Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 27, Wednesday 3 June 2026

The Seven Brothers Taverna at a corner in the old Venetian harbour in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Since the 50-day season of Easter came to an end with the Day of Pentecost or Whit Sunday (24 May 2026), we have returned to Ordinary Time once again. This week began with Trinity Sunday (31 May 2026), and tomorrow is the Feast of Corpus Christi (4 June 2026). But the liturgical colour today remains the Green of Ordinary Time, and today the calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship recalls the Martyrs of Uganda (1885-1887, 1977).

Later today (3 June 2026), I hope to take part in the 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.

A sign at the Seven Brothers Taverna in the old Venetian harbour in Rethymnon, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 12: 18-27 (NRSVA):

18 Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him a question, saying, 19 ‘Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. 20 There were seven brothers; the first married and, when he died, left no children; 21 and the second married her and died, leaving no children; and the third likewise; 22 none of the seven left children. Last of all the woman herself died. 23 In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had married her.’

24 Jesus said to them, ‘Is not this the reason you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? 25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 26 And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the story about the bush, how God said to him, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? 27 He is God not of the dead, but of the living; you are quite wrong.’

The old Venetian harbour in Rethymnon, with the Seven Brothers Taverna to the left (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s reflections:

The Gospel reading at the Eucharist in the lectionary today (Mark 12: 18-27) offers an opportunity to reflect both on how we treat the marginalised today and how we how we imagine heavenly life.

This account is set in the Temple in Jerusalem in Holy Week, on the day after Christ has overturned the tables of the moneychangers. There, as were read yesterday (Mark 12: 13-17), Christ is challenged by both the Pharisees and the Herodians, the people who supported Herod, the Roman puppet king, when they put to him was one of great questions at the time: should religious and pious Jews pay taxes to Rome?

Next, along come the Sadducees, who said there is no resurrection, but come with contorted questions about the afterlife.

When I read this passage, I also think of an old Hollywood musical, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), starring Jane Powell and Howard Keel, of the many superstitions about the seventh son of a seventh son, and even about a restaurant I know in the old Venetian harbour in Rethymnon in Crete called ‘The Seven Brothers’ (Τα Επτά Αδέρφια).

But this reading about seven brothers and one bride is primarily a story about questions about the resurrection (for parallel readings see also Matthew 22: 23-33; Luke 20: 27-40).

After his arrival in Jerusalem, Christ is in the Temple each day, teaching kingdom values. But his teaching is ignored by those who see him as a threat to their power and their privilege, by those who want to get rid of him at any cost … without realising that their choice, their actions, are part of the climax that ushers in Christ’s reign.

As an example of his kingdom values, his rejection of the either-or options, the black-or-white, the take-it-or-leave-it values of the world, Christ refuses to enter the debate about paying Temple taxes with imperial Roman coins (Mark 12: 13-17).

So another trap is set – this time by the Sadducees, the Temple priests. They held that only the first five books of the Bible, the Torah or the Pentateuch, were authoritative. They had very traditional views of the Law and rejected what they saw as the novel idea of life after death. They saw it as a dangerous innovation, an importation from the Babylonian exile, a Persian idea adapted by the Pharisees. The more traditional view accepted that people were rewarded or punished by God in this life.

So, seeking to trap Jesus into speaking against the Law, they pose this puzzle about a woman who ends up marrying seven brothers, each of whom dies in turn. In the new life, whose wife will she be?

The apostles later have a similar encounter with the Sadducees when they are preaching the Resurrection (see also Acts 4: 1-4), as does the Apostle Paul when he faces the council (Acts 23: 6-10).

This question about ‘levirate’ marriage is not about the marriage of Levites, but comes from the Latin word levir, meaning a brother-in-law. There was a sense in which a man was seen to live on in his son. So, if a man died without sons and heirs, his brother was required to marry his widow and give her a son, thus continuing the family line (see Deuteronomy 25: 5-10; see also Genesis 38: 8).

Saint Mark makes the same point that human relations in the home do not exist in the same way beyond death. Christ distinguishes two ages and kinds of existence. Mortals are part of this age by the very fact of our physical birth, and of the age to come by resurrection (see also Romans 1: 4).

Christ argues for life after death, and for the resurrection, from the Pentateuch, the very five books to which the Sadducees limited their understanding of what is Scripture. In the story of the Burning Bush, God tells Moses: ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ (verse 26; see Exodus 3: 6). Because God says he is (not was), Abraham is alive now. He died, so he must have been brought back to life, resurrected. God is truly ‘God … of the living’ (verse 27). God is not frustrated by physical death.

What happens afterwards?

According to Saint Luke’s version, some scribes, who are believers in resurrection, are pleased with Jesus’ argument. The Sadducees ‘no longer dared to ask him [Christ] another question’. Christ has evaded the trap that was set for him. What does this say about how we should deal with those who question and challenge the Christian faith?

This reading also poses some pastoral questions for the practice of pastoral ministry in parish life. In all the discussion, no-one refers to the right of the woman to her own integrity, her own inherent or intrinsic value, her own right to eternal life with equality in the eyes of God.

