Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 98, Thursday 13 August 2026

‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?’ (Matthew 18: 32-33) … a stained-glass window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Eighth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VIII). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), Bishop of Down and Connor, teacher of the faith; Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), nurse and social reformer; and Octavia Hill (1838-1912), social reformer.

I may stay up late tonight, or early into the morning, to watch the by-election results coming in from Clacton. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and for reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything’ (Matthew 18: 26) … old, worthless banknotes heaped up outside an antiques shop in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 18: 21 to 19: 1 (NRSVA):

21 Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ 22 Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

23 ‘For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25 and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow-slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, “Pay what you owe.” 29 Then his fellow-slave fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he should pay the debt. 31 When his fellow-slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32 Then his lord summoned him and said to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?” 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’

1 When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.

‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything’ (Matthew 18: 29) … a collection of denarii among old Greek coins in an exhibition in Callan, Co Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

The Gospel reading at the Eucharist this morning (Matthew 18: 21 to 19: 1) looks critically at the limits we place on forgiveness and the over-abundant generosity and universal scope of God’s forgiveness.

What are the limits to my capacity to understand and forgive others?

Are there limits to God’s willingness to forgive?

Forgiveness is so central to Christian faith and life, that it is emphasised throughout Saint Matthew’s Gospel.

In this reading, Saint Peter asks how many times he should forgive, and is told ‘not seven times but, I tell you, seventy-seven times,’ or, as some sources put it, seventy times seven.

In Biblical thinking, the number seven always indicates holiness, as in the seventh day, the seventh month, the seventh year or ‘year of release,’ and the Jubilee year that follows seven cycles of seven years.

As the former Chief Rabbi, the late Lord (Jonathan) Sacks, has said, seven is the symbol of the holy, that God exists beyond time and space.

But what about the number 70 when Christ says ‘seven times seventy’ or ‘seventy-seven times’?

Talmudic scholars approach the Torah as if it has ‘seventy faces’ (Numbers Rabbah 13: 15-16). The number 70 has sacred significance in Biblical Hebrew: 70 is the number of people who first went down to Egypt, the elders chosen by Moses, the years of King David, the Babylonian exile, the sages of the Sanhedrin, the translators of the Septuagint, the span of human life, the words of Kiddush, the nations of the world …

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy points out in The Genius of Judaism that the number 70 is ‘no ordinary number.’ He calls it the ‘secret universal.’ It represents the fullness of humanity, the ‘other universal that escorts human beings on the path of their history and to the centre of their substance.’ It is ‘the number of infinity extended.’

So, Christ tells us in this Gospel reading that divine forgiveness is to be extended ‘seventy-seven times’ or ‘seventy times seven’ – in other words, God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach.

In the second part of this reading, Christ explains what he is saying in a parable that is unique to Saint Matthew’s Gospel and that involves three distinct episodes:

1, A king decides to settle his accounts with his slaves or servants: the word δοῦλος (doulos) means either, so those who first heard this parable could imagine an end-of-year audit with court officials, financiers or tax collectors. One of these officials owes 10,000 talents, the equivalent to £3,358,735,524 (€3,877,551,979) today. No ordinary slave could accumulate such a debt. Of course, he is unable to clear a debt of such magnitude.

The king might have been reminded that Jewish law prohibits demanding payment from a debtor who is unable to pay (mitzvah 234; Exodus 22: 24). A lender may not embarrass a borrower by harassing him, and is forbidden to seize the debtor’s land or to sell him or his family into slavery.

When the servant seeks forgiveness, the king goes beyond the narrow constraints of rabbinical law, shows overflowing generosity, and agrees to clear off the loan.

2, Now, however, this senior official demands the repayment of a loan of three month’s wages, 100 denarii – about £6,473 (€7,473) today – from a lower-level servant. Imagine the senior official as the line manager for the official who asks for forgiveness. Once again, there is commandment not to take a pledge from a debtor by force (mitzvah 239; Deuteronomy 24: 10). The man already forgiven now refuses to forgive when it is his turn, even his obligation, and he compounds this with his use of force.

3, When the king hears about this, he retracts his original forgiveness.

After telling this parable, Christ identifies the king as God, the first servant as any Christian, and the second as anyone else.

Christ makes the point that God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach. He calls us to forgive in a way that is so difficult that I am still wrestling with it.

Many of us grew up with language that chided us, so that when we did something wrong and said sorry, we were told, ‘Sorry is not enough’ or ‘Sorry doesn’t fix anything.’ Such phrases allow a hurt person to withhold forgiveness, to find comfort in their own hurt, to control us in a way that allows us to know mercilessly how much we are in need of mercy.

But we also live in a culture of half-hearted apologies that are difficult to forgive. Politicians and business leaders say they accept responsibility by resigning – so they never have to answer for their actions. Half-hearted apologies – ‘I am sorry if I have offended you’ – mean that those who are hurt feel they need to apologise for their response, their reaction, for being hurt.

There are times that I have no right to forgive, when it is not my place to forgive. I cannot forgive the plotters and perpetrators of the Holocaust, because, no matter how many times I have visited places that are an intimate part of the Holocaust story, I am not one of the victims.

I cannot forgive slaveholders or mass murderers in wars and killing fields, because I am not one of their victims. On the other hand, perhaps, because I am not a victim, I might find it is not so difficult.

The true difficulties arise in my own personal life: members of my own family, some of them long-dead, lost friends, once-near neighbours, former work colleagues I think hurt me in the past. I walk around in self-pity with perceived slights, insults and hurts, like some crutch that helps the wounded, broken me to walk through this broken and hurting world.

But then I am reminded, time and again, that God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach.

‘And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt’ (Matthew 18: 27) … a stained-glass window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 13 August 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 (9-15 August 2026, pp 28-29), is ‘Mission to the Mangyans’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by the Revd Jewel B Tumaliuan, Programme Director, Iglesia Filipina Independiente (IFI).

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 13 August 2026) invites us to pray:

Lord, we lament the danger and disruption caused by military presence and conflict that makes travel and worship unsafe for the Mangyans. Protect all, we pray. May your church shine as a light in the darkness for many.

The Collect of the Day:

Holy and loving God,
you dwell in the human heart
and make us partakers of the divine nature
in Christ our great high priest:
help us who remember your servant Jeremy Taylor
to put our trust in your heavenly promises
and follow a holy life in virtue and true godliness;
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 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 Jeremy Taylor to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Forgiveness and love in the face of death and mass murder … a fading rose on the fence at Birkenau (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

Daily prayer in Lent 2026: 21, Tuesday 10 March 2026

‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything’ (Matthew 18: 29) … coins in a large bowl in a café in Carpenter Street, Kuching, (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the middle of Lent, which began almost three weeks ago on Ash Wednesday (18 February 2026), and this week began with the Third Sunday in Lent (Lent III).

