COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
The Church of the Sandals, a surviving Byzantine church in the Göreme Open Air Museum in Cappadocia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVII, 12 October 2025).
The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship and Exciting Holiness remembers Saint Edward the Confessor (1022-1066), King of England. Before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning 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 Church of the Sandals, a surviving Byzantine church in the Göreme Open Air Museum in Cappadocia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Luke 11: 29-32:
29 When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, ‘This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. 30 For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so the Son of Man will be to this generation. 31 The queen of the South will rise at the judgement with the people of this generation and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here! 32 The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here!’
The Last Supper depicted in a fresco in the refectory beneath the Church of the Sandals in Göreme in Cappadocia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s reflection:
One Easter, when I was visiting the churches dating back to Patristic and Byzantine times in the Göreme Open Air Museum in Cappadocia, one of the churches with an unusual name was the Church of the Sandals. It is an elaborate, well-preserved cave church, similar to the Dark Church and the Apple Church. This 11th century church has elaborate frescoes and is one of the finest cave churches in Cappadocia.
Historically it was called the Church of the Holy Cross and may have housed a relic of the True Cross. But the name Church of the Sandals comes from the footprints on the floor beneath a fresco the Ascension scene. According to legend, Christ left these sacred imprints at his Ascension.
The church is part of a monastic complex built into a shallow courtyard. Blind niches and red crosses decorate the two-story façade. The best-preserved refectory in Cappadocia is directly under the church. The seven-meter table has complete rock benches. The apse at the head of the table, which was the abbot’s seat, has a red-orange fresco of the Last Supper. The church above does not have an image of the Last Supper, because that image is found in the refectory.
Sandals and signs are part of the humour throughout Monty Python’s Life of Brian, also known as Life of Brian, a controversial 1979 film by the Monty Python team, including Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.
Scene 18, ‘The Holy Gourd of Jerusalem’, includes this dialogue:
FOLLOWERS: … Look! Ah! Oh! Oh!
ARTHUR: He has given us a sign!
FOLLOWER: Oh!
SHOE FOLLOWER: He has given us … His shoe!
ARTHUR: The shoe is the sign. Let us follow His example.
SPIKE: What?
ARTHUR: Let us, like Him, hold up one shoe and let the other be upon our foot, for this is His sign, that all who follow Him shall do likewise.
EDDIE: Yes.
SHOE FOLLOWER: No, no, no. The shoe is …
YOUTH: No.
SHOE FOLLOWER: … a sign that we must gather shoes together in abundance.
GIRL: Cast off …
SPIKE: Aye. What?
GIRL: … the shoes! Follow the Gourd!
SHOE FOLLOWER: No! Let us gather shoes together!
FRANK: Yes.
SHOE FOLLOWER: Let me!
ELSIE: Oh, get off!
YOUTH: No, no! It is a sign that, like Him, we must think not of the things of the body, but of the face and head!
SHOE FOLLOWER: Give me your shoe!
YOUTH: Get off!
GIRL: Follow the Gourd! The Holy Gourd of Jerusalem!
FOLLOWER: The Gourd!
HARRY: Hold up the sandal, as He has commanded us!
ARTHUR: It is a shoe! It is a shoe!
HARRY: It's a sandal!
ARTHUR: No, it isn't!
GIRL: Cast it away!
ARTHUR: Put it on!
YOUTH: And clear off!
How often do we pray unusual signs as indications of God’s blessing, favour, approval or intervention, or even God’s judgment?
In this morning’s Gospel reading, Jesus faces this sort of request too. with that in his own day. People wanted some spectacular sign from him to establish beyond doubt that he was who he said he was.
In today’s reading, Jesus addresses the crowds who gather around him as a wicked generation because they are asking for a sign. Today people can be very impressed by visionaries who claim to have visions that are denied to the rest of believers.
The church has traditionally been very wary of all such claims. In the Gospel reading Jesus accuses his contemporaries of failing to see what is there before them. They want signs and yet all they need already stands in front of them in the person of Jesus, someone greater than Solomon, greater than Jonah, greater than all the prophets and kings.
If the people of Nineveh responded to Jonah and if the Queen of the South responded to Solomon, how much more should Jesus’ contemporaries respond to him?
God has already given us all we need in and through the church, in Word, in Sacrament and in the community of believers. There we find the living word of God. There we find the Eucharist and the other sacraments. There we find Jesus present among us and within his followers.
In the Eucharist, Christ is present to us in the bread and the wine, saying, ‘This is my body … This is my blood’.
In coming to Christ in the Eucharist, we are coming to one who is greater than Jonah or Solomon. He is present to us in other ways also. We take his presence seriously by responding to his call and following in his way, as the people of Nineveh responded to Jonah’s call. And, in response to Christ’s presence, we are called to respond to his presence by living in as a sign of his presence in the world.
‘Hold up the sandal, as he has commanded us!’ (Monty Python, ‘The Life of Brian’) … large sandals as a sign at the Antika Irish bar in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Today’s Prayers (Monday 13 October 2025):
The theme this week (12 to 18 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘A Life Dedicated to Care’ (pp 46-47). This theme was introduced yesterday with a programme update on Sister Gillian Rose of the Bollobhpur Mission Hospital, Church of Bangladesh.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 13 October 2025) invites us to pray:
Father God, thank you for the incredible ministry of Sister Gillian. Bless and protect her for your name’s sake.
The Collect:
Sovereign God,
who set your servant Edward
upon the throne of an earthly kingdom
and inspired him with zeal for the kingdom of heaven:
grant that we may so confess the faith of Christ
by word and deed,
that we may, with all your saints, inherit your eternal glory;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post Communion Prayer:
God our redeemer,
who inspired Edward to witness to your love
and to work for the coming of your kingdom:
may we, who in this sacrament share the bread of heaven,
be fired by your Spirit to proclaim the gospel in our daily living
and never to rest content until your kingdom come,
on earth as it is in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
‘The shoe is … a sign that we must gather shoes together in abundance’ (Monty Python, ‘The Life of Brian’) … trying sandals for size in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Saint Katherine’s Church, the Greek Orthodox Church in Friern Barnet, is surrounded by a large wooded churchyard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Patrick Comerford
I spent a day recently visiting Saint Katherine’s Church, the Greek Orthodox Church in Friern Barnet, where the parish priest, Archimandrite Damianos Konstantinou
Introduced me to the church and the area around Friern Barnet, Finchley, Mill Hill and Golder’s Green. His parish has a large population of Greek Cypriots and Greek-speaking families.
