The Jaffe Memorial Fountain in Belfast is 150 years old and is in vivid splendour

The Jaffe Memorial Fountain in vivid yellow and white colours on Victoria Street was erected in 1874 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

When we were visiting Belfast last weekend, I promised myself to spend some time finding out a little more about Sir Otto Jaffe (1846-1929), Belfast’s only Jewish mayor, and to reacquaint myself with some of Jewish Belfast, including the sites of Belfast’s early synagogues on Annesley Street, off Antrim Road and Great Victoria Street.

The 150-year-old Jaffe Memorial Fountain is one of the most colourful public monuments in Belfast. It stands in vivid yellow and white colours at the Victoria Street entrance to the Victoria Square shopping centre. But it was almost lost earlier this century due to neglect and decay.

The Jaffe Memorial Fountain is a gilded, cast iron drinking fountain and was first erected a century and a half ago in 1874 by Sir Otto Jaffe in memory of his father, the German-born merchant Daniel Joseph Jaffe (1809-1874).

Daniel Joseph Jaffe was born in Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, on 19 August 1809. He owned a large business in Hamburg that was also active in Dundee, Leipzig and Paris. He visited Belfast in 1845 to open a linen house and shipped linen products back to his other firms in Europe and America, and then settled in Belfast in 1850.

He built a linen warehouse in ‘Italian Renaissance style’ at the corner of Linenhall Street and Donegall Square South in 1851.

Daniel Jaffe was also a politician and philanthropist. He is seen as the founder of Belfast’s Jewish community and built the city’s first synagogue on Great Victoria Street in 1871.

He died in Nice on 21 January 1874 at the age of 64 and his body was brought back to Belfast, where he was buried in the Jewish section of Belfast City Cemetery.

Daniel Joseph Jaffe died in Nice on 21 January 1874 and was buried in Belfast (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daniel Jaffe’s son Sir Otto Jaffe took over the family business in 1877. He was twice Lord Mayor of Belfast and the city’s first and only Jewish Lord Mayor.

Shortly after his father’s death, Otto Jaffe erected the Jaffe Fountain in Victoria Street in memory of his father. The fountain sits on a solid base with four steps from the street level. Eight columns support a large solid domed canopy and finial. The open filigree frieze above the cornice is expanded to the interior of the dome, and leaves decorate the outer edge of the cornice.

The cupola is trimmed with rope design and is surmounted by a five-tiered finial consisting of four scrolls with leaves and suns and stars pointing in four compass directions.

One of the original features of the fountain was a lamp at the apex of the dome. The lantern was later removed, perhaps with the arrival of electric light, and was replaced by a weather vane with a compass.

The present finial bears no resemblance to the original lantern, and has little resemblance to the weather vane that replaced it. The uppermost part of the finial appears to be in the shape of an arrow pointing to Heaven.

The wide based stood on a raised and stepped platform. The central pedestal was supported by four columns stamped with a diamond pattern. Square capitals on each side of the dog toothed basin contain a seven pointed embellishment that may represent a star or the sun. This symbol also outlines the ribs on the domed roof.

Four consoles with acanthus relief connect the central stanchion to the basin. They originally supported drinking cups suspended on chains. Shell motif spouts released the flow of water. A multi-tiered circular column was surmounted by a studded orb terminal.

Inside the Jaffe Memorial Fountain, made in Glasgow by the Sun Foundry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The commemoration panel on the interior of the canopy hood reads: ‘Daniel Joseph Jaffe born Schwerin 1809 Died at Nice 1874/ A founder of Jaffe Brothers/ of Hamburg, Dundee, Belfast, Leipzig and Paris/ He fostered the linen trade of Ulster/ Until 1933 this memorial stood near the warehouse/ he erected in 1880 at 10 Donegall Square South. It was/ then moved to this site for the better service of the public.’

The fountain was made in Glasgow by the Sun Foundry of George Smith & Co and first stood in Victoria Square. It was moved to the embankment near King’s Bridge, Botanic Gardens, in 1933.

However, while the fountain was in the Botanic Gardens it fell into a bad state of repair and was in a fragile condition.

The fountain was fully restored in 2007. This involved dismantling it piece by piece. The dismantled fountain was taken to Shropshire for its restoration.

During the restoration work, extensive research and scientific analysis was carried out on various layers of paint in order to identify the original colours.

The restored fountain was returned to Victoria Square on 14 February 2008. It remains dry but it is one of the most colourful monuments in Belfast’s city centre and is a reminder of the history of Belfast’s Jewish community.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום

The Jaffe Fountain is one of the most colourful monuments in Belfast’s city centre and a reminder of Belfast’s Jewish history (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024: 133, Friday 20 September 2024

James Tissot (1836-1902), The Holy Women (Les femmes saintes), 1886-1896 (Brooklyn Museum)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (15 September 2024). Today, the calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers John Coleridge Patteson (1871), First Bishop of Melanesia, and his Companions, Martyrs.

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, 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.

The Revd Florence Li Tim-Oi, the first Anglican woman priest, was ordained priest 80 years ago on 25 January 1944

Luke 8: 1-3 (NRSVA)

1 Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, 2 as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, 3 and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.

A notice board in Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, London, remembers the Revd Florence Li Tim-Oi, who was ordained 80 years ago in 1944 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Reflection:

In the three short verses in today’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist, Saint Luke describes the team of men and women who travel with Jesus, accompanying him in his ministry. They are men and women: the Twelve (verse 1), and a group of women, including three named women, and ‘many others, who provided for them out of their resources’ (verses 2-3).

The women and men are referred to in a way that implies that their ministry is equal. The three named women are Mary Magdalene, Joanna the wife of Cuza, and Susanna, but there are ‘many others.’

These women are women of independent means and are supporting Jesus ‘out of their resources’ or ‘out of their own means’ (Luke 8: 3b). The original text in Greek says αἵτινες διηκόνουν αὐτοῖς ἐκ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων αὐταῖς, they served, provided or ministered using their own resources.

The Greek verb here is διακονέω (diakoneō), which throughout the New Testament means to minister to, to fill the office of διάκονος (diakonos, deacon), to perform the duties of deacon, to serve. In this verse, it is found in the imperfect tense, meaning continual and habitual activity in the past. They supply Jesus’ financial needs again and again.