I am planning to travel from Stony Stratford later this morning to take part in the Ecumenical Pilgrimage to Walsingham in Norfolk from today (Tuesday 10 March) until Friday (13 March). This Ecumenical pilgrimage has been organised with the support of the Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius and the Society of Saint John Chrysostom and is in its 100th year. I have been invited to be one of the speakers, speaking on Thursday afternoon on ‘A Priest along the Way of a Pilgrim’.

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.

‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything’ (Matthew 18: 26) … old, worthless banknotes heaped up outside an antiques shop in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 18: 21-35 (NRSVA):

21 Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ 22 Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

23 ‘For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25 and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow-slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, “Pay what you owe.” 29 Then his fellow-slave fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he should pay the debt. 31 When his fellow-slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32 Then his lord summoned him and said to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?” 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’

‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?’ (Matthew 18: 32-33) … a stained-glass window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

The Gospel reading at the Eucharist this morning (Matthew 18: 21-35) looks critically at the limits we place on forgiveness and the over-abundant generosity and universal scope of God’s forgiveness.

What are the limits to my capacity to understand and forgive others?

Are there limits to God’s willingness to forgive?

Forgiveness is so central to Christian faith and life, that it is emphasised throughout Saint Matthew’s Gospel.

In this reading, Saint Peter asks how many times he should forgive, and is told ‘not seven times but, I tell you, seventy-seven times,’ or, as some sources put it, seventy times seven.

In Biblical thinking, the number seven always indicates holiness, as in the seventh day, the seventh month, the seventh year or ‘year of release,’ and the Jubilee year that follows seven cycles of seven years.

As the former Chief Rabbi, the late Lord (Jonathan) Sacks, has said, seven is the symbol of the holy, that God exists beyond time and space.

But what about the number 70 when Christ says ‘seven times seventy’ or ‘seventy-seven times’?

Talmudic scholars approach the Torah as if it has ‘seventy faces’ (Numbers Rabbah 13: 15-16). The number 70 has sacred significance in Biblical Hebrew: 70 is the number of people who first went down to Egypt, the elders chosen by Moses, the years of King David, the Babylonian exile, the sages of the Sanhedrin, the translators of the Septuagint, the span of human life, the words of Kiddush, the nations of the world …

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy points out in The Genius of Judaism that the number 70 is ‘no ordinary number.’ He calls it the ‘secret universal.’ It represents the fullness of humanity, the ‘other universal that escorts human beings on the path of their history and to the centre of their substance.’ It is ‘the number of infinity extended.’

So, Christ tells us in this Gospel reading that divine forgiveness is to be extended ‘seventy-seven times’ or ‘seventy times seven’ – in other words, God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach.

In the second part of this reading, Christ explains what he is saying in a parable that is unique to Saint Matthew’s Gospel and that involves three distinct episodes:

1, A king decides to settle his accounts with his slaves or servants: the word δοῦλος (doulos) means either, so those who first heard this parable could imagine an end-of-year audit with court officials, financiers or tax collectors. One of these officials owes 10,000 talents, the equivalent to £3,358,735,524 (€3,877,551,979) today. No ordinary slave could accumulate such a debt. Of course, he is unable to clear a debt of such magnitude.

The king might have been reminded that Jewish law prohibits demanding payment from a debtor who is unable to pay (mitzvah 234; Exodus 22: 24). A lender may not embarrass a borrower by harassing him, and is forbidden to seize the debtor’s land or to sell him or his family into slavery.

When the servant seeks forgiveness, the king goes beyond the narrow constraints of rabbinical law, shows overflowing generosity, and agrees to clear off the loan.

2, Now, however, this senior official demands the repayment of a loan of three month’s wages, 100 denarii – about £6,473 (€7,473) today – from a lower-level servant. Imagine the senior official as the line manager for the official who asks for forgiveness. Once again, there is commandment not to take a pledge from a debtor by force (mitzvah 239; Deuteronomy 24: 10). The man already forgiven now refuses to forgive when it is his turn, even his obligation, and he compounds this with his use of force.

3, When the king hears about this, he retracts his original forgiveness.

After telling this parable, Christ identifies the king as God, the first servant as any Christian, and the second as anyone else.

Christ makes the point that God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach. He calls us to forgive in a way that is so difficult that I am still wrestling with it.

Many of us grew up with language that chided us, so that when we did something wrong and said sorry, we were told, ‘Sorry is not enough’ or ‘Sorry doesn’t fix anything.’ Such phrases allow a hurt person to withhold forgiveness, to find comfort in their own hurt, to control us in a way that allows us to know mercilessly how much we are in need of mercy.

But we also live in a culture of half-hearted apologies that are difficult to forgive. Politicians and business leaders say they accept responsibility by resigning – so they never have to answer for their actions. Half-hearted apologies – ‘I am sorry if I have offended you’ – mean that those who are hurt feel they need to apologise for their response, their reaction, for being hurt.

There are times that I have no right to forgive, when it is not my place to forgive. I cannot forgive the perpetrators of the Holocaust, because, no matter how many times I have visited places that are an intimate part of the Holocaust story, I am not one of the victims.

I cannot forgive slaveholders or mass murderers in wars and killing fields, because I am not one of their victims. On the other hand, perhaps, because I am not a victim, I might find it is not so difficult.

The true difficulties arise in my own personal life: members of my own family, lost friends, near neighbours, former colleagues I think hurt me in the past. I walk around with perceived slights, insults and hurts, like some crutch that helps the wounded, broken me to walk through this broken and hurting world.

But then I am reminded, time and again, that God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach.

‘And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt’ (Matthew 18: 27) … a stained-glass window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 10 March 2026):

The theme this week (8-14 March 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Biblical Sisterhood’ (pp 36-37). This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections by Dr Sanjana Das, PhD feminist theologian, advocate for the dignity and rights of trafficked and migrant working women.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 10 March 2026) invites us to pray:

Gracious God, we give thanks for our partner the Diocese of Durgapur, Church of North India and its work to prevent forced marriage and trafficking through education and awareness. Bless the ministry of the Anti Human Trafficking programme, we pray.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain,
and entered not into glory before he was crucified:
mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross,
may find it none other than the way of life and peace;
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:

Merciful Lord,
grant your people grace to withstand the temptations
of the world, the flesh and the devil,
and with pure hearts and minds to follow you, the only God;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Eternal God,
give us insight
to discern your will for us,
to give up what harms us,
and to seek the perfection we are promised
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Forgiveness and love in the face of death and mass murder … a fading rose on the fence at Birkenau (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

Empty Chairs in a square in Kraków recall the Jewish ghetto and are a poignant tribute to victims of the Holocaust

The Empty Chairs Memorial in Kraków, a powerful yet poignant tribute to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

International Holocaust Memorial day this week (27 January 2026) marked the 81st anniversary of the end of the Holocaust, which began with the liberation of the concentration camps at Auschwitz Birkenau on 27 January 1945.

