COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
A creaking gate at 74? … No 74 on a garden gate in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
John Banville was interivewed by Marin Doyle in The Irish Times some weeks ago following the publication his latest novel, Venetian Vespers, and when asked about reaching the age of 80 he declared: ‘I expected to be dead, or at least gaga, by now’.
I’ve not quite reached 80 today, but I am glad to be alive at 74 and glad to find that I am not ‘at least gaga by now’. But, unless I am going to live to be 148, I have to concede something is wrong about still feeling middle-aged today. I’m up and about, enjoying life, feeling deeply loved, thinking too far ahead, and revelling in all the loving birthday greetings I have been receiving during the day.
According to Trainline, 74 trains run daily on the busiest and most popular train route in the UK, between London and Manchester, with an average journey time of 2½ hours. At 74, I am neither popular nor busy, nor am I running daily for 2½ hours.
But at this stage in my life, is 74 just another number along the road or on the pilgrimage of life, a number on a front door or a creaking gate, a mumber for the bus from Putney Exchange to Baker Street Station, Birmingham to Dudley, or Eden Quay to Dundrum Luas, or perhaps merely a broken speed limit?
Old and weary at 74? … No 74 Neofitou Patelarou, Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
In maths, 74 is a positive composite number, a semiprime or subprime (2 x 37), with factors 1, 2, 37, and 74, and it is the sum of two perfect squares (52 + 72 = 25 + 49 = 74).
A semiprime, or biprime or a pq number, is a natural number that is the product of exactly two prime numbers, which can be the same or different, like 6 (2×3) or 9 (3×3), or, for that matter 74 (2x37). They are important in number theory and cryptography, as they are difficult to factor, making them useful for security, and they include prime squares like 4, 25, and 49. Semiprimes that are not square numbers are called discrete, distinct, or squarefree semiprimes
The number 74 is represented as LXXIV in Roman numerals and 1001010 in binary, it is a palindromic number in base 6 (202) and base 36 (22).
In science, 74 is the atomic number of tungsten, a strong and dense metal. It has the highest melting point of all metals, which means it needs great heat to turn into a liquid. Because of this, tungsten is often used to make the filaments or tiny wires that glow inside old-fashioned light bulbs. It is also used in tools that need to be very hard, like drills.
I am aware a little more than usual today that the poet Seamus Heaney was 74 when he died in 2013.
When he reached the age of 74, the poet Michael Blumenthal, a former Director of Creative Writing at Harvard and retired Professor of Law at West Virginia University, said he had felt like 38 ‘’ever since I turned 38’: ‘Now that I am a limping 74-year-old, I am just trying to keep up with my peers and not feel jealous about the ones who can still walk without pain. Inside, I still feel like 38, outside like 74.’
He reflected wisely: ‘I am calmer, slower, more patient. I am no longer plagued, or motivated, by terribly much by way of ambition. I have a sense of being able to sit back and watch the world and its events go by … Life has its own plans for us, often not the ones we made.’
Perhaps, at 74, I am less of creaking gate or a dense metal and more like the sum of two perfect squares, a positive composite number, a semiprime, difficult to factor and useful for security, yet discrete and distinct. Outside I may look 74; inside, in my mind and in my heart, I still feel like I am 37, in my prime, or somewhere between 25 and 49, two prime squares.
Red berries at 74 …walking along Moreton Road in Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
For poets and lovers and lovers of poetry, it is worth remending ourselves how in Sonnet 74, Shakespeare says only the poet’s body will die, but the spirit of the poet will continue to live in his poetry and in the love he gave and shared:
But be contented when that fell arrest
Without all bail shall carry me away,
My life hath in this line some interest,
Which for memorial still with thee shall stay.
When thou reviewest this, thou dost review
The very part was consecrate to thee.
The earth can have but earth, which is his due;
My spirit is thine, the better part of me.
So then thou hast but lost the dregs of life,
The prey of worms, my body being dead,
The coward conquest of a wretch’s knife,
Too base of thee to be rememberèd.
The worth of that is that which it contains,
And that is this, and this with thee remains.
74 is more than a number on a door or a figure for counting the years (Photographs: Patrick Comerford)
A statue of Saint Paul at Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, Singapore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Patrick Comerford
The 40-day season of Christmas continues until Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation next Monday (2 February 2026). As yesterday was the Third Sunday of Epiphany (Epiphany III), the calendar of the Church of England provides for transferring the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul on 25 January to today. Otherwise, 26 January celebrates Saint Timothy and Saint Titus, Companions of Saint Paul, as a lesser festival.
Later this evening, I have a meeting of the trustees of a local charity I have been involved with for the past three years. 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, 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 Peter (left) and Saint Paul (right) among the carved figures on the west front of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Matthew 19: 27-30 (NRSVA):
27 Then Peter said in reply, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?’ 28 Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life. 30 But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.’
Saint Peter and Saint Paul … a fresco in the Church of the Four Martyrs in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Reflection:
If today is celebrated as the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, the Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Matthew 19: 27-30) talks about abandoning everything from the past for the sake of following Christ in apostolic ministry.
The account of the Apostle Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus is provided in one of the other readings for this day (Acts 9: 1-22).