These women are his first supporters of Jesus’ mission, and they generously met the needs of Jesus and his band out of their own personal wealth. The Greek word is the substantive of ὑπάρχω (hyparchō), ‘what belongs to someone, someone’s property, possession, means’.

If being a true disciple means putting everything that one has at the disposal of Jesus and his ministry, then these three women are, indeed, role models for ministry.

Throughout this year (2024), there have been celebrations marking the 80th anniversary of the ordination as priest of the Revd Florence Li Tim-Oi (1907-1992) in Hong Kong on 25 January 1944. She was the first woman to be ordained a priest in a church in the Anglican Communion.

Florence Li Tim-Oi was born in a fishing village in Hong Kong on 5 May 1907. Her father, a doctor turned headmaster, called her ‘Much Beloved’ because he valued her as a daughter even if other parents preferred sons. When she was baptised as a student, Tim-Oi chose the name Florence after Florence Nightingale, the 19th century ‘Lady with the Lamp’ who felt she had a vocation that was ignored by the Church.

At the ordination of a deaconess in Hong Kong Cathedral in 1931, Florence heard and responded to the call to ministry. She took a four-year course at the theological college in Guangzhou (Canton), was ordained deacon in 1941, and was given charge of the Anglican congregation in the Portuguese colony of Macao, which was thronged with refugees from war-torn China.

When a priest could no longer travel from Japanese-occupied territory to preside at the Eucharist, for three years Florence Tim-Oi was licensed to preside as a deacon. Bishop Ronald Owen Hall of Hong Kong then asked her to meet him in Free China, where on 25 January 1944 he ordained her ‘a priest in the Church of God.’ He knew that this was as momentous a step as when the Apostle Peter baptised the Gentile Cornelius. As Saint Peter recognised that God had already given Cornelius the baptismal gift of the Spirit, so Bishop Hall thought he was merely confirming that God had already given Florence the gift of priestly ministry – although he resisted the temptation to rename her Cornelia.

Although Bishop Hall’s action was well received in his diocese, it caused a storm of protest throughout the wider Anglican Communion, and pressure was brought on the bishop to have her relinquish the title and role of a priest.

When she became aware of the concern of the wider church and of the pressure on her bishop, Florence did not get angry and leave the Church. Instead, she decided in 1946 to surrender her priest’s licence, but not her Holy Orders. For the next 39 years, she served faithfully under very difficult circumstances, when the knowledge that she had been ordained priest later helped to carry her through the worst excesses of the Maoist era in China.

She moved to the far south of China, near the Vietnamese border, where she ran a maternity home to protect female babies. The Communist Government closed down all churches in China from 1958-74 and Tim-Oi was designated as a counter-revolutionary, persecuted by the Red Guards. Forced to work on a chicken farm, and then in a factory, she was unable to openly practice her Christian faith or meet people she knew were Christians, lest she got them into trouble.

While she was officially recognised as a priest in the Diocese of Hong Kong and Macau in 1971, she was not allowed to retire from her factory work until 1974. At the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1979, she resumed her ministry in the Church in China.

Arrangements were made for her to move to Canada in 1983, and she was appointed an honorary assistant at Saint John’s Chinese congregation and Saint Matthew’s parish in Toronto. By then, the Anglican Church in Canada had approved the ordination of women to the priesthood and in 1984, on the 40th anniversary of her ordination, with great joy and thanksgiving, she was reinstated as a priest.

The anniversary was also celebrated at Westminster Abbey and at Sheffield Cathedral, although the Church of England had not yet approved the ordination of women.

She was invited to Lambeth Palace that year to meet Archbishop Robert Runcie. Until then, he had not been convinced about women’s ordination, but their meeting changed his thinking: ‘Who am I to say whom God can or cannot call?’

She returned briefly to China in 1987, when Bob Brown made a film about her, Return to Hepu: Li Tim-Oi Goes Home.

Until she died in 1992, she exercised her priesthood with such faithfulness and quiet dignity that won tremendous respect for herself and gathered increasing support for other women seeking ordination. The very quality of her ministry in China and in Canada and the grace with which she exercised her priesthood helped convince many throughout the Anglican Communion and beyond that the Holy Spirit was working in and through women priests. Her contribution to the Church far exceeded the expectations of those involved in her ordination in 1944.

She was awarded Doctorates of Divinity by the General Theological Seminary, New York, and Trinity College, Toronto. She died in her sleep on 26 February 1992, reportedly after phoning several elderly people who were confined to home, praying with them and offering them pastoral counsel. She is buried in Toronto.

The Anglican Church of Canada agreed in 2004 to include Florence Li Tim-Oi in the Calendar of Holy Persons in the Book of Alternative Services – on the anniversary of her death, 26 February. She was made a permanent part of the Episcopal Church’s calendar of saints in 2018.

The Li Tim-Oi Foundation which helps women in the Two-Thirds World train for ministry and vocational work in their communities.

Her story is told by Ted Harrison in Much Beloved Daughter (1985) and in her own memoir, Raindrops of My Life (1996).

The Revd Li Tim-Oi, her mother, Bishop Mok, her father, and Archdeacon Lee Kow Yan after her ordination as deacon in Saint John’s Cathedral, Hong Kong, on Ascension Day 22 May 1941

Today’s Prayers (Friday 20 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 ‘The 5-finger prayer from the Diocese of Kuching, Malaysia.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday in reflections as told to Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 20 September 2024) invites us to pray:

Little Finger (yourself): Thank you Father that you know what I need before I ask you. Please help me to grow in mind, body, and spirit.

The Collect:

God of all tribes and peoples and tongues,
who called your servant John Coleridge Patteson
to witness in life and death to the gospel of Christ
amongst the peoples of Melanesia:
grant us to hear your call to service
and to respond trustfully and joyfully
to Jesus Christ our redeemer,
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 John Coleridge Patteson:
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.

