17 million lost years, 17 million Brexit votes, £17 million pension frauds and 17 million blog readers

17 million people voted for Brexit … 52% ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and 48% ‘Sense and Sensibility’? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This blog continues to reach more and more readers, and for the third time this month it has passed a half-million marker, reaching the staggering total earlier early this morning of 17 million hits since I first began blogging back in 2010.

The 16 million figure was passed earlier this month (6 September), while I was on a weekend visit to York and Durham, another half a million hits were noted in the space of a fortnight (19 September 2025), and, as this month comes to an end the 17 million mark was passed early this morning (30 September 2025).

After I began blogging in 2010, it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. It was over a year before this figure rose to 1 million by September 2013. It climbed steadily to 2 million, June 2015; 3 million, October 2016; 4 million, November 2019; 5 million, March 2021; 6 million, July 2022; 7 million, 13 August 2023; 8 million, April 2024; and 9 million, October 2024.

But the rise in the number of readers has been phenomenal this year, reaching 9.5 million on 4 January 2025, 10 million over a week later (12 January 2025), 10.5 million two days after that (14 January 2025), 11 million a month later (12 February 2025), 11.5 million a month after that (10 March 2025), and 12 million early in May (3 May 2025).

The figures claimed steadily throughout June, July and August, from 12.5 million early in June (6 June 2025), 13 million less than two weeks later (17 June 2025), 13.5 million a week after that (24 June 2025), 14 million a week later (1 July 2025), 14.5 million ten days later (11 July), 15 million two weeks after that (25 July 2025), 15.5 million less than a month later (23 August 2025), then 16 million earlier this month (6 September 2025), 16.5 million less than a fortnight later (19 September 2025), and now 17 million this morning (30 September), even before I had awoken.

So far this month, this blog has had more 1.3 million hits by late this afternoon, the fourth time there have been over 1 million hits in a month: in July, this blog had 1,195,456 hits, in June 2025 there were 1,618,488 hits, and thore were 1,420,383 visitor in January.

So far this year, the daily figures have been overwhelming on occasions. Seven of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog were in June, four were in January, and one was in September:

• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 261,422 (13 January 2025)
• 100,291 (10 January 2025)
• 82,043 (23 June 2025)
• 81,037 (21 June 2025)

• 80,625 (22 June 2025)
• 79,981 (19 June 2025)
• 79,165 (20 June 2025)
• 73,244 (24 September 2025)
• 69,722 (18 June 2025)
• 69,714 (30 June 2025)

This blog has already had almost 7.6 million hits this year, almost 45 per cent of all hits ever.

More than £17 million was lost to pension fraud in the UK last year

With this latest landmark figure of 17 million readers today, I once again found myself asking questions such as:

• What do 17 million people look like?
• Where do we find 17 million people?
• What does £17 million, €17 million or $17 million mean?
• What would it buy?

The 17 million-year-old fossil remains of an extinct large flightless bird have been discovered in Australia’s Boodjamulla National Park in Queensland. The ground-dwelling species – menura tyawanoides – is an ancient ancestor of Australia’s native lyrebird, according to a news release from Queensland’s Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation earlier this month (17 September 2025).

Lyrebirds have the remarkable ability to imitate almost any sound, even ‘chainsaws, horns, alarms and … trains,’ according to wildlife experts. Scientists believe the mimicry helps them to vocally establish their territory and ‘defend it from other lyrebirds,’ according to experts. They say the fossil wrist bone of menura tyawanoides is between 17 million and 18 million years old.

Action Fraud, the UK’s national fraud and cybercrime reporting centre, says victims in the UK lost more than £17 million to pension fraud last year (2024). The scams are varied and sophisticated: some involve high-pressure sales tactics promising incredible returns, while others rely on impersonation and account takeovers to steal retirement funds. For many victims, the losses are life-changing, wiping out years of careful saving.

In Ireland, SMEs lost over €17 million in the last two years through email-related scams, according to figures published by FraudSMART in April .

Taking into account all of the victims of persecution, the Nazis systematically murdered an estimated six million Jews and millions of others during the war. The historian Donald Niewyk of Columbia University suggests that the broadest definition, including Soviet civilian deaths, would produce a total of 17 million victims.

The 1918-1920 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A virus. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it the deadliest pandemic in history.

The earliest documented case in March 1918 was in Kansas in the US, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected.

In the US, because of Trump’s so-called ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ and other policy changes, the number of people without health insurance is expected to increase by about 17 million.

Among 289 million adults in 18 European countries, nearly 17 million years of life were lost from 2020-2022 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study. The study, in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine, shows a stark picture of the direct and indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on both total and disability-free years of life lost, with researchers able to identify different factors at play as the pandemic progressed.

The study was led by Dr Sara Ahmadi-Abhari of the School of Public Health at Imperial College London. Rates of diseases, such as heart disease and dementia, disability, and death were tracked and used to estimate the effect of the pandemic between 2020 and 2022.

Many people who died during the pandemic would probably have lived longer if the pandemic had not happened. The study quantified these ‘lost years’ and found that, in total, 16.8 million years of life were lost due to the pandemic across 18 European countries. In addition, more than half of those years would have been lived independently, even among people aged over 80.

More than 17 million people in conflict-torn Yemen are going hungry, including over a million children under the age of five who are suffering from ‘life-threatening acute malnutrition,’ according to Tom Fletcher, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. Dr Fletcher, who is the Principal of Hertford College, Oxford, has told the UN Security Council that the food security crisis has been accelerating since late 2023 in Yemen, which is the Arab world’s poorest country and which is beset by civil war.

About 17 million people live in Senegal and in Zimbabwe; Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo has around 17 million residents, making it the 13th largest city in the world in terms of population; and there are 17 million voters in Sri Lanka.

There are an estimated 17 to 25 million Muslims in China, where they are less than 2 per cent of the total population.

Dublin’s successful hosting of the 2024 UEFA Europa League Final brought a €17 million boost to the Irish economy, according to a new impact report. The comprehensive analysis, prepared by EY, underscores the substantial economic and societal benefits generated by the event.

The report reveals that the final contributed €17 million in Gross Value Added (GVA), fuelled by a total spend of €10 million by visitors to Ireland. On top of that, the event supported almost 300 full-time equivalent jobs.

