03 February 2025

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025:
1, Monday 3 February 2025

‘Immediately a man out of the tombs … He lived among the tombs’ (Mark 5: 2-3) … the Tomb of Amyntas, carved into the rock face in the cliffs above Fethiye in south-west Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The 40-day season of Christmas concluded yesterday with the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (Sunday 2 February 2025) or Candlemas. Today we return to Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, the liturgical colour returns from white to green, and it is little more than a month before Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025) and the beginning of Lent.

Today, the calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers Anskar (865), Archbishop of Hamburg and missionary in Denmark and Sweden. Later this morning, I have a GP appointment in Stony Stratford and some blood tests. The meeting of trustees of a local charity that mistakenly turned up last week actually takes place this evening. But, before today begins, 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.

‘Immediately a man out of the tombs … He lived among the tombs’ (Mark 5: 2-3) … the ‘King’s Tomb’ is a symbol of Kaş in southern Turkey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 5: 1-20 (NRSVA):

1 They came to the other side of the lake, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2 And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. 3 He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain; 4 for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. 6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; 7 and he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.’ 8 For he had said to him, ‘Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!’ 9 Then Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘My name is Legion; for we are many.’ 10 He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now there on the hillside a great herd of swine was feeding; 12 and the unclean spirits begged him, ‘Send us into the swine; let us enter them.’ 13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the lake, and were drowned in the lake.

14 The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came to see what it was that had happened. 15 They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid. 16 Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it. 17 Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighbourhood. 18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 But Jesus refused, and said to him, ‘Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.’ 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.

‘They came to the other side of the lake … [and he] stepped out of the boat (Mark 5: 1) … a boat at the shore at Cape Clear (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

We are returning to Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar today, but in the Lectionary provisions for the Gospel readings at the daily celebrations of the Eucharist we are continuing our readings from Saint Mark’s Gospel.

In today’s reading (Mark 5: 1-20), after calming the waters during a difficult boat journey, Jesus stills the mind and heart of a ‘possessed’ man who cannot be restrained. There are shorter versions of this story in the two other synoptic gospels (Matthew 8: 28-32; Luke 8: 36-33), but Mark’s is the most dramatic.

This man is regarded as ‘unclean’ for many reasons: the disturbing and embarrassing state of his psychiatric health; living among tombs and graves; and his foul and blasphemous language; his undressed and bloody wounds; and his violent behaviour. The totality of his unacceptable presence is expressed in saying he was as unclean as 2,000 pigs, although the name Legion hints at 3,000 to 6,000 demons.

The image of a dishevelled man, half-fed and verbally embarrassing living among the tombs at first seems over dramatic. But priests and churchgoers in parishes up and down this land are familiar with the homeless and marginalised men who often seek shelter in the lychgates at the entrances to our churchyards.

I cannot provide them with the professional help they need, but I can sit and talk with them, occasionally share a sandwich with them, and listen to their distressing stories. And sometimes, when I get to know them by name, they begin to accept me too, to the point of asking me to pray not only for them but for their families too, and occasionally one or two of them asks for a blessing or absolution.

One of the greatest intellectual minds of the 20th century, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, regularly called on his friend Dr Maurice O’Connor (‘Con’) Drury (1907-1976) for psychiatric help, and might have been homeless but for the care and help of this Irish psychiatrist.

Con Drury was an Anglican ordinand at Westcott House in Cambridge for just a year, but became a friend of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, while he was at Cambridge. One day in 1931, Wittgenstein visited Drury at Westcott House, and they sat in silence in the chapel. When suddenly someone in the gallery started playing the piano, Wittgenstein jumped up and exclaimed: ‘Blasphemy! A piano and the cross. Only an organ should be allowed in a church.’

Drury left Westcott to work in Tyneside with a club for the unemployed run by Archdeacon Leslie Hunter, who was later involved in the Jarrow March. He then worked with an unemployment scheme in Merthyr Tydfil until Wittgenstein, the economist John Maynard Keynes and their friend Gilbert Pattison arranged to finance Drury’s medical education in Ireland.

Drury became the Resident Psychiatrist in Saint Patrick’s Hospital (‘Swift’s Hospital’) in Dublin under Professor Norman Moore. He was instrumental in arranging Wittgenstein’s many visits to Ireland, and was a pioneer in psychiatric medicine in Ireland as the Resident Psychiatrist in Saint Patrick’s Hospital and its nursing home at Saint Edmundsbury’s in Lucan.

The Cambridge philosopher and Dublin psychiatrist met almost daily, strolling in the Phoenix Park and the Zoo, or visiting the Botanic Gardens in the 1940s. When Drury visited the dying Wittgenstein in Cambridge in April 1951 Wittgenstein accompanied him to railway station, and his last words to Drury were: ‘Whatever becomes of you, don’t stop thinking.’

Two of the great minds of the 20th century, the philosopher and the psychiatrist, had helped each other throughout their lives. I never know who I am sitting beside in the lychgate. They may not be among the greatest of philosophers; I am certainly not among the exemplary priests or counsellors. But sitting there with them, I look forward to the day when each one known to me by name may be ‘clothed and in his right mind’.

Hopefully, some of them get more than the prayers they need and that they get to the point where someone is able to say: ‘Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.’

‘The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country’ (Mark 5: 14) … a boot scraper in the shape of a pig at Westcott House, Cambridge, a pun on the surname of the former principal, Bertram Cunningham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 3 February 2025):

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 ‘Common Humanity and Love for Religious “Other”.’ This theme was introduced yesterday with a Reflection by the Revd Dr Salli Effungani, a minister in the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon (PCC), Programme Officer for the Programme for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa (PROCMURA), and Adjunct Lecturer on Interfaith Relations at Saint Paul’s University, Limuru, Kenya.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 3 February 2025) invites us to pray:

We thank you for creating us in your image, each unique and precious in your sight. Help us to celebrate our shared humanity and extend love to those of diverse faiths and backgrounds.

The Collect:

God of grace and might,
who sent your servant Anskar
to spread the gospel to the Nordic peoples:
raise up, we pray, in our generation
messengers of your good news
and heralds of your kingdom
that the world may come to know
the immeasurable riches of 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:

Holy Father,
who gathered us here around the table of your Son
to share this meal with the whole household of God:
in that new world where you reveal
the fullness of your peace,
gather people of every race and language
to share with Anskar and all your saints
in the eternal banquet of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

‘Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you’ (Mark 5: 19) … an icon in Holy Trinity Church, Old Wolverton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

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

‘Immediately a man out of the tombs … He lived among the tombs’ (Mark 5: 2-3) … the lychgate at the entrance to the churchyard beside Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

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