Collect on the Eve of Saint Matthew:

O Almighty God, whose blessed Son called Matthew the tax collector
to be an apostle and evangelist:
give us grace to forsake the selfish pursuit of gain
and the possessive love of riches
that we may follow in the way of your Son Jesus Christ,
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

The story about Florence Li Tim-Oi, the first woman priest in the Anglican Communion, and how she drew her strength from her faith in God

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 Revd Florence Li Tim-Oi with Archbishop Robert Runcie during a visit to Lambeth Palace 40 years ago in 1984

How Fisherwick and the Chichester family gave Lichfield names to the streets of Belfast

Arthur Chichester of Fisherwick, Marquess of Donegall, is remembered in street names and buildings throughout central Belfast (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

As Donegal celebrates its 450th anniversary this year, I wonder whether any connections are being made with Donegal House in Lichfield. But Donegal House in Lichfield and Donegall Square in Belfast take their name not from the town and county in the north-west Ireland but from the family who lived for generations at Fisherwick Hall, 6 km (4 miles) east of Lichfield, and a similar distance north of Comberford and Tamworth.

The street patterns of central Belfast and their names date from the second half of the 18th century, and many of the names are derived directly from Arthur Chichester (1739-1799), 5th Earl of Donegall and later 1st Marquess of Donegal. He owned a quarter of a million acres in Ireland and was the principal landlord of Georgian Belfast. Yet he had his main residence at Fisherwick Hall, near Lichfield, where the gardens were laid out by Capability Brown.

I have had a long-standing interest in the Chichesters of Fishwerwick because Arthur Chichester bought Comberford Hall, including the Manors of Wigginton and Comberford, on 1 August 1789 from Thomas Thynne (1734-1796), Viscount Weymouth – who was about to become the 1st Marquis of Bath – and his son, Thomas Thynne.

Chichester Street, Belfast, is named after the Chichester family of Fisherwick, between Lichfield and Tamworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Lord Donegall became the greatest landowner of his day in Ireland. His estates included 11,000 acres at Dunbrody, Co Wexford, almost 90,000 acres in Co Antrim, 160,000 acres in Co Donegal, the whole town of Belfast, and the townland of Ballynafeigh, Co Down, totalling over quarter of a million acres in all.

However, Arthur Chichester chose to live not in Ireland but at Fisherwick Hall near Lichfield. He tore down the Skeffington family’s old Tudor manor house, replacing it with a vast Palladian mansion set in a park of 4,000 acres, all designed and constructed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.

He was accused of ‘draining a manufacturing country of £36,000 a year and having raised fines’, paid by tenants to get leases, ‘sufficient to impoverish a province, and transported them out of the kingdom to build palaces in another land, where he is unknown and disregarded.’

Donegal House, Bore Street, Lichfield … takes its name from the Chichester family, Earls of Donegall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Lord Donegall is said to have rebuilt Comberford Hall, replacing the original half-timbered Tudor manor house dating back to the late 15th century, at the same time as he rebuilt Fisherwick Hall. However, Mrs Valerie Coltman, who lived at Comberford Hall for many years, believed it is more likely that Comberford Hall was rebuilt more than 70 years earlier in 1720.

He also gave his name to Donegal House in Bore Street, Lichfield, although the house was built in 1730 by a local merchant James Robinson.

Within a year of buying Comberford Hall, Lord Donegall had raised £20,000 from the banker Henry Hoare, using the manors and lands of Comberford and Wigginton as security. In 1791, he received additional titles of Marquess of Donegall and Earl of Belfast in the Irish peerage and of Baron Fisherwick of Fisherwick, Staffordshire in the British peerage. The mortgages he raised on Comberford and other Staffordshire properties probably paid the fees and administrative costs involved in receiving these elevated titles.

Arthur Chichester, Earl of Donegall, bought Comberford Hall on 1 August 1789 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Meanwhile, underneath the veneer of aristocratic splendour, domestic life for the Chichester family of Belfast and Fisherwick was in turmoil.

His eldest son, George Augustus Chichester (1769-1844), would eventually inherit the family titles as 2nd Marquess of Donegall and Earl of Donegall and Earl of Belfast. In his youth George was known as Lord Chichester, a courtesy title. At an early age, he developed a gambling addiction. One source says he ‘was licentious and profligate in proportion to his status and fortune.’

Arthur paid his son’s debts several times but eventually allowed him to be sent to the debtors’ prison. While in jail, George was offered financial assistance by Sir (James) Edward May (1751-1814), to secure his release in return for marrying his daughter Anna. May has been described as ‘a moneylender who also ran a gaming house’. He secured Lord Chichester’s release in 1795, and George was now obliged to return the obligation and marry Anna.

Five days before his 26th birthday, George Chichester married 18-year-old Anna May on 8 August 1795. But Anna was an illegitimate child and was also underage. In her circumstances, marriage required the consent of the Lord Chancellor and the permission given by her Welsh guardians was insufficient. Years later, the marriage was declared unlawful.

The Donegall title, with its unusual spelling, is repeated in street names in Belfast (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Anna’s father Edward May, had married Anna’s mother, Eliza Bagg in Saint George’s Church, Holborn, in 1773. But Eliza was already legally married. She was neither divorced nor widowed, and her first husband, a man named Lind, was living in the East Indies. Eliza May was never charged with bigamy, but their children – two sons and two – were deemed illegitimate.

George Chichester succeeded as 2nd Marquess of Donegall when his father died in 1799. He and Anna fled to Belfast in 1802 to escape his debtors once again and brought the May family with them, including Edward and Eliza and their four children.

Edward May became the agent for the Chichester family estates in Belfast. He was MP for Belfast in 1801-1814, was twice Sovereign (Mayor) of Belfast (1803-1806, 1809-1810), and in 1811 he also succeeded to the title of baronet first given to his father in 1763.

As Sir Edward May, he pioneered land reclamation on the edges of Belfast Lough, and gave his name to Edward Street, Great Edward Street, which merged with Victoria Street, May Street, May’s Dock and May’s Market. On his orders, the gravestones and memorials in Saint George’s Churchyard were destroyed or removed in 1806 and large parts of the graveyard were sold off in 1811 for the development of Church Lane and Ann Street.

When May died on 23 July 1814, it emerged that Eliza and Edward had not been legally married and that Eliza was a bigamist. All their children were deemed illegitimate, including their younger son, the Revd Edward May, who had become the Vicar of Saint Anne’s, Belfast, only weeks after his ordination in 1809.