Lichfield Southern Bypass was completed at a cost estimated at £17 million.

Over 17 million people voted for Brexit in 2016.

Dominic Frisby is presenting ‘An Evening Of Comedy, Songs and Satire’ at the Lichfield Garrick Theatre on 13 March next (2026). His show is a collection of right-wing political anecdotes, jokes and music and he is accompanied by the jazz pianist, Chad Lelong.

His song ‘17 Million Eff Offs’ took its name from the votes in the Brexit referendum. Frisby started a campaign in 2020 to get his ‘17 Million’ song to No 1 in the UK Singles Chart. Thankfully, during the run-up to the day of Brexit, pro-EU activists started a counter-campaign for people to buy copies of André Rieu's performance of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’, which has become the EU anthem. When the charts were released, ‘Ode to Joy’ reached No 30, but Frisby’s ‘17 Million’ song trailed far behind and only reached 43.

So, that was a joyful reversal of the Brexit vote in some ways, I like to think.

Once again, this blog has reached another humbling statistic and a sobering figure, and once more I am left with a feeling of gratitude to all who read and support this blog and my writing.

A continuing and warming figure in the midst of all these statistics continues to be the one that shows my morning prayer diary reaches up to 80-85 people each day. It is 3½ years now since I retired from active parish ministry. But I think many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches averaged or totalled 560 to 580 people a week.

Today, I am very grateful to all the 17 million readers of this blog to date, and in particular I am grateful for the small and faithful core group among you who join me in prayer, reading and reflection each morning.

17 million people voted for Brexit in 2016

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 141, Tuesday 30 September 2025

‘Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’ (Luke 9: 54) … lighting the Paschal Fire at Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. This week began with the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XV, 28 September 2025) and today the calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers Saint Jerome (420), translator of the Scriptures and teacher of the faith (30 September).

This morning, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time to give thanks, and 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 Samaritan Woman at the Well … an icon above a well in Arkadi Monastery in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 9: 51-56 (NRSVA):

51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. 52 And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; 53 but they did not receive him, because his face was set towards Jerusalem. 54 When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’ 55 But he turned and rebuked them. 56 Then they went on to another village.

Father Andrew Louth speaking at a conference in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge … love is an all-pervading theme in the theologians he portrays in ‘Modern Orthodox Thinkers’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

I was walking through Cambridge late one summer afternoon, after taking part in a conference on mission. I had visited some colleges, and had spent some time – a lot of time – browsing and rummaging in some of my favourite bookshops.

In the warm afternoon sunshine, I was feeling relaxed, and easy-going. And there, in front of Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, a large crowd had gathered in a circle in the open space on the corner of Market Street and Sidney Street.

Some people in the crowd were visibly amused, some were angry, some were heckling. They were watching and listening to a group of street preachers of the old-fashioned sort, the sort I thought had gone out of fashion many years ago, many decades ago.

And I can quote some of their posters and placards:

‘Cursed is the nation whose God is not the Lord’ … ‘Woe to them who call evil good and good evil’ … ‘Hate crime: to let sinners go to hell with no warning’ …

When people in the crowd asked questions, they were belittled and derided. Within a short time, I had lost count of the number of times people were told they were being disrespectful of God and God’s word, the number of times people were told they and their souls were going to burn in Hell for eternity.

Not once did I see the speakers smile, not once did I hear them speak words of compassion, let alone speak of love.

Is it any wonder that people turn away when they hear people like this claiming to represent Christ, Christianity, the Christian message and the Church?

There was a much more inviting message in the vision or slogan of the church behind them: ‘Come to Christ, Learn to Love and Love to Learn, in Cambridge and beyond.’

When people respond to preachers like this by saying ‘I don’t believe in God,’ I want to respond by saying, ‘I don’t believe in the God you don’t believe in either.’ Think about what the disciples want to do when they get a whiff of difference, an inkling of rejection.

A whiff of difference creates a whiff of sulphur. They want to burn the Samaritan village to the ground.

What have they been learning from Jesus so far about basic, fundamental Christian beliefs and values being expressed in how we love God and love one another?

What had the disciples learned from Jesus about compassion, tolerance and forbearance in the immediate weeks and months before they arrived in this Samaritan village?

How embarrassed they must have been if this was the same Samaritan village that Christ visits in Saint John’s Gospel (see John 3: 4-42), where it is a Samaritan woman, and not the disciples, who realise who Jesus really is. She is a Samaritan woman of questionable sexual moral values. But it is she, and not the disciples, who brings a whole village to faith in Christ; it is she who asks for the water of life; it is she who first suggests that indeed he may be, that he is, the Messiah.

How embarrassed they must be a little later when Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan (see Luke 10: 29-37). The one person I want to meet on the road, on the pilgrimage in life, is not a priest or a Temple official, but the sort of man who lives in the very sort of village I have suggested, because of my religious bigotry and narrow-mindedness, should be consumed with fire, burned to the ground, all its people gobbled up.to follow on their own terms.

In the Orthodox Liturgy, the priest introduces the Creed with the words: ‘Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess.’ In other words, our statement of belief, in ‘Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Trinity consubstantial and undivided,’ is confirmed, realised and lived out in our love for one another.

To love our neighbour as ourselves means to love them as we are ourselves, as being of the same substance – created in the image and likeness of God. The Church Fathers teach that we find our true self in loving our neighbour, and that love is not a feeling but an action.

Two books I once had on an easy-to-reach shelf are I love therefore I am, by Father Nicholas V Sakharov (Crestwood NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002), and Father Andrew Louth’s Modern Orthodox Thinkers (London: SPCK, 2015).

Father Nicholas is a monk in Tolleshunt Knights, and his great uncle, Father Sophrony, was the saintly founder of the monastery. Father Sophrony talks in La Félicité (p 21) about ‘the absolute perfection of love in the bosom of the Trinity’ and he says: ‘Embracing the whole world in prayerful love, the persona achieves ad intra all that exists.’

In Father Andrew’s book, love is an all-pervading theme in the writings of each of the 20th century theologians he portrays. For example, he summarises Mother Maria of Paris as saying that it is all too easy to sidestep the demands of love, to seem to be loving, when really love itself has been set aside, or turned into a means to an end.