The woman who was married off to seven brothers never made herself the victim, never chose her own misfortune. She is an object, a chattel, perhaps merely a trafficked sex slave, in the eyes of the interlocutors. But for Christ, she is to be seen as a child of God.

In those days it was never a woman’s choice to be a widow or, for that matter, to be divorced. At the time, women could often only acquiesce to what their husbands wanted to do.

What response to this reading might we expect from people in a parish who are widowed or divorced, or in difficult or broken marriages, or people who have never married?

A sign at the Seven Brothers Taverna in the old Venetian harbour in Rethymnon on Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 3 June 2026):

A new edition of Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), was published last week, in time for the USPG conference in the High Leigh, Hertfordshire, which opened yesterday (2 June) and continues until tomorrow (4 June). The theme this week, from 31 May to 6 June 2026 (pp 6-7), is ‘Peacebuilding in the Gulf’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a reflection from Saint Christopher’s Cathedral in Bahrain.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 3 June 2026) invites us to pray:

God of hope, sustain Anglican churches across the Gulf, from the UAE to Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar and elsewhere, as they navigate daily anxieties and dangers. May the rhythms of prayer, the hope found in Scripture, and fellowship with one another anchor them in your presence.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you have given us your servants grace,
by the confession of a true faith,
to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity
and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity:
keep us steadfast in this faith,
that we may evermore be defended from all adversities;
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:

Gracious God, lover of all,
in this sacrament
we are one family in Christ your Son,
one in the sharing of his body and blood
and one in the communion of his Spirit:
help us to grow in love for one another
and come to the full maturity of the Body of Christ.
We make our prayer through your Son our Saviour.

Additional Collect:

Holy God,
faithful and unchanging:
enlarge our minds with the knowledge of your truth,
and draw us more deeply into the mystery of your love,
that we may truly worship you,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Collect on the Eve of Corpus Christi:

Lord Jesus Christ,
we thank you that in this wonderful sacrament
you have given us the memorial of your passion:
grant us so to reverence the sacred mysteries
of your body and blood
that we may know within ourselves
and show forth in our lives
the fruits of your redemption;
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 sign at the Seven Brothers family taverna at the old Venetian harbour in Rethymnon (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

Short visits to three more churches in Dunstable, one Methodist and twoin the Baptist tradition

The Methodist Church on the Square in Dunstable was built in 1909 and is the third on the site (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

My mains hopes in visiting Dunstable last week were to see Saint Peter’s Priory Church, the mediaeval Church of England parish church dating back to the foundation of an Augustinian Priory in the early 12th century, and Saint Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, a listed building that typifies the approach of the architect Desmond Williams to sacred and liturgical space.

But there were other churches to see too, including the Methodist Church on High Street South, Dunstable Baptist Church on Saint Marys Gate, and Christ Church, West Street, built as a Baptist chapel but now part of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches.

The Methodist Church on the Square in Dunstable was designed by GE Withers in 1909 and built in a ‘free Gothic’ style with a tall spire. The church is listed at Grade II because it illustrates the importance of Methodist worship in Dunstable in the early 20th century, for the quality of its design and for the completeness of the interior fittings including the gallery, bench pews and rostrum.

Methodists in Dunstable owe their origins to John Darley, a local carpenter and joiner who, when he was visiting Nottingham, went to the nearby market town of Bingham to hear John Wesley preach on 30 July 1770.

Wesley preached a powerful sermon resulting in John Darley’s conversion and he returned to Dunstable a changed man. Darley and others applied to the Bishop of Lincoln in 1797 for a license to register Thomas Summerfield’s house as a place of worship. Darley opened his own workshop in Church Street in 1812, inviting people to sing, pray and read the Bible.

The church is the third Methodist chapel on the site. The first Methodist chapel in Dunstable was built in 1831 but burned down in 1844 in an incendiary attack on adjoining farm buildings. It was rebuilt in 1845, and was enlarged in 1853, with an extra wing to accommodate 500 people, a Wesleyan day school at the back with 450 children attending on a regular basis, and a library.

The Methodist Church on the Square in Dunstable was designed by the architect George Edward Withers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Disaster struck again in September 1908 when the second chapel was also burned down. How this fire started remains unknown but there had been a number of incendiary outbreaks in the area that summer. The Methodists pushed on with plans for a new church on a grand scale, with a spire that would be seen for miles around.

The foundation stone of the third church was laid on 31 May 1909 and it opened in December 1909 with an overflowing congregation when the Revd Dr John Scott Lidgett preached.

George Edward Withers (1873-1945) of Withers and Meredith specialised in designing nonconformist chapels. He had designed Bushey and Oxhey Methodist Church in 1905 when he was commissioned to design a new church in Dunstable. It opened in 1909 and the organ was installed in 1910.

