Patrick Comerford
Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (5 April 2026) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (24 May 2026), or Whit Sunday. This week began with the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Easter IV, 26 April 2026), sometimes known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’.
The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), Teacher of the Faith. Today also marks the 75th anniversary of the death of the philsopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and I hope to say more about that anniversary in a blog posting later today. Later this evening, I hope to take part choir rehearsals in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. But, 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, 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.
John 12: 44-50 (NRSVA):
44 Then Jesus cried aloud: ‘Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. 45 And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. 46 I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness. 47 I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge, 49 for I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me.’
Today’s Reflections:
In the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (John 12: 44-50), we come to the end of what is known as the ‘Book of Signs’ in Saint John’s Gospel (chapters 1 to 12). Through these seven signs, Christ clearly indicates who he is and what his mission is.
Today’s reading recapitulates all that Christ has said in the ‘Book of Signs’. We hear how Jesus ‘cried aloud’ and spoke. This gives extra emphasis to what he is proclaiming. It is once again a call to believe in Jesus where ‘believing in’ means much more than mere acceptance of the truth of his words. It implies too a personal commitment to Christ and to his mission.
To believe in Christ is also to believe in, to surrender oneself entirely to, the One who sent him, the Father. All through this Gospel, Jesus emphasises the inseparability of the Father and the Son.
The Father sends Christ as light into the world so that ‘whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness’ (John 12: 45-46).
One of the first images of Christ that I remember being show as a child by my grandmother in her house in Cappoquin, Co Waterford, is Holman Hunt’s ‘The Light of the World’. It remains my favourite image of Christ and my favourite Pre-Raphaelite painting.
Saint Catherine of Siena, the Dominican doctor of the church remembered today, says, ‘It is only through shadows that one comes to know the light.’ Addressing Chrit in The Dialogue of Saint Catherine, where she touches topics on prayer, divine providence, and obedience, she writes, ‘You are the Fire that takes away the cold, illuminates the mind with its light, and causes me to know the truth’.
The ‘word’ of Christ is a challenge. It offers a way of living and of inter-relating with God, with others and with ourselves. Christ tells us that his Father’s commands – which he also observes – mean eternal life. Everything that Jesus did was the carrying out of his Father’s will. We are called to follow the same path, which is the way to total freedom.
But how do we follow that path, how do we walk that path?
During the week, I found myself re-reading the hymn ‘Attend and Keep this Happy Fast’ by the English Roman Catholic theologian and one-time Dominican priest, Roger Ruston. He has been strongly influential in Christian CND and similar movements. He is best known for both his careful critique of the ‘deterrence’ theory and the reliance on nuclear weapons and for his work on human rights, including his book Human Rights and the Image of God (SCM-Canterbury Press, 2004), and the conference with that name organised that year by the Dominican Justice and Peace Commission at Blackfriars, Oxford.
Roger Ruston’s insights have a pressing relevance in today’s dismal global political realities. He has also written a number of hymns that are informed by his theological priorities. His hymn ‘Attend and Keep this Happy Fast’ is based on Isaiah 58: 5-9 and expresses the idea that love is better than fasting, and looks to ‘the dawn your light will break’ and that time when ‘the glory of the Lord will shine’:
Attend and keep this happy fast
I preach to you this day.
Is this the fast that pleases me,
that takes your joy away?
Do I delight in sorrow’s dress,
says God, who reigns above,
the hanging head, the dismal look,
will they attract my love?
But is this not the fast I choose,
that shares the heavy load;
that seeks to bring the poor man in
who’s weary of the road;
that gives the hungry bread to eat,
to strangers gives a home;
that does not let you hide your face
from your own flesh and bone?
Then like the dawn your light will break,
to life you will be raised.
And all will praise the Lord for you;
be happy in your days.
The glory of the Lord will shine,
and in your steps his grace.
And when you call he’ll answer you;
He will not hide his face.
Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 29 April 2026):
I have been recalling my own grandmother in my reflections this morning. In my prayers, I am also remebering a family of dear friends in Crete who are burying a dear mother, mother-in-law and grandmother, in Iraklion this afternoon. Mika was a warm, welcoming member of the family, and her son proudly gave her name to the family hotel in Piskopiano in the hills above Hersonissos. I have stayed in or visited there countless times since the mid-1990s.
‘Prayer and Action in Pakistan’ provides the theme this week (26 April to 2 May 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 50-51. This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections from the Revd Davidson Solanki, Senior Regional Manager for Asia and the Middle East.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 29 April 2026) invites us to pray:
Lord, bless the Church of Pakistan as they seek to serve all neighbours. Particularly after the devastation of the floods, may their acts of care demonstrate Christ’s love in action even across faiths.
The Collect:
God of compassion,
who gave your servant Catherine of Siena
a wondrous love of the passion of Christ:
grant that your people may be united to him in his majesty
and rejoice for ever in the revelation of his glory;
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 Catherine to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
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
No comments:
Post a Comment