In a blog posting to mark the day, I posted a ‘virtual tour’ of Holocaust memorials I have visited in a dozen countries, but I also came across photographs I had taken of an unusual memorial in a square in Kraków that remembers the victims of the Holocaust who had first been forcibly squeezed into the ghetto and then murdered either in the ghetto or in the camps such as Auschwitz.

I visited Kraków and Auschwitz ten years ago, I wrote about the death camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and about the seven surviving synagogues in Kraków, the history and life of the old Jewish Quarter in Kazimierz, the Jewish cemeteries, the Salt Mines at Wieliczka, the churches in Kraków, and the castle and cathedralon on Wawel Hill. But I had only made a passing reference in a magazine feature to some of the monuments and memorials I had seen in the ghetto the Nazis had created in Podgórze, to Schindler’s's factory, or to an unusual sculpture in the Ghetto Heroes Square in the former ghetto. Yet, when I came across my photographs from Kraków and Auschwitz-Birkenau this week, my memories of that visit ten years ago were as traumatic and as sharp as yesterday, filled with heartache and tenderness at one and the same time.

The Empty Chairs Memorial, a powerful yet poignant tribute to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, is in the Ghetto Heroes Square (Bohaterów Getta Square) in the Kazimierz Jewish Quarter in Kraków. This series of empty chairs symbolised the lives abandoned and the homes left empty during the mass deportation of Jews from the Kraków Ghetto in March 1943.

Bohaterów Getta Square began as a quiet, small market place, first known as Zgody Square or Plac Zgody. In the 1930s, the square also became a local bus station.

All changed in 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Zgody Square was closed off by a large gate marked with a Star of David, confining the Jewish populations to a ghetto, segregated the rest of the people of Kraków.

The Nazis issued an edict on 3 March 1941, forcing the Jews into the ‘Jewish residential quarter’ in Podgórze, ordering them to move there by 20 March. Non-Jewish residents were force to leave the Podgórze district, and Jewish families from across Kraków were forced to move into the area.

The ghetto, which functioned in Podgórze from 1941 to 1943, became the place for the brutal and savage extermination of the Jews of Kraków. The ghetto covered am area of just 20 ha and had 320 tenement houses, previously inhabited by the 3,500 people who had been forced to leave. About 17,000 Jews were crammed into 320 buildings in the ghetto, often with four or five families in one flat. Many slept on the floor; all, including children, the elderly and the sick, were forced to work; hunger and disease prevailed; and brutal treatment was a daily experience.

The only non-Jewish business not included in the order was the sole remaining pharmacy in the ghetto, run by Tadeusz Pankiewicz, a Pole who became the only non-Jew living in the area.

An arcaded portion of the ghetto wall mockingly resembled matzevot or traditional Jewish tombstones (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The ‘Jewish residential quarter’ was surrounded by a three-metre wall with an arcaded portion mockingly styled to resemble matzevot or traditional Jewish tombstones. Four gates led into the ghetto: the main gate had an inscription that read Jüdischer Wohnbezirk (Jewish Quarter) and stood where Limanowskiego Street enters the Main Market of Podgórze.

A tram ran along Lwowska and Limanowskiego streets, but there were no stops inside the walls, and passengers were forbidden even to look at the ghetto through the windows. Of course, that prohibition was broken, and sometimes parcels of food were dropped from a tram.

In October 1941, any departure from the ghetto without leave became punishable by death. The same penalty faced people helping fugitives. Postal services were forbidden, and all ground-floor windows on the non-Jewish side were bricked up, cutting the ghetto off from possible channels of food delivery.

Soon deportations to death camps and forced labour camps began in the ghetto. Płaszów concentration camp was originally intended as a forced labour camp, and was constructed on the grounds of the old and new Jewish cemeteries in Podgórze.

Exceedingly brutal resettlements were carried out in June and October 1942, and many people died in the streets during the roundups and transports. The painter Abraham Neuman and the folk singer and poet Mordecai Gebirtig were executed on so-called ‘Bloody Thursday’, 4 June 1942. Hospital patients and children from the orphanage were murdered on the spot or deported. Some of the deported people were executed over the mass graves already dug by the inmates in Płaszów.

The area of the ghetto was repeatedly reduced throughout 1942. Before the end of the year, it was bisected by barbed wire: precinct A was for able-bodied people capable of labour, while B was for children, the elderly, and the ailing.

Zgody Square became the site for roll-calls and selections. The police station was at the former bus terminal, the ghetto wall was nearby, and square became the place where people were selected to send from the ghetto to trains, waiting for hours for their final journey. The elderly, the sick and the young were often executed in the streets, in their homes, or even in the square.

The victims were clustered together at the west end of the square, while looted property was stacked in the centre. Tadeusz Pankiewicz, who ran the Under the Eagle Pharmacy, was an eyewitness to the horrors of daily life in the ghetto. He helped to smuggle in food and medicines, and provided fake documents to Jews living in hiding. In his memoir, The Kraków Ghetto Pharmacy, recalled ‘In Plac Zgody, an incalculable number of wardrobes, tables, sideboards and other furniture was rotting.’

Finally, on 13 and 14 March 1943, the Nazis carried out the final ‘liquidation’ of the Kraków ghetto. Around 6,000 residents of ghetto A, capable of heavy labour, were moved to the camp in Płaszów. Their children under 14 had to stay in the orphanage. On the following day, the residents of ghetto B were driven to Zgody Square. Many elderly, sick, and unemployed residents – along with children – were shot on-site, in the square or in nearby courtyards.

Around 1,000 people were shot dead on the spot, including the elderly, patients and physicians from the hospital, children and mothers who would not let them go. Many were worked to death in the camps in Płaszów and Belzec. Those who remained were taken to Auschwitz Birkenau, where they were murdered in the gas chambers. The action ended with SS officers searching the now abandoned buildings, murdering anyone who tried to hide.

Oskar Schindler’s factory, featured in ‘Schindler’s List’, is close to Ghetto Heroes Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The city renamed Plac Zgody as Ghetto Heroes Square in 1948 to honour the victims. For a time, it became a hub for public transport once again, but the memory of the wartime atrocities never faded. This chapter in the square’s history is retold in Stephen Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List (1993).

Inspired by Tadeusz Pankiewicz’s memoirs, the city commissioned an installation of oversized metal chairs, symbolising what was left behind – and the absence of those who once sat there. The architects Piotr Lewicki and Kazimierz Łatak created the monument, and it was completed in 2005.

The memorial features 33 large chairs arranged in rows, reminiscent of the roll-calls, facing the former pharmacy. Three face Lwowska Street, where a fragment of the original ghetto wall survives. An additional 37 smaller chairs for sitting encircle the larger ones. Each chair represents 1,000 lives.

Many people walk past the installation or weave their way their way through and around it, while children play and sit on the chairs, and only an odd walking tour seems to pause briefly to acknowledge it. But the empty chairs are stark and bold, sparse and empty, and they carry a powerful message with their feeling of absence. They capture a moment when human life was discarded just like the furniture piled up in the square.