Mother Maria says there are two ways of loving to be avoided: one which subordinates love of our fellow humans to love of God, so that humans become means whereby we ascend to God, and the other of which forgets love of God, and so loves our fellow humans in a merely human way, not discerning in them the image of God, or the ways in which it has been damaged or distorted.

Yet, despite all this, I find a more difficult commandment is the third and great neglected commandment: to love our enemies (Matthew 5: 44). We all have a good idea of who our neighbour is; but when do we ask: ‘Who is my enemy?’

Do I define who my enemy is?

Or does the other person define me or himself, or herself, as the enemy?

‘We pray for all those dedicated to the work of Bible translation’ (USPG Prayer Diary, 30 September) … a Chinese translation of the Bible (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 30 September 2025):

The theme this week (28 September to 4 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘One Faith: Many Voices’ (pp 42-43). This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections from Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 30 September 2025, International Translation Day) invites us to pray:

On this day, we pray for all those dedicated to the work of Bible translation and the preservation of Indigenous languages. Lord, bless their efforts so that more people may hear and understand the good news of Jesus Christ in their own language.

The Collect of the Day:

God, who in generous mercy sent the Holy Spirit
upon your Church in the burning fire of your love:
grant that your people may be fervent
in the fellowship of the gospel
that, always abiding in you,
they may be found steadfast in faith and active in service;
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:

Keep, O Lord, your Church, with your perpetual mercy;
and, because without you our human frailty cannot but fall,
keep us ever by your help from all things hurtful,
and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Lord God,
defend your Church from all false teaching
and give to your people knowledge of your truth,
that we may enjoy eternal life
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

Saint Jerome depicted on the pulpit in Holy Trinity Church, Old Wolverton (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

Smeared blackberries, childhood memories, and Michaelmas reflections on the beauty of creation

Michaelmas blackberries ripening on Mill Lane in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

This was a bumper summer for fruit, with the extra sunshine and rain at the right time giving bumper crops of apples and pears. Most of this year's blackberries are gone by now, but there are still some blackberries coming to full fruit along Mill Lane in Stony Stratford. I I wonder, though, how many people will reach up to pick them and taste them after today, Michaelmas (29 September).

In Irish, sméar dubh or the definite form sméar dhubh is the word for blackberry, and it translates literally as ‘black berry’: smear is the base word for ‘berry’, while dubh means black.

Smearagan is another but less common term for blackberry, while the words dris and dris-choille refer to brambles and blackberry bushes.

The phrase sméar dubh translates directly as ‘black berry’. But when I first heard it as a young boy I imagined – with childish humour – how descriptive the phrase was, thinking how often and how easily I smeared my face and mouth and hands black while picking and eating blackberries on the brambles and hedgerows by the lanes around my grandmother’s farm near Cappoquin in Co Waterford.

A well-known belief states that blackberries should not be picked after Michaelmas Day on 29 September because it is believed the devil spits on them after this date.

I remember too the way the phrase ‘Blackmouth’ was used a derogatory label for Presbyterians, especially in parts of Northern Ireland. It goes back to the times in the 18th and 17th century, when Presbyterians were seen as political radicals due to their opposition to the established Church and monarchy.

Before that, in Tudor and Stuart England, a ‘blackmouth’ was a railer, a slanderer, a foulmouthed or malicious person. In the north of England it later referred to a seditious person, and was even used occasionally in the sense of Blackleg.

Some say the phrase was used in Ulster for fugitive Presbyterians or Covenanters eating blackberries as sustenance while they hid, staining their lips and tongues black, although others relate it to their refusal to take the ‘Black Oath’ in 1639.

In Scotland, ‘Blackneb’ emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as a label to denote a person who had sympathies with French revolutionaries.

The phrase ‘Blackmouth’ gained prominence in Ulster once again at the end of the 18th century as an insult, used in a contemptuous way to demean Presbyterians who supported the United Irish rebellion in 1798. Many Presbyterians were seen as politically disaffected and radical and were suspected of being a threat to church and state in Ireland. They were reviled and accused of republican sympathies and revolutionary activities, and the epithet came to be applied to the whole Presbyterian community.

Sadly, as my friend and former Irish Times colleague Andy Pollak observes in a blog posting earlier today, much of Presbyterian Ulster has, ‘unfortunately … become … right-wing, fundamentalist, separatist and Orange.’

Saint Michael depicted in a window by Charles Eamer Kempe in the tower of Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

As I was looking at those blackberries along Mill Lane in Stony Stratford at the weekend, I was brought back to childhood memories of West Waterford, and how we were told as children that Michaelmas Day is the last day for picking blackberries.

According to folklore, when the Archangel Michael expelled the Devil from Heaven on this day, he fell into a blackberry bush, cursed the brambles he had fallen into, and continues to spit on them after this day. It is a superstition shared across these islands, from Achill to Lichfield, and from Wexford to Essex and Cambridge.

In his poem ‘Trebetherick,’ the late John Betjeman seems to link ripening blackberries and the closing in of the autumn days with old age and the approach of death:

Thick with sloe and blackberry, uneven in the light,
Lonely round the hedge, the heavy meadow was remote,
The oldest part of Cornwall was the wood as black as night,
And the pheasant and the rabbit lay torn open at the throat.

Betjeman had spent much of his childhood in Trebetherick, and he died there on 19 May 1984, at the age of 77. But the former poet laureate had a more benign view of blackberries on a visit to the Isle of Man, when he described ‘wandering down your late-September lanes when dew-hung cobwebs glisten in the gorse and blackberries shine, waiting to be picked.’

Saint Michael in a statue at the tower in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In his poem ‘At the chiming of light upon sleep,’ first drafted on this day 79 years ago [29 September 1946], the poet Philip Larkin links Michaelmas and a lost paradise with the chances and opportunities that he failed to take in his youth.

In contrast to Larkin’s dejection, I was reminded earlier today of a well-known story in Orthodox piety:

The devil appeared to three monks and said to them: ‘If I gave you power to change something from the past, what would you change?’

The first monk replied with great fervour: ‘I would prevent you from making Adam and Eve fall into sin so that humanity could not turn away from God.’

The second monk pondered awhile and then said: ‘I would keep you far from God so that you condemn yourself eternally.’

The third monk was the simplest. Instead of responding, he fell to his knees, made the sign of the cross and prayed: ‘Lord, free me from the temptation of what could be and was not’.