Father Damian and I were introduced through a number of mutual friends, including the writer Richar Pine, a regular contributor to The Irish Times and founder of the Durrell School of Corfu, where I lectured in 2006, Euthymius Petrou in Athens and Father Gregory Wellington of the Greek Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford.
Over the day, our conversations ranged across a vast range of shared interests, from Sir Richard Church, Sir Charles Napier and the Irish Philhellenes and the folk music of Zakynthos to Epitaphios processions in Corfu, from the current crisis at Saint Katherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai and the plight of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem, to Italian opera, the songs of Maria Farandouri and modern Greek poetry.
Inside Saint Katherine’s Church, facing towards the iconostasis, the altar and the east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Saint Katherine’s Greek Orthodox Church is picturesque country church in Friern Park that dates from 1853 and that was originally known as Saint James’s Church. The church stands on the corner of Friern Barnet Lane and Friary Road, on the main north-south road through the village. The church is surrounded by 20th century housing but retains its large wooded churchyard.
Friern Barnet was once a small, rural parish seven miles north of London. Its original name, Little Barnet, distinguished it from the larger part of Barnet that was in Hertfordshire.
The story of this church goes back 800 years to a time when there was a friary in the area serving pilgrims on their way to and from St Albans. The manor later called Friern Barnet or Whetstone seems to have been held by St Albans Abbey before the Conquest, but it was taken from that abbey by William I and apparently given to the Bishop of London.
Inside Saint Katherine’s Church, facing the west end from the iconostasis and the altar at the east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
A church was first mentioned in 1187, probably Saint James’s. By the late 12th century, the lands in Barnet were held by John Picot from the Bishop of London. By 1199, Bishop Gilbert Foliot or his successor Richard FitzNeal had given these lands to the Knights Hospitaller, following Picot’s surrender of them.
The name of Friern Barnet did not appear before 1294 and reflected the lordship of the Brotherhood of the Knights Hospitaller.
With the dissolution of the monastic houses and the Hospitallers in 1540 the manor of Friern Barnet passed to the Crown and then to Saint Paul’s Cathedral.
The 12th century Romanesque south doorway was restored and reset by the Habershon brothers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
The original Norman church was a simple one with of a nave and chancel with a south porch and a wooden west tower. The church today consists of a chancel with a north vestry, a nave with south aisle, a porch and a tower with a shingled spire at the south-west. The exterior is of flint, with stone dressings. The Friern Barnet Parishioners War Memorial stands in the churchyard.
Today’s church owes its appearance to a major restoration and enlargement in 1853 by the brothers William Habershon (1819-1892) and Edward Habershon (1826-1900). The Habershon brothers specialised in neo-gothic buildings, especially churches and chapels. They increased the seating capacity of the church from 200 to 500 and reset the 12th century Romanesque south doorway – although it is heavily restored, many of the original stones survive.
The 1853 tower collapsed in 1930 and was rebuilt on the same plan.
An octagonal parish room, the Jubilee Hall, was added on the north side of the nave in 1977, and it is reached through the church by the north nave doorway.
The Jubilee Hall, an octagonal parish room, was added on the north side of the church in 1977 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Saint John the Evangelist Church on Friern Barnet Lane was built in 1910 as a chapel-of-ease to Saint James’s, which was no longer large enough for the expanding population.
Saint James’s continued to serve the parish until 2009, when Church of England services for Friern Barnet were transferred to Saint John’s Church on Friern Barnet Road and Saint James’s was leased to the local Greek Orthodox community, who renamed it Saint Katherine’s Church.
Saint Katherine’s Greek Orthodox Community was formally established in 1985, mainly through the efforts and energy of Katina Antoniou. Father Nicodemos Velalopoulos was the first priest, and services were held in a number of local Anglican churches until the parish found space in All Saints’ Church, Whetstone, in 1986.
A large and Greek and Greek Cypriot community have been based in Hendon since the 1960s, with a church and under the leadership of Bishop Aristarchos of Zenoupolis, and later served by Father Andrew Panayiotou from 1986.
An icon of Saint Katherine of Alexandria in Saint Katherine’s Church, Friern Barnet (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Six years after the church was founded, it moved in 1992 to Saint Mark’s Church in New Barnet. Father Damian, the Very Revd Archimandrite Damianos Konstantinou, was appointed priest-in-charge of the church 30 years ago in October 1995.
After studying journalism in Athens, he went to Saint Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai, and was ordained in Jerusalem, where he served for 11 years in the Patriarchate, and has been a chaplain in the Greek army.
He has also studied theology in Athens, Italian language and culture in Perugia, and teacher training in Nottingham, and he has an MA in Religion and Politics from Saint Mary’s University, London. He has served the Greek Orthodox community in Aylesbury, and was chaplain to the Mayor of Barnet, Pantelitsa Rutte, in 2011-2012. He has a particular interest in the Irish Philhellenes, with a yearning to correct the name of the street in Athens named after Sir Richard Church from Cork.
Saint Katherine’s found a new home at Saint James the Great Church, Friern Barnet, in 2009 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Although at first his church services in the new parish were few, there were several community events and significant visits by Archbishop Damianos of Sinai in June 1996 and the late Patriarch Petros of Alexandria in September 1997. The choir of Saint George Karytsis Church in Athens visited in 2000, and sang at the feast day of Saint Catherine and at a millennium concert.
A plan to build a new church in 2004 was never realised. However, Saint Katherine’s found a new home in 2009 at Saint James the Great Church at Friern Barnet Lane. The congregation soon tripled in number and the Jubilee Hall began to host many events.
The hall was upgraded, and work on the church included repairs to the masonry, landscaping, roof cleaning, maintenance of the bell tower and other improvements.
The flame passed outside the church as it was carried through London on 26 July 2012, when the road was bedecked with Greek flags. This was followed by an Olympic Concert in the church.
Father Gregory Wellington was ordained deacon for the church in 2011 and priest in January 2014. He was there as deacon in 2011-2014 and as assistant priest in 2014-2023.
The church had a major renovation at the end of 2016 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
During a major renovation of the church from September 2016, the church found alternative accommodation for three months in All Saints’ Church, Whetstone.
More recently, the church was renovated internally, new lighting was installed along with new electrical installations, flooring and painting, all signs of hope for and an investment in the future of Saint Katherine’s.