May Street Presbyterian Church, Belfast … May Street is named after Sir Edward May and his family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The elder son, Stephen Edward May, had taken his father’s seat as MP for Belfast in 1814. He also presumed he had succeeded as the third baronet and was styling himself Sir Stephen Edward May. But in the eyes of the law, he had been born out of wedlock and the title was removed from him. Feeling he had been shamed publicly, he resigned as MP and the title reverted to his uncle, Sir Humphrey May, as the third baronet.

The revelations about the May bigamy also meant that Anna May, Lady Donegall, was illegitimate. In addition, she had been underage when she married, and it emerged in 1815 that under the terms of legislation in 1753 her marriage was invalid. Not only was she under-age when she married, but the marriage was under special licence without calling banns, and her marriage had not received the consent of the Lord Chancellor.

The couple’s adult children now faced being cut out of the succession to the Chichester family titles and estates in Ireland and in England and being disinherited. The eldest son, who had been using the courtesy title of Earl of Belfast, became plain Mr George Chichester.

Lord Belfast failed in his efforts to sort out his legal position in the consistory court and in chancery, and the Lord Chancellor referred the case to the House of Lords in 1821. The case was not heard, but a Marriage Act amendment bill in 1822 retrospectively legalised past formal breaches of the marriage laws, and finally Lord Belfast’s legitimacy was resolved 27 years after his parents’ irregular and forced marriage.

Celebratory dinners were held in Belfast and other places in August and September. On 8 December 1822, he married Lady Harriet Butler (1799-1860), a daughter of Richard Butler (1775-1819), 1st Earl of Glengall. She had been partly brought up by the Empress Josephine in France, she had a fiery temper and the couple were known as ‘Bel and the Dragon’.

Lord Belfast came to a new, but ultimately disastrous, financial arrangement with his father, and the Chichester properties in Belfast were sold in a vain attempt to ward off mounting debts.

His father, the 2nd Marquess of Donegall, died in 1844, aged 75, and Lord Belfast succeeded as the 3rd Marquess of Donegall. But by then, the debts of father and son had mounted to over £400,000 – the equivalent of about £64 million today. He had already lost control of almost all his property and influence in Belfast, and now saw the town sold off forcibly through the encumbered estates court in 1850. He died in October 1883. Both his sons had died before him, and his titles and remaining estates passed to his brother, Lord Edward Chichester (1799-1889), Dean of Raphoe.

Church House on Fisherwick Place … Fisherwick Place takes its name from Fisherwick, between Lichfield and Tamworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Meanwhile, when the 1st Marquess of Donegall died in 1799, Comberford Hall and his other Staffordshire estates, including Fisherwick, again heavily mortgaged, passed to a younger son, Lord Spencer Stanley Chichester (1775-1819). He also inherited Dunbrody Abbey, Co Wexford, with a townhouse in Saint James’s Square, London, 20,000 acres on the Inishowen Peninsula in Co Donegal, the townland of Ballymacarrett, Co Down, the lands through which the Lagan Canal passed … and the family’s Gainsborough portraits.

But Spencer Chichester’s gambling debts also caught up with him. In 1801, he sold some of his lands in Lichfield, Alrewas, Whittington, Wichnor, Comberford, Coton, Tamworth and Hopwas, including two public houses and various burgage tenements in Lichfield, to the Lane family of King’s Bromley.

By January 1805, Spencer Chichester was seeking legal opinion on his title to the Manor of Comberford and Wigginton. Eventually, he was forced to sell Fisherwick, where the great house was demolished. This branch of the Chichester family, crippled by the gambling debts of profligate sons, found it impossible to pay off their loans, and were forced to sell Comberford Hall and the manorial rights and lands that went with it.

Lord Spencer Chichester’s son, Arthur Chichester, was given the title of Baron Templemore in 1831, and his branch of the family eventually inherited the Donegall titles.

A collection of Arthur Street names in Belfast (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Athur Chichester of Fisherwick, Marquis of Donegall, and many of his family members are remembered to this day in street names throughout the city centre in Belfast.

Arthur Street, Arthur Place, Arthur Lane, Arthur Square and Upper Arthur Street take their name from Arthur Chichester.

Chichester Street leads from Donegall Square east to Victoria Street, and then onto Oxford Street. Chichester Avenue, Chichester Close, Chichester Court, Chichester Gardens, Chichester Park and Chichester Road are off Antrim Road.

Fisherwick Presbyterian Church … moved from Fisherwick Place to Malone Road in 1901 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Fisherwick Place takes its name from Fisherwick Hall near Lichfield. It is a small street running from Great Victoria Street to College Square, and the corner with Howard Street is dominated by Church House, the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

Church House stands on the site of Fisherwick Place Presbyterian Church, which was founded in 1823. When Church House was built on the site, the church moved to a site on Malone Road, and the new church opened as Fisherwick Presbyterian Church in 1901.

Marquis Street was originally known as Ferguson’s Lane after the family of Sir Samuel Ferguson, the Belfast-born lawyer and poet. Its name was changed in deference to the Marquis of Donegall.

Donegall Square and City Hall in the heart of Belfast (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The name Donegall appears in several places in Belfast, including Donegall Square, Donegall Road, Donegall Place, Donegall Gardens, Donegall Lane and Donegall Parade.

But it is worth noting tha the spelling of the name throughout Belfast is with two Ls, the way the Chichester family spelt it in their titles since the 17th century.

When the first Marquess of Donegall built a new church in Belfast, he named its Saint Anne’s Church in honour of his first wife, Lady Anne Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Hamilton, whom he married in 1761. It has since been replaced by Saint Anne’s Cathedral.

Charlotte Street and Little Charlotte Street off Donegall Pass (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Charlotte Street and Little Charlotte Street, in a loyalist heartland off Donegall Pass, are named after either his eldest daughter, Lady Charlotte Anne Chichester, who was born in 1762 and died in infancy, or his second wife, the widowed Charlotte (née Spencer) Moore. They were married on 24 October 1788, she had no children and she died less than a year after their marriage, on 19 September 1789.

The name of My Lady’s Road near Ormeau Road is intriguing. When the 2nd Marquis of Donegall went to live at Ormeau House about 1807, the former Anna May did not appreciate the journey along a row of dilapidated cottages with broken windows. A special way was made for Lady Donegall and became known as My Lady’s Road. Ormeau Avenue and Ormeau Road take their name from Ormeau House.

