A day to reflect on 24 years of priesthood and a journey that began in Lichfield 54 years ago

The Chapel and the Hospital of Saint John Baptist without the Barrs, Lichfield, today … recalling a journey that began 54 years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Today is the Feast of the Birthday of Saint John the Baptist (24 June 2025). I have been back in Lichfield today where, throughout the day, I have been remembering that I was ordained priest 24 years ago on this day, 24 June 2001, and that tomorrow is the anniversary of the day I was ordained deacon 25 years ago (25 June 2000).

I have reflected throughout this day on these 25 years of ordained ministry, praying, reading, thinking, walking and giving thanks.

Bishops, in the charge to priests at their ordination, call us to ‘preach the Word and to minister his (God’s) holy sacraments.’ But the bishop also reminds us to be ‘faithful in visiting the sick, in caring for the poor and needy, and in helping the oppressed,’ to ‘promote unity, peace, and love,’ to share ‘in a common witness in the world’ and ‘in Christ’s work of reconciliation,’ to ‘search for God’s children in the wilderness of this world’s temptations.’

These charges remain a sacred commitment for life, even after a priest retires from parish ministry. I retired from full-time ministry over three ago (31 March 2022) after a stroke earlier that month, and I am still in the process of seeking Permission to Officiate (PTO). But I shall always remain a priest.

With Archbishop Walton Empey at my ordination as priest in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on 24 June 2001, and (from left) the Revd Tim Close and the Revd Avril Bennett (Photograph: Valerie Jones, 2001)

As I reflected today on the anniversaries of my ordination, I recalled too how my path to ordination began here in Lichfield 54 years ago when I was a 19-year-old, following very personal and special experiences in the chapel dedicated to Saint John the Baptist – the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield – and in Lichfield Cathedral, both of which I return to constantly.

It was the summer of 1971, and although I was training to be a chartered surveyor with Jones Lang Wootton and the College of Estate Management at Reading University, I was also trying to become a freelance journalist, contributing features to the Lichfield Mercury, the Rugeley Mercury and the Tamworth Herald.

Late one sunny Thursday afternoon, after a few days traipsing along Wenlock Edge and through Shropshire, and staying at Wilderhope Manor and in Shrewsbury, I had returned to Lichfield.

I was walking from Birmingham Road into the centre of Lichfield, and I was more interested in an evening’s entertainment than prayer or religious life when I stumbled into that chapel out of curiosity. Not because I wanted to see the inside of an old church or chapel, but because I was attracted by the architectural curiosity of the outside of the building facing onto the street, with its Tudor chimney stacks and its Gothic chapel.

I still remember lifting the latch, and stepping down into the chapel. It was late in the afternoon, so there was no light streaming through the East Window. But as I turned towards the lectern, I was filled in one rush with the sensation of the light and the love of God.

This is not a normal experience for a young 19-year-old … certainly not for one who is focussing on an active social night later on, or on rugby and cricket in the weekend ahead.

But it was – and still is – a real and gripping moment. I have talked about this as my ‘self-defining moment in life.’ It still remains as a lived, living moment.

At the Patronal Festival Eucharist in the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield, earlier today (Photograph: Patrick Comerford. 2025)

My first reaction was to make my way on down John Street, up Bird Street and Beacon Street and into the Cathedral Close and Lichfield Cathedral. There I slipped into the choir stalls, just in time for Choral Evensong.

It was a tranquil and an exhilarating experience, all at once. But as I was leaving, a residentiary canon shook my hand … I think he was Canon John Yates (1925-2008), then the Principal of Lichfield Theological College (1966-1972) and later Bishop of Gloucester and Bishop at Lambeth. He looked at me amusingly and asked whether a young man like me had decided to start going back to church because I was thinking of ordination.

All that in one day, on that one summer afternoon.

The west front of Lichfield Cathedral in the afternoon sunshine earlier today (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

However, I took the scenic route to ordination. I was inspired by the story of Gonville ffrench-Beytagh (1912-1991), which was beginning to unfold at the time. He was then the Dean of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Johannesburg, and facing trial when he opened his doors to black protesters who were being rhino-whipped by South African apartheid police on the steps of his cathedral.