When I visited Saint Katherine’s last Tuesday, the south porch was decorated joyfully with flags from Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Romania, the UK and other countries, representing the cultural diversity found in this Orthodox community.
Matins and the Divine Liturgy are celebrated in Saint Katherine’s Church, Friern Barnet, from 9:30 am on Sundays (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
• The services at Saint Katherine’s Church include Matins and Divine Liturgy on Sundays (9:30 am to 12 noon), on weekdays (9:30 to 11:15 am) and Vespers (Summer 7 pm, Winter 6 pm), with other services according to the Church calendar.
With Archimandrite Damianos Konstantinou (Father Damian) in Saint Katherine’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him … they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ (Luke 17: 12-13)
Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and today is the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVII, 12 October 2025). Later this morning, I hope to take part in the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, reading one of the lessons.
The calendar of the Greek Orthodox Church, as I was reminded at Vespers last night, today commemorates the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (nicaea II), the 365 bishops and priests at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 who condemned the iconoclast heresy and restored the veneration of icons in the Church. Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning 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.
James Tissot (1836-1902), ‘The Healing of Ten Lepers’ (‘Guérison de dix lépreux’), 1886-1896, Brooklyn Museum
Luke 17: 11-19 (NRSVA):
11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, 13 they called out, saying, ‘Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!’ 14 When he saw them, he said to them, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests.’ And as they went, they were made clean. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. 16 He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus asked, ‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? 18 Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?’ 19 Then he said to him, ‘Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.’
The ‘Leper’s Squint’ and the Arthur Memorial behind the organ in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Reflections:
This morning’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Luke 17: 11-19) provides many opportunities for many sermons on faith and healing, inclusion and exclusion, how Christ meets our every need, how we need conversion, on the connection between healing of the body and healing of the soul, perhaps even on the value of good manners and learning to say thank you.
Some parishes are going to hear about one Samaritan who returns and says thank you. Others may hear about nine other lepers who did exactly as they were told, went and showed themselves to the priests, received a clean bill of health and were restored to their rightful place in the community of faith.
But which is the greatest miracle for you: the healing of these 10 people?
Or their restoration to their rightful places in the community of faith?
Perhaps it is worth noting that it is the 10 men, not Christ, who keep their distance on the outskirts of the village, because they are forced to behave this way, to be marginalised and to live on the margins.
Christ keeps his distance, as might be expected. Yet, from that distance, he sees. Many Bibles have verse 14 to say that ‘he saw them.’ But the Greek says simply, καὶ ἰδὼν (kai idon), ‘and having seen,’ without any object, there is no ‘them.’
For Christ, we are not mere objects; and for Christ there is no ‘us’ and ‘them.’ He sees the future without the limits of the present.
This is a story about trusting in God’s plans for the future, rather than living in the past, living with the fears of the present, living without hope for the future … precisely the context for the urgings and exhortations to the exiles by the Prophet Jeremiah in the Old Testament reading (Jeremiah 29: 1, 4-7), precisely the hope the Apostle Paul has for Saint Timothy in the epistle reading (II Timothy 2: 8-15).
But we foil those plans, we quench those hopes, we continue to live in the past, when we continue to limit Christ’s saving powers with our own limitations, continue to look at him with our own limited vision.
Christ sees … sees it as it is in the present, and as it could be in the future.
Perhaps this is why Saint Luke has placed this story in a location that is an in-between place, the region between Galilee and Samaria. The place between Galilee and Samaria is neither one nor the other, neither this earthly existence nor what the future holds, but still on the way to Jerusalem.
Even the village here is not named.
We should not forget that not one but 10 were healed. Christ does good – even to those who will not be thankful.
And even then, we do not know why the other nine did not return to say thanks. It took an eight-day waiting process for a person with leprosy to be declared clean by the priests.
After those eight days, did they then go and give thanks to God in their local synagogues?
Did they first breathe sighs of relief and return to the families they loved but had been isolated from for so long?
Did they return to that unnamed village, and find that 10 days later Jesus had moved on … the next named place we find him in is Jericho (see Luke 19: 1-10, the Fourth Sunday before Advent, 3 November 2025)?
Surely Christ does good without expecting a thanks that comes straight from some Victorian book on good manners.
How often when we give a gift to someone do we want to control how they use it?
I give a Christmas present or a birthday gift, and then I am upset when they do not like it, when they trade it in for something else, or rewrap it and pass it on to someone else, or simply just never say thank you or acknowledge what I have done for them.
But who was the gift supposed to benefit: me as the giver, or you as the receiver? What was it a token of: my love for you, or my need for you to acknowledge how important I am to you?
A begrudging attitude to how others receive and use the gifts I give, or taking offence when I feel they have not thanked me enough, amount to a passive aggressive attitude on my part, a desire to control. If we give gifts only to be thanked, are we truly generous?
And if I only say thank you so I remain in someone else’s esteem, perhaps even to be rewarded again, to be kept on their invitation list, am I truly grateful?
Christ is not passively aggressive in this story. He is not seeking to control. He sends the 10 on their way … and they go. If he had expected them to return, he would not have been surprised that one returned; he would have waited around in that unnamed village until the other nine had time to make their humble ways back there to thank him.
Instead, it is more important what Christ frees them for, and where he frees them.
He frees them to regain their place in the community, in the social, economic and religious community that is their rightful place.
For the Samaritan, his ‘faith has made him well’: ἡπίστις σου σέσωκέν σε, or, more accurately, your faith has saved you, rescued you, restored you. The word σῴζω is all about being saved, rescued, restored, ransomed, and not just about regaining health and physical well-being.
That land between Samaria and Galilee is where we find Christ today. The in-between place, the nowhere land, the place where people need to be saved, ransomed, rescued, restored.
We all find ourselves in the in-between place, the nowhere land … to borrow a phrase from TS Eliot, wandering in the ‘Waste Land.’
Perhaps, just for one moment, it is possible to imagine that Christ has arrived in that particular in-between place for a reason. For the land between Samaria and Galilee is neither one place nor the other.
And that in-between place is a place where I might find myself unsure of who belongs and who does not, where I might be uncertain, untrusting, even frightened and afraid. It is a place where the usual rules may not apply, where I do not know my place, where I do not fit in, where I appear not as the person God see as the true me, but as others want to see me.
This is the place where Christ is travelling through in this Gospel story this morning. It seems to me that I am often travelling in that place every day, today.
It is difficult travelling in this in-between land. When we realise we are there, then it may be easier to identify with the 10 Lepers, cast out into the in-between land, not knowing where to go, rather than with those who appear certain about where they are going.