Templemore Avenue, Close, Park, Place and Street and the Templemore Baths in East Belfast take their name from the title held by Lord Spencer Chichester’s descendants. But during last weekend’s visit, I never managed to visit Lichfield Avenue, off Bloomfield Road in East Belfast.

Arthur Square in Belfast city centre … the streets off it include Ann Street, Arthur Street, Castle Lane, Cornmarket and William Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024: 132, Thursday 19 September 2024

Peter Paul Rubens, ‘The Feast of Simon the Pharisee’

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (15 September 2024). Today, the calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers Saint Theodore of Tarsus (690), Archbishop of Canterbury.

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, 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.

James Tissot, ‘The Ointment of the Magdalene’ (‘Le parfum de Madeleine’) … however, the woman in Simon’s house, Mary Magdalene and the woman caught in adultery are three different people (Photograph: Brooklyn Museum)

Luke 7: 36-50 (NRSVA)

36 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee’s house and took his place at the table. 37 And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. 38 She stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment. 39 Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching him – that she is a sinner.’ 40 Jesus spoke up and said to him, ‘Simon, I have something to say to you.’ ‘Teacher,’ he replied, ‘speak.’ 41 ‘A certain creditor had two debtors; one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. 42 When they could not pay, he cancelled the debts for both of them. Now which of them will love him more?’ 43 Simon answered, ‘I suppose the one for whom he cancelled the greater debt.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘You have judged rightly.’ 44 Then turning towards the woman, he said to Simon, ‘Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. 45 You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46 You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. 47 Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.’ 48 Then he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ 49 But those who were at the table with him began to say among themselves, ‘Who is this who even forgives sins?’ 50 And he said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace.’

Christ in the House of Simon, by Dieric Bouts (1440s)

Today’s Reflection:

In today’s Gospel reading in the lectionary for Holy Communion (Luke 7: 36-50), Jesus is a guest, but the unwelcome guest at the meal, when he is invited to the house of Simon the Pharisee.

Jesus is accused at different times of eating with publicans and sinners. As we read yesterday, he knows that his detractors point to him and say: ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ (Luke 7: 34).

But Jesus also eats with Pharisees too. Indeed, he may have had many meals with Pharisees, although the Gospel writers simply make a passing reference to the host without naming him (see Luke 14: 1-24), or perhaps ignore the meals altogether.

However, at this meal, I imagine an evening when Jesus is found eating with an eminently respectable member of society, a Pharisee, and a leading Pharisee at that too.

Jesus is invited to dinner by a leading Pharisee, Simon, although it is some time before we learn the name of the host that evening. Nor is it clear which city he lives in. Is it Capernaum? Is it Nain or Bethany? I don’t know, I don’t know that it really matters. What does matter is that the man who should have been the host fails at his task, and the guest at the dinner becomes the true host.

Have you ever been at a dinner where you know some of the guests were invited simply to boost the ego of those who had invited them? Do you know what I mean by the dinner-party-name-dropping-syndrome?

Some might think Simon was suffering from DPND syndrome when he invited Jesus to dinner. I am not inclined to think so: after all, just a few verses earlier, Jesus has come in for some severe criticism, and has given a robust response.

Simon may have thought he was doing the decent thing … a Pharisee inviting a visiting rabbi and preacher to dinner would have been common courtesy and a common experience.

Nor is there is nothing unusual, anything offensive, about the behaviour of Jesus at this meal. He takes his allotted or allocated place at the table, and he probably enjoyed the conversation with the people beside him and opposite him.

But then the drama begins.

A woman in the city, a woman known as a sinner, manages to get in. Now, despite popular portrayal and the myths of centuries, it does not necessarily mean that this woman was an open and public sinner, a figure who was known for her sinful ways.

Those who were blind or who were suffering from leprosy or a physical ailment were often treated as sinners. They were seen as having brought their visible scars on themselves, or to be suffering because of the sins of their parents or their ancestors.

Perhaps she was not the easy woman of popular story-telling. Perhaps she was blind, or was disabled physically in some way. We are not told.

And some people ask: how did she get into the house anyway?

But on a balmy summer’s evening in a Mediterranean house, people will normally eat in the inner courtyard that is the part of any house of substance. I just love those long evening dinners in Greece, where you break bread and pour wine for each other at long tables, and as you hand the bread to and pour the wine for the person next to you, the natural response is σε ευχαριστώ (seh efcharisto, thank you), the very phrase that gives us the word Eucharist, thanksgiving.

Anyway, as they were sitting around, perhaps in the inner courtyard, giving thanks to each other, this woman slips in, unnoticed. There was no need for her to gatecrash, she probably just slipped in silently and unnoticed.

At first, even Jesus would not have noticed her, for she stands behind him.

What hurt this unnoticeable woman on the margins so much that she cried so profusely? She cries so much that she must have been deeply hurt, thoroughly dejected and rejected.

I think Rubens and the other great painters get it wrong when they show her in front of Jesus, washing and drying his feet. This woman’s very marginalisation is symbolised in four ways:

• No-one noticed her coming in, or if they did, she was not worth going to the bother of throwing out.

• When she is noticed, she is regarded by all present as being a sinner, although Jesus tells us that she has been forgiven … probably long before this incident took place.

• She remains unnamed, anonymous, throughout this story. At the beginning, Simon is unnamed, but eventually we get to know who he is. This woman is obviously well-known in her town, but no-one calls her by her name. And in Christian tradition, we have continued to deny her identity, often confusing her with Mary Magdalene and with the woman caught in adultery – two completely different people altogether.

• And by her physical place at the table: she is standing behind Jesus, at the back, perhaps just where the servants would have stood as they waited to bring more dishes, or clear away some empty plates. But she takes the place of the servant at the table … in other words, she is a true deacon.

The woman’s behaviour is embarrassing for Simon. He never went through the normal courtesies and formalities of welcoming a guest into the house, seeing that his shoes were taken from him, his feet washed, his head anointed.

But her alabaster and tears used for anointing and washing Jesus, his head and his feet, also prefigures something else: the women who come to wash the corpse of the Crucified Christ, and to anoint him in his grave (Luke 24: 1-11).

This woman prefigures those women who will be the first witnesses of the Resurrection … perhaps she even is one of them.

