‘And the fire and the rose are one’ (TS Eliot) … a candle and a rose on a dinner table in Minares on Vernardou Street, Rethymnon, in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (20 April 2025) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (8 June 2025), or Whit Sunday. This week began with the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Easter VI, 25 May 2025), and this Thursday is Ascension Day (29 May 2025).
The Calendar of the Church of England in
Common Worship today remembers Saint Augustine (605), first Archbishop of Canterbury; John Calvin (1564), reformer; and Saint Philip Neri (1591), founder of the Oratorians and spiritual guide. Today is the Spring Bank holiday in England. Before today begins though, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, reading today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
‘The Advocate … whom I will send to you from the Father’ (John 15: 26) … Christ with the Holy Spirit depicted above as a dove on a gravestone in Calverton Road Cemetery, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
John 15: 26 to 16: 4 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 26 ‘When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. 27 You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.
1 ‘I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. 2 They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. 3 And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. 4 But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them.’
‘… all shall be well and / All manner of thing shall be well’ … sunset seen from the Sunset Taverna in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Reflection:
The Gospel reading provided in the Lectionary at the Eucharist today (John 15: 26 to 16: 4) continues our readings from the ‘Farewell Discourse’ at the Last Supper in Saint John’s Gospel. Christ continues to prepare his followers for his departure, and repeats once again his promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost: ‘When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf’ (verse 26).
I think our thinking about the Holy Spirit is made difficult by traditional images of a dove that looks more like a homing pigeon; or tongues of fire dancing around meekly-bowed heads of people cowering and hiding in the upper room in Jerusalem, rather than a room that is bursting at the seams and ready to overflow.
But the Holy Spirit is not something added on as an extra course, as an after-thought after the Resurrection and the Ascension.
This onth we are marking the
1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea and the agreement on the Nicene Creed, in which we say: ‘We believe in the Holy Spirit’. Do we really believe in the Holy Spirit as ‘the Lord, the giver of life,’ in the Holy Spirit as the way in which God ‘has spoken through the prophets’?
The gift of the Holy Spirit does not stop being effective the day after confirmation, the day after ordination, the day after hearing someone speaking in tongues, or the day after the Day of Pentecost.
God never leaves us alone. This is what Christ promises the disciples, the whole Church, in today’s Gospel reading. We need have no fears, for the Resurrection breaks through all the barriers of time and space, of gender and race, of language and colour.
If the Holy Spirit is the Advocate and is living in me and you, then who am I an advocate for? Who do I speak up for when there is no-one else to speak up for them?
Pentecost includes all – even those we do not like. Who do you not want in the Kingdom of God? Who do I find it easy to think of excluding from the demands the Holy Spirit makes on me and on the Church?
Pentecost promises hope. But hope is not certainty, manipulating the future for our own ends, it is trusting in God’s purpose.
‘Little Gidding,’ the fourth and final poem in the
Four Quartets, is TS Eliot’s own Pentecost poem. ‘Little Gidding’ begins in ‘the dark time of the year’, when a brief and glowing afternoon sun ‘flames the ice, on pond and ditches’ as it ‘stirs the dumb spirit’, not with wind but with ‘pentecostal fire.’
At the end of the poem, Eliot describes how the eternal is contained within the present and how history exists in a pattern, and repeating the words of Julian of Norwich, he is assured:
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
I have no doubts that the Holy Spirit works in so many ways that we cannot understand. And no doubts that the Holy Spirit works best and works most often in the quiet small ways that bring hope rather than in the big dramatic ways that seek to control.
Sometimes, even when it seems foolish, sometimes, even when it seems extravagant, it is worth being led by the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit may be leading us to surprising places, and, surprisingly, leading others there too, counting them in when we thought they were counted out.
Whether they are persecuted minorities in the Middle East, immigrants threatened with deportation to a third country, or people who are marginalised at home, or those we are uncomfortable with because of how they sound, seem, look or smell, God’s generosity counts them in and offers them hope.
And if God counts them in, so should the Church. And so should I.
Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Saint Augustine of Canterbury (left), the Archangel Michael and Saint Alban in a window by Charles Eamer Kempe in Saint Peter’s Church, Berkhamsted (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Prayers (Monday 26 May 2025):
The Feast of the Ascension is on Thursday next (29 May 2025) and provides the theme for this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). This theme was introduced yesterday with reflections from Dr Paulo Ueti, Theological Advisor and Regional Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 26 May 2025) invites us to pray:
Lord creator of the earth, air, waters, and sky, creator of our homeland, we cry out for people and communities most affected by climate change, especially the vulnerable and marginalised. Guide us to act with love, justice, and mercy as stewards of your creation.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
whose servant Augustine was sent as the apostle
of the English people:
grant that as he laboured in the Spirit
to preach Christ’s gospel in this land,
so all who hear the good news
may strive to make your truth known in all the world;
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, shepherd of your people,
whose servant Augustine 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
The Chiesa Nuova or the Church of Santa Maria in Vallicella is closely associated with the life of Saint Philip Neri (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