The devil cried out, shuddered in pain, and vanished.

The other two, surprised, asked: ‘Brother, why have you responded like this?’

He replied: ‘First, we must never dialogue with the devil. Second, Nobody in the world has the power to change the past. Third: satan’s interest was not to prove our virtue, but to trap us in the past, so that we neglect the present, the only time God gives us his grace and we can cooperate with him to fulfil his will.’

Of all the demons, he continued, the one that catches the most people and prevents us from being happy is that of ‘what could have been and was not’. The past is left to the mercy of God and the future to his Providence. Only the present is in our hands. ‘Live in God, in the moment.’

I was listening yesterday to Morning Worship broadcast from Lichfield Cathedral on BBC Radio 4. The theme was drawn from the Nicene Creed – ‘Maker of all that is, seen and unseen’ – and Canon Gregory Platten reminded us of what it means to believe in God as Creator in a world facing climate change, extinction, and disconnection from nature.

The ripening blackberries along Mill Lane in Stony Stratford these days are yet another reminder that Michaelmas today is a day to allow my mind to wander back to childhood memories, and a time for contemplation and unstructured prayers, but to think less of lost opportunities not taken in youth and more about giving thanks for the beauty of the creation and taking responsibility for it.

‘Thick with sloe and blackberry, uneven in the light’ … ripening blackberries in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 140, Monday 29 September 2025, Saint Michael and All Angels

‘Archangel Michael The Protector’ by Emily Young at Saint Pancras Church, London … today is the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. This week began with the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XV, 28 September 2025) and today the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels (29 September).

This morning, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time to give thanks, and 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.

Angel I by Emily Young (2003), Paternoster Square, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 4: 47-51 (NRSVA):

47 When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ 48 Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you come to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ 49 Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ 50 Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.’ 51 And he said to him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’

Angel II by Emily Young (2003), Paternoster Square, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

Like many people, I never cease to be fascinated by the Caryatids that make Saint Pancras Church facing Euston Station in London a unique and captivating church. But I wonder how many miss the opportunity to appreciate Emily Young’s ‘Archangel Michael The Protector’ in the church gardens.

‘Archangel Michael The Protector’ is in onyx and can be viewed in the church grounds from Upper Woburn Place, around the corner from Euston Road. An inscription on a plaque between the sculpture and the railings reads: ‘In memory of the victims of the 7th July 2005 bombings and all victims of violence. ‘I will lift up my eyes unto the hills’ Psalm 121.’

Nothing moves in this image, a silent reminder of what is being commemorated in the sculpture. Because Saint Michael’s face has only one eye, and this is closed, some critics have wondered whether the quotation is ill-chosen. But the full context is provided in Psalm 121: 1-2:

1 I lift up my eyes to the hills –
from where will my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

The London bombings twenty years ago on 7 July 2005, often referred to as 7/7, were a series of four co-ordinated suicide attacks that targeted commuters on the public transport system in the morning rush hour.

Three homemade bombs packed into backpacks were detonated in quick succession on Underground trains on the Circle line near Aldgate and at Edgware Road, and on the Piccadilly line near Russell Square; later, a fourth bomb went off on a bus in Tavistock Square, near Upper Woburn Place and Saint Pancras Church.

Apart from the four bombers, 52 people of 18 different nationalities were killed and more than 700 people were injured in the attacks. It was Britain’s deadliest terrorist incident since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 near Lockerbie, and the first Islamist suicide attack in the UK.

Emily Young has been described as ‘Britain’s foremost female stone sculptor’ and ‘Britain’s greatest living stone sculptor.’ On different occasions, as I have strolled through London, I stopped and taken time at an open-air exhibition at ENO Southbank of works by Emily Young.

A number of her works have formed a sculpture trail or garden at the NEO Bankside development on South Bank in ‘Emily Young: Sculptor Trail.’ The exhibition was both a continuation and a broadening of her presence on the South Bank, echoing three large-scale works on long-loan facing the Tate Modern from NEO Bankside.

Emily Young’s sculptures of five angel heads in stone stand on five columns in Saint Paul’s Churchyard, London. The sequence of heads are mounted on columns under the arcade of a new classical-inspired building to the north west side of Saint Paul's, redeveloped as part of the redesign of Paternoster Square at the top of Ludgate Hill.

Her five angels’ heads are placed dramatically on columns in the arcade of Juxon House and almost face the west front of Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

Emily Young’s works are instantly recognisable and accessible. She deals in spectacular lumps of stone – quartzite, onyx, marble, alabaster – to which she gives an identity by carving a face but leaving the remainder of the rock displayed in its raw, craggy intensity, as if the face had grown or evolved organically. The Financial Times says: ‘Her sculptures meditate on time, nature, memory, man’s relationship to the Earth.’

xxx Emily Young was born in London in 1951 into a family of writers, artists and politicians. Her grandmother, the sculptor Kathleen Scott (1878-1947), was a colleague of Auguste Rodin, and the widow of the Polar explorer, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, ‘Scott of the Antarctic’. Her works included a statue of Edward Smith, the captain of the Titanic, now in Beacon Park, Lichfield. She later married Emily Young’s paternal grandfather, the politician and writer Edward Hilton Young, 1st Lord Kennet.

Emily Young’s father, Wayland Hilton Young, 2nd Lord Kennet, was also a politician, conservationist and writer. Her mother was the writer and commentator Elizabeth Young; her uncle was the ornithologist, conservationist and painter, Sir Peter Scott.

She was still a student when she achieved fame (or notoriety) in 1971 as the inspiration for the Pink Floyd song See Emily Play written by Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. But the song had earlier origins in the 1960s. She was 15 when she met Syd Barrett at the London Free School in 1965. ‘I used to go there because there were a lot of Beat philosophers and poets around,’ she said many years later. ‘There were fundraising concerts with The Pink Floyd Sound, as they were then called. I was more keen on poets than rockers. I was educating myself. I was a seeker. I wanted to meet everyone and take every drug.’

As a young woman, Emily Young worked primarily as a painter while she was studying at Chelsea School of Art in 1968 and later at Central Saint Martins. She travelled around the world in the late 1960s and 1970s, spending time in the US, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, France, Italy, Africa, South America, the Middle East and China, encountering a variety of cultures and developing her experiences of art.