Wanting to eject her is a rejection of the Easter faith.

Simon thinks Jesus should know who this woman really is, failing to realise that Jesus knows what is really going on in Simon’s heart.

Simon is embarrassed, not by what Jesus might know about him, but by the woman.

But Jesus is not embarrassed at all. Instead of confronting the woman, he confronts Simon, and he commends this woman for her faith. He sends her out in peace – the very dismissal that we should experience at the end of the Liturgy every Sunday, week-by-week. She is sent out as a disciple, as an apostle, as a missionary.

And Simon wants to eject her.

Not because of who she is, or because of her reputation, but because she has shown him up to be a poor host.

There is a sharp contrast between the shallow faith of Simon, the pillar of the Church, and the woman, who has been pushed to the margins, a sharp contrast between those with apparent faith and no response, and those dismissed for having no faith but who are full in their response to Christ’s presence among us.

Simon fails in offering the proper hospitality to his guest. This woman on the other hand receives the full and generous hospitality of God.

Simon has no place in his house for this woman – and to be honest, no place in his house for Jesus. But God has a place for her in his kingdom.

The conversations between Jesus and this woman is a model for all our encounters with people we see as different or as strangers.

Am I like Simon, and only willing to count in within my inner circle those who are like me and who behave according to my standards?

If I am going to enter into conversation with the stranger, am I open to listening to them, to talking openly and honestly with them about where they come from and what they believe?

When the conversation is over, will they remain strangers?

How open am I to new friendships?

How often do I think people get what they deserve rather than sympathising with their predicaments?

Do I live up to my weekly commission to go out into the world in peace and in the name of the Risen Christ?

The anointing of Christ’s feet … an illuminated manuscript, ca 1500 (Wikipedia/ the National Library of Wales)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 19 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 ‘The 5-finger prayer from the Diocese of Kuching, Malaysia.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday in reflections as told to Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 19 September 2024) invites us to pray:

Ring Finger (those in need): Today we pray and remember those who are sick or are treated badly. Pray that Jesus would give them new strength.

The Collect:

O Lord, we beseech you mercifully to hear the prayers
of your people who call upon you;
and grant that they may both perceive and know
what things they ought to do,
and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil them;
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:

Almighty God,
you have taught us through your Son
that love is the fulfilling of the law:
grant that we may love you with our whole heart
and our neighbours as ourselves;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Lord of creation,
whose glory is around and within us:
open our eyes to your wonders,
that we may serve you with reverence
and know your peace at our lives’ end,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Mary anoints the feet of Jesus in Bethany (see John 12: 1-8) … a window in the north aisle of Saint Mary’s Church in St Neot’s, Cambridgeshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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

Saint Patrick’s Church on Donegall Street is at the centre of cultural life in the heart of Belfast

Saint Patrick’s Church on Donegall Road, Belfast, was built in the 1870s, replacing a church built in 1815 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

During our short visit to Belfast last weekend, I visited or revisited a number of places of interest in the city, including Saint George’s Church on High Street and both Saint Anne’s Church of Ireland Cathedral and Saint Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church on Donegall Street.

Saint Patrick’s Church on Donegall Street is a Victorian gem and an oasis of peace in the heart of the city and it is part of community life in the city centre.

The church serves a large local resident community, a thriving population in the Cathedral Quarter, the city’s cultural and social heartland, and the students and staff in the neighbouring Belfast campus of Ulster University, as well as a busy hospital, a large primary school, and a number of residential and care homes.

The statue of Saint Patrick by James Pearse in the tympanum above the main doors of Saint Patrick’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The first church was built on the site in 1815, the year of the Battle of Waterloo, and it was the second Catholic church built in Belfast since the Reformation.

The first Roman Catholic church in Belfast was Saint Mary’s, Chapel Lane, which opened in May 1784. But with the growth of the Catholic population in Belfast in the early 19th century, Bishop William Crolly, then a priest in residence in the small town, decided to build a new church on Donegall Street.

This church, dedicated to Saint Patrick, opened in 1815. Its construction was made possible – in part – by the contribution of Belfast’s educated Protestants and civic elite. The presbytery was built as residence for the Catholic bishop and his clergy, and is Belfast’s oldest, continuously-inhabited house.

The society painter Sir John Lavery was baptised in the earlier Saint Patrick’s Church on 26 March 1856.

Inside Saint Patrick’s Church, facing the sanctuary and the east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

In the post-famine era Belfast’s Catholic population had swollen considerably and, while other churches and new parishes were developed, it was clear by the early 1870s that Saint Patrick’s needed a new, larger church.

The present Saint Patrick’s Church, the second on the site, was designed in the Gothic Revival style by Timothy Hevey (1846-1878) and Mortimer Thomspon. It is said the church was built ‘by the pennies of the poor’.

Timothy Hevey was a son of Timothy Hevey, a Belfast builder, and Martha Alexandra Hevey (née McNeice). He was educated at Saint Malachy’s College, Belfast, and became an apprentice in the firm of Boyd and Batt. He moved to Dublin in 1865 and became an assistant in the office of Pugin and Ashlin. There he was involved in draughting the plans for the Church of Saint Augustine and Saint John, known popularly as John’s Lane Church, the Augustinian church on Thomas Street, Dublin. John Ruskin (1818-1900), the writer, critic, artist and philosopher who is intimately associated with the Gothic Revival movement on these islands, called the church ‘a poem in stone.

Hevey married Florence Eugenie Geret in Saint Peter’s Church (Church of Ireland), Aungier Street, Dublin, on 7 March 1868. He returned to Belfast in April 1869, and worked as a builder and architect in partnership first with James Mackinnon and later with Mortimer H Thomson. He became the city’s leading Catholic architect, enjoying the patronage of Patrick Dorrian, Bishop of Down and Connor, and James McDevitt, Bishop of Raphoe, in Co Donegal.

Hevey’s career was cut short abruptly the following year when he died at the age of 33 on 29 December 1878 following a severe cold caught on a business trip to Newry.

Inside Saint Patrick’s Church, looking west from the altar (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The foundation stone of the new church was laid by Bishop Patrick Dorrian on 18 April 1875. He had spent his early priestly ministry in the parish, and while he was Bishop of Down and Connor (1865-1885), 26 new churches were built in the diocese.

