
The disciples are reminded, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me’ (see Psalm 69: 9).
But his rebuke is heard and interpreted only in material ways. Those around him are so distracted from their prayers that they cannot grasp that the true, lasting Temple is the body of Christ which, as the disciples would see after the Resurrection, would be raised up in three days.
Hopefully, we shall continue to see this as we journey towards welcoming him as Christ the King next Sunday, and during Advent as we prepare to welcome at his incarnation.
Today’s Prayers (Friday 22 November 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 ‘Coming Together for Climate Justice’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections by Linet Musasa, HIV Stigma and Discrimination Officer, Anglican Council of Zimbabwe.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 22 November 2024) invites us to pray:
Let us pray for the strength of the youth in church who raise awareness in their communities and advocate for climate-friendly practices.
The Collect:
Heavenly Father,
whose blessed Son was revealed
to destroy the works of the devil
and to make us the children of God and heirs of eternal life:
grant that we, having this hope,
may purify ourselves even as he is pure;
that when he shall appear in power and great glory
we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom;
where he is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Post Communion Prayer:
Gracious Lord,
in this holy sacrament
you give substance to our hope:
bring us at the last
to that fullness of life for which we long;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Additional Collect:
Heavenly Lord,
you long for the world’s salvation:
stir us from apathy,
restrain us from excess
and revive in us new hope
that all creation will one day be healed
in 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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