When we get to where you are going, we should remember how we feel about the present unknown, whether it is fear – ‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust’ – whether it is trepidation, anticipation, or joy that is tinged with all of these, in this in-between time, this nowhere place.
Shakespeare reminds us, in the words of Portia in The Merchant of Venice,
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven … (The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene 1)
These 10 lepers were cut off from all they knew and loved, all the certainties they once enjoyed or took for granted.
And when we move from an in-between place and nowhere land, we should not hold back from the call to join the task of cleansing, healing, restoration. We do it not for ‘Thank Yous’ and plaudits. It is not about you, it is not all about me.
Indeed, it is not this one man’s thanks that is important, but that his thanks is expressed in turning around, conversion, and praising God, bowing down before Christ as his Master and as the Lord God.
Martin Luther was once asked to describe the nature of true worship. His answer was the tenth leper turning back.
Christ invites us into that region between Samaria and Galilee, that space between wrong-doing and right-doing, between them and us – and bids us find our healing and salvation – and theirs. And in doing that we find ourselves engaged, quite naturally, in true worship. And in Christ we realise that there is no us and them – there is only us.
‘Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David – that is my gospel’ (II Timothy 2: 8) … the icon cross in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Prayers (Sunday 12 October 2025, Trinity XVII):
The theme this week (12 to 18 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘A Life Dedicated to Care’ (pp 46-47). This theme is introduced today with a programme update on Sister Gillian Rose of the Bollobhpur Mission Hospital, Church of Bangladesh:
Sister Gillian Rose, now in her mid-80s, moved from England to Bangladesh in 1964 when the country was still known as East Pakistan. She has since devoted her life to serving at Bollobhpur Mission Hospital in Kushtia, western Bangladesh, and regularly writes letters to USPG to share updates.
In a recent letter, Sister Gillian describes the hospital as ‘a little oasis of peace,’ where staff live and work harmoniously together, regardless of religious or political background. In a country marked by political unrest, she finds joy in the sight of a diverse group of student nurses – Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists – living and working side by side.
Beyond providing medical care, the hospital offers spiritual support. Staff visit nearby villages three times a week, offering healthcare, prayers, and sacraments to those who wish to receive them. Sister Gillian concludes, ‘My faith is the basis of all I do, and faith is the foundation of the hospital’s work too. We are a Christian hospital, and we serve as a Christian witness in the community.’
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 12 October 2025, Trinity XVII) invites us to pray as we read and meditate on Luke 17: 11-19.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you:
pour your love into our hearts and draw us to yourself,
and so bring us at last to your heavenly city
where we shall see you face to face;
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, we pray that your grace
may always precede and follow us,
and make us continually to be given to all good works;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Gracious God,
you call us to fullness of life:
deliver us from unbelief
and banish our anxieties
with the liberating love of Jesus Christ our Lord.
‘Be joyful in God, all the earth; sing the glory of his name; sing the glory of his praise’ (Psalm 66: 1) … at the mouth of the river in Messonghi in Corfu (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Standing against fascism on the streets of London almost 90 years ago … the Battle of Cable Street on Sunday 4 October 1936 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
The choice of the Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is particularly apt. It comes after a month of constant bombing by the Trump regime of fishing boats in Caribbean waters simply because they fly the flags of Venezuela and Colombia, without supporting evidence for the excuses given and in violation of international law.
I do not agree where María Corina Machado stands on many political issues, nor am comfortable with many of her social values and views. But deomcracy is not democracy if it is not also for those democrats I do not agree with. If you want regime change, then María Corina Machado shows how to do it peacefully, unlike the Trump regime.
Trump is huffing and puffing. He thinks he has brought peace to the Middle East, and, honestly, I truly hope that in some way he has. But if peace arrives, it has been long overdue.
I am reminded of the epigram by the Roman historian Tacitus in his biography of his father-in-law, Agricola: ‘They make a desert and call it peace’. It is part of a speech by the Caledonian chieftain Calgacus, in which he condemns the Roman invaders, saying they ‘ravage, slaughter, and usurp under false titles; and that ‘where they make a desert, they call it peace’ – ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant – and it remains a critique of imperialism and the nature of violent conquest.
We may have peace, of sorts, in Middle East, but the hostages have yet to return to their families, much of Gaza is still going to remain occupied, the people of Gaza have been given no hope for either democracy or housing, and Gaza has been turned into a desert that is going to remain without peace for decades, if not generations.
Perhaps the real reasons any agreement has been reached in recent days is because Nethanyahu overstepped the mark when his planes bombed Qatar and tried to take out the Hamas negotiators. Without Qatar has a broker, and without anyone in Hamas left to talk to, the Middle East faced the prospect of a catastrophe close to Armageddon-like proportions.
I am sure too that the coalition parties that have supported Nethanyahu fear the generational consequences of the criticism they face from the families of the hostages, and were warned that continued in havoc and devastation in Gaza have become a contributing factor – not matter how illogical and offensive that is – in the rise of antisemitism.
Trump’s demands for the Nobel Prize are petulant and, as if he couldn’t get any lower – debasing. This is the man who claims the wars he has ended include a war between ‘Aber-baijan’ and Albania, although there is no such place as ‘Aber-baijan’, and he may have been referring to Azerbaijan and Armenia. Nor have Serbia and Kosovo or Egypt and Ethiopia recently gone to war, the border exhanges between Cambodia and Thailand never amounted to war and Malaysia was the mediator, the agreement between Rwanda and DRC signed in the White House, and both Pakistan and India, like Serbia and Kosovo, deny Trump every played a role in their negotiationss.