The church is oriented from north-east to south-west and is roughly cruciform with a wide nave, with an offset tower at the north-east corner. The church is built of buff-coloured brick in English bond with Bath stone dressings and with plain tile roofs. It was built with a nave, galleried north and south aisles, a gallery that continues around the geographical east end, a rostrum at the geographical west end, with a gallery behind, and a ‘chancel’ at the geographical west.

The entrance at the east end is flanked by a squat north-east tower with embattled corner piers and a south-east tower with diagonal buttresses and an octagonal belfry steeple above. The east end has a large five-light window with reticulated tracery, a moulded four-centred arch and flanking four-centred arch lancets with buttresses rising between. The north and south elevations have gabled transepts and reticulated tracery in cambered arches.

Inside, there is an open timber roof structure. The interior still has its complete original set of pitch-pine furnishings, including galleries with tiered bench seating and benches in the transepts, aisles and nave. The walls are plastered. There is a four- centred domed arch above the ‘high’ end containing an organ loft and beneath it a rostrum and communion rail. The organ, installed in 1910, is flanked by lancet windows holding commemorative stained glass.

The transepts have four-bay four-centred arch arcades with slender polygonal piers with foliated capitals. The gallery cuts through the arcades and is curved around the east end.

Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century, the Square Methodist Church continued to evolve as a place of witness and worship in the town. The church completed a building project in September 2009 that opened up the front of the church and improved access and the welcome area. The main hall at the rear has separate access and is used for community events, jumble sales, coffee mornings, a drama group and market traders on Saturdays.

Dunstable Baptist Church at Saint Mary’s Gate (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Two other churches in Dunstable have roots in the Baptist tradition: Dunstable Baptist Church on Saint Mary’s Gate and Christ Church, West Street.

Baptist roots in the Dunstable area date back to Kensworth in 1652. William Brittan, a local leader, who had oversight in 1694, was instrumental in forming the first Baptist communities by leading meetings in homes in Dunstable and Houghton. The Baptist movement in the Dunstable area has two distinct historical streams: Dunstable Baptist Church at Saint Mary’s Gate, formerly Saint Mary’s Street, and Christ Church on West Street.

Dunstable Baptist Church at Saint Mary’s Gate describes itself as ‘a Grace Baptist Church who believe the Bible’ and traces its origins back over 350 years to 17th century nonconformist groups in Kensworth and Thorn. It was part of the ‘Strict Baptist’ tradition in Dunstable with roots dating back to the early 1700s. This was known as the Old Baptist Church as it belonged to an older religious group known as the Particular Baptists.

A piece of land in Saint Mary’s Street was bought by the spiritual heirs of John Bumyan in 1708 to build a meeting house. The Bunyan Meeting House or Old Baptist Chapel was enlarged in 1807 to twice its original size and a Sunday School was founded. But it was demolished after a violent storm severely damaged the chapel in 1849.

The present church was built in 1849, with a capacity for 400 people. It has been Grade II listed as a rare and exceptionally preserved example of mid-19th century nonconformist architecture, complete with its original gallery, box pew, and pulpit.

The other church in the Baptist tradition Dunstable is the former Baptist Church or chapel on West Street, now known as Christ Church Dunstable. It was founded by the General Baptists and built in 1847 to seat 700 people and used as a church and pa art-time school.

The church was built in red brick and stucco with a central pediment. It has two storeys, three arched windows that are round headed on the first floor and segmental on the ground floor. There are quoins, a slightly recessed centre and windows recessed in panels. Three central doors, each two-fold with 10 panels, are flanked by pilasters under consoles, cornice hood.

The church also took over what was the Plume of Feathers pub, and has turned it into a community coffee shop and advice centre.

I missed seeing the United Reform Church in Edward Street, which was once a school hall attached to the Congregational Church, which stood next to it until the 1980s. In addition, the Salvation Army, which came to Dunstable in 1885, has a building on Bull Pond Lane, one of the oldest lanes in Dunstable. There are many other churches, church sites and former churches for me to see. Hopefully, though, the summer is long enough for that.

Christ Church, West Street, a former Baptist church in Dunstable (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 26, Tuesday 2 June 2026

Christ Pantocrator … a fragment from a 13th century mural in a museum in Iraklion in Crete … where do we see the face of Christ? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Since the 50-day season of Easter came to an end with the Day of Pentecost or Whit Sunday (24 May 2026), we have returned to Ordinary Time once again. This week began with Trinity Sunday (31 May 2026) and the Feast of the Presentation (transferred this year from 31 May to 1 June yesterday), but the liturgical colours once return today to the Green of Ordinary Time today (2 June 2026). 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.

The denarius with the image of Caesar represented a day’s labour … Roman coins in a private collection in Callan, Co Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 12: 13-17 (NSRVA):

13 Then they sent to him some Pharisees and some Herodians to trap him in what he said. 14 And they came and said to him, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality, but teach the way of God in accordance with truth. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? 15 Should we pay them, or should we not?’ But knowing their hypocrisy, he said to them, ‘Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a denarius and let me see it.’ 16 And they brought one. Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ 17 Jesus said to them, ‘Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ And they were utterly amazed at him.