Saint Patrick’s Church was built in different coloured sandstone by Collen Brothers of Portadown and Dublin who built the new church around the old one which was then demolished.

The old church was then demolished in August 1876 and the entire fabric of the new church was speedily completed for blessing on 12 August 1877 by Archbishop Daniel McGettigan of Armagh.

Bishop Dorrian was later buried beneath the sanctuary and behind the priest’s chair. In the left transept, adjacent to Saint Joseph’s Columbarium, is his memorial, rendered in sandstone and alabaster, and it bears the arms of the Diocese of Down and Connor.

The new Saint Patrick’s Church was designed to seat 2,000 people. Both the 7 ft Portland stone statue of Saint Patrick in the tympanum above the main doors and the high altar were carved by the English-born James Pearse, father of the 1916 leader Padraig Pearse.

A two-ton bell, cast by Thomas Sheridan of Dublin, was placed in the spire, which rises to a height of 54 metres (180 ft).

The baptistry and the font with seven of the eight sides commemorating the grace given in the seven sacraments (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Inside the church, 10 beautiful arches of red sandstone, supported by slender rose and grey Dumfries granite pillars separate the nave from each aisle. Three further arches separate the sanctuary from the nave. As the eye traces the orbit of the 15 metre (50 ft) high centre arch, it comes to rest on the pitch pine ceiling.

To the left of the sanctuary is the shrine of Our Lady of Comfort, designed and cast in bronze by the sculptor Chris Ryan of Howth in 1997.

On the right is the baptistry where seven of the eight sides of the font commemorate the grace given in the seven sacraments. An aumbry beside the font holds the holy oils used in administering the sacraments.

Two of the six windows in the south transept illustrating the life and mission of Saint Patrick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The stained glass windows in the church were added over time. High in the apse, seven windows depict Christ with the saints in glory; a rose window in the Shrine of Mary represents the Magi visiting Bethlehem; the rose window in the baptistry portrays Christ revealing the love of the Sacred Heart to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque.

Four windows in the left transept, reinstalled from Saint Kevin’s Church in North Queen Street before its demolition, represent the Trinity.

The original windows in the right transept were destroyed by an explosion during the ‘Troubles’, but six newly-installed windows illustrate the life and mission of Saint Patrick.

A shrine in the nave is dedicated to Saint Anthony of Padua. There is a first class relic of the saint in the reliquary on the left side of the statue.

The altar facing the people was installed in Saint Patrick’s Church in 1997 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The altar facing the people (versus populum) is made of Portland stone and was installed in 1997. It stands in front of the original high altar with its reredos of Caen stone and Cork red and Galway green marble columns.

The reredos and its sculptures are the work of O’Neill and Pearse of Dublin.

After a catastrophic fire on 12 October 1995, the church as restored under the then Administrator, the Very Rev David White, and the project manager, Oliver Magill. After a lengthy restoration project, the church was reopened by Bishop Patrick Walsh on 5 October 1997.

Sir John Lavery's triptych, ‘The Madonna Of The Lakes’, was given to Saint Patrick’s Church in 1919

The church has a triptych by Sir John Lavery, who was baptised in the older, smaller church. He painted ‘The Madonna Of The Lakes’ with his second wife, Hazel Trudeau, as the model for the Virgin Mary and his daughter Eileen and step-daughter Helen as models for Saint Patrick and Saint Brigid.

Lavery contacted the then Administrator of Saint Patrick’s, Father John O’Neill, in 1917 offering to donate a work of art to the church. The triptych was unveiled in April 1919.

The triptych originally stood on an altar designed by Edwin Lutyens, a friend of Lavery, and was illuminated by two candlesticks by Lutyens. Both the altar and the candlesticks were lost during reordering works out in the 1960s and 1970s, and the frame around the triptych, decorated with Celtic knotwork, remains the only Lutyens-designed artefact in Northern Ireland.

A statue of Saint Patrick in Saint Patrick’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The church has a large collection of relics of saints, including two relics of Saint Patrick. The silver reliquary that holds the arm relic of Saint Patrick was made in the 14th century and is on loan to the Ulster Museum in Belfast.

The silver reliquary made in 1645, with the jawbone of Saint Patrick, taken from the burial site of Saint Patrick in Downpatrick in 1194, is now on loan to the Down County Museum in Downpatrick.

The church also holds a small relic of Saint Anthony of Padua.

Because of its splendour and scale, the church has been the venue for the episcopal consecrations of Bishop Henry Henry (who invited the Redemptorists to found Clonard Monastery) in 1895, his successor Bishop John Tohill in 1908 and later Bishop Daniel Mageean in 1929.

Saint Patrick’s Church celebrated its bicentenary in 2015. During the celebrations, Prince Charles, now King Charles, and his wife Camilla, then Duchess of Cornwall, visited the church in May 2015, and after a short prayer service they viewed Lavery’s work.

Saint Patrick’s School beside the church on Donegall Street was built in 1828 by the Belfast builder Timothy Hevey, father of the architect who designed the church. It was the first Catholic school built in Belfast and was built on land donated by Belfast’s principle landlord, George Chichester, 2nd Marquess of Donegall. For much of its history the school was run by the Christian Brothers and continued as a primary school until it closed in 1982.

• The Very Reverend Eugene O’Neill has been the Parish Priest of Saint Patrick’s since 2022, and previously was Administrator of Saint Patrick’s from 2016. Sunday Masses begin on Saturday with a 6 pm Vigil Mass, with Sunday Masses at 9 am, 11 am and 6 pm.

Saint Patrick’s Church was designed by the architect Timothy Hevey and was built ‘by the pennies of the poor’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024: 131, Wednesday 18 September 2024

‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’ (Luke 7: 32) … ‘Τα κάλαντα’ (‘Carols’), Νικηφόρος Λύτρας (Nikiphoros Lytras)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (15 September 2024).

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, 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.

‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’ (Luke 7: 32) … traditional musicians in Nevşehir in Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 7: 31-35 (NRSVA)

[Jesus said:] 31 ‘To what then will I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? 32 They are like children sitting in the market-place and calling to one another,

“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not weep.”

33 ‘For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, “He has a demon”; 34 the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” 35 Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children.’

