The Maids of Moreton: were they generous benefactors of the church? Or are they merely a local legend?

Who were the Maids of Moreton? … a hidden memorial below the floor and near the north door in Saint Edmund’s Church, Maids Moreton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

In recent days, I have been describing my visits to the village of Maids Moreton, a mile or two outside Buckingham, and I have been looking at its traditional timber-framed and cruck houses, the thatched cottages and Saint Edmund’s Church, the oldest building in the village. The church dates back to the late 14th century, but, as I suggested on Sunday afternoon, it probably stansd on the site of an earlier, Anglo-Saxon church, and many of the pretty houses and cottages date back to the 16th and 17th century.

Local lore says Maids Moreton takes its name from two sisters, the Maids of Maids Moreton, who also co-founded or re-founded the parish church in the village. The legend is so popular and so widely accepted and believed that the sisters are commemorated in a number of ways in different parts of the church.

Tradition in Maids Moreton says the two sisters lived at Manor Farm, a 16th-century house in Maids Moreton.

But who were the Maids of Moreton?

What were their names?

Indeed, did they ever live?

Are they historical people? Or are they merely part of a popular story, albeit heart-warming and inspiring?

By tradition, the church is said to have been built by two pious maiden ladies of the Peyvre family. But this tradition is first recorded only in 1644 in the Civil War diary of the antiquarian Richard Symonds, 200 or 300 years after the sisters are said to have lived.

A stone slab now under a section of the nave floor near the north door that can be lifted, carries the outline of the commemorative brasses for two women with a hairstyle that is said to date the figures to a time between ca 1380 and 1420, and there are reproductions of the images of the two figures in the north-east corner of the chancel.

So, I returned to the church yesterday, and there the Rector, the Revd Hans Taling, and I lifted the covering in the floor to see the brass and stone memoorial with the two figures, its heraldic images and an inscription that dates from as recently as 1890.

The 17th century painted inscription above the north door of the church in Maids Moreton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Above the north door of thde church is a 17th century painted inscription with the coat of arms of the Pever or Peyvre family and commemorating the founding of the church with the words: ‘Sisters and Maids, Daughters Of The Lord Peovre. The Pious and Munificent Founders of this Church.’

Thomas Peyvre (1344-1429) may well have paid for rebuilding the church. He acted as a banker and would have had the kind of wealth needed to pay for the work. But we start encountering problems when we realise that the painted inscription is 300-350 years later than Thomas Peyvre’s lifetime.

In addition, this is the heraldic emblem of a man, not that of a woman or of two sisters, they are not named, and their father is not clearly identified.

Below this, a black-and-white image shows two women with interlocked arms and in 16th or 17th century dress. But this depiction does not match the images in the brass and stone monument set in the nave floor below, nor does it match the two brass rubbings in the chancel, and it has no label, caption or description, and no explanation of its provenance.

Who were the Maids of Moreton? … an image above the north door in Saint Edmund’s Church, Maids Moreton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Revd Hans Taling and I lifted the floor covering in the nave near the north door yesterday to see the stone slab and to inspect the commemorative brasses for two women with hairstyles that are said to date the figures to a 40-year time period between ca 1380 and 1420.

New brasses were inserted in 1890, and a tablet under the feet of the figures bears the inscription: ‘In pious Memory of two Maids, daughters of Thomas Pever, Patron of this Benefice. These figures are placed in the ancient Matrix by MT Andrewes, Lady of the Manor, in 1890. Tradition tells that they built this church and died about 1480.’

But Thomas Peyvre’s only daughter Mary was not what was once called a ‘maid’, nor was she one of two sisters. She died before her father, but by then she had married John Broughton. Their son, also John Broughton, inherited both the Peyvre and the Broughton estates.

Once again, this inscription was put in place about 500 years after the date it gives for the death of the two sisters, and that date, ca 1480, is perhaps a century after both the dating of the images and the probable date when the church itself was built.

Research in 2016 found documents recording two sisters, named Alice and Edith de Morton, who held part of a manor in Moreton from 1393 to 1421. Could they have been the true maids of Maids Moreton and, if so, was the stone slab theirs? But then, if this is the case, the two shields with Peyvre arms on the slab are later embellishments, if not forgeries.

The reproductions of the hidden floor memorials in the chancel in Saint Edmund’s Church, Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The story of the Maids of Moreton has developed different strands over time. One version says the sisters were conjoined or ‘Siamese’ twins, and pictures were produced showing them with their arms linked, suggesting that they were joined at the arm.

This version of the tradition says that when one sister died, the other refused to be separated from her and so died also.

The maiden sisters are commemorated not only in the church and in the name of the village, Maids Moreton, but also in a Victorian poem by the Revd Joseph Tarver, Rector of Tyringham with Filgrave, Buckinghamshire.

The story of the Maids of Moreton seems to have been enriched with details from the legends of Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst or Chalkhurst (1100-1134), conjoined twins commonly known as the ‘Biddenden Maids’, who were from Biddenden in Kent. But the story of the ‘Biddenden Maids’ is new known to be a legend, drawing in part on ancient Irish manuscripts, including the Chronicon Scotorum, the Annals of the Four Masters and the Annals of Clonmacnoise.

Perhaps we should stop trying to match the name of Maids Moreton with the legends associated with the ‘Maids of Moreton’ and the foundation of Saint Edmund’s Church, and simply allow a good story to remain a good story – and nothing more than that.

Saint Edmund’s Church in Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire, dates from the late 14th century but probably stands on the site of an earlier Anglo-Saxon church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in the Kingdom Season: 11, Tuesday 11 November 2025

At my ordination as deacon in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on 25 June 2000 … priests remain deacons after ordination to the priesthood (Photograph: Valerie Jones)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints and Advent. This week began with the Third Sunday before Advent, which was also Remembrance Sunday (9 November 2025. The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Martin, Bishop of Tours, ca 397, and today is Armistice Day or Remembrance Day (11 November).