In the early 1980s, she abandoned painting and turned to carving, sourcing stone from all over the world. Travelling from a London childhood, to a European education, to a life lived as an artist round the world, she began to interact with the timeless quality of stone to produce breath-taking sculptures of luminous intensity and great beauty.

As well as marble, she carves in semi-precious stone – agate, alabaster, lapis lazuli. These not only reflect and refract the light – but glow with a passionate intensity (as Winged Golden Onyx Head), revealing the hidden crystalline structure of the material and the subtle layers the time has laid down, showing the liquid qualities of hard rock.

The primary objective of her sculpture is to bring the natural beauty and energy of stone to the fore. Her sculptures have unique characters because each stone has an individual geological history and geographical source. Her approach allows the viewer to comprehend a deep grounding across time, land and cultures. She combines traditional carving skills with technology to produce work that is both contemporary and ancient, with a unique, serious and poetic presence.

Emily Young now divides her time between studios in London and Italy. Her permanent installations and public collections can be seen in many places, including Saint Paul’s Churchyard, Saint Pancras Church, NEO Bankside, and the Imperial War Museum in London; La Defense, Paris; Salisbury Cathedral, Wiltshire; the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; and the Cloister of Madonna Dell’Orto, Venice.

After years of being feted as ‘Britain’s foremost female stone sculptor,’ the art critic of the Financial Times called her ‘Britain’s greatest living stone sculptor.’ The Daily Telegraph has written: ‘Emily Young has inherited the mantle as Britain’s greatest female stone sculptor from Dame Barbara Hepworth.’

She recently explained: ‘So my work is a kind of temple activity now, devotional; when I work a piece of stone, the mineral occlusions of the past are revealed, the layers of sediment unpeeled; I may open in one knock something that took millions of years to form: dusts settling, water dripping, forces pushing, minerals growing – material and geological revelations: the story of time on Earth shows here, sometimes startling, always beautiful.’

She told an interviewer: ‘I carve in stone the fierce need in millions of us to retrieve some semblance of dignity for the human race in its place on Earth. We can show ourselves to posterity as a primitive and brutal life form – that what we are best at is rapacity, greed, and wilful ignorance, and we can also show that we are creatures of great love for our whole planet, that everyone of us is a worshipper in her temple of life.’

Angel III by Emily Young (2003), Paternoster Square, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 29 September 2025, Saint Michael and All Angels):

The theme this week (28 September to 4 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘One Faith: Many Voices’ (pp 42-43). This theme was introduced yesterday with Reflections from Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 29 September 2025, Saint Michael and All Angels) invites us to pray in these words:

O God, who has given us the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, grant us your protection and guidance. May we, with the help of your heavenly hosts, stand firm in the faith and be strong in your service.

Angel IV by Emily Young (2003), Paternoster Square, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect:

Everlasting God,
you have ordained and constituted
the ministries of angels and mortals in a wonderful order:
grant that as your holy angels always serve you in heaven,
so, at your command,
they may help and defend us on earth;
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:

Lord of heaven,
in this eucharist you have brought us near
to an innumerable company of angels
and to the spirits of the saints made perfect:
as in this food of our earthly pilgrimage
we have shared their fellowship,
so may we come to share their joy in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Angel V by Emily Young (2003), Paternoster Square, London (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

‘Archangel Michael The Protector’ by Emily Young in the gardens of Saint Pancras Church near Euston Station (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Edburg’s Church in Bicester stands on the site of an earlier Saxon church and a mediaeval priory

Saint Edburg’s Church, Bicester, is the oldest building in the Oxfordshire town (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Saint Edburg’s Church on Church Street is the 12th century parish church of Bicester in Oxfordshire. It is at the heart of Bicester’s mediaeval centre, and is the oldest and only Grade I listed building in the market town. The church also has important connections with the Gothic revival and the Pre-Raphaelites in the late 19th century.

The church is dedicated to Saint Edburg of Bicester – also known as Eadburh or Eadburth – who was a seventh century nun and abbess. She remains something of a mystery, as there were several Saxon saints with the same name. It is most likely that Eadburh of Bicester was the daughter of King Penda of Mercia, who was pagan but had several children who were Christians.

Eadburg was born in Quarrendon in Buckinghamshire. Her sister was Edith (or Eadith), and together they founded an abbey near Aylesbury, where Eadburg probably became the abbess. She was also the aunt of Osgyth, and she trained her in the religious life. There are legends that claim that Edburgh and Edith found Osyth after she had drowned three days before and witnessed her return to life.

Eadburg may have lived at Adderbury, north Oxfordshire, which may have been named after her. She died ca 650. Saint Edburg’s burial place is unknown; her feast day is 18 July.

Saint Eadburg’s Church, Bicester, stands on the site of an earlier Saxon church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A simple Saxon church was built in Bicester in 850, and Saint Eadburg’s relics were moved there in 1182, when an Augustinian priory was founded by canons regular and dedicated to Saint Eadburgh and to the Virgin Mary.

Bicester Priory had a priory church, chapter house with cloisters, hospice, prior’s lodgings and a farmyard. The walled rectangular enclosure lay just south of the church, the gatehouse was on the site of ‘Chapter and Verse’ Guesthouse in Church Lane, and Saint Edburg’s House is built partly over the site of the priory church. This was linked by a cloister to a quadrangle with the refectory, kitchens, dormitory and prior’s lodging. The priory farm buildings lay in the area of the present church hall and had direct access to land in what is now the King’s End estate.

The Augustinian priory was endowed with extensive lands and buildings, although they appear to have been poorly managed and did not produce much income. The priory was dissolved in 1536 and there are few remaining visible signs of the priory today.

Many pilgrims visited Saint Edburg’s shrine and holy well in Bicester. During the Reformation, Sir Simon Harcourt, the Sheriff of Oxford, destroyed Bicester Priory church in 1536. But he saved Saint Edburg’s shrine and moved it to Saint Michael’s Church in Stanton Harcourt, west of Oxford, to use as an Easter sepulture. Other parts of the shrine were combined into a tomb in the Harcourt chapel. Attempts in the 1940s to return the shrine to Bicester were without success.