A paved line through the square marks the symbolic border of the ghetto. Two dates are displayed on the old bus station building: 1941 (ghetto establishment) and 1943 (ghetto liquidation).

The memorial won the European Prize for Urban Public Space in 2006 and the Gold Award for Urban Quality in 2011.

The memorial is near other sites, including Oskar Schindler’s factory, and is a focal point for Holocaust remembrance in Kraków. In the March of Memory on 13 and 14 March each year, people march from Bohaterów Getta Square to the former Płaszów camp, following the route that led the Jews of Kraków to their death.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎

The Empty Chairs, installed in 2005, were inspired by Tadeusz Pankiewicz’s memoirs (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Tales of the Viennese Jews: 22, Eva (Geiringer) Schloss (1929-2026), stepsister of Anne Frank

xxx

Patrick Comerford

Most people of my generation read Anne Frank’s Diary in our teenage years, and I remember how read it over a few days as a 14-year-old during the summer months on the beach in Ballinskelligs, Co Kerry, 60 years ago.

Perhaps this explains, in part, why I paid special attention to news reports in recent days of the death of Eva Schloss (formerly Eva Geiringer), a Holocaust survivor, educator and bestselling author, who was a step-sister of Anne Frank and a co-founder of the Anne Frank Trust UK.

I began this occasional blog series, ‘Tales of the Viennese Jews,’ in November 2019. I last returned to that series almost a year ago (7 February 2025), when I told the stories of Marianne Faithfull (1946-2025), the archetypal ‘wild child’ of the 1960s, of her brave battle for recovery from addiction and against cancer, and of her mother, Eva Hermine von Sacher-Masoch (1912-1991), a self-styled baroness who resisted the Nazis in Austria. My previous posting in this series had been the story of Max Perutz (18 May 2021).

The Tales from the Vienna Woods is a waltz by the composer Johann Strauss II (1825-1899), written more than a century and a half ago in 1868. Although Strauss was baptised in the Roman Catholic Church, he was born into a prominent Jewish family. Because the Nazis had a particular penchant for Strauss’s music, they tried to conceal and even deny the Strauss family’s Jewish identity.

However, the stories of Vienna’s Jews cannot be hidden, and many of these stories are told in the exhibits in the Jewish Museum in its two locations, at the Palais Eskeles on Dorotheergasse and in the Misrachi-Haus in Judenplatz.

Rather than describe both museums in detail in one or two postings, I decided after a visit to Vienna to re-tell some of these stories through this series, celebrating a culture and a community whose stories should never be forgotten.

Eva Geiringer was born in Vienna on 11 May 1929 into a middle-class Jewish family, the daughter of Elfriede Markovits, known as Fritzi, and Erich Geiringer, a businessman. The family observed the main Jewish festivals and did not eat pork, but they were not orthodox.

Their lives changed overnight with the Anschluss, the German annexation of Austria, in 1938. After Eva’s older brother Heinz was beaten up at school because he was Jewish came home blood-soaked, the Geiringer family decided to leave Vienna and moved first to Brussels and then to Amsterdam.

Eva was 11 when the family arrived in Amsterdam in 1940. Anne Frank, who was a month younger, lived with her parents, Otto and Edith Frank, and her sister in the same block of flats in Merwedeplein: Anne lived at flat 37 and Eva at 46. They were not close, nor were they alike – Eva was athletic, while Anne was more interested in fashion, films and flirting.

When the Netherlands fell to the Nazis, they were forced to wear yellow stars. As life got worse, the two families found false papers and went into hiding, moving seven times in two years before ending up in an attic flat with a secret compartment behind a trapdoor.

While the Geiringer family were having breakfast on Eva’s 15th birthday, the Gestapo stormed in and marched them to their headquarters, where they were beaten before being sent from Westerbork to Auschwitz. Eva and her mother were separated from Eva’s father and brother, their heads were shaved and Eva was tattooed with the number A/5272.

Eva later recalled in detail the repeated humiliations, the starvation, the rats, beetles and lice, the brutal beatings, frostbite and diarrhoea, being forced to watch prisoners being hanged, and being forced to carry away dead bodies.

When Eva went to the hospital block in Birkenau with a high fever, she met her cousin from Prague, Minni, a nurse who interceded with Josef Mengele to save Fritzi, who had been selected for the gas chambers. Without Minni, neither Eva nor Fritzi would have survived.

When Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army in January 1945, Eva and Fritzi returned to Amsterdam. There they learned that Eva’s brother Heinz had died in Mauthausen of exhaustion in April, after the forced march from Auschwitz, and that her father had died three days before the end of the war.

Eva returned to school but felt bitter, angry and depressed. Otto Frank, who had learned of the death of his wife Edith and his daughters Anne and Margot, began to get close to Fritzi, especially after the discovery and the publication of Anne’s diary in 1947. When they married in 1953, Otto became Eva’s stepfather and he gave her the Leica camera he had used to photograph Anne and Margot.

At Otto’s suggestion, Eva went to London to take a photography course. There she met Zvi Schloss, a Bavarian-born Israeli citizen. They married in 1952, became the parents of three daughters, and Eva opened an antiques shop in Edgware.

Eva and Fritzi were invited to the opening of the exhibition ‘Anne Frank and the World’ at the Mall Galleries in 1986. The event was chaired by Ken Livingstone, leader of the Greater London Council, who called on Eva to speak. She had never spoken publicly about her experiences before, but went on to speak at events throughout the UK and co-founded the Anne Frank Trust UK with Gillian Walnes Perry.

Eva lived with survivor’s guilt in relation to her brother Heinz. In 2016, she spoke in Tralee, Co Kerry, at an International Women’s Day event organised by the Kerry Businesswomen's Association and the Bon Secours Hospital. In 2017, she organised an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in London of 30 of his paintings she had retrieved from their hiding place in Amsterdam.

She seldom spoke in public about Anne Frank apart from quoting the her diary where she said ‘I still believe that deep down human beings are good at heart’, commenting: ‘I cannot help remembering that she wrote this before she experienced Auschwitz and Belsen.’ Her books included The Promise (2006) and the bestselling After Auschwitz (2013).

Eva Schloss was appointed MBE for her work with the Anne Frank Trust and other Holocaust charities. She became an Austrian citizen again in 2021. Her mother Fritzi died in 1998 and her husband Zvi died in 2016. Three years ago, she danced with King Charles when he visited the JW3 centre on Finchley Road in December 2022. Eva died on 3 January 2026 and is survived by their daughters, Caroline, Jacky and Sylvia, and five grandchildren.

‘I have worked very, very hard to change people’s attitudes,’ Eva Schloss once told the BBC. ‘Each person you convince not to be racist is a positive.’ She believed that ‘we need to learn to live with each other in harmony, to accept each other for who and what we are. We must learn the lesson that human differences actually enrich our lives. We should not be afraid of people who are different from us, but we need to embrace their faiths and ways of life so that we can give our children and future generations a safer life to live’.