I have a meeting of the Town Council Working Group in Stony Stratford later this evening. But, before today begins, before having breakfast, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

With Archbishop Walton Empey at my ordination as deacon in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on 25 June 2000 (Photograph: Valerie Jones)

Luke 17: 7-10 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said to his disciples,] ‘7 ‘Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, “Come here at once and take your place at the table”? 8 Would you not rather say to him, “Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink”? 9 Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”’

‘Will you strive for justice and peace …, and respect the dignity of every human being’ … a reminder of the Baptismal Covenant and the charges to ordinands in the Episcopal Church during a protest in the US

Today’s reflections:

Slaves were expected to do their duties, and no master would absolve a slave of them. So how then could a slave eat before his master? The master stands for God and the slave for his people.

There are two Greek words for service in this short passage.

In verse 8, the word to serve, διακονέω (diakonéo), relates particularly to supplying food and drink. It means to be a servant, attendant, domestic, to serve, wait upon. It is the same term that gives us the word ‘deacon’ in the ministry of the Church.

In the New Testament, the service of this type of servant is different to the role of a steward or a slave. It means to minister to someone, to render service to them, to serve or minister to them; to wait at a table and to offer food and drink to the guests. It often had a special reference to women and the preparation of food. It relates to supplying food and the necessities of life.

The story is told about a young curate in his first year of ordained ministry, and who was attending a parish function for pensioners. When he was asked by the rector’s wife to go around the tables and top up the cups of tea, he protested, insinuating that this was not what he had been ordained for.

‘Oh,’ said the rector’s wife. ‘Did you not know it’s a deacon’s job to serve at tables?’

The second word, δοῦλος (doulos), in verses 7, 9 and 10, refers to a slave, someone who is in a servile condition. But this word also refers metaphorically to someone who gives himself or herself up to the will of another, those whose service is used by Christ in extending and advancing the Kingdom.

The Greek word translated worthless (ἀχρεῖος, achreios, verse 10) means those to whom nothing is owed, or to whom no favour is due. So, God’s people should never presume that their obedience to God’s commands has earned them his favour.

Do those of us in ministry expect extra credit and rewards other than knowing that we have answered the call of God and the call of the Church?

Do we expect our faith to sow seeds for the faith and deeds of others that bears fruit for which we gain no praise or glory?

Are we engaged in lives of service?

Are we expecting to be servants and slaves in the ministry of the Church?

At the ordination of deacons, bishops recall that deacons ‘remind the whole Church that serving others is at the heart of all ministry.’

They go on to say: ‘Deacons have a special responsibility to ensure that those in need are cared for with compassion and humility. They are to strengthen the faithful, search out the careless [those with no-one to care for them] and the indifferent, and minister to the sick, the needy, the poor and those in trouble.’

Deacons are asked at ordination: ‘Will you be faithful in visiting the sick, in caring for the poor and needy, and in helping the oppressed? Will you promote unity, peace and love …?’

When I was ordained a priest, I was reminded that I still remain a deacon in the Church of God, a slave and a servant of God and of his Kingdom.

An image of Saint Martin of Tours at Carfax Tower, a reminder of Saint Martin’s Church in Oxford … his feastday is 11 November (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 11 November 2025):

The theme this week (9 to 15 November) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Hope for the Future’ (pp 54-55). This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections from Laura D’Henin-Ivers, Chief Executive Officer at Hope for the Future, to mark COP30 in Brazil this week.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 11 November 2025) invites us to pray:

Lord of justice, we lift up all those who speak truth to power at COP30 and beyond. Give courage to leaders and activists striving for policies that safeguard our planet. May their work reflect your righteousness and wisdom.

The Collect:

God all powerful,
who called Martin from the armies of this world
to be a faithful soldier of Christ:
give us grace to follow him
in his love and compassion for the needy,
and enable your Church to claim for all people
their inheritance as children of God;
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.

Post Communion Prayer:

God, shepherd of your people,
whose servant Martin revealed the loving service of Christ
in his ministry as a pastor of your people:
by this eucharist in which we share
awaken within us the love of Christ
and keep us faithful to our Christian calling;
through him who laid down his life for us,
but is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Anglican participants at the 2012 Edinburgh consultation on the diaconate (from left): Canon Patrick Comerford, Canon Frances Hiller, Revd Sarah Gillard-Faulkner, Bishop John Armes, Elspeth Davey, Church Relations Officer, Scottish Episcopal Church

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

As President Michael D Higgins steps down after 14 years, he has earned the nation’s gratitude

With President Michael D Higgins and Brendan Howlin during the 2011 Presidential election campaign at the Wexford Ambassadors initiative in Iveagh House, Dublin

Patrick Comerford

President Michael D Higgins formally relinquishes office as President of Ireland at midnight tonight (Monday 10 November 2025), and Catherine Connolly becomes president at an inauguration ceremony in Dublin Castle tomorrow (Tuesday 11 November 2025).

In her inauguration speech, she is expected to indicate some of the themes and priorities of her presidency and the projects she hopes to undertake. After her election victory, she spoke in Dublin Castle of a new-style Republic, so tomorrow she may touch on that and on her plans to revisit communities across the country she visited during her campaign.

As President Michael D Higgins prepares to step down tonight, I find it appropriate to look back on my memories of his commitment to peace and social justice, and some of the many achievements of this president, poet, politician, academic and campaigner.

I first got to know Michael Higgins over 50 years ago. We were both delegates at the Labour Party conference in Cork in 1973, when he slept on the floor in the rooms I was sharing with Philip orish, another Wexford constituency delegate in Moore’s Hotel.

Both as a senator (1973-1977, 1983-1987) and as a TD (1981-1982, 1987-2011), he was an active supporter of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), took part in the protests against President Ronald Reagan’s visit to Ireland in 1984 and later against the war in Iraq, and was also deeply committed to campaign groups focussed on Latin American issues, particularly in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

In those years, we took part together in many protests outside the US Embassy in Dublin. I was among his guests in the Mansion House in Dublin in 1992 when he was presented with the Sean MacBride Peace Prize by the International Peace Prize – Sean MacBride had been president of both Irish CND and the IPB.