My new-found adult faith led me to a path of social activism, campaigning on human rights, apartheid, the arms race, and issues of war and peace. I also moved into journalism full-time, first with the Wexford People and eventually becoming Foreign Desk Editor of The Irish Times.

While I was working as a journalist, I became a student once agaon, and completed degrees in theology at the Irish School of Ecumenics and Trinity College Dublin in 1984 and at the Kimmage Mission Institute and Maynooth in 1987. In the back of my mind, that startling choice I was confronted with after evensong in Lichfield Cathedral 54 years ago was gnawing away in the back of my mind.

Letters of ordination as priest by Archbishop Walton Empey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Of course, I was on the scenic route to ordination. A long and scenic route, from the age of 19 to the age of 48 … almost 30 years: I returned to study theology at the Church of Ireland Theological College (CITC, now CITI) in 1999, I was ordained deacon on 25 June 2000 and I was ordained priest a year later on 24 June 2001, the Feast of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist.

Since then, my ordained ministry has included two years as an NSM curate in Whitechurch Parish, Rathfarnham (2000-2002), while I continued to work as Foreign Desk Editor of The Irish Times; four years working with mission agencies and as a part-time lecturer in the Church of Ireland Theological College (2002-2006); 11 years on the staff of CITC and CITI as Director of Spiritual Formation, college chaplain, and then Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History (2006-2017), when I was also an adjunct assistant professor in TCD (2011-2017) and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (2008-2017); and five years in west Limerick and north Kerry in the Diocese of Limerick and Killaloe (now Tuam, Limerick and Killaloe) as priest-in-charge of the Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group of Parishes, Precentor of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, Saint Flannan’s Cathedral, Killaloe, Co Clare, and Saint Brendan’s Cathedral, Clonfert, Co Galway, and Director for Education and Training (2017-2022).

That ministry has included school and hospital chaplaincy, membership of the General Synod and various church commissions and committees and school boards, mission agency visits to Egypt, China, Hong Kong, Italy, the Vatican, Romania, Hungary and Finland, and six years as a trustee of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). There were additional studies at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and the Institutum Liturgicum, based at the Benedictine Study and Arts Centre in Ealing Abbey and KU Leuven.

Archbishop Walton Empey’s inscription on the Bible he gave to me on my ordination to the priesthood on 24 June 2001 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I had started coming to Lichfield as a teenager because of family connections with the area around Lichfield and Tamworth. The traditions of the chapel in Saint John's Chapel subtly grew on me and became my own personal expression of Anglicanism, while and the liturgical traditions of Lichfield Cathedral nurtured my own liturgical spirituality.

That bright summer evening left me open to the world, with all its beauty, all its problems and its promises.

The chapel in Saint John’s Hospital and Lichfield Cathedral remain my twin spiritual homes, and I returned to both again today (24 June 2025), to Saint John’s for the Patronal Festival Eucharist at Noon, and to the Cathedral for Choral Evensong at the end of the day.

Ten years ago, Canon Andrew Gorham, the then Master of Saint John’s Hospital, invited me to preach at the Festal Eucharist in the chapel on the Feast of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist on 24 June 2015. It was also the anniversary of my ordination. The attendance included the Lord-Lieutenant of Staffordshire, Dr Ian Dudson, the Deputy Mayor of Lichfield, Mrs Sheelagh James, and a former Mayor, Mrs Norma Bacon.

With Canon Andrew Gorham, Master of St John’s Hospital, at the Festal Eucharist in Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield, in 2015

As priests, we normally celebrate the anniversary of our ordination to the priesthood and reflect on it sacramentally. However, I still await PTO in a new diocese and I have found unexpected restrictions on celebrating this meaningful day.

This continues to be trying at a personal level, and I held these emotions and feelings in my heart at the mid-day Eucharist in Saint John’s and Evensong in Lichfield Cathedral today, and at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church in Stony Stratford on Sunday (22 June 2025).