As for Anne Frank, many of the observations in her diary seem so relevant to events playing out today. For example, she wrote: ‘Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. They’re allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them, and even then, they’re robbed of these possessions on the way.

‘Families are torn apart; men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared. Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone … Everyone is scared … the end is nowhere in sight.’

When the Jon S Randall Peace Page on Facebook cited this quotation in June 2019, it was labelled ‘fake’ and denied and the page was suspended by Facebook for some time. Snopes, the online fact-check site, researched and investigated the quote, and verified it. Eventually, when the suspension was lifted, Jon S Randall cited another quotation from Anne Frank that was often quoted by Eva Schloss: ‘It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.’

May her memory be a blessing, זיכרונה לברכה‎

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎



Tales of the Viennese Jews:

1, the chief rabbi and a French artist’s ‘pogrom’

2, a ‘positively rabbinic’ portrait of an Anglican dean

3, portraits of two imperial court financiers

4, portrait of Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis

5, Lily Renée, from Holocaust Survivor to Escape Artist

6, Sir Moses Montefiore and a decorative Torah Mantle

7, Theodor Herzl and the cycle of contradictions

8, Simon Wiesenthal and the café in Mauthausen

9, Leonard Cohen and ‘The Spice-Box of Earth’

10, Ludwig Wittgenstein and his Jewish grandparents

11, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his Jewish librettist

12, Salomon Mayer von Rothschild and the railways in Vienna

13, Gustav Mahler and the ‘thrice homeless’ Jew

14, Beethoven at 250 and his Jewish connections in Vienna

15, Martin Buber and the idea of the ‘I-Thou’ relationship

16, Three Holocaust survivors who lived in Northern Ireland.

17, Schubert’s setting of Psalm 92 for the synagogue.

18, Bert Linder and his campaign against the Swiss banks.

19, Adele Bloch-Bauer and Gustav Klimt’s ‘Lady in Gold’.

20, Max Perutz, Nobel laureate and ‘the godfather of molecular biology’.

21, Marianne Faithfull (1946-2025) and her mother Eva Hermine von Sacher-Masoch (1912-1991)

22, Eva Geiringer Schloss (1929-2026), step-sister of Anne Frank

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 97, Thursday 14 August 2025

‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?’ (Matthew 18: 32-33) … a stained-glass window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Eighth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VIII). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers the life and witness of Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941), Carmelite friar and martyr in Auschwitz.

I am back in Stony Stratford this morning after my short-mid-week visit to Dublin. Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and for reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything’ (Matthew 18: 26) … old, worthless banknotes heaped up outside an antiques shop in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 18: 21 to 19: 1 (NRSVA):

21 Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ 22 Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

23 ‘For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25 and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow-slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, “Pay what you owe.” 29 Then his fellow-slave fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he should pay the debt. 31 When his fellow-slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32 Then his lord summoned him and said to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?” 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’

1 When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.

‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything’ (Matthew 18: 29) … a collection of denarii among old Greek coins in an exhibition in Callan, Co Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

The Gospel reading at the Eucharist this morning (Matthew 18: 21 to 19: 1) looks critically at the limits we place on forgiveness and the over-abundant generosity and universal scope of God’s forgiveness.

What are the limits to my capacity to understand and forgive others?

Are there limits to God’s willingness to forgive?

Forgiveness is so central to Christian faith and life, that it is emphasised throughout Saint Matthew’s Gospel.

In this reading, Saint Peter asks how many times he should forgive, and is told ‘not seven times but, I tell you, seventy-seven times,’ or, as some sources put it, seventy times seven.

In Biblical thinking, the number seven always indicates holiness, as in the seventh day, the seventh month, the seventh year or ‘year of release,’ and the Jubilee year that follows seven cycles of seven years.

As the former Chief Rabbi, the late Lord (Jonathan) Sacks, has said, seven is the symbol of the holy, that God exists beyond time and space.

But what about the number 70 when Christ says ‘seven times seventy’ or ‘seventy-seven times’?

Talmudic scholars approach the Torah as if it has ‘seventy faces’ (Numbers Rabbah 13: 15-16). The number 70 has sacred significance in Biblical Hebrew: 70 is the number of people who first went down to Egypt, the elders chosen by Moses, the years of King David, the Babylonian exile, the sages of the Sanhedrin, the translators of the Septuagint, the span of human life, the words of Kiddush, the nations of the world …

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy points out in The Genius of Judaism that the number 70 is ‘no ordinary number.’ He calls it the ‘secret universal.’ It represents the fullness of humanity, the ‘other universal that escorts human beings on the path of their history and to the centre of their substance.’ It is ‘the number of infinity extended.’

So, Christ tells us in this Gospel reading that divine forgiveness is to be extended ‘seventy-seven times’ or ‘seventy times seven’ – in other words, God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach.

In the second part of this reading, Christ explains what he is saying in a parable that is unique to Saint Matthew’s Gospel and that involves three distinct episodes:

1, A king decides to settle his accounts with his slaves or servants: the word δοῦλος (doulos) means either, so those who first heard this parable could imagine an end-of-year audit with court officials, financiers or tax collectors. One of these officials owes 10,000 talents, the equivalent to £3,358,735,524 (€3,877,551,979) today. No ordinary slave could accumulate such a debt. Of course, he is unable to clear a debt of such magnitude.

The king might have been reminded that Jewish law prohibits demanding payment from a debtor who is unable to pay (mitzvah 234; Exodus 22: 24). A lender may not embarrass a borrower by harassing him, and is forbidden to seize the debtor’s land or to sell him or his family into slavery.

When the servant seeks forgiveness, the king goes beyond the narrow constraints of rabbinical law, shows overflowing generosity, and agrees to clear off the loan.

2, Now, however, this senior official demands the repayment of a loan of three month’s wages, 100 denarii – about £6,473 (€7,473) today – from a lower-level servant. Imagine the senior official as the line manager for the official who asks for forgiveness. Once again, there is commandment not to take a pledge from a debtor by force (mitzvah 239; Deuteronomy 24: 10). The man already forgiven now refuses to forgive when it is his turn, even his obligation, and he compounds this with his use of force.

3, When the king hears about this, he retracts his original forgiveness.

After telling this parable, Christ identifies the king as God, the first servant as any Christian, and the second as anyone else.

Christ makes the point that God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach. He calls us to forgive in a way that is so difficult that I am still wrestling with it.

Many of us grew up with language that chided us, so that when we did something wrong and said sorry, we were told, ‘Sorry is not enough’ or ‘Sorry doesn’t fix anything.’ Such phrases allow a hurt person to withhold forgiveness, to find comfort in their own hurt, to control us in a way that allows us to know mercilessly how much we are in need of mercy.

But we also live in a culture of half-hearted apologies that are difficult to forgive. Politicians and business leaders say they accept responsibility by resigning – so they never have to answer for their actions. Half-hearted apologies – ‘I am sorry if I have offended you’ – mean that those who are hurt feel they need to apologise for their response, their reaction, for being hurt.