The measure of the man’s international acclaim as a poet, a key figure in shaping cultural policies across Europe and his reputation internationally was edident when I was writing regularly for The Irish Times on Greek politics and culture in the 1990s. Once when I was interviewing the Greek Minister of Culture, Professor Evangelos Venizelos, in Athens, the first person he asked about was Michael D Higgins, and he asked me to convey much he appreciated both his poetry and his standing among politicians in Pasok and other European socialist parties.

With President Michael D Higgins at a Pax Christi seminar on cluster munitions in Dublin in 2008

I was invited, unexpectedly, in 2008 to chair a seminar organised by Pax Christi, the International Catholic Peace Movement, on the topic: ‘Towards a Comprehensive Ban on Cluster Bombs.’ The seminar also saw the launch of Pax Christi’s campaign, ‘Make Cluster Bombs History.’

The speakers included Michael D Higgins, then President of the Labour Party and Labour spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, the President of Pax Christi Ireland, Bishop Raymond Field, and Joe Little of RTÉ, who spoke on the effects of cluster munitions in Lebanon.

When Mr Higgins was elected President in 2011, peace and anti-war groups, including PANA, the Irish Anti-War Movement (IAWM), Shannonwatch and Galway Alliance Against War (GAAW), expressed the hope that his time as President would further the cause of peace and bring a renewed focus on the importance of Irish neutrality, causes he has passionately defended throughout his political career.

He consistently opposed the use of Shannon, a civilian airport, for the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. He was critical of the apparent Irish collusion with the US government in relation to suspected rendition flights through Shannon, and he once called on the government to withdraw Irish military personnel from Afghanistan. Hundreds of armed US troops passed through Shannon Airport each day without any oversight or inspection of planes suspected of carrying illegally kidnapped prisoners, CIA assassination crews or dangerous munitions.

President McAleese opened the doors of Áras an Uachtaráin to people working for peace, development and human rights

When his presidential election campaign began in June 2011, Michael D Higgins was one of the speakers at the launch of the Wexford Ambassadors programme in Iveagh House, Dublin. The programme was launched by the Minister for Public Expenditure, Brendan Howlin, Labour TD for Wexford, and the chair of Wexford County Council, Councillor Michael Kavangh. The first four appointed Wexford Ambassadors that evening were the writers Colm Tóibín and Eoin Colfer, the rugby international Gordon D’Arcy and the soccer international Kevin Doyle. His predecessor as President, President Mary McAleese, opened the doors of Áras an Uachtaráin to those she encouraged in work for peace, development, human rights and interfaith dialogue.

She warmly welcomed me to Áras an Uachtaráin on Sean MacBride’s 100th birthday; when she publicly thanked and affirmed Development and Mission workers and agencies for work in Africa; and when an interfaith group of Christians and Muslims from Egypt were visiting Ireland in 2006.

President Higgins was in office during the difficult ‘decade of centenaries’, including those of the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant, the 1913 Lock-Out, World War I and its many battles, the 1916 Rising, the First Dail and the Irish War of Independence, and he lived up to his pledge that in office he would continue President McAleese’s work to help heal the wounds of the Troubles in Ireland.

His first official engagement as President of Ireland was attending the Remembrance Sunday service in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, and he was there again as President for the last time yesterday. His second inauguration ceremony in 2018 was held in the evening so that he could attend the Armistice Day commemorations in the morning – two opportunities that President-elect Connolly should not miss when she is in office and seeks to demonstrate that she is the President for all the people.

Bruce Kent and President Michael D Higgins at the presentation of the Sean MacBride Peace Prize medals in All Hallows College, Drumcondra in 2012 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A year after his inauguration, and 20 years after he received the Sean MacBride Peace Prize, President Higgins was invited by the International Peace Bureau to present the 2012 Sean MacBride Peace Prize to two Arab activists, Dr Lina Ben Mhenni from Tunisia and Dr Nawal El-Sadaawi from Egypt, for their courage and contributions to the ‘Arab Spring.’ I was present as President of Irish CND at the ceremony and his address in All Hallows’ College, Drumcondra, that evening.

The ceremony marked the opening of the annual conference of the International Peace Bureau, and it was the first time the IPB council ever met in Ireland in over 100 years of its history. Old friends and fellow campaigners who were there that night included Caitriona Lawlor, who worked for many years with Sean MacBride, Brendan Butler, a long-time activist on Central American rights, David Hutchinson-Edgar of Irish CND, Roger Cole of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance, Joe Murray of Afri, Tony D’Souza of Pax Christi, and Rob Farmichael, the nonviolence activist.

The evening ended in conversation with President Higgins and the veteran international peace activist, the late Bruce Kent, who had been a personal friend since the mid-1970s.

Canon Patrick Comerford speaking at the National Famine Commemoration in Glasnevin Cemetery with President Michael D Higgins in 2016 (Photograph: Church Review)

President Higgins and I both spoke at the annual National Famine Commemoration in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, in 2016, when he accused European nations failing to respond to their humanitarian obligations to refugees and said they should learn the lessons of the Great Famine in Ireland. He compared some of the rhetoric used today about people crossing the Mediterranean ‘marine grave’ to media reports during the worst period of Ireland’s 19th century catastrophe. Between 1845 and 1849, over a million people died of hunger and related diseases, and two million fled a country ‘with no hope.’ Many who emigrated faced fresh marginalisation on arrival on foreign shores.

President Higgins asked: ‘Is there not a lesson for all of us, as we are faced in our own time with the largest number of displaced people since World War II, as the Mediterranean becomes, for many, a marine grave, as European nations fail to respond to their humanitarian obligations?’

I was at that commemorative service on behalf of the Church of Ireland and said in my prayers: ‘As we remember those who were driven from this land in their hunger, in their thirst, and in their quest for justice and mercy, and how they left on the high seas, let us pray for those who are driven from their own lands as they hungered and thirsted for justice and mercy.’

I added: ‘Let us pray in particular for the people of Syria, for those who are on the high seas in the Aegean and the Mediterranean, and those who flee places where climate change and our inaction deprives them of justice and forces them to choose between, on the one hand, hunger and thirst at home, and short measures of justice and mercy in the countries they reach.’