The High Altar, Chancel and East Window in Saint Edburg’s Church, Bicester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

There is no mention of a stone church on the site in the Domesday Book, but some sources suggest the triangular-headed arch in the north aisle was the doorway of this building. The remains of a zig-zag dripstone between the arches of the north aisle imply that this was the outside wall of the Norman church built by Gilbert Bassett, one of the earliest manorial lords of Market End manor, ca 1120. The great central arches that once supported a tower also belong to this period.

Saint Edburg’s is impressive inside, with a large nave and high oaken roof, and two long vistas: one towards the altar from the west end, and the other from the high altar steps, with the wide chancel arch framing the tall narrow arch that forms the internal east face of the tower.

By the 13th century, the church had been given to Bicester Priory. The priors appointed the vicars and they enlarged and improved the church over time.

The chancel was extended in the Early English period in the 13th century and the priest’s door was made in the south wall. Four arches were cut in the south wall of the nave and the south aisle was added. The fine arch between the south aisle and the Lady Chapel was built then, as was the south doorway.

The north chapel and the north aisle were built in the Decorated period in the 14th century, when three arches were cut in the north wall of the nave. The north chapel is now used as the choir vestry.

Inside Saint Edburg’s Church, Bicester, looking from the chancel towards the west end and the tower (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The church was given its present appearance in the Perpendicular Period in the 15th century. The central tower was taken down, its west arch was removed and the crossing was thrown into the nave. The nave was heightened, the clerestory was added and the nave was roofed with timbers supported on 12 stone corbels, carved heads of beasts and grotesques. The west tower was built with a splendid perpendicular arch opening into the nave. Parapets were added to the outside walls and the porch was built.

The north chapel once had an upper chamber, perhaps to house the sexton. It was used from the late 17th century as a school room for a grammar school founded by Samuel Blackwell, Vicar of Bicester in 1670-1691 and Dean of Bicester Deanery. His curate was White Kennett (1660-1728), later Bishop of Peterborough (1718-1728), and the author of a two-volume history of Bicester and the priory.

A great storm damaged the church in 1765. Lightning struck the tower, damaged the belfry and the bells, broke into the main body of the church, tore up part of the floor in the south aisle and smashed most of the lower windows. The church was left ‘full of smoke, accompanied with a suffocating sulphurous stench’. This explains why there is no remaining mediaeval stained glass in the church.

The north chapel once had an upper chamber and in now the choir vestry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A print from 1849 shows the nave and aisles filled with boxed pews and a three-decker pulpit opposite the Grantham memorial. There were galleries across the west end and between the arches over both aisles.

This ‘chaos of uplifted boxes’ and the galleries were removed in a thorough restoration of the church in 1862-1863 by the Revd JW Watts, Vicar of Bicester in 1843-1881. The roofs, walls and the floor were repaired or renewed and pews were installed. The church was heated and gas lighting installed.

The restoration was carried out by the architect Charles Nightingale Beazley (1834-1897), in consultation with George Edmund Street, two leading architects in the Gothic Revival movement. They installed the existing window tracery and the stone and marble pulpit.

The Pre-Raphaelite window designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A Morris & Co window in the Lady Chapel in memory of Sir Gregory and Lady Page-Turner and designed by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir Edward Burne-Jones. It depicts Faith (centre), Hope (left) and Love (right) trampling on the vices of unbelief (Faith), despair (Hope) and hate (Love).

A wooden screen leading in the vestry is painted with a design of flowers, birds and insects on a gilt background and is signed ‘HL Busby 1882’.

The high altar was given in 1910. It is made of oak and carved with the Lamb of God. The reredos also dates from this time.

The ‘priest’s door’ in the south wall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The interior was repainted, the church was rewired, and new lighting and audio-visual systems were installed in 2008. Later, the floor in the vestry was replaced in 2012. A new raised floor was installed at the west end in 2014, when the 13th century font was centrally positioned, along with its cover dating from 1757.

Attention turned to the exterior in 2015, when a parapet wall on the south aisle roof was in danger of collapsing and was replaced. Other work on the south side involved replacing stone around some windows.

The nave floor was levelled in 2020, the Victorian pews were replaced with chairs and the nave became more accessible for people with mobility issues, giving them the opportunity to move around the church unhindered.

The church has a ring of 10 bells: eight were recast in 1913 and two were installed as a gift to celebrate the Millennium; there is also a Sanctus bell.

The Old Vicarage is probably the oldest house in Bicester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

There are memorials to local dignitaries, including the naval commander Sir Thomas Grantham, the Page-Turners of Ambrosden, and the Coker family, who were lords of the manor of King’s End from 1584 until the 1970s and lived in Bicester House.

Saint Edburg’s is a venue for concerts and exhibitions, keeping the church at the centre of community life in Bicester.

The Old Vicarage beside the church dates from the 16th century. It is a Grade II * listed building and is probably the oldest house in Bicester. The original house appears to have been L-shaped and of a ‘hall house’ design. It remained the vicarage until Canon William Henry Trebble retired in 1974.

The 19th century reredos above the High Altar (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Recent archaeological excavations at Procter’s Yard have identified the ecclesiastical enclosure boundary, and a large cemetery of Saxon graves suggesting a much larger churchyard has been excavated on the site of the car park of the Roman Catholic Church almost opposite Saint Edburg’s.

The recent Vicars of Bicester have included Michael Charles Scott-Joynt (1943-2014), who was in Bicester in 1975-1982 and later became Bishop of Stafford (1987-1985) in the Diocese of Lichfield and Bishop of Winchester (1995-2011).

Saint Edburg’s is part of the Bicester Area Team Ministry, and the Vicar of Bicester, the Revd Peter Wright, is also the Rector of the Bicester Benefice.

The Lady Chapel in Saint Edburg’s Church, Bicester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

• The Sunday services include Sung Eucharist (first and third Sundays), ‘Café Church’ (second Sunday), and All-Age Holy Communion (fourth and fifth Sundays) at 10:30. In addition, there is a Book of Common Prayer Holy Communion every second Sunday of the month at 8 a.m. and mid-week Holy Communion every Wednesday at 10 am.

The war memorial cross near the west end of the church was erected in 1921 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 139, Sunday 28 September 2025, Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XV)

Lazarus and the Rich Man … a panel in the East Window by Mayer & Co in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick, depicting a series of ten parables (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and tomorrow is the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XV, 28 September). Later this morning, I hope to be at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford.

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, reading 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.