Trump’s promise was to end Russia’s war against Ukraine a key pledge in his re-election failed. The war continues relentlessly, nor has he ever renounced his desires to annex Greenland or even Canada. Meanwhile, war is being glorified and the Defence Department has been relabelled the War Department
Trump's obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize has taken internation attention away from the reality that rvery hour in every day brings yet another event in the White House or on the streets of towns and cities in the US that everone of us ought to find shocking. Here are 14 example of what has happened In the past week or two:
1, we have heard Trump in the White House admit he is taking away freedom of speech in defiance of court rulings;
2, government has been shut down and the Democrats are being blamed, even though the Republicans control the House, the Senate and the White House;
3, Trump has called for the arrest of the Mayor of Chicago and the Governor of Illinois, local politicians are being arrested by ICE on the streets, at press conferences and in hospitals, without warrants and without IDs;
4, a Presbyterian pastor, the Revd David Black, was shot in the head in Chicago by ICE agents who then laughed to one another;
5, congressional electoral boundaries are being redrawn to fix the elections next year;
7, racial profiling is now being used in making decksions about who to detain;
8, armed and masked men refuse to identify themselves as they lift people off the streets, family homes are being raided and families being broken up, and children don’t know where their parents are;
9, allies are traduced and betrayed, enemies are rewarded, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been humiliated while Putin has been feted;
10, people who are legally resident in the US are being deported to countries they never heard of and never lived in, or missing and unaccounted for, with no-one in charge being answerable or caring about these lost human lives;
11, troops have been deployed on the streets of Chicago, Washington DC, Portland and Memphis against the people they are supposed to defend and in defiance of locally elected state authorities;
12, pressure is put on television channels to sack comedians, journalists are being expelled from the White House press pool, and those who have tried to make Trump accountable legally in the past, including the former FBI director James Comey and the Attorney General of New York Letitia James, are being pursued through the courts with weaponised fraud charges;
13, the spectre of a non-existent organisation, Antifa, has been created and labelled ‘terrorist’ when there is no such organisation and the word simply means ‘anti-fascist’;
It is only a few years since any one of these events on any one day would have made headline news in newspapers and on major television news shows across the world. Had so many things happened in such a short span of time a few years ago in a small country in Central America or Latin America, there would have been sanctions or even a US-led invasion.
Have we become inured to what is happening in the US? We are no longer shocked or surprised. It is no longer headline news. And what comes out of MAGA mouths was parroted and mimicked by speaker after speaker at both the Reform and the Conservative party conferences in recent weeks.
If Robert Jenrick bothered, he might have seen the Handsworth I know, which is diverse, creative, culturally vibrant and has much that is beautiful (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Robert Jenrick fuelled a fire of toxic nationalism after he doubled down durinhg the Conservative Party conference this week on his commments about not seeing another white face in Handsworth. He spent, on his own admission, all of 90 minutes in Handsworth, but thinks he’s so knowledgeable about the place to tell Tories in Aldrige-Brownhills that it is ‘absolutely appalling. It’s as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country.’ He claims it’s not the kind of Britain – or Britian if you’re eating Badenoch-branded chocolate – he wants to live in. To make what he said even worse, he said unashamedly, he ‘didn’t see another white face there.’
There are some points I tried to make on Facebook earlier this week in response:
1, 90 minutes do not make someone an expert analyst on any topic, particularly if most of those 90 minutes are spent looking down at litter on the street or looking into a camera, rather than looking people in the face, or, even better talking to them.
2, Jenrick seems to want to talk to white people only. He did not talk to or listen to anyone who was not white. What sort of human being denies the dignity and shared humanity of another person because of their ethnicity or culture? There is only one word to answer that.
3, Jenrick thinks Handsworth is ‘as close as I’ve come to a slum in this country.’ Obviously, he does not know what a true slum is like, he has never visited a real slum. But then, if he had, he could not be so slick about the words he spouts out in his rush to judgment. Indeed, if he had ever visited some of the slums I know, and had a conscience, he would abandon his political and social opinions.
4, And Jenrick came with prejudice in the sense of pre-judging what to expect: if he bothered, he might have seen the Handsworth I know, which is diverse, creative, culturally vibrant and has much that is beautiful. Rushing to judgment without looking around you, without listening to people, without talking to them, and without respecting their lifestyle and integrity is contributing to shaping a Britain than none of us should want to emerge in the future.
Jenrick has described himself as an ‘Anglofuturist’. But Hope Not Hate, the anti-racist think-tank, has shown how Anglofuturist accounts on social media are full of AI-generated images moon bases emblazoned with the Union Jack, giant spaceships hovering over Westminster, and Maglev trains zooming through green and pleasant countryside.
Beneath the surface, however, some of the most prominent advocates in the Anglofuturist movement are deeply racist. The Hope Not Hare analysis of Anglofuturism raises awkward questions for Jenrick – who hopes soon to lead the Conservative Party – and the movement as a whole.
MAGA ideas have infected British politics. We can expected them to inspire Reform and their far-right partners painting flags on roundabouts, protesting outside hotels that house huddled and frightened asylum seekers, and waving their flags through the streets of London. But it is sad indeed how they have also become acceptable within one of the mainstream political parties. One Nation Tories are now very thin on the ground indeed, and figures such as Michael Heseltine (Lord Heseltine), Dominic Grieve and Andy Street seem to have become lone voices in their own party.
Standing against fascism … part of the mural at Saint George’s Town Hall commemorating the Battle of Cable Street in October 1936 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Democratic mayoral candidate for New York City, Zohran Mamdani, said this week, ‘No one should be surprised that Donald Trump is employing fascist tactics – prosecuting his opponents, weaponising the federal government and attacking the very fabric of our democracy.’
Writing in the Guardian today, the former Prime Minister Gordon Browne says the rise of Reform UK has parallels with the rise of the hard right in 'in every one of Europe's major countries and from India and Thailand to the US and Argentina, and the examples he cites from across Europe include Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and Slovakia.
But if democrats -- left, right and centre -- are going to unite to defeat the rise of this new fascism, it is important to ask: what is Fascism, and what is Anti-Fascism?
In a paper ‘Fascism Anyone?’ in the Spring 2003 edition of Free Inquiry, Lawrence Britt outlines 14 characteristics of fascism.
Britt studied the fascist regimes in many places in the 20th century, including Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, Suharto in Indonesia, the colonels in Greece and Pinochet in Chile. He found they had 14 elements in common, which he calls the identifying characteristics of fascism.
A similar list is based on his political novel June, 2004 about an authoritarian government in the US under a Republican administration. The book was published in 1998, while the list is found in an article published in 2003.
Britt’s 14 characteristics of fascism are:
1, Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism
2, Disdain for the importance of human rights
3, Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
4, The supremacy of the military/avid militarism
5, Rampant sexism
6, A controlled mass media
7, Obsession with national security
8, Religion and ruling elite tied together
9, Power of corporations protected
10, Power of labour suppressed or eliminated
11, Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
12, Obsession with crime and punishment
13, Rampant cronyism and corruption
14, Fraudulent elections
The Italian philosopher and author, Umberto Eco (1932-2016), is best known in the English-speaking world for his popular novel The Name of the Rose (1980). He also wrote extensively on fascism. In his essay ‘Ur-Fascism’ or ‘Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt’ (Il fascismo Eterno, or Ur-Fascismo), first published in 1995, Eco provided an analysis of fascism and a definition of fascism, discussed the fundamental characteristics and traits of fascism, and out forward some principles by which we can recognise fascism today.