Another speaker that Sunday was the then Minister for the Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Ms Heather Humphreys, the other candidate in last month’s Presidential election.

Ireland has been well served by Michael D Higgins as President of Ireland, and he has used the office to keep reminding everyone of important values both at home and internationally.

President Michael D Higgins at the presentation of the Sean MacBride Peace Prize in All Hallows’ College, Drumcondra, in 2012

Daily prayer in the Kingdom Season: 10, Monday 10 November 2025

You could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea,” and it would obey you (Luke 17: 6) … a mulberry tree in Stoke Bruerne, Northamptonshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints and Advent. This week began with the Third Sunday before Advent yesterday, which was also Remembrance Sunday. The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Leo the Great (461), Bishop of Rome, Teacher of the Faith.

Before today begins, before having breakfast, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘World’s Smallest Seed,’ 40”x30” oil/canvas, by James B Janknegt

Luke 17: 1-6 (NRSVA):

1 Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! 2 It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. 3 Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. 4 And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, “I repent”, you must forgive.’

5 The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’ 6 The Lord replied, ‘If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, “Be uprooted and planted in the sea”, and it would obey you.’

Mulberry Street in Whitechapel … welcomed 400 refugees who had been trafficked by boat in 1764 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s reflections:

I can honestly admit that I do not have green fingers.

For most of my life, I have no interest in gardening. I like sitting in a garden, reading in the sunshine, listening to the sound of the birds or a small fountain, enjoying the shade of the trees, and in summertime, eating out in the open.

So, it is not that I do not enjoy the garden. It is just that I have always felt I am no good at it.

It is an attitude that may have been nurtured and cultured from heavy hay-fever in my early childhood, hay-fever that comes back to haunt me perennially at the beginning of each summer.

I once bought a willow tree, in the early 1980s, sat with it in the back of a small car all the way back across Dublin, holding on to the tree as it stuck out the side window. By the time I got home, I was covered in rashes, and my eyes, ears and nose were in a deep state of irritation. It must have been related to the willow trees in the Psalms, because afterwards I sat down and wept.

For that reason alone, you could not call me a ‘tree hugger.’ But do not get me wrong … I really do like trees.

I relish spending time in the vast, expansive olive groves that stretch for miles and miles along the mountainsides in Crete, or in vineyards where the olive groves protect the vines.

But I cannot be trusted with trees. I was once given a present of a miniature orange tree … and it died within weeks. I have been given presents of not one, but two olive trees. One, sadly, died, the other grew but remained a tiny little thing.

Perhaps if I had just a little faith in my ability to help trees to grow, they would survive and mature.

Mulberries were introduced to England by the Romans and were commonly used for making mediaeval ‘murrey’ (sweet pottage) as well as for medicinal purposes. They were reintroduced in the early 17th century when James tried to establish native silk production in 1607-1609 when around 10,000 saplings were imported and distributed by William Stallenge and François Verton through local officials at six shillings for a hundred plants, less for packets of seeds.

The commercial project failed, black mulberries (morus nigra) being acquired rather than the white (morus alba) that silkworms tend to favour. But one of these mulberry plantations gave its name to Mulberry Street, a short quiet back street in Whitechapel, with the tall bell-tower of Saint Boniface, the German Roman Catholic Church, at one end.

There was a second mulberry garden close by, across Whitechapel Road in Mile End New Town, north of what is now Old Montague Street and east of Greatorex (formerly Great Garden) Street. Land to the east of that south of Old Montague Street appears also to have been similarly planted. Spitalfields was already at the beginning of the 17th century a centre of silk throwing and weaving.

The mulberry garden in Whitechapel became a market garden and then a pleasure ground, and was used of for a few weeks in 1764 as a temporary asylum for refugees. A tented camp was set up for around 400 deceived and destitute refugees from the Palatinate and Bohemia who had been abandoned on what they had thought was a journey to Nova Scotia. With local fundraising and charitable efforts, iniiated primarily by local churches and clergy, the refugees eventually left and found homes in South Carolina.

Housing development in the area began in the 1780s and 1790s. The Mulberry Tree public house once stood on the north side of Little Holloway Street, while Union Row later became Mulberry Street.

You may wonder why Christ decides to talk about a mustard seed and a mulberry tree, rather than, say, an olive tree. After all, as he was talking in the incident in this morning’s Gospel reading, he must have been surrounded by grove after grove of olive trees.

But, I can imagine, he is also watching to see if those who are listening have switched off their humour mode, if they have withdrawn their sense of humour. He is talking here with a great sense of humour, using hyperbole to underline his point.

We all know a tiny grain of mustard is incapable of growing to a big tree. So, what is Christ talking about here? Because, he not only caught the disciples off-guard with his hyperbole and sense of humour … he even wrong-footed some of the Reformers and many Bible translators who make mistakes about what sort of trees he is talking about this morning.

Why did Christ refer to a mustard seed and a mulberry or sycamine tree, and not, say, an olive tree or an oak tree?

Christ first uses the example of a tiny, miniscule kernel or seed (κόκκος, kokkos), from which the small mustard plant (σίναπι, sinapi) grows. But mustard is an herb, not a tree. Not much of a miracle, you might say: tiny seed, tiny plant.

But he then mixes his metaphors and refers to another plant. Martin Luther, in his translation of the Bible, turned the tree (verse 6) into a mulberry tree. The mulberry tree – both the black mulberry and the white mulberry – is from the same family as the fig tree.

As children, some of us sang or played to the nursery rhyme or song, Here we go round the mulberry bush. Another version is Here we go gathering nuts in May. The same tune is used for the American rhyme Pop goes the weasel and for the Epiphany carol, I saw three ships. TS Eliot used the nursery rhyme in his poem The Hollow Men, replacing the mulberry bush with a prickly pear and ‘on a cold and frosty morning’ with ‘at five o’clock in the morning.’

Of course, mulberries do not grow on bushes, and they do not grow nuts that are gathered in May. Nor is the mulberry a very tall tree – it grows from tiny seeds but only reaches the height of an adult person. It is not a very big tree at all. It is more like a bush than a tree – and it is easy to uproot too.