Bonifacio Veronese, Dives and Lazarus, 1540-50. Oil on canvas (Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice)

Luke 16: 19-31 (NRSVA):

[Jesus told this parable:] 19 ‘There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. 24 He called out, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.” 25 But Abraham said, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” 27 He said, “Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house – 28 for I have five brothers – that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.” 29 Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” 30 He said, “No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” 31 He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead”.’

The Rich Man and Lazarus … a stained glass window in Saint Mary’s Church, Banbury, Oxford

Today’s Reflections:

The Gospel reading today (Luke 16: 19-31) is a popular Bible story. We usually know this as the story of Dives and Lazarus, and it is almost as well-known a story as the parables of the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son.

But there are some unique and distinctive aspects to this story.

For example, this story is found only in Saint Luke’s Gospel.

Surprisingly, God is not named in this story. But, of course, as in the Book of Esther, God is seldom named in the Gospel parables either. Instead, the parables challenge us to think who is God for us by asking us to see who is most God-like, who acts like God would act.

The poor man at the gate is named, but the name Lazarus could be confusing, because this is also the name of the brother of Mary and Martha, the dead friend Jesus raised to life in Bethany.

The name Lazarus, or in Hebrew Eleazar, which means ‘the Lord is my help,’ is an interesting name for those who first heard Jesus tell this story, for the rich man in his castle certainly is of no help to the poor man at his gate.

Abraham is named. And Moses is named. Both are key figures in this story, for all the descendants of Abraham are promised that they are going to be children of the covenant with God. And it is Moses who receives that covenant in the wilderness on Mount Sinai. The man at the gate, who is being ignored by a leading religious figure of the day, must have been made to feel hopeless, outside the scope of the covenant, abandoned, in a wilderness, impoverished, exiled outside the community.

But there are six other characters in the story – and not one of them is named.

The Rich Man, who is at the centre of the story, is sometimes called ‘Dives.; But the name Dives is one he does not have in the Gospel story, in the parable as Jesus tells it. Tradition has given him the name Dives, but the rich man is anonymous and he has no name. The name Dives derives simply from a misreading of an early Latin translation of the Bible.

The rich man has five brothers, but not one of these is named either.

I like to think this man is anyone who claims to be religious but who falls in love with riches. It is not his wealth that is his downfall, but his love of wealth and how he uses it.

The Apostle Paul is often misquoted as saying money is the root of all evil. But what he actually tells Timothy is that ‘the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,’ and that, ‘in their eagerness to be rich, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.’

It is possible to be religious and rich at one and the same time. But if I appear to be religious, I need to be careful that my religious practices are not a contradiction of, a denial of, the way I live my life in the world, and respond to the needs of others.

God’s covenant is only meaningful when it is lived as a covenant of love. The rich man loves himself first, and, perhaps, his family, his own inner circle second. But that is as far as his religion goes. It does not go beyond his own front door.

I like to think Jesus is playing a little game with those who are religious and listening. The Samaritan woman at the well (John 4) is told that she is wed to five husbands but has no true marriage at all.

The five husbands could represent the first five books of the Bible – the Torah. The Samaritans would not accept any other writings as Holy Scripture, and there was a joke among Jews at the time that the Samaritans were so insistent on these five books alone that it was like being wedded to them. They were the Biblical fundamentalists of their day. She is being told that you cannot be wed to Holy Scripture and have a covenantal relationship with God without love. She realises that just as being wed but without love is no marriage, so being religious without love is no religion at all.

Love is the active ingredient of true religion. And when that dawns on her, she becomes one of the greatest missionaries in the Gospels.

Similarly, Jesus may be playing a game with those who are listening to today’s parable. If the rich man, as it appears, is a priest of the Temple, then he too is a religious figure. But the priestly caste of the day were Sadducees, not Pharisees. And so the Pharisees who were listening to this story (verse 14) would have known that the Sadducees too refused to accept as part of the Bible any books other than the first five – when it came to Holy Scripture they only admitted those five into the family of faith.

The rich man realises that being wed to the Torah without love is no covenant. But unlike, the Samaritan woman, it is too late for him when this truth dawns on him.

There is no covenant without love, and this is true for marriage and for religion.

There is no true religion without love … not self-interest, but love for God and love for others.

Of course, there is one other character in this story who is not named. This is not a human character, but an animal – the dog.

There is a 1996 film produced at the Sullivan Bluth studios in Dublin, All Dogs go to Heaven, with a voice over by Burt Reynolds. But, while we think of dogs today as faithful pets, there was a religious tradition in the time of Jesus that dogs did not get into heaven.

Lazarus is hungry and covered with sores, and sits outside the gate of what must have looked like a Heavenly City inside. He is in such a condition and in a place that even the dogs come and lick his sores (verse 21). For its time, this is a description of abject living, so abhorrent that this man is totally outside normal, good clean company. He is in the wilderness, in exile, and at a point where only God can redeem him.

Dives is not a single identifiable rich man. He is each and every one of us. Who among us, on first hearing this story, as it opened, as the first part of it began to be told, would not have delighted in the lifestyle of the rich man. After all, how often do I find myself saying, quite rightly, all I want is for me and those I love to have somewhere decent to live, decent clothes and decent food?

But that decency turns to indecency when these things soon become all we want in life … and want nothing for others, have no place for meeting the needs of others.

I heard a comedian once complaining about the size of a pizza slice he was served in a café – if you had a pie chart for what you would do if you a won a million in the lotto, this was the size of the slice for what I would give to charity, he said.

Having lost his compassion for others, especially the needy on his doorstep, Dives loses his religion, for without love there can be no true religion; and Dives loses his humanity, for I am only human in so far as I am like God and love others.

The loss of Dives’ humanity is symbolised by his loss of a personal name. I am baptised with a personal name, and so incorporated into the Body of Christ; that name is how I am known to God and to others – God calls me and you recognise me by my name. Without a name, can Dives remain in the image of God? Can he be called on by others as a fellow human being?

On the other hand, the name Lazarus means ‘God helps’ – the Greek Λάζαρος (Lazaros) is derived from the Hebrew Eleazar (אֶלְעָזָר, Elʿazar), ‘God’s assistance,’ or: ‘God has helped.’ Eleazar was a nephew of Moses and the second High Priest, succeeding his father Aaron after he died. So, as this story unfolds, our expectations of God’s actions, of God’s deliverance, are raised incrementally, but we are also expecting a conflict between two priests about who are the true heirs to Abraham and Moses, and a conflict about the teachings on and expectations of eternal justice and eternal life.