There are times that I have no right to forgive, when it is not my place to forgive. I cannot forgive the perpetrators of the Holocaust, because, no matter how many times I have visited places that are an intimate part of the Holocaust story, I am not one of the victims.

I cannot forgive slaveholders or mass murderers in wars and killing fields, because I am not one of their victims. On the other hand, perhaps, because I am not a victim, I might find it is not so difficult.

The true difficulties arise in my own personal life: members of my own family, lost friends, near neighbours, former colleagues I think hurt me in the past. I walk around with perceived slights, insults and hurts, like some crutch that helps the wounded, broken me to walk through this broken and hurting world.

But then I am reminded, time and again, that God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach.

‘And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt’ (Matthew 18: 27) … a stained-glass window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 14 August 2025):

The theme this week (10 to 16 August) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Serving God in the Gulf’ (pp 26-27). This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections from Joyaline Rajamani, Administrator at the Church of the Epiphany, Doha, Anglican Church in Qatar.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 14 August 2025) invites us to pray:

Gracious God, we thank you for Joyaline. Grant her wisdom, patience, and courage to reflect Christ’s love in all she does. Bless her as a faithful steward of your calling.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty Lord and everlasting God,
we beseech you to direct, sanctify and govern
both our hearts and bodies
in the ways of your laws
and the works of your commandments;
that through your most mighty protection, both here and ever,
we may be preserved in body and soul;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Strengthen for service, Lord,
the hands that have taken holy things;
may the ears which have heard your word
be deaf to clamour and dispute;
may the tongues which have sung your praise be free from deceit;
may the eyes which have seen the tokens of your love
shine with the light of hope;
and may the bodies which have been fed with your body
be refreshed with the fullness of your life;
glory to you for ever.

Additional Collect:

Lord God,
your Son left the riches of heaven
and became poor for our sake:
when we prosper save us from pride,
when we are needy save us from despair,
that we may trust in you alone;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

Almighty God,
who looked upon the lowliness of the Blessed Virgin Mary
and chose her to be the mother of your only Son:
grant that we who are redeemed by his blood
may share with her in the glory of your eternal kingdom;
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.

Yesterday’s reflectons
Continued Tomorrow

Forgiveness and love in the face of death and mass murder … a fading rose on the fence at Birkenau (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

God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach

‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?’ (Matthew 18: 32-33) … a stained-glass window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Sunday 13 September 2020

Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIV)

9.30 a.m.: The Parish Eucharist (Holy Communion 2), Castletown Church, Kilcornan

11.30 a.m.: Morning Prayer (Morning Prayer 2), Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale

Readings: Exodus 14: 19-31; Psalm 114; Matthew 18: 21-35

‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything’ (Matthew 18: 26) … old, worthless banknotes heaped up outside an antiques shop in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

May I speak to you in the name of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

The Gospel reading this morning (Matthew 18: 21-35) looks critically at the limits we place on forgiveness and the over-abundant generosity and universal scope of God’s forgiveness.

What are the limits to my capacity to understand and forgive others?

Are there limits to God’s willingness to forgive?

Forgiveness is so central to Christian faith and life, that it is emphasised throughout Saint Matthew’s Gospel, and we heard about it last Sunday and this morning, just to get this point through.

In the Gospel reading, Saint Peter asks how many times he should forgive, and is told ‘not seven times but, I tell you, seventy-seven times,’ or, as some sources put it, seventy times seven.

We have seen in recent weeks that the number seven always indicates holiness, as in the seventh day, the seventh month, the seventh year or ‘year of release,’ and the Jubilee year that follows seven cycles of seven years.

As the former Chief Rabbi Lord (Jonathan) Sacks says, seven is the symbol of the holy, that God exists beyond time and space.

But what about the number 70 when Christ says ‘seven times seventy’ or ‘seventy-seven times’?

Talmudic scholars approach the Torah as if it has ‘seventy faces’ (Numbers Rabbah 13: 15-16). The number 70 has sacred significance in Biblical Hebrew: 70 is the number of people who first went down to Egypt, the elders chosen by Moses, the years of King David, the Babylonian exile, the sages of the Sanhedrin, the translators of the Septuagint, the span of human life, the words of Kiddush, the nations of the world …

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy points out in The Genius of Judaism that the number 70 is ‘no ordinary number.’ He calls it the ‘secret universal.’ It represents the fullness of humanity, the ‘other universal that escorts human beings on the path of their history and to the centre of their substance.’ It is ‘the number of infinity extended.’

So, Christ tells us in this morning’s Gospel reading that divine forgiveness is to be extended ‘seventy-seven times’ or ‘seventy times seven’ – in other words, God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach.

In the second part of this reading, Christ explains what he is saying in a parable that is unique to Saint Matthew’s Gospel and that involves three distinct episodes:

1, A king decides to settle his accounts with his slaves or servants: the word δοῦλος (doulos) means either, so those who first heard this parable could imagine an end-of-year audit with court officials, financiers or tax collectors. One of these officials owes 10,000 talents, the equivalent to €3,877,551,979 today. No ordinary slave could accumulate such a debt. Of course, he is unable to clear a debt of such magnitude.

The king might have been reminded that Jewish law prohibits demanding payment from a debtor who is unable to pay (mitzvah 234; Exodus 22: 24). A lender may not embarrass a borrower by harassing him, and is forbidden to seize the debtor’s land or to sell him or his family into slavery.

When the servant seeks forgiveness, the king goes beyond the narrow constraints of rabbinical law, shows overflowing generosity, and agrees to clear off the loan.

2, Now, however, this senior official demands the repayment of a loan of three month’s wages, 100 denarii – about €7,473 today – from a lower-level servant. Imagine the senior official as the line manager for the official who asks for forgiveness. Once again, there is commandment not to take a pledge from a debtor by force (mitzvah 239; Deuteronomy 24: 10). The man already forgiven now refuses to forgive when it is his turn, even his obligation, and he compounds this with his use of force.

3, When the king hears about this, he retracts his original forgiveness.

After telling this parable, Christ identifies the king as God, the first servant as any Christian, and the second as anyone else.

Christ makes the point that God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach.

As for the first reading, I have to admit to some difficulties with the readings from the Book Exodus in recent weeks.

We have had very specific details about how the Passover Lamb is to be killed and cooked, with splattering of blood on doorposts and lintels.

Then we have the warning that the first-born are going to be slain. It is an image of God that is terrifying. And then, this morning, we have a story in which we meet the Angel of the Lord or the Angel of Death.

Not only do I find myself asking why Pharaoh and his army had to drown. Why could events not take another turn so that they arrive late, after the people cross and after the waters return?

To make matters worse, Moses and the Israelites later sing a triumphant song of gratitude to God for wiping out their enemies, declaring: ‘God is a Man of War’ (see Exodus 15:3). The Bible does not get any more masculine and militaristic than that.