However, the tree Christ names (Greek συκάμινος, sikámeenos) is the sycamine tree, which has the shape and leaves of a mulberry tree but fruit that tastes like the fig, or the sycamore fig (συκόμορος, Ficus Sycomorus). Others think the tree being referred to here is the sycamore fig (συκόμορος, Ficus Sycomorus), a tree we come across later in this Gospel as the big tree that little Zacchaeus climbs in Jericho to see Jesus (Luke 19: 1-10).

The sycamine tree is not naturally pollinated. The pollination process is initiated only when a wasp sticks its stinger right into the heart of the fruit. In other words, the tree and its fruit have to be stung in order to reproduce. There is a direct connection between suffering and growth, but also a lesson that everything in creation, including the wasp, has its place in the intricate balance of nature.

Whether it is a small seed like the mustard seed, a small, seemingly useless and annoying creature like the wasp, or a small and despised figure of fun like Zacchaeus, each has value in God’s eyes, and each has a role in the great harvest of gathering in for God’s Kingdom.

Put more simply, it is quality and not quantity that matters.

Here are six little vignettes about faith that I came across recently:

1, Once all the villagers decided to pray for rain. On the day of prayer, all the people gathered, but only one little boy came with an umbrella. That is faith.

2, When you throw babies in the air, they laugh because they know you will catch them. That is trust.

3, Every night we go to bed without any assurance of being alive the next morning, but still we set the alarm to wake up. That is hope.

4, We plan big things for tomorrow in spite of zero knowledge of the future. That is confidence.

5, We see the world suffering, but still people get married and have children. That is love.

6, There is an old man who wears a T-shirt with the slogan: ‘I am not 80 years old; I am sweet 16 with 64 years of experience.’ That is attitude.

This morning’s Gospel reading challenges us to pay attention to our attitude to, to the quality of, our faith, trust, hope, confidence, love and positivity. And if we do so, we will be surprised by the results.

Meanwhile, the refugees in the Mulberry Gardens in Whitechapel over 260 years are a reminder that people have always been the victims of traffickers and people smugglers and that refugees have been arriving from cotinental Europe on these islands without documentation for centuries. But the compassionate and practical response of the local churches and clergy shows that small actions by people of faith, no matter what size that faith may be, can bring about positive results and create justice.

Mulberry Hall at 17-19 Stonegate, York, dates from 1434 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 10 November 2025):

The theme this week (9 to 15 November) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Hope for the Future’ (pp 54-55). This theme was introduced yesterday with Reflections from Laura D’Henin-Ivers, Chief Executive Officer at Hope for the Future, to mark the opening of COP30 in Brazil today.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 10 November 2025) invites us to pray:

Creator God, you have entrusted us with this beautiful world. Forgive us for the ways we have misused its gifts and failed to protect its wonders. Inspire us to be faithful stewards, cherishing the land, waters, and all creatures who share this home with us.

During my prayers this morning I am also giving thanks for the 14 years Michael D Higgins has been President of Ireland, and the ways he has used that office to be a voice for social justice and peace around the world. I shall reflect on that again later this evening as term of office draws to a close.

Olive groves on the slopes beneath Piskopianó in Crete … why did Jesus talk about mustard plants and mulberry trees and not about olive trees? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect of the Day:

God our Father,
who made your servant Leo strong in the defence of the faith:
fill your Church with the spirit of truth
that, guided by humility and governed by love,
she may prevail against the powers of evil;
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 of truth,
whose Wisdom set her table
and invited us to eat the bread and drink the wine
of the kingdom:
help us to lay aside all foolishness
and to live and walk in the way of insight,
that we may come with Leo to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Figs ripening on a fig tree near the beach at Platanias, east of Rethymnon in Crete (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

Saint Edmund’s Church in Maids Moreton was rebuilt in the 1450s, but may date from the Anglo-Saxon period

Saint Edmund’s Church in Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire, dates from the late 14th century but probably stands on the site of an earlier Anglo-Saxon church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I was in Maids Moreton, on the edges of Buckingham, earlier last week, looking for the Old Rectory as part of my continuing research into the work of the Stony Stratford architect Edward Swinfen Harris (1841-1924).

Maids Moreton is a pretty Buckinghamshire village that retains its rural and rustic charms despite its proximity to Buckingham, with many timber framed houses and thatched cottages in the village. But the oldest building in Maids Moreton is the Parish Church of Saint Edmund, said to date from the late 14th century but probably standing on the site of an earlier Anglo-Saxon church.

Saint Edmund’s is dedicated to the ninth century Anglo-Saxon King Edmund who was martyred and beheaded by the Danes in Essex in the year 869. He is buried at Bury St Edmunds and Saint Edmund and Saint Edward the Confessor were the patron saints of mediaeval England until they were replaced by Saint George in the 15th century. Saint Edmund’s Day is later next week, on 20 November.

A modern portrait of Saint Edmund, king and martyr, in Saint Edmund’s Church, Maids Moreton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Edmund’s Church is a simple structure with a chancel, nave and tower, north and south porches and a south vestry that was extended in 1882. It is of exceptional quality in the Perpendicular style, a uniquely English variation of Gothic architecture that emphasises verticality, light and proportion. This is seen in the large windows with vertical mullions that continue downwards to stone seats. The most notable feature of the church are the four fan vaults that are contemporary with the building and among the earliest to be seen today.

The church was entirely rebuilt ca 1450, and later legends and local lore associate the founding or re-founding of the church with two women who became known as the Maids of Moreton. They were said to have been daughters of the last Thomas Pever, who died in 1429, and are said to give Maids Moreton its name.

The legend and its dating is further confused by a stone slab, originally in the centre of the nave and now under a section of the floor that can be lifted. It has the outline of the brasses of two women dated to ca 1380-1420. They too have been identified with the two women said to have given Maids Moreton its name.

Inside Saint Edmund’s Church, Maids Moreton, looking towards the chancel and the east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A late 12th century font and some 12th century moulded stones, reused in the rear arches of the windows of the north porch, are parts of an earlier church, and the list of rectors of the parish begins in 1241 with one Robert.