Christ the Pantocrator depicted in church domes in Rethymnon, Panormos and Iraklion in Crete (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Reflections:

This morning’s Gospel reading (Mark 12: 13-17 ) challenges us to ask where we see the face of God. When Christ asks whose face is on the coin presented to him, he may also be challenging us to consider where we too see the face of God, or which gods we see and fashion te replace the one and true God.

This account is set in the Temple in Jerusalem in Holy Week, on the day after Christ has overturned the tables of the moneychangers.

The moneychangers were in the Temple because Roman coins had images, such as the image of Caesar, who called himself ‘lord’ and ‘divine’ when those titles truly belong to God alone, and ‘priest’ when that title challenges the ritual purity of the Temple. Today's analogiy might be finding Donald Trump's image on a $250 banknote, realising how he has posted memes of himself in role of Christ and made golden statues of himself, and then asking whether it was appropriate or acceptable such a $250 banknote on the collection plate in a church on Sunday morning.

Images like those were forbidden in the Temple, and so coins had to be changed outside by the moneychangers. In the Temple, Christ is challenged by both the Pharisees and the Herodians, the people who supported Herod, the Roman puppet king.

The question they put to him was one of great debates at the time: should religious and pious Jews pay taxes to Rome?

Jewish opinion was divided on this question. But the question put to Christ is also loaded with presuppositions, with built-in fallacies and false dichotomies, like the sort of question all lawyers know not to ask in court: ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’

The question allows only one of two answers, ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. But it is only a question about law. It does not ask, for example, whether it is moral to pay those taxes, or, indeed, whether it is folly not to pay those taxes.

If Christ answers ‘Yes’, those who are hostile to Roman rule are going to turn against him. But if he says ‘No’, he risks arrest for inciting rebellion.

The coin they present is a denarius, a day’s pay for workers and Roman troops. It is the ‘D’ that gives us the ‘D’ in the old formulaic £SD for British coinages. The denarius was a silver coin and the most common Roman coin of the time, and it is mentioned in the Bible more often than any other coin.

Having looked at the head on the denarius, Christ then looks at the inscription.

The obverse of the denarius of Tiberius carries an image of Tiberius with a laurel crown and lettering around it that proclaims ‘Tiberius Caesar, the Divine Augustus, Son of Augustus’ (Ti Caesar Divi Avg F Avgvstvs).

The reverse side depicts a seated woman as Pax. This was Livia Drusilia, the mother of Tiberius. She died in AD 29 and was later deified by her grandson Claudius with the title Diva Augusta. On the coin, Diva Augusta holds a palm branch and an inverted spear in her hands, and the inscription on this side refers to Tiberius as Pontif[ex] Maxim[us] or the ‘High Priest’ of Rome.

Christ does not even get around to flipping over the coin to read the inscription referring to Caesar as the High Priest. But both inscriptions are affronts to people who worship the one true God. This coin should never have been in the hands of anyone who has entered the Temple.

Yet, when Christ asks his inquisitors to produce a denarius in the Temple, they do so immediately. In other words, they themselves have already carried an image of Caesar and Diva Augusta, with those blasphemous inscriptions, into the Temple.

It is the Passover, and Jerusalem is filled with pilgrims who have arrived to remember and celebrate God’s liberation of their ancestors from slavery under foreign rulers.

At Passover, parallels might have been drawn between Tiberius and Pharaoh. Tiberius was a tyrant in his own right. He was Roman Emperor from AD 14 to AD 37, and spent most of the latter years of his reign in the Villa Jovis on the island of Capri.

While he was in Capri, rumours abounded about his lifestyle. There were lurid tales and graphic depictions of sexual perversion, capricious cruelty, and most of all his paranoia. Those who challenged his power or divinity were often thrown off the cliffs at the Villa Jovis onto the rocks below and into the sea.

If Christ says paying taxes to Caesar is wrong, he risks provoking immediate arrest by the Romans. If he says paying taxes to Rome is right, those who question him are ready to accuse him of betraying their faith and beliefs as the people recall their liberation from slavery and oppression.

But Christ trips up those who question him by showing that they are bearing proclamations of Caesar’s lordship and high priesthood into the very Temple of the very God they claim to be serving with ritual purity.

The obvious questions here are not about what is lawful, or even what is moral or wise, but: who is the divine son, and who is the great high priest?

Christ has won the argument. He has unmasked his critics; there is no need for any further argument, there is no need to say anything more; there is no need to answer the question.

Yet, he answers the question anyway: ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’

So what in this world is God’s?

When it comes to any worldly power that demands to be our lord – whether it is a US president, a figurehead, or a flag that ought to be a sacred symbol but has been abused for political and racist purposes by the far-right up and down this land – the exclusive claims of some nation-state nationalism or some self-obsessed head of state demanding unquestioning loyalty, these are places reserved for the Lord God alone.

And if we seek to see the face of God, we should not be looking at the faces of the despots and rulers of the world who stir up fanaticism, or at ill-gotten accumulated wealth.