The coming of Christ turns all our skewed values upside down: those we think are most outside God’s compassion and outside the Kingdom of Heaven may well be those most likely to be signs of what the Kingdom of God is, and to be reminders of kingdom values.

Lazarus who is an outsider becomes the true insider; Lazarus who is totally poor becomes rich in the one way that really matters; Lazarus who is at death’s door finds eternal life.

The dogs too play an important role – like the woman who mops the brow of Jesus on his way to Calvary, and the women who weep with him above the city … they do not take away his suffering, but they tell him that his suffering is shared in creation.

So, who is most like God, most like Christ, in this Gospel story?

Those who first heard this story, would initially have expected the person to be most like God to be the religious leader, the one who can cite the Bible, who calls out to Abraham and Moses. And those who first heard this story would initially have expected that the person to be least like God is going to be the beggar at the gates, the man outside among the dogs.

But is that not what Christ is like? He gives up everything to identify with our humanity in his incarnation, life and death; he is rejected, suffers and dies outside the city walls.

You may not want to be like Lazarus, but Christ wants us to be like him. And we are most like him not when we hope for riches and pleasures beyond our reach, but when we love God and when we love one another. God calls each and every one of us to be like him, to love like him, and when he calls us he calls us by name.

When the poor man dies, he is carried away by the angels to be with Abraham (verse 22). When the rich man dies and finds himself in Hades he calls out to Abraham as ‘father’ or ‘Father Abraham’ (verse 24), and he in turn is addressed by Abraham as ‘Child’ (verse 25).

These are not mere terms of affection but in a profound way they open one other possibility in this story, a perspective that is not offered by commentators, perhaps because many are not familiar with customs within Judaism, yet one that I believe may be possible and perhaps even profound.

Jewish law or halakhah considers converts to Judaism as spiritually adopted into the lineage of Abraham, the first Jewish patriarch. Male converts are often called ‘ben Avraham Avinu’ (son of Abraham, our father) during liturgical ceremonies such as being called up to Torah readings in the synagogue.

This custom serves to emphasise their connection to these foundational figures and signifies that converts are spiritually adopted into the Jewish lineage, becoming part of the covenant established with Abraham and Sarah. This practice is a way to acknowledge their entry into the Jewish people and their spiritual connection to the foundational figures of Judaism.

The custom of referring to a man who is a convert to Judaism as ‘ben Avraham Avinu’ is connected with the prohibition in Jewish law of mistreating proselytes, including reminding them that they were once not a Jew.

There is a possibility here that Lazarus was a convert to Judaism, but that he was constantly reminded of this by Dives, metaphorically left outside the gates, outside what he defined as the community of faith, denied his place as a true child of Abraham, as though he had been thrown to the dogs.

We are told that when the poor man in the Gospel reading died, he ‘was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham.’ In calling him ‘child’, Abraham restores the outsider to his proper place as an insider within the community of faith, restores him to him to his rightful place in the community, an eternal justice that he had been denied in mortal life.

Jesus uses a similar phrase in a Gospel reading last month (Luke 10: 13-17, Sunday 24 August 2024, Trinity X), when he seess a woman who has endured suffering for 18 years, calls her into the centre of the synagogue, heals her and refers to her as a daughter of Abraham. Was she too a convert to Judaism, or the widow of a convert, denied her rightful place in the community of faith, marginalised and never fully accepted, bent over for 18 years by the demands and expectations that had been laid on her shoulders?

Who is Lazarus to me today?

Who do I exclude, who do I make a stranger at the gate?


The story of Dives and Lazarus has inspired great artists, and composers like Vaughan Williams

Today’s Prayers:

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 28 September 2025, Trinity XV):

The theme this week (28 September to 4 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘One Faith: Many Voices’ (pp 42-43). This theme is introduced today with Reflections from Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG:

To mark the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, USPG created a unique video showcasing Christians from around the world reciting the Nicene Creed in their own languages. The compilation features speakers of Twi, Bengali, Portuguese, Welsh, and various forms of English spoken by believers from the Middle East, Zambia and the Solomon Islands.

Interestingly, the project revealed some similarities concealed within the different languages we speak. For instance, the Arabic term for Holy Spirit, ar-rūh al-qudus (رلاُّحو لاْقُدُس‎), closely resembles Roh Kudus in Iban, an Indigenous language of Malaysia, due to the influence of Islam. Likewise, Biblical Hebrew rúakh hakódesh (ורּחַ הַקֹּדֶשׁ‎) shares a striking similarity – a clear sign of the legacy of Abrahamic religions and their languages. In the Philippines, espíritu santo in Tagalog reflects the same expression in Spanish, highlighting the enduring legacy of Spanish colonial influence.

And so, whilst history, culture, and even colonial legacies have shaped the languages we speak, they have not divided the essence of our faith. Although we sound different, the central message remains the same. It is a beautiful thing to affirm together that ‘we believe in one God, one faith, and one baptism’.

Watch now and hear the Nicene Creed as you’ve never heard it before. Available on YouTube @USPGglobal.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 28 September 2025, Trinity XV) invites us to pray by reading and meditating on Luke 16: 19-31.

The Collect:

God, who in generous mercy sent the Holy Spirit
upon your Church in the burning fire of your love:
grant that your people may be fervent
in the fellowship of the gospel
that, always abiding in you,
they may be found steadfast in faith and active in service;
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:

Keep, O Lord, your Church, with your perpetual mercy;
and, because without you our human frailty cannot but fall,
keep us ever by your help from all things hurtful,
and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Lord God,
defend your Church from all false teaching
and give to your people knowledge of your truth,
that we may enjoy eternal life
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of Saint Michael and All Angels:

Everlasting God,
you have ordained and constituted
the ministries of angels and mortals in a wonderful order:
grant that as your holy angels always serve you in heaven,
so, at your command,
they may help and defend us on earth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow


Maddy Prior’s live performance of ‘Dives and Lazarus’ at the Nettlebed Folk Club on the ‘Seven For Old England’ tour. The song is on the album of the same name ‘Seven For Old England’