Because I was born a day after this feast day, my mother wanted to call me Paul. The uncle and aunt who brought me to be baptised – my father’s half-brother Arthur and his wife Kathleen – had other ideas. Another of my father’s brothers was also called Patrick, named after his maternal grandfather, Patrick Lynders. But my mother often continued to call me Paul. I am more than comfortable with the name Patrick, yet there is a way in these two days – the Conversion of Saint Paul (25 January) and my birthday (26 January) – come together for me as one celebration.
The Apostle Paul’s entire life is explained in terms of one experience – his meeting with Christ on the road to Damascus. Although he had a zealot’s hatred for Christ, who was just a few years older than him, Saint Paul probably never saw Jesus before the Ascension. Yet he was determined in chasing down the followers of Christ: ‘entering house after house and dragging out men and women, he handed them over for imprisonment’ (Acts 8: 3b).
But, on the road to Damascus, Christ enters Saint Paul’s own inner home, seizes possession of him, takes command of all his energy, and harnesses it so that Saint Paul becomes a slave of Christ in the ministry of reconciliation as a consequence of one simple sentence: ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting’ (Acts 9: 5b).
Saint Paul, who was blind in his prejudice, is blinded so that he can have a new vision. He is imprisoned so that he can bring his great message to the world. And the magnitude of his sins, including his attempts to wipe out Christianity completely, show us clearly that no matter how terrible the sin may be any sinner may be forgiven.
In the same way, the Apostle Peter’s denial of Christ – three times during his Passion – did not put him beyond the forgiveness and love of Christ. Saint Peter too, in an effort to save his own skin, denied he knew the prisoner, but became a prisoner himself and a martyr for Christ.
No matter what our failings and our weaknesses, no matter where our blind spots may be, Christ calls us – not once but constantly – to turn around, to turn towards him, to turn our lives around, to turn them over to him.
Instead of his persecution, Saint Paul is remembered as the first and greatest missionary.
Instead of his three denials, Saint Peter is remembered for his confession of faith, his acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah or the Christ, recorded in the three synoptic Gospels (Matthew 16: 13-20; Mark 8: 13-20; Luke 9: 18-20). That Confession of Saint Peter is marked in many Church calendars on 18 January 2025, and is the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
The Conversion of Saint Paul is celebrated a week later (25 January) throughout the Church – in the Anglican, Roman Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox traditions – and marks the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity – or rather, the Octave of Christian Unity – from 18 to 25 January, linking those two feasts, was first suggested in 1908 by an American Episcopalian or Anglican monk, Father Paul Wattson, who was the superior of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, and who reintroduced Franciscan life to the Anglican Communion.
Appropriately, the icon of Christian Unity in the Eastern Orthodox tradition shows Peter and Paul embracing – almost wrestling – arms around each other, beards so close they are almost inter-twining. Every time I see this icon, I think of Psalm 133:
How very good and pleasant it is
when [brothers] live together in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down upon the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down over the collar of his robes.
It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion.
For there the Lord ordained his blessing,
life for evermore.
So, despite many readings of the New Testament, especially the Acts of the Apostles, that see Saint Peter and Saint Paul in conflict with each other rather than complementing each other, they can be models for Church Unity.
Without that unity in the Early Church, its mission would have been hamstrung and hampered. For without unity there can be no effective mission, as the great Edinburgh Missionary Conference realised in 1910. And so the modern ecumenical movement has real roots in the mission of the Church.
The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity came to an end yesterday. I pray that we may rejoice in the fact that our differences can complement each other, and that we will see the diversity and unity that Saint Peter and Saint Paul wrestled with but eventually rejoiced in as models for our own unity today and in times to come.
The Apostle Peter and the Apostle Paul holding the church in unity … an early 18th century icon in the Museum of Christian Art in Iraklion, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Today’s Prayers (26 January 2026, the Conversion of Saint Paul, transferred):
The theme this week (25-31 January 2026) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Connections That Last’ (pp 22-23). This theme was introduced yesterday with Reflections from Paula de Mello Alves, a Brazilian lawyer and theologian, Executive Secretary of the Southern Diocese, and former co-leader of the Anglican Communion Youth Network (ACYN).
The USPG Prayer Diary today (26 January 2026) invites us to pray:
Lord, we give thanks for Paula and the ways her leadership encourages connection between young people and the wider Anglican Communion. Guide her steps and fill her path with trust in you.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
who caused the light of the gospel
to shine throughout the world
through the preaching of your servant Saint Paul:
grant that we who celebrate his wonderful conversion
may follow him in bearing witness to your truth;
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:
Almighty God,
who on the day of Pentecost
sent your Holy Spirit to the apostles
with the wind from heaven and in tongues of flame,
filling them with joy and boldness to preach the gospel:
by the power of the same Spirit
strengthen us to witness to your truth
and to draw everyone to the fire of your love;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
A modern icon of the Conversion of Saint Paul
The Collect (Saint Timothy and Saint Titus):
Heavenly Father,
who sent your apostle Paul to preach the gospel,
and gave him Timothy and Titus
to be his companions in faith:
grant that our fellowship in the Holy Spirit
may bear witness to the name of Jesus,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer (Saint Timothy and Saint Titus):
Holy Father,
who gathered us here around the table of your Son
to share this meal with the whole household of God:
in that new world where you reveal
the fullness of your peace,
gather people of every race and language
to share with Timothy and Titus and all your saints
in the eternal banquet of Jesus Christ our Lord.