We simply need to look for the face of Christ. And we meet Christ face-to-face both in word and sacrament, and when we truly love God and love one another.

Beneath the Villa Jovis in Capri, where the Emperor Tiberius threw his enemies off the cliff-top into the sea (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 2 June 2026):

A new edition of Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), was published last week, in time for the USPG conference in the High Leigh, Hertfordshire, which opens today (2 June) and continues until Thursday (4 June). The theme this week, from 31 May to 6 June 2026 (pp 6-7) is ‘Peacebuilding in the Gulf’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a reflection from Saint Christopher’s Cathedral in Bahrain.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 2 June 2026) invites us to pray:

Lord God, we thank you for your grace as the USPG Annual Conference takes place at High Leigh this week. May all taking part be guided by your Spirit as we reflect on the theme of the Church as an agent of peace.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you have given us your servants grace,
by the confession of a true faith,
to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity
and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity:
keep us steadfast in this faith,
that we may evermore be defended from all adversities;
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:

Gracious God, lover of all,
in this sacrament
we are one family in Christ your Son,
one in the sharing of his body and blood
and one in the communion of his Spirit:
help us to grow in love for one another
and come to the full maturity of the Body of Christ.
We make our prayer through your Son our Saviour.

Additional Collect:

Holy God,
faithful and unchanging:
enlarge our minds with the knowledge of your truth,
and draw us more deeply into the mystery of your love,
that we may truly worship you,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

An icon of Christ the Great High Priest, in a shop window in Thessaloniki (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 Mary’s Church, Dunstable, typifies the work of the church architect Desmond Williams and his liturgical priorities

Saint Mary’s Church, Dunstable, completed in 1964, is typical of the work of the architect Desmond Williams (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

When I was in Dunstable in Bedfordshire last week, the two buildings I truly wanted to visit are Saint Peter’s Priory Church in the centre of the town, which I wrote about yesterday (31 June 2026), and the Roman Catholic Church, Saint Mary’s Church, on West Street.

Saint Mary’s was designed on a circular plan by the distinguished church architect Desmond Williams (1932-2026) when he was not yet 30. It was built in 1962-1964 and is one of four churches he designed that are listed Grade II. It has been listed for four principal reasons:

• an early example of the impact of the Liturgical Movement on church design and anticipated the reforms adopted at the Second Vatican Council;
• an important early work in the career of Desmond Williams, an architect notable for his innovative church buildings at a time of great change in ecclesiastical architecture;
• its innovative circular form and layout;
• its intact interior, including good quality bespoke furnishings and a highly unusual tetrahedral ceiling.

Saint Mary’s Church, Dunstable, with its circular plan and tetrahedral ceiling of 600 aluminium pyramids, is one of Desmond Williams’s four listed Catholic churches (Photograph © Robert Proctor/The Guardian)

The Roman Catholic Church was growing in England in the late 19th and early 20th, and this growth created the need to build a large number of churches that would serve the religious and social needs of a growing community.

Until 1927, Catholics in Dunstable had to travel to nearby towns to attend Mass. In that year the Bishop of Northampton granted a petition for Mass to be said in Dunstable under the leadership of the Congregation of the Mission or the Vincentians based in Potters Bar.

The new parish was dedicated to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal and the first church was built in 1935. The former building survives as the parish social centre in the grounds of the present church, but has been heavily altered. When the Spanish Vincentians left the parish, they were succeeded by and the Irish Vincentians.

As Dunstable expanded after World War II, plans were drawn up for a larger church in 1961 and the foundation stone of a new church was laid on 29 April 1962. Bishop Leo Parker of Northampton blessed and opened the building on 15 March 1964. The new church, dedicated to Our Lady Immaculate, was designed by Desmond Williams and was built by R Willis and Son at a cost of £72,000.

The church is circular in plan. The internal layout places the altar in front of the congregation, rather than at the centre as was the case at groundbreaking churches of the Liturgical Movement in church design. Nevertheless, Williams’s work was at the forefront of new design and draws the congregation together around the altar, anticipating the emphasis on a greater sense of communion and community in worship that is at the heart of the major reforms of the Second Vatican Council, expressed in Sacrosanctum Concilium, the 1963 Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.

The liturgical arrangement in Dunstable is very similar to some highly significant later churches such as the Roman Catholic Cathedral at Clifton (1969-1973).

A contemporary presbytery and offices were built alongside the new church and a later hut was built to the north of the church beside a Garden of Remembrance (2000). The church has not been heavily altered since its completion, although the baptistery was later re-purposed as a shop.

Meanwhile, the association of the Irish Vincentians with Saint Mary’s Parish in Dunstable came to end when the parish was officially transferred to the Diocese of Northampton in September 2019.

Saint Mary’s Church, Dunstable, is organised around a circular worship space (Photograph © Historic England Archive)

Desmond Williams and Associates designed a number of modern churches, including Saint Augustine’s Church, Manchester (1966-1968) with a notable reredos by Robert Brumby; Saint Dunstan’s Church, Birmingham (1966-1968), and Saint Michael’s Church, Penn, Wolverhampton (1967-1968). His other churches that I have visited include the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Bicester, Oxfordshire (1963).