Why is the ‘Song of the Sea’ (Shirat Hayam), or ‘The Song of Miriam’, so violent and unforgiving?

Where is God’s compassion and mercy?

First of all, this story is part of a longer passage that recalls the contrasting images of God parting the waters of Creation (Genesis 1: 6) and God promising after the Flood that the world would never be flooded or drowned again (Genesis 9: 11).

So, this reading holds promises of a new creation and redemption.

We need to be sensitive too to the ethical problems in this story. The Talmud says that when they see the Egyptians drowning, the angels are about to break into song. But God silences them declaring, ‘How dare you sing for joy when my creatures are dying’ (Talmud, Megillah 10b, Sanhedrin 39b).

The Talmud reminds us that our personal elation should never let us forget the misfortunes of others (Berachot 31a). The mediaeval commentaries (Tosafot) say this is the source for the Jewish customs of breaking a glass at a wedding and spilling out drops of wine on Seder night, at the Passover meal, reminders that the cup of deliverance and celebration cannot be full when others suffer.

The mediaeval rabbis say God continues to pour out pity and mercy for the rest of life even while wrongdoers are destroyed. Even when the oppressors engage in gross evil, God is open to forgiveness.

‘The Song of the Sea’ is so challenging, so disturbing, that the General Synod dropped it from the canticles in the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of Ireland in 2004.

There is a dichotomy. If we are not happy that evil has been punished, then we do not care enough. But if we are not sad at the loss of life, then our humanity is weakened.

Perhaps the two shores of the sea represent two sides of the one story. Perhaps we must pass through the middle, preserving and valuing life, yet not drowning in war and hatred. The middle path between justice and mercy is difficult: at any moment we can be washed away; we must tread carefully so as not to drown.

In the Gospel reading, Christ calls us to forgive in a way that is so difficult that I am still wrestling with it.

Many of us grew up with language that chided us, so that when we did something wrong and said sorry, we were told, ‘Sorry is not enough’ or ‘Sorry doesn’t fix anything.’ Such phrases allow a hurt person to withhold forgiveness, to find comfort in their own hurt, to control us in a way that allows us to know mercilessly how much we are in need of mercy.

But we also live in a culture of half-hearted apologies that are difficult to forgive. Politicians say they accept responsibility by resigning – so they never have to answer for their actions. Half-hearted apologies – ‘I am sorry if I have offended you’ – mean those who are hurt feel they need to apologise for their response, their reaction, for being hurt.

There are times that I have no right to forgive, when it is not my place to forgive. I cannot forgive the perpetrators of the Holocaust, because, no matter how many times I have visited places that are an intimate part of the Holocaust story, I am not one of the victims.

I cannot forgive slaveholders or mass murderers in wars and killing fields, because I am not one of their victims. On the other hand, perhaps, because I am not a victim, I might find it is not so difficult.

The true difficulties arise in my own personal life: members of my own family, lost friends, near neighbours, former colleagues I think hurt me in the past. I walk around with perceived slights, insults and hurts, like some crutch that helps the wounded, broken me to walk through this broken and hurting world.

But then I am reminded, time and again, that God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach.

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

‘And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt’ (Matthew 18: 27) … a stained-glass window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 18: 21-35 (NRSVA):

21 Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ 22 Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

23 ‘For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25 and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow-slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, “Pay what you owe.” 29 Then his fellow-slave fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he should pay the debt. 31 When his fellow-slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32 Then his lord summoned him and said to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?” 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’

‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything’ (Matthew 18: 29) … a collection of denarii among old Greek coins in an exhibition in Callan, Co Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Liturgical colour: Green (Ordinary Time, Year A).

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty God,
whose only Son has opened for us
a new and living way into your presence:
Give us pure hearts and steadfast wills
to worship you in spirit and in truth,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Collect of the Word:

O God,
you call your Church to witness
that in Christ we are reconciled to you:
help us to proclaim the good news of your love,
that all who hear it may turn to you;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord God, the source of truth and love:
Keep us faithful to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship,
united in prayer and the breaking of bread,
and one in joy and simplicity of heart,
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

‘The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained’ (Exodus 14: 28) … an illustration in the ‘Passover Haggadah’ by the Polish-American artists Arthur Szyk

Hymns:

421, I come with joy, a child of God (CD 25)
503, Make me a channel of your peace (CD 29)

‘Lord … how often should I forgive?’ … ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times’ (Matthew 18: 21-22) … what is the significance of the number 70 in this reading? (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

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

Forgiveness and love in the face of death and mass murder … a fading rose on the fence at Birkenau (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

World War II and the Holocaust ended 75 years ago and must be remembered

Patrick Comerford

The Covid-19 pandemic ‘lockdown’ is being lifted gradually, and some people are now holding out hopes for a short getaway at the end of this summer or rebooking their holidays into next year.

Earlier this year, before the pandemic took its grip on Europe, I managed to spend a few days in Valencia in Spain and had two visits to London for USPG meetings and interfaith work.

However, a planned visit to the Anglican Church in Myanmar on behalf of USPG was the first trip that was cancelled. This was followed by cancelling a short personal retreat in Lichfield, abandoning plans for Greek Orthodox Easter in Crete, and the cancellation of the General Synod in Dublin in May.

These disappointments were followed by the cancellation of visits to Italy, Poland, and Greece. I particularly wanted to see Warsaw and visit the site of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Jewish uprising near the end of World War II.

‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ … the gates of Auschwitz (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This is the second time circumstances have cancelled a planned visit to Warsaw. Now I am wondering whether I am going to get beyond Limerick or Dublin for the rest of this year.

I never took up playing golf – it is a bit wearisome now to joke that I am too young to play golf – and so quick, short city breaks, thanks to cheap flights with Ryanair, are my alternative to golf, and they have provided many topics for this column in the Church Review.

In my own way, I have compensated myself by occasional blog postings that offer ‘virtual tours’ of a dozen sites, such as the churches of Athens, Cambridge, Lichfield, Rome, Tuscany and Venice, the churches, monasteries and restaurants of Crete, or Sephardic synagogues across Europe.

Holocaust anniversaries

The names of the concentration camps surround the Aron haKodesh or Holy Ark in the Pinkas Synagogue, Prague (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

On a much more sober note, I have also been blogging about the commemorations of the 75th anniversaries of the end of World II and the end of the Holocaust in 1945.

In a way that is typical of the worst sort of bias, the Daily Mail allowed its ‘Brexit’ prejudices to overcome historical accuracy and impartial journalism when one souvenir offer referred to VE Day on 8 May as ‘Britain’s Victory over Europe Day.’ There was almost no discussion in newspapers of this sort of the end of the Holocaust.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In recent years, I have visited the concentration camps at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Sachsenhausen, the Holocaust memorials in Berlin, and the former Jewish ghettoes in many European cities. In addition, I found that telling the stories of the concentration camps at Theresienstadt and Ravensbrück involved telling the stories of members – albeit very distant members – of the Comerford family.