Imagine going to a wedding but not getting onto the floor and dancing (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

When we were looking at the Gospel reading yesterday, which told the story of the widow of Nain grieving her son at his funeral, I said how funeral stories and the stories of children being raised to life, are not always the most cheerful Bible readings, and I recalled how that reading was particularly difficult when I was preaching one Sunday morning when I was baptising a little baby boy.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus compares ‘the people of this generation’ with children sitting in the market-place calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep’ (Luke 7: 31-32).

I have often stayed up late at weddings, at the receptions after funerals, and enjoying late night sporting events, especially rugby and football. Each time, in ways that were appropriate to the occasion, I have entered into the spirit of the event, and where possible, moving from being a mere spectator to being a full participant.

When we go to weddings and funerals … and as a priest I got my fair share of both … when we go to weddings and funerals, the attitude we go with makes a world of difference: do I go as a spectator or as a participant?

Imagine going to a funeral and failing to offer sympathy to those who are grieving and mourning.

Shortly after my ordination, I was asked to officiate at my first wedding. Initially, I declined the invitation to go to the reception afterwards, until someone chided me gently and asked me: are you at this wedding as a spectator or as a participant?

Perhaps, as a new curate, I was too worried about sending out the wrong signals. If I stood back, would I be reproached for not eating and drinking with the people I was there to serve (see Luke 7: 33)? If I went, would I be seen as being too interested in eating and drinking (verse 34)?

But it was never about me, surely. It was only ever about the couple getting married.

A student in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute was telling me once about her parish placement as an ordinand. Initially, she was uncomfortable with the style of worship and the theological emphasis of the parish she was placed in. But the parish reacted to her warmly and gently. And as the weeks rolled on she realised she had moved from being an observer on Sunday mornings, to being an engaged visitor, to being a participant.

When we join in waves and chants at a football match, join in the dance at weddings, sing the hymns and enter into the prayers at another church, cry and hug those who are grieving and mourning, we move from being observers and spectators to being participants. And the great opportunity for this transformation is provided Sunday after Sunday here, not at the Liturgy but in the Liturgy.

If you have been to the Middle East, or have just seen Fiddler on the Roof, you know that dancing at Jewish weddings was traditionally a male celebration. I have seen at funerals in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean that the open mourning and weeping is usually expressed on behalf of the community by women in particular.

Indeed, we know since classical times how a man’s worth in life was once counted by the number of women crying at his funeral.

These traditions were passed on through the generations by children learning from adults and by children teaching each other.

In today’s Gospel reading, we see how Christ has noticed this in the streets and the back alleys as he moves through the towns and cities, probably in Galilee and along the Mediterranean shore.

He sees the children playing, the boys playing wedding dances, and the girls playing funeral wailing and mourning.

He notices the ways in which children can reproach each other for not joining in their playfulness:

We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn. (verse 32)

Even as he speaks there is playfulness in the way Jesus phrases his observation poetically. There is humour in the way he uses Greek words that rhyme for dance and mourn at the end of each line of the children’s taunts:

Ηὐλήσαμεν ὑμῖν
καὶ οὐκ ὠρχήσασθε·
ἐθρηνήσαμεν
καὶ οὐκ ἐκλαύσατε.

Perhaps he was repeating an everyday rebuke in Greek at the time for people who stand back from what others are doing. We might put poetic rhyme on his lips here:

A wedding song we played for you,
The dance you did but scorn.
A woeful dirge we chanted too,
But then you would not mourn.

The boys playing tin whistles and beating tin drums are learning to become adult men. The girls wailing and beating their breasts in mock weeping are learning to become adult women. Each group is growing into the roles and rituals that will be expected of them when they mature.

Like all good children’s games, the point is the game, not who wins.

The games we played as children may now seem silly and pointless. But when we were children they mattered as a communal and community experience. The fun was not because there was anything to win. The fun was in taking part. And in taking part we were helped in the process of growing and maturing and making the transition from childhood to adolescence, and from adolescence to adulthood.

To and fro, back and forth, these boys and girls in the market place play the games of weddings and funerals.

The music they play shifts and changes its tones and tunes. This endless, pointless, repetition is their inherited way of learning and socialising. Their playfulness ensures their tradition and culture is reinforced and is handed on to the next generation.

But if the boys make music and the girls do not dance, if the girls wail, and the boys do not weep, how can they have a shared story, a shared adulthood, a shared culture, a shared future, a shared humanity?

When we refuse to take part in the game, in the ritual, we refuse to take part in the shaping of society, we are denying our shared culture.

When reciprocity collapses, we are denying our shared humanity.

We can become paralysed by our inability to enter into the game of others. And then the game turns from song and dance to what we might call ‘the blame game.’

It is so easy when I withdraw from the social activities of others to blame them.

Yes, there is a time for dancing and a time for mourning: each has its proper place, and they flow into each other, like the children’s game when it is working. But when vanity gets in the way, there is a breakdown in our understanding of time and of humanity.

If I stand back detached, and remain a mere observer of the joys and sorrow in the lives of others, I am not sharing in their humanity.

And in not sharing in your humanity, I am failing to acknowledge that you too are made in the image and likeness of God.

But when we rejoice with people in their joys, and when we mourn with people in their sorrows, we are putting into practice what the doctrine of the Trinity teaches us about us being not only made in the image and likeness of God individually but communally and collectively too as humanity.

The ‘Bottle Dance’ at the wedding in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 18 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 ‘The 5-finger prayer from the Diocese of Kuching, Malaysia.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday in reflections as told to Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 18 September 2024) invites us to pray:

Tall Finger (enemies): Heavenly Father, I’m sorry that I find it difficult to pray for those who curse me. Knowing your forgiveness and grace, I want to change. Help me to love my neighbour as myself.

The Collect:

O Lord, we beseech you mercifully to hear the prayers
of your people who call upon you;
and grant that they may both perceive and know
what things they ought to do,
and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil them;
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:

Almighty God,
you have taught us through your Son
that love is the fulfilling of the law:
grant that we may love you with our whole heart
and our neighbours as ourselves;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Lord of creation,
whose glory is around and within us:
open our eyes to your wonders,
that we may serve you with reverence
and know your peace at our lives’ end,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’ (Luke 7: 31-32) … musicians in a poster in Corfu Restaurant, Dublin (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