He too identified 14 characteristics of fascism:
1, The cult of tradition: ‘One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.’
2, The rejection of modernism: ‘The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.’
3, The cult of action for action’s sake: ‘Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.’
4, Disagreement is treason: ‘The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.’
5, Fear of difference.: ‘The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.’
6, Appeal to a frustrated middle class: ‘One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.’
7, The obsession with a plot: ‘The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia.’
8, The enemy is both strong and weak: ‘By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.’
9, Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy: ‘For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.’
10, Contempt for the weak: ‘Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.’
11, Everybody is educated to become a hero: ‘In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.’
12, Machismo and weaponry: ‘Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of non-standard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.’
13, Selective populism: ‘There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.’
14, Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak: ‘All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.’
I can identify most of the 14 traits on both lists in the behaviour of the Trump regime and some right-wing politcians in the UK.
How many can you identify in speeches at the Reform and Conservative party conferences?
Meanwhile, as Charlie Kirk is being transformed into the Horst Wessel of the MAGA movement, I can imagine that somewhere in an attic in America or in an hotel room in England, a young girl is hiding, writing a diary.
Edith Cavell depicted in a bronze bust on her memorial by Henry Alfred Pegram (1862–1937) outside the Erpingham Gate at Norwich Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and tomorrow is the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVII, 12 October 2025).
The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Ethelburga (675), Abbess of Barking, and James the Deacon, seventh century companion of Paulinus. Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning 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.
‘Patriotism is not enough’ … the Edith Cavell Memorial in Saint Martin’s Place, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Luke 11: 27-28:
27 While he was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’ 28 But he said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’
The Edith Cavell Memorial near Trafalgar Square is the work of the sculptor Sir George Frampton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s reflection:
The Gospels – and in particular Saint Luke’s Gospel – are scattered throughout with short pithy sayings from Jesus that I am reminded of when I read the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the Pirkei Avot or Ethics of the Fathers in the Mishnah and Jewish tradition, or even the sayings of Zen masters.
This morning’s short Gospel reading quotes one of those short and pithy sayings or aphorisms from Jesus. It is one I thought of as an appropriate Gospel response last year when when Trump’s running mate JD Vance referred to Kamala Harris and spoke dismissively of ‘childless cat ladies’ who are ‘mean and mean spirited.’
The Trump campaign was infected in a thorough-going way with racism, misogyny, antisemitism and violence, and seems to be nourished by and feed on all four. A ‘childless cat lady’ seems to have the greater potential of being blessed in the way she may encourage ‘those who hear the word of God and obey it’.
Two fearless women among ‘those who hear the word of God and obey it’ are Elizabeth Fry (1845), the Prison Reformer, and Edith Cavell (1915), Nurse, who are normally commemorated in the Calendar of the Church of England on 12 October. However, we are unlikely to hear about them this weekend because their commemoration tomorrow falls on a Sunday (Trinity XVII, 12 October 2025).
Edith Cavell (1865-1915) is a striking example of those childless women who provide moral leadership in the face of violence and who realised the inappropriate values inherent in what passes as patriotism. I went to see two monuments to her last year: one close to Norwich Cathedral, where she is buried, the other in Saint Martin’s Place, close to Trafalgar Square and Saint Martin-in-the-Fields Church.
Edith Cavell was a matron at Berkendael Medical Institute in Brussels when World War I broke out in 1914. She nursed soldiers from both sides without distinction and helped 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium. She was arrested in August 1915, court-martialled, found guilty of treason, and shot by a German firing squad 110 years ago on 12 October 1915.
A month before the end of World War I, her statue in Norwich by Henry Pegram (1862-1937) was unveiled on 12 October 1918 by Queen Alexandra. It stood originally in the middle of the road opposite the then Cavell Rest Home for Nurses, which occupied part of the Maids Head Hotel. The depiction of the soldier offering a wreath represents the men she protected at the cost of her own life.
Her body was brought back from Belgium to Britain in May 1919 for a state funeral at Westminster Abbey and she was buried at Norwich Cathedral.
The sculptor Sir George James Frampton (1860-1928) accepted the commission for her monument in London, but declined any fee. He adopted a distinctively Modernist style for the memorial, which comprises a 3 metre high statue of Cavell in her nurse’s uniform, sculpted from white Carrara marble, standing on a grey Cornish granite pedestal. The statue stands in front of the south side of a larger 12-metre grey granite block. The top of the block is carved into a cross and a statue of a mother and child, sometimes interpreted as the Virgin and Child.
The inscription on the pedestal beneath her statue reads: ‘Edith Cavell / Brussels / Dawn / October 12th 1915 / Patriotism is not enough / I must have no hatred or / bitterness for anyone’. The last three lines quote her comment to the Revd Stirling Gahan (1870-1958), the Irish-born Anglican chaplain in Brussels, who shared Holy Communion with her on the night before her execution.
The face of the granite block behind the statue of Cavell bears the inscription ‘Humanity,’ and higher up, below the Virgin and Child, ‘For King and Country.’ Other faces of the block read ‘Devotion’, ‘Fortitude’ and ‘Sacrifice.’ On the rear face of the block is a carving of a lion crushing a serpent, and higher up is the inscription ‘Faithful until death.’
The memorial was unveiled by Queen Alexandra on 17 March 1920. The site was chosen because it was beside the first headquarters of the British Red Cross at 7 Saint Martin’s Place.
Edith Cavell was born on 4 December 1865 in Swardeston, near Norwich, where her father, the Revd Frederick Cavell (1824-1910), was the vicar for 45 years; her maternal grandmother was Irish. She was educated at Norwich High School for Girls, and at boarding schools at Clevedon, Somerset, and Laurel Court, Peterborough.
In 1888, when she was 23, Edith was governess in Keswick Hall, near Norwich, for the children in the Gurney family, the family of Elizabeth Fry, who is also commemorated in Common Worship on 12 October. She later spent five years with a family in Brussels, and began nursing training in London at the age of 30.
At the invitation of Dr Antoine Depage, she became the matron of a new nursing school in Brussels in 1907. She was visiting her widowed mother in Norfolk when World War I broke out. She returned to Brussels, where her clinic and nursing school were taken over by the Red Cross.