The windows throughout the church, with their tracery of vertical mullions and horizontal transoms, are the most obvious feature in the Perpendicular style. The original oak roofs of the nave and chancel remain. All the vaults in Saint Edmund’s are of an early design and construction, similar to the cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral, with the ribs doubling and re-doubling in number as the cone expands.

These architectural details suggest Saint Edmund’s Church was completed before 1400, and the unusually large number of stone seats, especially in the chancel, suggest it may have been intended for a singing school.

The chancel, the oldest part of Saint Edmund’s Church, may have been built before the Black Death in 14th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The chancel is the oldest part of the church and may have been built before the Black Death in 14th century, with the nave and tower built after that. The chancel roof is of two bays, the carved boss at the centre of the tie-beam shows Christ in Majesty sitting on a throne holding the world in his left hand while his right hand is raised in blessing.

The east window has a three-centred arch that is flat at the top rather than pointed in the Gothic tradition. Pieces of mediaeval glass at the top of the window indicate it originally depicted the Tree of Jesse, illustrating the genealogy of Jesus through King David.

The stained glass in the east window is the work of Percy Charles Haydon Bacon (1860-1935), who founded the firm of Percy Bacon & Brothers in 1892. He also made windows in Saint James the Great Church, Hanslope, and Saint Simon and Saint Jude Church, Castlethorpe.

The window by Percy Charles Haydon Bacon was installed in 1898 to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee the previous year. It shows five major events in the life of Christ: the Nativity; the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan by Saint John the Baptist; the Crucifixion; the Resurrection or Noli Me Tangere; and the Ascension, though with only two of the disciples, Saint Peter and Saint John.

The east window by Percy Charles Haydon Bacon was installed in 1898 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The altar or communion table replaced the pre-Reformation stone altar that may once have held relics of Saint Edmund, and a later Reformation-era table. The carved oak Jacobean table is dated 1623 and the carvings include dragons with grape vines emerging from their mouths, symbols of the Holy Spirit and the fruit of the Spirits, a rose and thistle symbolising the united crowns of England and Scotland, various faces and shields with the name of the donor John More, the donor, and the coat of arms of the More family.

The sedilia on the south side of the chancel has an elaborately carved canopy above the seats for the priest, deacon and subdeacon. The canopy is of chalk, and probably dates from the late 15th century. The painting behind is of uncertain date. It showed the Last Supper, and was defaced probably by Cromwellian soldiers.

The sedilia on the south side of the chancel with its elaborately carved canopy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The door on the north side of the chancel is made of wide vertical planks, mostly elm, and may have been made hastily to replace a door that Cromwellian soldiers broke through.

An elaborate monument in a recess in the centre of the north wall of the chancel commemorates Penelope Bate and her husband Edward Bate, the son of George Bate, who was the physician to Charles I, Oliver Cromwell and Charles II.

The lectern, now in the chancel, has an oak base and support, with an oak carving of an eagle. It was donated by Eliza Nickols of Oxford, in 1933, in memory of her mother, who was born in Maids Moreton.

The oak chancel screen dates from the 15th century. When Hugh Harrison, a consultant conservationist, examined the screen in 2012, he found convincing evidence that it was no later than the 15th century and had always been in its location. He said ‘the screen is one of the most complete, least altered or damaged mediaeval screens that I have ever seen.’

He found signs of the original red and green polychrome decoration. On top of the screen, at either end of the chancel arch, are two blackened oak figures with shields displaying the hammer and nails of the crucifixion. They may have been corbel fronts or bosses from an old roof.

The oak chancel screen dates from the 15th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The nave is divided into four bays by the spacing of the roof trusses. In each of the first, second and fourth bays on either side is a tall, finely-proportioned window of three transomed lights, cinquefoiled in both stages, with vertical tracery in a two-centred head.

In the third bay on either side are the north and south doorways, each set in a recess of the same character as those in the chancel, and rising to the same height as the heads of the windows.

The nave roof has four bays with carved bosses and a carved with a figure of Christ in Judgment sitting on a rainbow. The roof was renovated in 1882, overlaid with new timbers and reroofed.

The pulpit was presented by Bishop Edmund Harold Browne in memory of his parents (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The pulpit has carved oak rails in the Gothic style. It was presented by Edmund Harold Browne (1811-1891), Bishop of Ely, Bishop of Winchester and Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, in memory of his parents, who lived at Moreton House and are buried by the church tower.

On the wall behind the pulpit, an 18th century tablet recalls Penelope Packe (1699-1718), a granddaughter of Edward Bate, who is commemorated on the north wall in the chancel, and the first wife of Richard Verney (1693-1752), 13th Lord Willoughby de Broke; she died when she was only 18.

The remains of a piscina – a drain used in rinsing the Communion vessels – in the south-east corner of the nave indicate an altar was originally in that place. The side chapel may have been the Lady Chapel, with a niche in the corner and a peculiar squint or hagiascope, that provided a view of the High Altar, so that the elevation at the two celebrations could take place at the same time.

The font is from the earlier church and may date from the 1140s or 1150s (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The font, which is from the earlier church, is of late Norman character, and has a large circular bowl resting on a large octagonal base and stem. The bowl is decorated with a series of six ornamented and beaded semi-circles, each enclosing a large acanthus leaf, with smaller leaves in the intermediate spaces. The bowl is believed to have been made in the workshop at Saint Peter’s in Northampton in the 1140s or 1150s.

Above the north door is a 17th century painted inscription with the arms of the Peyvre family, commemorating the Maids of Moreton, the legendary founders of the church.

An early Victorian bread basket on the wall near the north door was once used to hold bread distributed to the poor of the parish after evensong in winter. The bread was paid for through a bequest from of John Snart who died in 1743. The basket was rediscovered in the attic of the Old Rectory in 1904. The loaves were last distributed in 1970.

The north porch has embattled parapets, winged cherubim and a fan-vaulted ceiling (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The north porch with its vaulted ceiling and early 17th century outer double door (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

An early 17th century double door in the outer entrance of the north porch is set in a frame with a balustered fanlight in the head, bearing the date 1637 and a shield with the heraldic arms of the Pever family.

