Patrick Comerford
We have passed the half-way into the Season of Advent, and the countdown to Christmas seems to be gathering pace. This week began with the Second Sunday of Advent (Advent II, 8 December 2024), and the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Lucy (304), Martyr at Syracuse, and Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), writer of dictionaries, literary editor and the ‘Great Moralist’.
I have an appointment in the John Radcliffe Hospital later today, which is part of the care and attention I continue to receive following my stroke in March 2022. I remain truly grateful for the caring and attentive treatment I received in Milton Keynes University Hospital and in the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. And I am even more grateful for the way Charlotte Hunter recognised I was having a stroke, brought me to hospital, ensured I received the attention I needed, visited me every day, and brought me back to Stony Stratford.
But, before today begins and before I catch my buses to Oxford, I am taking some quiet time 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.
Matthew 11: 16-19 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 16 ‘But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market-places and calling to one another,
17 “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.”
18 For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He has a demon”; 19 the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.’
Today’s reflection:
The theme in the lectionary readings last Sunday for Advent II (8 December) was the Prophets, while next Sunday the theme is Saint John the Baptist (Advent III, 15 December). Those two themes continue to be linked in this morning’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Matthew 11: 11-15), when Christ contrasts the reasons John was rejected with the reasons he is criticised.
These double standards in a Gospel reading are interesting on a day when we remember Samuel Johnson, who was known as ‘The Great Moralist’, although in the 18th century that was a term of affection and honour.
Samuel Johnson was a pious Anglican throughout his life, but is best remembered as a writer of dictionaries and a literary editor. He was a High Church Anglican and deeply committed to the Church of England since his younger days when he read William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.
It is almost 250 years since Samuel Johnson took his friend James Boswell to Lichfield in 1776 to show him ‘genuine civilised life in an English provincial town’. Later Johnson would recall: ‘I lately took my friend Boswell and showed him genuine civilised life in an English provincial town. I turned him loose at Lichfield.’
They stayed at the Three Crowns in Breadmarket Street, beside the house on the corner of Market Square where Johnson was born and spent his childhood.
When Bosswell asked Johson why the people of Lichfield seemed to lack industry, Johnson famously replied that the people of Lichfield were philosophers: ‘Sir, (said Johnson,) we are a city of philosophers: we work with our heads, and make the boobies of Birmingham work for us with their hands.’
Lichfield has grown considerably in the two and a half centuries since that visit, from 4,000 people in Samuel Johnson’s days, to almost 35,000 people today. It is one of England’s smallest cities, but it retains its civilised charm, and I return to Lichfield regularly for my own personal retreats and time of prayer and reflection.
Samuel Johnson was a key figure in shaping the English language as we use it today. Indeed, he has been described as ‘arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history’ and his biography by Boswell has been described as ‘the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature.’
Although Johnson began his literary career as a ‘Grub Street’ journalist, he made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer.
The 18th century was a period of great intellectual activity, and Lichfield was home to many figures of intellect and culture, including Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward, prompting Johnson’s observation that Lichfield was ‘a city of philosophers’.
Samuel Johnson was born on 18 September 1709 in what is now the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum, a five-storey house at the west end of the Market Square.
He married the widowed Elizabeth Porter in 1735, when he was 25 and she was 46 and the mother of three children. Two years later, Johnson and 20-year-old David Garrick set off for London in 1737 in search of fame and fortune. They survived many difficulties, and eventually Johnson became the leading literary figure of his generation and Garrick the leading actor.
Johnson’s fortunes took a dramatic turn in 1746 when a publisher commissioned him to compile a dictionary of the English language – a contract that was worth 1,500 guineas. Johnson claimed he could finish the project in three years. In comparison, the Académie Française had 40 scholars who would spend 40 years completing its French dictionary. Eventually, it took Johnson nine years to complete his Dictionary of the English Language.
Johnson’s Dictionary was not the first, nor was it unique. But it remained the standard, definitive and pre-eminent English dictionary for 150 years, until the Oxford English Dictionary was published in 1928. His Dictionary offers insights into the 18th century, providing ‘a faithful record of the language people used.’ It has been described as ‘one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship.’ As a work of literature, it has had a far-reaching impact on modern English.
Johnson’s legacies in Lichfield include: the Johnson statue in Market Square; his monument in a corner of the south transept of Lichfield Cathedral; John Myatt’s fading mosaic mural on a wall on a corner of Bird Street; and ‘Johnson’s Willow’ on the north shore of Stowe Pool.
I have been familiar with the willow trees at this location for over 50 years, and the present willow tree is the fifth there since Johnson’s days.
When Johnson was young, the willow was close to his father’s parchment factory. When he returned to Lichfield in later years, he never failed to visit the tree, passing it on his way to visit his friends the Aston sisters who lived at the two large houses on Stowe Hill. He is said to have described the willow as ‘the delight of his early and waning life’.
The original willow eventually became decayed, and in 1829 it was blown down. But it has been replaced by many of its descendants ever since.
A fifth willow of was planted on the same site by Stowe Pool on 2 November 2021. The ceremony included a reading of a poem about Johnson’s Willow by Sarah Dale, the winning entry in the Johnson Society’s Willow poetry competition.
On his last visit to church, the walk strained Samuel Johnson. However, while there he wrote a prayer for his friends, the Thrale family: ‘To thy fatherly protection, O Lord, I commend this family. Bless, guide, and defend them, that they may pass through this world, as finally to enjoy in thy presence everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.’
In his last prayer, on 5 December 1784, before receiving Holy Communion and eight days before he died, Samuel Johnson prayed:
Almighty and most merciful Father, I am now, as to human eyes it seems, about to commemorate, for the last time, the death of thy Son Jesus Christ our Saviour and Redeemer. Grant, O Lord, that my whole hope and confidence may be in his merits, and his mercy; enforce and accept my imperfect repentance; make this commemoration available to the confirmation of my faith, the establishment of my hope, and the enlargement of my charity; and make the death of thy Son Jesus Christ effectual to my redemption. Have mercy on me, and pardon the multitude of my offences. Bless my friends; have mercy upon all men. Support me, by the grace of thy Holy Spirit, in the days of weakness, and at the hour of death; and receive me, at my death, to everlasting happiness, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.
As he lay dying, Samuel Johnson’s final words were: ‘Iam Moriturus’ (‘I who am about to die’). He fell into a coma and died at 7 pm on 13 December 1784 at the age of 75. He was buried at Westminster Abbey a week later.
Johnson’s life and work are celebrated in a stained glass window in Southwark Cathedral, he has monuments in Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, and Lichfield Cathedral, and he is named in the calendar of the Church of England on this day as a modern Anglican saint.
Today’s Prayers (Friday 13 December 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 ‘Peace – Advent’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections by the Revd Nitano Muller, Canon for Worship and Welcome, Coventry Cathedral.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 13 December 2024) invites us to pray:
Heavenly Father, we pray for all people who are silenced and cannot speak out because of oppression or fear, may their voices be heard.
The Collect:
God our redeemer,
who gave light to the world that was in darkness
by the healing power of the Saviour’s cross:
shed that light on us, we pray,
that with your martyr Lucy
we may, by the purity of our lives,
reflect the light of Christ
and, by the merits of his passion,
come to the light of everlasting life;
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 Lucy:
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
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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