Today has been a day for walks around Stowe Pool and Minster Pool, through the streets of Lichfield, along Beacon Street, and a walk out into the countryside along Cross in Hand Lane after a pleasant late lunch in the Hedgehog Vintage Inn at the corner of Stafford Road.

When I get home to Stony Stratford later tonight, I shall have a quiet celebration of the Eucharist. This has been a day to remind myself that I remain a priest forever, and to remind myself where this journey or pilgrimage began 54 years ago, and I was erncouraged by Timothy Dudley-Smith’s opening lines of the Post-Communion hymn in Saint John’s today:

Lord, for the years yiur love has kept and guided,
urged and inspired us, cheered us on our way,
sought us and saved us, pardoned and provided:
Lord for the years, we bring our thanks today.

Saint John the Baptist seen in a statue above the entrance arch at Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 46, Tuesday 24 June 2025, the Birth of Saint John the Baptist

Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield, and the east end of the chapel, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

The week began with the First Sunday after Trinity (Trinity I, 22 June 2025), and today is Feast of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist. The Birth of Saint John Baptist (24 June) is one of the few birthdays of a saint commemorated in the Church Calendar.

I was ordained priest 24 years ago today, on the Feast of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist [24 June 2001], and deacon 25 years ago tomorrow, on 25 June 2000. I am hoping to mark those anniversaries later today by being present at the mid-day Eucharist and Evening Prayer in Lichfield Cathedral and visiting the chapel in Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield. During the day, I may go for some walks around Lichfield, along Cross in Hand Lane, and I may even get to see Comberford.

Before today begins, however, 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.

Saint John the Baptist above the entrance to Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Luke 1: 57-66, 80 (NRSVA):

57 Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. 58 Her neighbours and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her.

59 On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. 60 But his mother said, ‘No; he is to be called John.’ 61 They said to her, ‘None of your relatives has this name.’ 62 Then they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him. 63 He asked for a writing-tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And all of them were amazed. 64 Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God. 65 Fear came over all their neighbours, and all these things were talked about throughout the entire hill country of Judea. 66 All who heard them pondered them and said, ‘What then will this child become?’ For, indeed, the hand of the Lord was with him.

80 The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel.

Inside the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Reflection:

Saint Matthew’s Gospel introduces Christ’s ministry by first telling the story of Saint John the Baptist. Saint Mark begins his Gospel with the appearance of Saint John the Baptist. And the first person we meet in Saint John’s Gospel is Saint the Baptist. But Saint Luke alone tells the story of Saint Elizabeth’s pregnancy and the birth of Saint John the Baptist.

This birthday celebration is at pivotal moment in the calendar: half-way between one Christmas Eve and the next: yes, sorry to startle you, but Christmas Eve is just six months away from today. But it is also a pivotal moment in the calendar, because it coincides with that time when the days start to get shorter and the nights start to get longer.

In Ireland, in Greece, and in many other places across Europe, a bonfire was kindled as darkness fell on Saint John’s Eve. The bonfire was a protest at what the poet Dylan Thomas called ‘the dying of the light.’

The child’s mother, Elizabeth, even though she is, as some might say, a little on in years, knows her pregnancy is a blessing, and her neighbours and relatives rejoice with her when she gives birth (Luke 1: 58).

The child’s father, Zechariah, is, literally, dumb-struck, by the prospect of becoming the father of a son. When he recovers his speech – a sign of his obedience to God in all this chaos – his first words give us the long song of praise or canticle we know as Benedictus.

This is the part that is missing from the Gospel reading provided for today. But here Zechariah hails his son as the prophet of God the most high. And he is a prophet because he brings from the very beginning, at his birth the good news of the fulfilment of God’s promise.

Zechariah tells those who are gathered that God has responded to the cries of people, and in his mercy is going to ‘rescue’ then ‘from the hands of our enemies,’ so that they may live without fear’:

‘By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.’ (Luke 1: 78-79).

But I sometimes wonder whether Zechariah and Elizabeth would have been so quick to rejoice, so quick to celebrate, if they had known what was going to happen to their son?