The porch has embattled parapets, winged figures representing cherubim, and a handsome fan-vaulted ceiling.

The design and execution of the vault is almost identical to the cloister of Gloucester Cathedral. In the rear arches of the windows are some 12th century moulded stones, probably re-used from the original church.

The south porch is smaller and less elaborate than the north porch (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The south porch is smaller and less elaborate than that the north porch – it is without buttresses and has a plain parapet in place of battlements. The roof is fan-vaulted and the internal door was installed during restoration work in the 1880s.

The west doorway has an elaborate canopy and the west window has remains of 15th century glass (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The west doorway has an elaborate canopy, supported by two richly panelled cones of fan vaulting. The west window has remains of 15th century glass. At the top corners of the tower are winged figures identical to those on the north porch.

The tower has a ring of six bells that are regularly rung. The bellringers’ gallery was built as a memorial to the dead of World War II. On the south wall of the gallery hangs the old south door with musket-ball holes made by Roundhead troops in 1642.

The Uthwatt family commissioned Edward Swinfen Harris to rebuild the Old Rectory (1878-1879) beside Saint Edmund’s Church. A major, but sympathetic, restoration of the church was undertaken in 1882-1887. At the time, the Rector of Maids Moreton was the Revd Bolton Waller Johnstone (1823-1903). His parents, the Revd John Beresford Johnstone and Elizabeth Waller of Castletown Park, Co Limerick, were married in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, and he was born in Kilkenny and educated at Trinity College Dublin.

Inside Saint Edmund’s Church, Maids Moreton, looking towards the west end from the chancel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The church was reordered in 2015 when the chancel was cleared of accumulated furnishings and a level oak floor and a kitchen and toilet were added under the bellringers’ gallery.

The North Buckingham Parish is in the Diocese of Oxford and includes the villages of Akeley, Leckhampstead, Lillingstone Dayrell, Lillingstone Lovell and Maids Moreton and their churches, as well as part of the town of Buckingham.

The Revd Hans Taling is the Rector and the Revd Cathy Pearce is the Associate Priest.

The windows, with their tracery of vertical mullions and horizontal transoms, are the most obvious feature in the Perpendicular style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

• The Sunday services in Saint Edmund’s Church, Maids Moreton, at at 10:30, with Holy Communion on the second and fourth Sundays. Tn addition there are services at 8 am on the first and third Sundays and at 6 pm on the fourth Sunday.

The east end and chancel window of Saint Edmund’s Church, Maids Moreton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in the Kingdom Season: 9, Sunday 9 November 2025, III before Advent, Remembrance Sunday

‘Now there were seven brothers’ (Luke 20: 29) … the Seven Brothers Taverna at the Harbour in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints and Advent. In the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today is the Third Sunday before Advent and Remembrance Sunday.

Later this morning, I hope to sing with the choir at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, and in the afternoon I plan to attend the Remembrance Sunday commemorations at the War Memorial on Horsefair Green.

Meanwhile, before today begins, before having breakfast, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

The war memorial in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Luke 20: 27-38 (NRSVA):

27 Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him 28 and asked him a question, ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; 30 then the second 31 and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. 32 Finally the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.’

34 Jesus said to them, ‘Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; 35 but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 36 Indeed they cannot die any more, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 37 And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.’

‘Now there were seven brothers’ (Luke 20: 29) … the Seven Brothers Tavern at the Harbour in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections

When I was younger, much younger, I remember leafing through the pages of the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of Ireland during what I must have then thought were boring sermons.

Did you ever do that?

What did you come across?

Some things were undoubtedly more boring than any sermon, such as the list of sermons in the ‘Second Book of Homilies,’ listed in Article 35 of the 39 Articles.

But perhaps the most unusual thing I remember finding in the ‘old’ Book of Common Prayer was the ‘Table of Kindred and Affinity.’

It seeks to list ‘whosoever are related are forbidden by the Church … to marry together.’

The table – which is not there any more – ruled, for example, that a man may not marry his mother, his sister, his daughter, or numerous other relatives, and neither may a woman marry her uncle, nephew, grandparent or grandchild. That all makes common sense.

But it goes into obsessive detail with some surprising prohibitions. For example, a man may not marry his wife’s father’s mother or his daughter’s son’s wife.

I can still recall how my mind boggled at the thought of the need for such rules. What was life like back in the 16th century if the Church felt it needed to specify such prohibitions? And how many women had the opportunity even to contemplate marrying their deceased granddaughter’s husband?

At least six of the 25 relationships that are expressly prohibited from developing into marriage involve no genetic link at all. Yet the list did not prohibit marriages between first cousins. So some of the inconsistencies are striking, to say the least.

Some of the rules make sense: when extended families were the norm, and often lived under the same roof, these rules warned against exploitative relationships within family circles. They helped to prevent secret affairs that might have continued in the hope of their eventual ratification with marriage. And they clearly delineated family structures in ways that were important when it came to inheriting land and property and keeping them within the family.

But it could all have been, and was, dealt with anyway, through legislation and law.

What was something like that doing in a prayer book, in the Book of Common Prayer, in the first place?

I think it had less to do with morality and more to do with the Church needing to bolster long-held prejudices by cloaking them in statements that were good in part but in sum amounted to bad law and bad theology.

When the men who drew up this table in the Church, and the men who handed it down to Anglicans unquestioned for centuries, were getting their minds around some very peculiar relationships, did any one of them ever think about asking a woman, ‘What do you think about these obscure and arcane rules and regulations?’

Is the Church not doing the very same today, with the way it tries to rule about who can and who cannot get married in church today?

As the Church distances itself from marriages that are actually allowed in law today, who among senior decision-makers actually takes the time to ask the women and men who are refused Church marriages, ‘Would you like to be married in Church?’

For example, when Lyra McKee was murdered in Derry in 2019 Church leaders were right to rush to condemn her brutal murder. It was so fitting that she received a dignified funeral in a Church of Ireland cathedral, Saint Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, later that month. But had the bishops and priests who condemned her murder and were supportive of her funeral instead offered her the marriage she had looked forward to, they would have been severely disciplined by Church authorities.