After the German occupation of Brussels in November 1914, Edith began sheltering British soldiers, helping them to escape to the neutral Netherlands, and hiding wounded British and French soldiers and Belgian and French civilians of military age.
She was arrested on 3 August 1915, charged with harbouring allied soldiers and war treason, despite not being a German national, and was sentenced to death. The First Geneva Convention guaranteed the protection of medical personnel, but this was forfeit if used as cover for belligerent action. At her trial, she made no attempt to defend herself.
The British government said it could do nothing to help her. But Hugh S Gibson of the US legation at Brussels made it clear to the German government that executing her would further harm Germany’s already damaged reputation. He reminded the Germans of the burning of Louvain and the sinking of the Lusitania.
The sentence of death by firing squad was confirmed at 4:30 pm on 11 October 1915, to be carried out before dawn the next day. Her final words to the German Lutheran prison chaplain, the Revd Paul Le Seur, were, ‘Ask Father Gahan to tell my loved ones later on that my soul, as I believe, is safe, and that I am glad to die for my country.’
Pastor Le Soeur realised that Edith could not receive spiritual help from someone in a German uniform. He hurriedly called for Horace Gahan who was not at home, but eventually the message reached him to meet the chaplain at his lodgings. Learning of Edith’s fate was a very shocking moment for him.
Gahan arrived with a pass at Saint Gilles Prison after 8:30 that evening 110 years ago, 11 October 1915, and went to Edith’s cell. There he found her calm and resigned. He recalled her words, ‘I have no fear or shrinking; I have seen death so often it is not strange, or fearful to me!’
They shared Holy Communion together and he stayed for an hour. She spoke kindly of her treatment in prison and said, ‘But this I would say, standing as I do in view of God and eternity, I realise that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.’
The meeting ended after they softly recited together the hymn Abide with Me. On leaving, he said ‘God Bless’; she smiled and replied tenderly, ‘We shall meet again.’
Sixteen men, forming two firing squads, carried out the death sentence on her and four Belgian men in Schaerbeek at 7 am on 12 October 1915. News reports after her execution were found to be only true in part. Even the American Journal of Nursing repeated the fictional account that she fainted and fell because of her refusal to wear a blindfold in front of the firing squad. Allegedly, while she lay unconscious, the German commanding officer shot her dead with a revolver. She was 49.
Pastor Le Seur, the German army chaplain, recalled at the time of her execution, ‘I do not believe that Miss Cavell wanted to be a martyr … but she was ready to die for her country … Miss Cavell was a very brave woman and a faithful Christian.’
Immediately after her execution, Horace Gahan wrote a moving account of their last meeting. It was sent through the US Legation to the Foreign Office in London, where it was released. Her story was used in war-time propaganda as an example of German barbarism and moral depravity.
Edith Cavell became the most prominent British female casualty of World War I, and many memorials were created around the world to remember her.
The reredos of the Last Supper behind the altar in Holy Trinity Church, Essex Street, Norwich, where Edith worshipped with her mother, was dedicated as a memorial to her. The Edith Cavell Health Care Campus is on the site of the former Edith Cavell Hospital in Peterborough, and there is a memorial to her in Peterborough Cathedral. She is also remembered in Peterborough in the name of the Cavell car park at the Queensgate shopping centre.
The Revd Horace Sterling Townsend Gahan (1870-1959), who shared Holy Communion with her on the evening before her execution, continued to live in Brussels until 1923, and there he was sometimes known affectionately as ‘Father Pat’ because of his Irish origins.
Gahan was born in Lurganboy, Co Donegal, on 11 November 1870, a son of Frederick Beresford Gahan, an engineer, and his wife, Katherine Jane (Townsend). He was ordained deacon (1894) and priest (1895), and worked in parishes in the Church of England until 1905, when he returned to Ireland. He moved to Brussels as the Anglican chaplain of Christ Church, just as World War I was about to break out. He returned to England and a parish in Leicester in 1923, and died in 1959.
Meanwhile, all those fears I had about the dangers of Trump returning to the White House, with his brutal interpretation of ‘patriotism’, have become a reality in the 12 months since I first wrote about those fears as I reflected on Edith Cavell and Elizabeth Fry.
I was reminded then, as I am once again this morning, of two pithy sayings in the Pirkei Avot or Ethics of the Fathers: ‘Your house should be open wide, and you should treat the poor as members of your household’ (1: 5) … ‘On three things the world continues to exist: On justice, truth, and peace’ (1: 18).
The monument to Edith Cavell near Norwich Cathedral, where she is buried (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Prayers (Saturday 11 October 2025):
The theme this week (5 to 11 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘Disability inclusion in Zimbabwe’ (pp 44-45). This theme was introduced last Sunday with Reflections from Makomborero Bowa, Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy Religion and Ethics in the University of Zimbabwe.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 11 October 2025) invites us to pray:
Father, help us to unite as the Body of Christ to ensure that the Church is a place of true inclusivity.
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.
Collect on the Eve of Trinity XVII:
Almighty God,
you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you:
pour your love into our hearts and draw us to yourself,
and so bring us at last to your heavenly city
where we shall see you face to face;
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 Holocaust Memorial Stone at the east end of Bourton Park, Buckingham, was installed in 2021 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Patrick Comerford
In the Jewish calendar, Shabbat Chol Hamoed Sukkot begins at sunset this evening and end at sunset tomorrow evening. This is the Shabbat that falls in the middle of the week-long festival of Sukkot, known as the ‘Intermediate Shabbat’. It is a significant Shabbat that features special Torah readings from the Book of Exodus, discussing Moses’s request to see God’s glory and God’s proclamation of his attributes. The Haftarah reading is from the Book of Ezekiel, prophesying the war of Gog and Magog, and the Book of Ecclesiastes is also read in some synagogues.
On a warm sunny autumn morning last week, I visited the Holocaust Memorial Stone in Bourton Park, Buckingham. The memorial has become the venue for the Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in Buckingham each year.
The Holocaust Memorial Stone was installed at the east end of Bourton Park in 2021. Several years ago, Ruth Newell, a past mayor, initiated a fundraising drive to place a Holocaust memorial in one of the town’s parks. What began as a small initiative grew into a significant community event.
Buckingham Town Council commissioned Louis Francis, a local stonemason and master letter carver, to engrave the Holocaust Memorial Day emblem and the lettering. The stone is bedrock, sourced from the Brackley Road cemetery in Buckingham. It was transported, as a gesture to the community, by a local firm Paragon Tool Hire.
