‘It is like children sitting in the market-places’ (Matthew 11: 16) … Samuel Johnson's statue in winter sunshine in the Market Square, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Patrick Comerford
We have passed the half-way into the Season of Advent, and the countdown to Christmas seems to be gathering pace. This week began with the Second Sunday of Advent (Advent II, 7 December 2025), and the Calendar of the Church of England in
Common Worship today provides for a Commemoration and Lesser Festival that remembers Saint Lucy (304), Martyr at Syracuse, and Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), writer of dictionaries, literary editor and the ‘Great Moralist’.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read 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.
Samuel Johnson’s monument in a corner of the south transept in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Luke 11: 33-36 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 33 ‘No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar, but on the lampstand so that those who enter may see the light. 34 Your eye is the lamp of your body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light; but if it is not healthy, your body is full of darkness. 35 Therefore consider whether the light in you is not darkness. 36 If then your whole body is full of light, with no part of it in darkness, it will be as full of light as when a lamp gives you light with its rays.’
The Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum in Lichfield where Samuel Johnson was born in 1709 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Today’s reflection:
Those two themes continue to be linked in this morning’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Matthew 11: 11-15), when Christ contrasts the reasons John was rejected with the reasons he is criticised.
The theme in the lectionary readings last Sunday for Advent II (7 December 2025) was the Prophets, while tomorrow’s theme is Saint John the Baptist (Advent III or Gaudete Sunday, 14 December 2025). Those two themes continue to be linked in this morning’s Gospel weekday reading at the Eucharist (Matthew 17: 10-13), when Christ once again compares the Prophet Elijah and Saint John the Baptist.
The Gospel reading for the commemorations of Saint Lucy and Samuel Johnson (Luke 11: 33-36) is a reference too to the fact that both Saint Lucy and Samuel Johnson suffered greatly with their eye problems yet were figures of light.
Saint Lucy was martyred at Syracuse in Sicily
ca 283-304. Her relics are kept in a shrine in the beautiful Church of San Geremia, facing onto the Grand Canal in Venice, between the Palazzo Labia and the Palazzo Flangini. In mediaeval accounts, her eyes were gouged out before her execution. Saint Lucy’s name, from the Latin
lux, ‘light’, also played a large part in her being named as a patron saint of the blind and people with eye-trouble.
Samuel Johnson was known as ‘The Great Moralist’, although in the 18th century that was a term of affection and honour. He was a pious Anglican throughout his life, but is best remembered as a writer of dictionaries and a literary editor. He was a High Church Anglican and deeply committed to the Church of England since his younger days when he read William Law’s
A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life.
It is almost 250 years since Samuel Johnson took his friend James Boswell to Lichfield in 1776 to show him ‘genuine civilised life in an English provincial town’. Later Johnson would recall: ‘I lately took my friend Boswell and showed him genuine civilised life in an English provincial town. I turned him loose at Lichfield.’
They stayed at the Three Crowns in Breadmarket Street, beside the house on the corner of Market Square where Johnson was born and spent his childhood.
When Boswell asked Johson why the people of Lichfield seemed to lack industry, Johnson famously replied that the people of Lichfield were philosophers: ‘Sir, (said Johnson,) we are a city of philosophers: we work with our heads, and make the boobies of Birmingham work for us with their hands.’
Lichfield has grown considerably in the 2½ centuries since that visit, from 4,000 people in Samuel Johnson’s days, to about 35,000 people today. It is one of England’s smallest cities, but it retains its civilised charm, and I return to Lichfield regularly for my own personal retreats and time of prayer and reflection.
Samuel Johnson was a key figure in shaping the English language as we use it today. Indeed, he has been described as ‘arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history’ and his biography by Boswell has been described as ‘the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature.’
Although Johnson began his literary career as a ‘Grub Street’ journalist, he made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, novelist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer.
The 18th century was a period of great intellectual activity, and Lichfield was home to many figures of intellect and culture, including Samuel Johnson, David Garrick, Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward, prompting Johnson’s observation that Lichfield was ‘a city of philosophers’.
Samuel Johnson was born on 18 September 1709 in what is now the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum, a five-storey house at the west end of the Market Square.
He married the widowed Elizabeth Porter in 1735, when he was 25 and she was 46 and the mother of three children. Two years later, Johnson and 20-year-old David Garrick set off for London in 1737 in search of fame and fortune. They survived many difficulties, and eventually Johnson became the leading literary figure of his generation and Garrick the leading actor.
Johnson’s fortunes took a dramatic turn in 1746 when a publisher commissioned him to compile a dictionary of the English language – a contract that was worth 1,500 guineas. Johnson claimed he could finish the project in three years. In comparison, the Académie Française had 40 scholars who would spend 40 years completing its French dictionary. Eventually, it took Johnson nine years to complete his
Dictionary of the English Language.