And, as they were disciplined, I imagine, no-one would have asked Lyra McKee what she wanted, what she needed, what she had hoped for.

I think her plight would have been similar to the plight of the woman who is at the centre of the debate in this morning’s Gospel reading (Luke 20: 27-38).

Her plight was probably not plucked from thin air, not concocted in the narrow imaginations of the Sadducees, the prominent group of ruling priests in the Temple, who use her dilemma to try to paint Jesus into a corner.

They are not interested in her plight.

They are not interested in her dilemma.

They are not interested in the fact that a widow in that society who fails to remarry is left without financial means of support, is left in poverty, may even be forced into prostitution.

Who ever asked this woman what she would like?

Who ever asked her how she would like to end up in this life … never mind in the next life?

And just as they had no real interest in life after death for this widow, they had no interest in life before death for her.

If they had, they would have asked her how she felt not about eternal life but about her life in the here and now … how did she feel after the death of her husband and her husbands … how did she feel about being traded as a commodity to protect men’s property interests … how did they die … did they die in war …?

On Remembrance Sunday each year, I wonder how many men bothered to ask my grandmother how she felt when her husband, my grandfather, returned from Thessaloniki in the middle of World War I, suffering from malaria, malaria that would eventually take him to an early grave.

She was so distressed that the age she gave for him on his gravestone is 49 … not the age he was when he died in 1921 (which was 53), but the age he was in 1916, when he returned from the war in Greece.

Perhaps, in this very sad mistake, she was saying the war had killed her husband.

She lived as widow for another 27 years, bringing up six children, two stepchildren and the four children of her marriage. Who ever asked her what she felt about life-before-death, never mind life-after-death?

If we fail to listen to the plight of the victims of war, then war creeps up on us suddenly. And then we ask: ‘Why did no-one tell us.’

World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars. That promise was betrayed, for my grandmother, for all the men who are named on the war memorials in our churches, for their widows, mothers, sisters, daughters, for all who loved them, for all who continue to love them and to cherish their memories.

Wars continue to be waged in Ukraine and Russia … in Israel, Gaza and Palestine … in Sudan … in central Africa …in the caves and mountains of Afghanistan.

And when the war widows and refugees arrive in Britain or Ireland, they must wonder, in some places, whether we truly believe that love is at the heart of the Christian way of life.

The Sadducees in this morning’s reading do not believe in the afterlife anyway, so any answer Jesus gives is going to be ridiculed.

This woman, unnamed, is made an object by the people who come to Jesus with their silly questions. But none among them is truly concerned about her plight.

Her only role is to meet the obscure obligations set out in the arcane interpretations of the marriage code that make her an object. She has no name, no home; her only function is to serve the needs of men, to continue the family name and line, so that the family lands and wealth are not estranged.

But instead of dealing with trifling arguments that do not matter, Jesus avoids the debate and tells us three very straight truths:

• God is alive and loving.

• We are God’s children.

• Love is at the heart of true relationships.

Of course, we do not yet live in the fullness of God’s kingdom. People still marry, people still vote and run in elections, people still invest and spend money. When we do those things, they have most value when they reflect the values of God’s kingdom.

When they do not reflect kingdom values, they become debased and lose value, significance and meaning. It is easy to understand that in terms of the political, social and economic difficulties we face. It is more difficult to say that in terms of relationships and marriages.

How we inhabit the political and economic structures of this age can become a sign of our dwelling in God’s kingdom … if we live with those structures so that we give priority, not to our own self-interest and gain, but to the concerns and needs of the poor, the outcast and the marginalised.

If we live our committed relationships in this life with integrity and honesty and self-sacrifice, they can become signs of how we live our risen lives in the age to come.

And in the great working out of God’s great eternal plans, these are the three eternal truths that matter most:

• God is alive and loving.

• We are God’s children.

• Love is at the heart of meaningful relationships, with God and with others.

‘Now there were seven brothers’ (Luke 20: 29) … the Seven Brothers Taverna at the Harbour in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 9 November 2025, III Sunday before Advent, Remembrance Sunday):

The theme this week (9 to 15 November) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Hope for the Future’ (pp 54-55). This theme is introduced today with Reflections from Laura D’Henin-Ivers, Chief Executive Officer at Hope for the Future:

Read and meditate on Psalm 24.

On 10 November, COP30 begins in Brazil, marking a crucial moment in our collective journey to care for God’s creation. Climate change threatens the most vulnerable, from communities facing rising seas to farmers enduring droughts. As Christians, we are called to pray and act, advocating for justice and sustainability.

Faith calls us to action – just as prophets spoke against injustice, so must we raise our voices for the earth. Stewardship is a sacred trust. Through advocacy, sustainable living, and hope, we embody our love for God and neighbour.

At Hope for the Future, we believe in collaboration with decisionmakers for bold climate action. Faith communities hold a unique role, as trusted institutions, vital parts of local and national societal fabric, and moral guides. When we speak up for climate justice, we amplify our message, making it harder for leaders to ignore. Rooted in shared values, faith-driven advocacy builds meaningful change.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 9 November 2025, III Sunday before Advent, Remembrance Sunday) invites us to pray by reflecting on these words: ‘For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth’ (Job 19: 25).

The prayer diary yesterday invited us to pray: Lord of Peace, we pray for your peace to fill the world, healing divisions and bringing unity. May Christians everywhere commit to being prayerful, reflecting your love and sharing your peace with others.

A wilted poppy in the mud in a field in Comberford, Staffordshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty Father,
whose will is to restore all things
in your beloved Son, the King of all:
govern the hearts and minds of those in authority,
and bring the families of the nations,
divided and torn apart by the ravages of sin,
to be subject to his just and gentle rule;
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 of peace,
whose Son Jesus Christ proclaimed the kingdom
and restored the broken to wholeness of life:
look with compassion on the anguish of the world,
and by your healing power
make whole both people and nations;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Additional Collect:

God, our refuge and strength,
bring near the day when wars shall cease
and poverty and pain shall end,
that earth may know the peace of heaven
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Peeparations in Stony Stratford and Old Stratford for Remembrance Sunday (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org