Saint Mary’s Church, Dunstable, is built of load-bearing brick and concrete, with walling in red-brown Fletton bricks and stained glass. The roof is of steel trusses covered in copper and asphalt. The interior features ironwork and joinery of pine and laminated tropical hardwoods.

The church is organised around a circular worship space with 12 projecting segments forming petal-like bays around its circumference. To the south-east, three full-height bays extend further outwards and are combined to form an entrance foyer with a baptistry and chapel at either side.

The stairs from the foyer lead to a gallery that cantilevers into the worship space. An ambulatory runs around the perimeter of the worship space cutting archways through brick piers to create a continuous path. Behind the altar, the ambulatory ramps upwards and connects with the sacristy and boiler room in a single-storey projection to the north of the church.

The principal entrance of Saint Mary’s Church, Dunstable, is at the centre of three projecting bays (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The exterior of the church is divided into 12 bays separated by full-height stained glass recesses with rectilinear multi-coloured panes. Set back above these bays is a plain-glazed clerestory beneath a copper roof that rises gently to a needle-like spirelet topped with a Celtic cross.

The principal entrance is at the centre of three projecting bays. Three modern replacement doors are accessed under three segmental concrete hoods to enter the foyer. Above the hoods is the coat of arms of Pope Paul VI, who was Pope when the church opened. On either side is a narrow window and five further windows are above. Most other bays have 10 slit windows arranged across four rows. The three bays at the north-west are not separated by glazing and connect to a single-storey projection with plain windows and a doorway at the top of a small cantilevered flight of concrete steps.

Inside the church, the worship space consists of four polygonal ranks of pews in good quality pine with open backs and upholstered kneelers on hinges. The bench ends follow the geometry of the benches and each has a cross in relief at the uppermost corner.

The nave floor, which has developed large cracks, is original and is laid in diamond patterns of grey and white tiles. Axially positioned opposite the entrance and in front of the pews, a wide polygonal sanctuary has a communion rail of cruciform brass stanchions and a dark marble top. The sanctuary steps are terrazzo and lead to a large white marble altar inlaid with gold mosaic tiles reading: Adoro Te Devote. Iron openwork behind the altar supports a large crucifix and allows views of the only bay to have stained glass in the narrow slit windows.

The whole worship space is unified by a sound-absorbing ceiling of 600 aluminium pyramids in 18 shades of blue and white radiating in concentric rings from a Greek cross in a boss at the centre. Williams’s design for the ceiling evokes mediaeval fan vaulting, especially that of the chapel at King’s College, Cambridge.

Within the ambulatory there are two confessionals clad in tropical hardwood with plain interiors. To the east of the narthex, Williams placed a baptistery entered through a screen of iron openwork of the same design as the reredos and lectern, on which hang two carved doves. The baptistry, now a shop, retains a round font in fine white marble carved with a pattern of squares that echo the stepped square recess in the floor that is now covered, and a suspended wooden square of the same proportions that hangs from the ceiling. The font is supported on a square shaft with a mosaic figure of Saint John the Baptist on the front and water on the back.

The architect Desmond Williams died earlier this year (31 January 2026) aged 93. He is best known for his design of modern Catholic churches, reflecting a rare ability to bring together liturgical function, architectural ambition and artistic collaboration. The quality and significance of his work were recognised during his lifetime with the listing of four of his churches, a distinction that placed him among the leading figures of post-war British architecture.

Saint Mary’s Church, Dunstable, which was completed in 1964, is typical of his work. The building’s circular form cradled the congregation in an expansive embrace, bringing them nearer to the altar. Its real drama, however, lay in its complex tetrahedral ceiling, described as ‘resembling a giant and delicate piece of origami’. It is fashioned from 600 aluminium pyramids bolted together in alternating bands of blue and white – ‘a modern vault of heaven’, as the obituary writer said in The Gurdian.

Desmond Williams explained: ‘The ceiling was inspired by my earlier visits to King’s College Chapel in Cambridge’, with its exquisite stone lattice of mediaeval fan vaulting.

Williams designed churches that are bold yet disciplined, characterised by a confident use of materials, proportion and acoustics. His other listed churches were all completed in 1968.

Collaboration lay at the heart of his practice. At Saint Augustine’s Church, Manchester, he worked closely with the ceramic artist Robert Brumby, whose imposing sculptural reredos, along with Pierre Fourmaintraux’s abstract stained glass, elevate and enrich the architectural fabric. The unified and powerful liturgical space they created exemplifies the progressive, interdisciplinary spirit of 1960s British modernism.

The cot of arms of Pope Paul VI above the entrance to Saint Mary’s Church, Dunstable (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Desmond Williams was born in Whalley Range, Manchester, on 7 July 1932, the son of Sydney Williams, a draughtsman of electrical systems on submarines, and his wife, Eleanor, a staunch Catholic, He was educated at Saint Bede’s College, Manchester, where his early interest in architecture was encouraged.

