Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIII, 14 September 2025), which was also Holy Cross Day.
The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Theodore of Tarsus (690), Archbishop of Canterbury.
Later this evening, I am speaking in the Swinfen Harris Church Hall, beside the Greek Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford, about the work of the architect Edward Swinfen, as part of the Heritage Days programmes in Milton Keynes. But, 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.
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.
Today’s Reflection:
In the three short verses in today’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Luke 8: 1-3), 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, in addition, 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, meaning 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.
There were celebration throughout last year (2024), 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.’
Bishop Hall 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 to 1974 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).
Today’s Prayers (Friday 19 September 2025):
The theme this week (14 to 20 September) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Standing in Solidarity with the Church in Myanmar’ (pp 38-39). This theme was introduced last Sunday with a programme update from Rachael Anderson, former Senior Communications and Engagement Manager, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 19 September 2025) invites us to pray:
Father God, bring peace to your Church in Myanmar. Protect displaced believers, provide for their needs, and heal their wounds.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
who called your Church to bear witness
that you were in Christ reconciling the world to yourself:
help us to proclaim the good news of your love,
that all who hear it may be drawn to you;
through him who was lifted up on the cross,
and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
God our creator,
you feed your children with the true manna,
the living bread from heaven:
let this holy food sustain us through our earthly pilgrimage
until we come to that place
where hunger and thirst are no more;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
you search us and know us:
may we rely on you in strength
and rest on you in weakness,
now and in all our days;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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
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