Johnson’s
Dictionary was not the first, nor was it unique. But it remained the standard, definitive and pre-eminent English dictionary for 150 years, until the
Oxford English Dictionary was published in 1928. His
Dictionary offers insights into the 18th century, providing ‘a faithful record of the language people used.’ It has been described as ‘one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship.’ As a work of literature, it has had a far-reaching impact on modern English.
Johnson’s legacies in Lichfield include: the Johnson statue in Market Square; his monument in a corner of the south transept of Lichfield Cathedral; John Myatt’s fading mosaic mural on a wall on a corner of Bird Street; and ‘Johnson’s Willow’ on the north shore of Stowe Pool.
I have been familiar with the willow trees at this location for over 50 years, and the present willow tree is the fifth there since Johnson’s days.
When Johnson was young, the willow was close to his father’s parchment factory. When he returned to Lichfield in later years, he never failed to visit the tree, passing it on his way to visit his friends the Aston sisters who lived at the two large houses on Stowe Hill. He is said to have described the willow as ‘the delight of his early and waning life’. The original willow eventually became decayed, and in 1829 it was blown down. But it has been replaced by many of its descendants ever since. A fifth willow was planted on the same site by Stowe Pool on 2 November 2021. The ceremony included a reading of a poem about Johnson’s Willow by Sarah Dale, the winning entry in the Johnson Society’s Willow poetry competition.
On his last visit to church, the walk strained Samuel Johnson. However, while there he wrote a prayer for his friends, the Thrale family: ‘To thy fatherly protection, O Lord, I commend this family. Bless, guide, and defend them, that they may pass through this world, as finally to enjoy in thy presence everlasting happiness, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.’
In his last prayer, on 5 December 1784, before receiving Holy Communion and eight days before he died, Samuel Johnson prayed:
Almighty and most merciful Father, I am now, as to human eyes it seems, about to commemorate, for the last time, the death of thy Son Jesus Christ our Saviour and Redeemer. Grant, O Lord, that my whole hope and confidence may be in his merits, and his mercy; enforce and accept my imperfect repentance; make this commemoration available to the confirmation of my faith, the establishment of my hope, and the enlargement of my charity; and make the death of thy Son Jesus Christ effectual to my redemption. Have mercy on me, and pardon the multitude of my offences. Bless my friends; have mercy upon all men. Support me, by the grace of thy Holy Spirit, in the days of weakness, and at the hour of death; and receive me, at my death, to everlasting happiness, for the sake of Jesus Christ. Amen.
As he lay dying, Samuel Johnson’s final words were: ‘
Iam Moriturus’ (‘I who am about to die’). He fell into a coma and died at 7 pm on 13 December 1784 at the age of 75. He was buried at Westminster Abbey a week later.
Johnson’s life and work are celebrated in a stained glass window in Southwark Cathedral, he has monuments in Westminster Abbey, Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, and Lichfield Cathedral, and he is named in the calendar of the Church of England on this day as a modern Anglican saint.
John Myatt’s fading mosaic mural of Samuel Johnson on a wall on a corner of Bird Street, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
Today’s Prayers (Saturday 13 December 2025):
The theme this week (7 to 13 December 2025) in
Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel),has been ‘Divine Sufficiency’ (pp 8-9). This theme was introduced last Sunday with Reflections from the Revd Neli Miranda, Vicar at Saint James the Apostle in Guatemala City and Professor of Theology at the University Mariano Gálvez of Guatemala.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 13 December 2025) invites us to pray:
We pray for the Spirit of Solidarity to grow among Christian communities, and that this spirit may not only alleviate immediate needs but also become a force for social change.
The Collect:
Eternal Father,
whose servant Samuel Johnson
knew the omnipotence and omniscience of the divine presence in his life,
giving him the grace of great learning and piety:
help us to use wisely the gifts you have entrusted to us,
not swelling with pride,
but humbly acknowledging the glorious wonder
of the blessing we have received.
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 your servant Samuel Johnson
to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Collect on the Eve of Advent III:
O Lord Jesus Christ,
who at your first coming sent your messenger
to prepare your way before you:
grant that the ministers and stewards of your mysteries
may likewise so prepare and make ready your way
by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just,
that at your second coming to judge the world
we may be found an acceptable people in your sight;
for you are alive and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
The shrine of Santa Lucia di Siracusa or Saint Lucy of Syracuse in the Church of San Geremia in Venice (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 Lucy depicted in a monument to Lucy Marian Hubbard in Saint Mary’s Church, Addington, near Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)