Could they had foreseen that a cruel capricious ruler, who would slaughter the first-born, would then lock up their son and – to meet the demands of his wayward daughter – would agree to behead him?

We all know in some way the sadness of people who wait longingly, through many years of marriage, for the birth of a child.

But we all know too that the greatest sadness and grief any parent can suffer is to be alive when their child dies, no matter how old the parents are by then, no matter how young or old the child is, an infant or an adult.

Would any of us who are parents have our children if we knew they were going to suffer cruelly? But my question is asked in vain. The answer, of course, is yes. And that answer is so because it is rooted in love.

While I think of Zechariah and Elizabeth, how they longed for a child, how that child escaped Herod’s slaughter of children in his age group (see Matthew 2: 16-18), only to become the victim of the victim of cruelty that was whimsical and decided on the spur of the moment, I cannot avoid thinking of the plight of children who have been forcibly separated from their parents in the United States, and who are now being held – despite what President Trump says – inhumane conditions, separated from their parents, not knowing where they are going, or when.

It seems like only yesterday since I was invited to speak outside the US Embassy in Dublin in 2018 at a protest about Trump holding children in cages. There I asked if anyone asks how ordinary, decent people remained silent while children were being sent on trains to Auschwitz and Belsen in the 1930s and 1940s, they need only ask how ordinary, decent people remain silent today given what we now know is happening in America.

If children here in a school, creche or pre-school group were held in conditions like that, the police or the gardai would be called in immediately, and there would be outrage if judges did not jail the culprits. I reminded the protest outside the embassy how we would not allow cattle to be transported like this, or animals to be caged like this. Why then are children being held like this?

I hope I would not have been silent in the 1930s or the 1940s. But I can blame myself if I am silent today. This is not about politics, this is about morality.

This is not about what I think or do not think about Donald Trump or JD Vance or about Elon Musk, about ICE or Homeland Security, about the deployment of troops on the streets of US cities against the will of elected politicians or of the people in the cities; this is about what I think about as mall children being pulled forcibly from their mothers, or parents being shot dead on their doorstep because they are Democrat politicians, elected politician.

This not about whether I think Donald Trump is like Herod, but about whether I fear countless children living in the US today could end up like Anne Frank, like the children whose stories I heard in Krakow and Auschwitz.

Sometimes evil is so great that crying out is our only prayer, but remaining silent becomes our condemnation.

Zechariah was dumb-struck, indeed, but the end of his silence is a sign of his obedience to God’s hopes for the future.

And I know that the pregnant Elizabeth took comfort against any foreboding she may have had instinctively for her son when the words she heard from her cousin Mary, just a few verses before this morning’s reading, words in the Canticle Magnificat:

‘He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty’ (Luke 1: 51-53).

Saint John the Baptist depicted in a stained glass window in the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 24 June 2025, the Birth of Saint John the Baptist):

‘Windrush Day’ is the theme this week (22-28 June) 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 on Sunday with reflections by Rachael Anderson, former Senior Communications and Engagement Manager, USPG.

The USPG prayer diary today (Tuesday 24 June 2025, the Birth of Saint John the Baptist) invites us to pray:

Lord God, who promised Zechariah a son filled with the spirit and power of Elijah, to prepare a people fit for the Lord: we pray for reconciliation between all people. (Church of England).

The Collect:

Almighty God,
by whose providence your servant John the Baptist
was wonderfully born,
and sent to prepare the way of your Son our Saviour
by the preaching of repentance:
lead us to repent according to his preaching
and, after his example,
constantly to speak the truth, boldly to rebuke vice,
and patiently to suffer for the truth’s sake;
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:

Merciful Lord,
whose prophet John the Baptist
proclaimed your Son as the Lamb of God
who takes away the sin of the world:
grant that we who in this sacrament
have known your forgiveness and your life-giving love
may ever tell of your mercy and your peace;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

The Birth of Saint the Baptist (see Luke 1: 57-66) … an icon from the Monastery of Anopolis in the Museum of Christian Art in Iraklion, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition copyright © 2021, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.