Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and the week began with the Fourth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VI, 12 July 2026). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Swithun (ca 862), Bishop of Winchester, and Saint Bonaventure (1218-1274), Franciscan friar, bishop and teacher of the faith.
Later today, I plan to take part in the rehearsals of the choir in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, and I am still in two minds about whether and where to watch the England v Argentina World Cup semi-final afterwards. 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.
Matthew 11: 25-27 (NRSVA):
25 At that time Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; 26 yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. 27 All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’
Today’s Reflections:
Jesus said, ‘I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth’ … (Matthew 11: 25).
Sometimes, I am concerned that my prayers are too complicated and too direct. I spend more time explaining to God what I want or need, and explaining to God or justifying to myself what and why I am praying for … telling God how awful the world’s complex problems and politics are, and in a prayerful but passive aggressive way chiding God for seeming to nothing about it, yet.
The prayers of infants and children are often simple, honest and direct, as in the opening lines of Jesus’s words in today’s Gospel reading, thanking God as ‘Lord of heaven and earth’. This morning’s reading is also a warning to me about wanting to appear wise and intelligent to others and not being patient and humble like a child of God.
It’s almost 60 years since the New Vaudeville Band had a novelty one-hit chart-topping success in December 1966 with Winchester Cathedral. Of course, there was no such thing as the New Vaudeville Band – it was a novelty group of session musicians put together by the song’s composer, Geoff Stephens, and the singer John Carter recorded singing through his hands to imitate a megaphone sound:
Winchester Cathedral
You’re bringing me down
You stood and you watched as
My baby left town.
You could have done something
But you didn’t try
You didn’t do nothing
You let her walk by.
Saint Swithun, was Bishop of Winchester in the ninth century, is commemorated in Common Worship today (15 July), although little is known of his life and he is usually associated with aphorisms or superstitions about weather forecasts on this day.
Saint Swithun was a bishop for 10 years and appears to have been a trusted adviser of Egbert, King of Wessex. He had asked to be buried ‘humbly’ and not in a great shrine and, when he died on 2 July 862, his request was fulfilled. However, when a new cathedral was being built, Ethelwold, the new bishop, decided to move Swithun’s remains into a shrine in the cathedral, despite dire warnings that to move the bones would bring about terrible storms.
His body was reburied or translated on 15 July 971 and, although many cures were claimed and other miracles observed, it apparently rained for 40 days, as forecast. Thus the feast-day of Saint Swithun became synonymous with long, summer storms, rather than as an occasion for celebrating Christian simplicity and holiness.
An English proverb says:
Saint Swithun’s day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
Saint Swithun’s day if thou be fair
For forty days ’twill rain nae mare
A variation says:
If on St Swithun’s day it really pours
You’re better off to stay indoors.
Perhaps that’s why Geoff Stephens and John Carter felt let down by Winchester Cathedral almost 60 years ago.
The need to not just pray about our weather but to act politically in response to climate change was brought out in a report in The Guardian on Monday (13 July 2026) that scientists estimate the heatwave in England and Wales in June killed about 440 people a day during its three-day peak. The analysis, led by Dr Clair Barnes at Imperial College London, shows that across the whole of the June heatwave, plus the one in May, about 2,700 people have died prematurely.
The data starkly illustrates the danger of extreme heat, which is being supercharged by the climate crisis. More than 40% of the people affected would not have died without the 1.4C of human-caused global heating to date, according to the analysis. In comparison, about four people die each day as a result of road traffic collisions and about 35 a day because of alcohol and drug use.
Extreme temperatures will worsen as continued fossil fuel burning pumps pollution into the atmosphere, making cuts in emissions and measures to protect people from global heating urgent, experts say. There are real reasons that go beyond folklore and superstition to be concerned about the weather we may have today on Saint Swithun’s Day and for the next 40 days … sunshine or rain.
Meanwhile, if we truly acknowledge God in our prayers as ‘Lord of heaven and earth’ we need to reflect that in taking responsibility for our custody of the earth and we need to do more in respose to the climate crisis.
Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 15 July 2026):
In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, from 12 to 18 July 2026 (pp 18-19), is ‘The Land of the Highlanders’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a reflection by the Most Revd Mark Strange, Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church.
The USPG prayer diary today (Wednesday 15 July 2026) invites us to pray
Dear Lord, for the Highlands, we pray that it may be honoured as a shared gift and not controlled by a few. Open paths for fair access, sustainable living, and flourishing local communities.
The Collect of the Day:
Almighty God,
by whose grace we celebrate again
the feast of your servant Swithun:
grant that, as he governed with gentleness
the people committed to his care,
so we, rejoicing in our Christian inheritance,
may always seek to build up your Church in unity and love;
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:
God, shepherd of your people,
whose servant Swithun revealed the loving service of Christ
in his ministry as a pastor of your people:
by this eucharist in which we share
awaken within us the love of Christ
and keep us faithful to our Christian calling;
through him who laid down his life for us,
but is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.
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