A formative moment came during a teenage visit to Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight. There the abbey’s simple brick interior, its harmonious proportions and powerful combination of architecture, music and liturgy left a lasting impression and instilled a lifelong fascination with the relationship between space, sound and spiritual experience. His teenage interests in architecture were strengthened by a cycling trip through East Anglia, exploring Norwich Cathedral, along with local churches and historic houses.

Williams studied architecture at the University of Manchester School of Architecture, where his contemporaries included Donald Buttress, later the surveyor of the fabric of Westminster Abbey. After qualifying, he was briefly in partnership with Arthur Farebrother in Altrincham, securing early commissions for churches and schools. His first task as project architect was Saint Catherine of Siena Church, Didsbury (1957), designed in the style of a Romanesque basilica.

He was only 28 when he set up his own practice in Manchester, nurturing strong professional links with the Department of Education and Science that led to a steady stream of commissions. One of his first church commissions he received was for Saint Mary’s, Dunstable. The schools and colleges he designed included an extension to Ampleforth College, the Benedictine-run boarding school at Ampleforth Abbey.

Williams formed a partnership with the W & JB Ellis of Liverpool in 1968. This expanded into Ellis Williams Architects, with studios in London, Berlin and across the north of England. He was appointed OBE in 1988 in recognition of his work as a church architect and he continued working until he was in his mid 90s. He died on 31 January 2026.

• Sunday Masses in Saint Mary’s are: Saturday Vigil, 6 pm; Sunday mornings, 9:30 and 11:30; weekday Masses are generally on Monday to Friday at 9:30, or 10 am on bank holidays.

A statue of the Virgin Mary in the grounds of Saint Mary’s Church, Dunstable (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 25, Monday 1 June 2026, the Visitation

The ‘Madonna of the Magnificat’, a sculpture by Laurence Broderick in Saint Peter’s Priory Church, Dunstable (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

Since the 50-day season of Easter came to an end with the Day of Pentecost or Whit Sunday (24 May 2026), we are in Ordinary Time once again. This week began with Trinity Sunday (31 May 2026), and on Trinity Sunday the liturgical colour returned from the Green of Ordinary Time to the white or gold of a festival.

The liturgical colour remains white or gold today because the Feast of the Visit of the Blessed Virgin Mary to Elizabeth has been transferred from 31 May to 1 June this year because yesterday was Trinity Sunday. 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.

The Visitation (Luke 1: 39-45) … a panel from the 19th century Oberammergau altarpiece in the Lady Chapel in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 1: 39-49 [50–56] (NRSVA):

39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’

46 And Mary said,

‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
48 for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
[50 His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
51 He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
53 he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
54 He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

56 And Mary remained with her for about three months and then returned to her home.]

‘The Visitation’ in a stained-glass window in Great Saint Mary’s Church in Saffron Walden (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

At the Feast of the Visitation, transferred from 31 May this year because yesterday was Trinity Sunday, the Church recalls the visit of the Virgin Mary to her cousin Saint Elizabeth, as Saint Luke’s Gospel records in today’s Gospel reading (Luke 1: 39-49 [50–56]).

This feast was first celebrated at a Franciscan Order General Chapter in 1263 and quickly spread throughout Europe. Since it is a celebration clearly described in the Gospel, the churches of the Reformation were less inclined to proscribe it than they were other Marian feasts, particularly as it was the occasion for the Virgin Mary to sing her great hymn of praise in honour of her Lord and God.

The Canticle Magnificat (Luke 1: 46-55) is familiar to Anglicans at Evening Prayer and Evensong throughout the week. The great German theologian and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), in a sermon in London over 90 years ago (17 December 1933), said Magnificat ‘is the oldest Advent hymn,’ and he spoke of how Mary knows better than anyone else what it means to wait for Christ’s coming:

‘In her own body she is experiencing the wonderful ways of God with humankind: that God does not arrange matters to suit our opinions and views, does not follow the path that humans would like to prescribe. God’s path is free and original beyond all our ability to understand or to prove.’

Today’s Gospel reading (Luke 1: 39-56) recalls Mary of the Magnificat and tells the story of the Virgin Mary’s visit to her cousin, Saint Elizabeth.

When she visits, they are both pregnant – one with the Christ Child, the other with Saint John the Baptist.

Immediately after the Annunciation, the Virgin Mary leaves Nazareth and travels south to an unnamed ‘Judean town in the hill country,’ perhaps Hebron outside Jerusalem, to visit Elizabeth. When she arrives, although he is still in his mother’s womb, Saint John the Baptist is aware of the presence of Christ, and the unborn child leaps for joy.

Saint Elizabeth too recognises that Christ is present, and declares to Mary with a loud cry: ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy’ (Luke 1: 42-44).

The Virgin Mary responds to Saint Elizabeth immediately with the words that we now know as the canticle Magnificat.