The Holocaust Day ceremony earlier this year (27 January 2025) was led by the Mayor of Buckingham, with readings from Ruth Newell, a former mayor, and from Stan Cohen, a representative of the Milton Keynes Synagogue. The service included readings, survivors’ stories and moments of silence, with time to pause and reflect on the immense loss and the vital lessons learned from this tragic period in history.
Around 25 primary school students from Bourton Meadow Academy showcased their recent work on the Holocaust, following a visit to Bletchley Park. Staff and sixth form students from Furze Down School contributed a vibrant hand-painted banner to the event, with bright colours and thoughtful designs symbolising hope and resilience.
Buckinghamshire has a total of 1,688 Jewish people, according to census figures, making up 0.3% of the population. There are at least two Jewish communities in Buckinghamshire, represented by the Milton Keynes and District Reform Synagogue, based in north Milton Keynes, and the South Bucks Jewish Community, which holds its services and events near Amersham.
Louis Francis engrave the Holocaust Memorial Day emblem and the lettering in Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
After visiting the Holocaust memorial I went for a long walk by the banks of the River Great Ouse and through Bourton Park. It was a sunny day, and it was still within the Ten Days of Awe, the High Holy Days that ended with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, last week (2 October 2025).
It is the most popular of Buckingham’s three main parks, with plenty of space to explore nature, exercise and play. The river and a series of ponds create a diverse eco-system including otters, kingfishers and dragonflies as well as wildflower and meadow areas.
Bourton Park’s hard-surface paths are accessible and suitable for running or long walks, and the park is the home of Buckingham Parkrun and Junior Parkrun. The Trim Trail has outdoor exercise equipment for pull-ups, hurdles, sit-ups and more. There is a multi-use games area for basketball and football and a table tennis table. A fenced area caters for toddlers, while a senior play area has a zip wire, balance trail and spinners.
As I walked by River Great Ouse in the park, with a vast number of weeping willows along the river bank, I found myself repeating the opening words of Psalm 137, so often associated with Holocaust commemorations:
1 By the rivers of Babylon –
there we sat down and there we wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 On the willows there
we hung up our harps.
3 For there our captors
asked us for songs,
and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying,
‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
4 How could we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
6 Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy.
Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום
‘By the rivers of Babylon – there we sat down and there we wept (Psalm 137: 1) … by the River Great Ouse in Bourton Park, Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
‘If it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you’ (Luke 11: 20) … the finger of God touches Adam in Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel (1508-1512)
Patrick Comerford
We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, with the Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVI, 5 October).
The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Paulinus (644), Bishop of York, Missionary, and Thomas Traherne (1636-1674), Poet and Spiritual Writer.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning 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.
‘He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons’ (Luke 11: 15) … a gargoyle at Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Luke 11: 15-26 (NRSVA):
15 But some of them said, ‘He casts out demons by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons.’ 16 Others, to test him, kept demanding from him a sign from heaven. 17 But he knew what they were thinking and said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself becomes a desert, and house falls on house. 18 If Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? – for you say that I cast out the demons by Beelzebul. 19 Now if I cast out the demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your exorcists cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. 20 But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you. 21 When a strong man, fully armed, guards his castle, his property is safe. 22 But when one stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away his armour in which he trusted and divides his plunder. 23 Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
24 ‘When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting-place, but not finding any, it says, “I will return to my house from which I came.” 25 When it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. 26 Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first.’
‘When a strong man, fully armed, guards his castle, his property is safe’ (Luke 11: 21) … Ballybur Castle, the former seat of the Comerford family near Callan, Co Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s reflection:
In this morning’s Gospel reading, Christ is challenged about whether his work is the work of God or the work of the Devil.
Too often, when I am offered the opportunity to do the right thing, to make a difference in this society, in this world, I ask: ‘What’s in this for me?’ And how often do I challenge others when they are doing the right thing, questioning their motives and wondering ‘Wat’s in it for them?’
When I am asked to speak up for those who are marginalised or oppressed, this should be good enough reason in itself. But then I wonder how others are going to react – react not to the marginalised or oppressed, but to me, and then jealous or feeling hubris when others are seeing to do the right thing when I failed to respond?
How often have I seen what is the right thing to do, but have found an excuse that I pretend is not of my own making?
How often do I think of doing the right thing only if it is going to please my family members or please my neighbours?
How often do I use the Bible to justify not extending civil rights to others?
How often do I use the Bible to condemn others when I know, deep down, that they are doing the right thing for other people?
How often do I use obscure Bible texts to prop up my own prejudices, forgetting that any text in the Bible, however clear or obscure it may be, depends, in Christ’s own words, on the two greatest commandments, to love God and to love one another.
We can convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing when we are doing it for the wrong reason. A wrong decision taken once, thinking it is doing the right thing, but for the wrong reason, is not just an action in the present moment. It forms habits and it shapes who we are, within time and eternity.
The Revd Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), a prominent German Lutheran pastor and an outspoken opponent of Hitler, spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. He once said:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.
What we do today or fail to do today, even if we think it is the right thing to do but we do it for the wrong reasons, reflects how we have formed ourselves habitually in the past, is an image of our inner being in the present, and has consequences for the future we wish to shape.
As TS Eliot writes:
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past (‘Burnt Norton’).
How is the Church to recover its voice and speak up for the oppressed and the marginalised, not because it is fashionable or politically correct today, but because it is the right thing to do today and for the future?
Surely all our actions must depend on those two great commandments – to love God and to love one another.
‘Now if I cast out the demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your exorcists cast them out?’ (Luke 11: 19) … an image at La Lonja de la Seda in Valencia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Prayers (Friday 10 October 2025):
The theme this week (5 to 11 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Disability inclusion in Zimbabwe’ (pp 44-45). This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections from Makomborero Bowa, Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy Religion and Ethics in the University of Zimbabwe.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 10 2025) invites us to pray:
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for the way you perfectly modelled care and compassion.
The Collect:
God our Saviour,
who sent Paulinus to preach and to baptize,
and so to build up your Church in this land:
grant that, inspired by his example,
we may tell all the world of your truth,
that with him we may receive the reward
you prepare for all your faithful servants;
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:
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 Paulinus and all your saints
in the eternal banquet of Jesus Christ our Lord.
‘Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future / And time future contained in time past’ (TS Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’) … the clock on Donegall House in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