So we see, side-by-side, two women, one seemingly too old to have a child, but destined to bear the last prophet of the age that is passing away; and the other woman, seemingly too young to have a child, but about to give birth to he who is the beginning of the age that is not going to pass away.

The Virgin Mary of the canticle Magnificat and of the Visitation is a strong and revolutionary woman, unlike the Virgin Mary of the plaster-cast statues and the Rosary.

The Mary I see as a role model for belief and discipleship is the Mary who sets off in a hurry and a flurry to visit her cousin Elizabeth, the Mary with a gob on her who speaks out of turn when she comes out with those wonderful words we hear in this Gospel reading, the Mary who sings the Canticle Magnificat.

What a contrasting pair these two cousins, Mary and Elizabeth, are.

How much they speak to so many of the dilemmas we have in our lives today.

Elizabeth is the older woman. She has been married for years. Because of social and family pressures, she had started to become embarrassed that after all those years of marriage she has not become pregnant.

In those days, even in many places to this day, this was an embarrassing social stigma. She had no son to inherit her husband’s lands, his family position, the place of Zechariah as a priest in the Temple in Jerusalem.

She reminds us too of Sarah, who is so embarrassed at the thought of becoming pregnant in her old age that she laughs in the face of the three visitors, she laughs in the face of the living Triune God.

Today, a woman who became pregnant at her stage in life might not laugh. She might quake with fear. She might ask for amniocentesis or an amniotic fluid test.

And yet Elizabeth takes control of her situation. She turns a predicament into an opportunity, a crisis of a pregnancy so late in life into a blessing for us all.

She is so filled with joy when Mary arrives that as soon as she hears the knock on the door, as soon as she hears the sound of Mary on her doorstep, her joy is infectious, so infectious that even the child in her womb – the child who would grow up to be Saint John the Baptist – leaps with joy in her womb.

Elizabeth’s action is radical. Life is tough enough for her. Her husband has been struck dumb. A dumb priest was unlikely to be able to continue to earn a liturgical living in the Temple in Jerusalem. How was she now going to provide for her child when he was born?

But Elizabeth’s actions are more radical than that.

How many women of her age, and her respectable background, would have been so quick to rush out and welcome her much younger, single and pregnant cousin?

How many women would have been worried: ‘What if she stays here and has the child here? Would we ever live with the shame?’

How many women might have suggested instead that Mary goes off and finds a home where they can find someone else to take care of her child when he is born?

Instead, Elizabeth welcomes Mary with open arms. Elizabeth’s joyful greeting, ‘Blessed are you among women …,’ echoes the greeting of the Archangel Gabriel (see Luke 1: 28), ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.’

It is almost as if Elizabeth is saying: ‘It doesn’t matter what others think of you. It doesn’t matter how other people are going to judge you. I love you.’

Which is precisely what God says in the Incarnation, in the precious gift of the Christ come among us: ‘It doesn’t matter what others think of you. It doesn’t matter how other people are going to judge you. I love you.’

Mary for her part is such a wonderful, feisty person. She is, what might be described in the red-top tabloid newspapers today as ‘a gymslip Mum.’ But, instead of hiding herself away from her family, from her cousins, from the woman in her family who is married to a priest, she rushes off to her immediately, to share her good news with her.

And she challenges so many of our prejudices and our values and our presumptions today. Not just about gymslip mums and unexpected or unplanned pregnancies, but about what the silent and the marginalised have to say about our values in society today.

And Mary declares:

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.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

She sings a song of hope in a world where those who are proud in their hearts need to be scattered, where the powerful need to be brought down from their thrones, where the lowly wait to be lifted up.

She sings a song of hope for the hungry who long to be filled with good things, where the rich are about to be sent away empty, where those who have been at the bottom of pile too long need help and mercy.

‘The Visitation’ depicted in a stained-glass window in Saint John’s Church, Pallaskenry, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 1 June 2026, the Visitation, transferred):

A new edition of Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), was published last week, in time for the USPG conference in the High Leigh, Hertfordshire, from tomorrow (2 June) until Thursday (4 June). The theme this week, from 31 May to 6 June 2026 (pp 6-7) is ‘Peacebuilding in the Gulf’. This theme was introduced yesterday with a reflection from Saint Christopher’s Cathedral in Bahrain.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 1 June 2026, the Visitation, transferred) invites us to pray:

Lord, uphold the people of Saint George’s and all who gather in Baghdad, giving them courage to walk streets shadowed by conflict. Thank you that there is peace in your presence. We pray with them for peace across the country too.

The Collect:

Mighty God,
by whose grace Elizabeth rejoiced with Mary
and greeted her as the mother of the Lord:
look with favour on your lowly servants
that, with Mary, we may magnify your holy name
and rejoice to acclaim her Son our Saviour,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Gracious God,
who gave joy to Elizabeth and Mary
as they recognized the signs of redemption
at work within them:
help us, who have shared in the joy of this eucharist,
to know the Lord deep within us
and his love shining out in our lives, that the world may rejoice in your salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

The Visitation depicted in a window in Saint Ailbe’s Church, Emly, Co Tipperary (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