I began this year with a visit to the House of Lords for the launch of resources by the Council of Christians and Jews to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. Over the following weeks, the 75th anniversary commemorations included the liberation of the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau (27 January), Buchenwald (11 April), Bergen-Belsen (15 April), Sachsenhausen (22 April), Dachau (29 April), Ravensbrück (30 April) and Mauthausen (5 May).

Remembering Auschwitz

Multilingual memorials in Birkenau … a reminder of the many nationalities of the victims of the Holocaust (Photographs: Patrick Comerford)

A series of memorials in a variety of languages in Birkenau commemorates the victims of the Holocaust who were murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz and Birkenau. Over 20 languages appear on separate plaques, representing the languages and nationalities of the victims.

The Nazis planned to exterminate 11 million Jews in Europe, including 4,000 Jews in Ireland … a list on display in Auschwitz (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Although there is no plaque in Irish, it would be wrong to think that the Holocaust was something that did not affect Ireland, for the Nazis were planning to extend their genocide to Ireland too. During a visit to Auschwitz, I was chilled by one exhibit that shows how the Nazis plan to exterminate 11 million Jews in Europe included 4,000 Jews in Ireland.

Esther Steinberg married Vogtjeck Gluck in the Greenville Hall Synagogue on the South Circular Road, Dublin, and were murdered in Auschwitz (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Four Irish citizens, Ettie Steinberg and her son Leon, and Ephraim and Lena Sacks from Dublin were murdered in Auschwitz, and Isaac Shishi from Dublin and his family were murdered by the Nazis in Lithuania.

Esther, or Ettie, was one of the seven children of Aaron Hirsh Steinberg and his wife Bertha Roth. She grew up at 28 Raymond Terrace, in ‘Little Jerusalem’ off the South Circular Road in Dublin. Ettie went to school at Saint Catherine’s School, the Church of Ireland parish school on Donore Avenue, and she married Vogtjeck Gluck in the Greenville Hall Synagogue on the South Circular Road, Dublin, in 1937.

She was 22 and he was 24, and they moved to France.

When the Vichy regime began rounding up Jews in France, Ettie’s family back in Dublin secured visas that would allow them to travel to Northern Ireland. But when the visas arrived in Toulouse, it was too late: Ettie, Vogtjeck and Leon had been arrested the day before.

As they were being transported to the death camps, Ettie wrote a final postcard to her family and threw it out a train window. A passer-by found the postcard and it eventually reached Dublin. The family arrived in Auschwitz on 4 September 1942. It is assumed that they were put to death immediately.

Isaac Shishi, Ephraim Saks and his sister Lena, were all born in Ireland, but their families moved to Europe when they were children.

Isaac was born in Dublin on 29 January 1891, when his family was living at 36 St Alban’s Road, off the South Circular Road. Isaac, his wife Chana and their daughter Sheine were murdered by the Nazis in Vieksniai in Lithuania in 1941.

Ephraim and Lena Sacks were born in Dublin on 19 April 1915 and 2 February 1918. Ephraim was 27 when he was murdered in Auschwitz on 24 August 1942; Lena was about 24 when she was murdered there in 1942 or 1943.

Recalling Ravensbrück

Starvation, a sculpture in Auschwitz by Meiczyslaw Stobierski … Ephraim and Lena Sacks were born in Dublin and were murdered in Auschwitz (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Holocaust touched every family in Europe. We should not think that there was a family that did not lose cousins, neighbours, friends, work colleagues or school friends.

In my own family, a very, very distant family member, Hedwige Marie Renée Lannes de Montebello (1881-1944), was born in Paris but was a descendant of the Comerford family of Wexford.

She was involved in the French resistance and was captured, and on 7 April 1944. She was sent to the women’s concentration camp in Ravensbrück, where her unique number was 47135. She died in Ravensbrück on 19 November 1944.

Her husband, Louis d’Ax de Vaudricourt (1879-1945), died in the concentration camp in Dachau two months later in January 1945.

The children of Terezín

A suitcase packed for Terezín in an exhibition in Vienna … Terezín was liberated on 8 May 1945 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Theresienstadt or Terezín was both a concentration camp and a ghetto established by the SS in World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, 70 km north of Prague. It was both a waystation to the extermination camps, and a ‘retirement settlement’ for elderly and prominent Jews to mislead their communities about the Nazi plan for genocide. The conditions were created deliberately to hasten the death of the prisoners, but the ghetto also served a propaganda role, most notably during Red Cross visits and in making propaganda films.

The children’s opera Brundibár was composed in 1938 by the composers Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister for the Children’s Orphanage of Prague. It was first performed at Theresienstadt on 23 September 1943, and was performed 55 times, or about once a week, until the transports of autumn 1944.

The opera tells the story of a brother and sister who stand up to a bully in order to afford milk to save their sick mother. It was meant to teach the children how to deal with a bully and how to remain positive in difficult situations.

‘A view of the Engineers’ Barracks Building in Terezín’ by Sonja Fischerová (1931-1944) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Brundibár was performed 55 times in the camp for inspectors from organisations including the Red Cross. Many of the performers were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most of them died.

Hoffmeister’s final verse was: ‘Who likes mummy and daddy and our native home is our friend and can play with us.’ Erik Saudek changed this to: ‘Who likes the law, stands by it and is not afraid of anything …’ This final verse became something of an anthem in Terezín. Actors and viewers alike knew very well the meaning of these words in combination with the innocent children’s fight with the evil Brundibár.

At the end of Brundibár, the chorus sings:

We’ve won a victory over the tyrant mean.
Sound trumpets, beat your drum,
and show us your esteem.
We’ve won a victory because we were not fearful, because we were not tearful. Because we marched along singing our happy song,
bright joyful and cheerful.

A memorial to Jewish children at the Jewish Cemetery in Berlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Red Cross took over the administration of Terezín and removed the SS flag on 2 May 1945. The SS fled on 5-6 May. On 8 May 1945, V-E Day, Red Army troops skirmished with German forces outside the ghetto and liberated it at 9 pm.

Only 20 of the 400 performers of Brundibár survived until their liberation. Brundibár was not performed outside Terezín until 1986, when Radio Prague recorded its international debut.

Why we must remember

A Hanukkah Menorah made by children in Terezín … Rebecca Comerford has revived a children’s opera telling the story of the children of Terezín (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Rebecca Comerford, a professional singer and actor, is now bringing Brundibár and the story of Terezín to American audiences, including synagogues, in a deliberate decision taken in the light of the present political climate.

Speaking in Etz Chaim Synagogue in Biddeford, Maine, she recalled how her company chose Brundibár as part of their programme because of ‘the current political climate, and the rise of fascism across the globe, and the pervasive rise of intolerance, not just nationally, but on a macro level, too.’

Rachel Whiteread’s Holocaust Memorial in Judenplatz in Vienna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘We decided that this would be really timely and relevant in terms of our mission, and said let’s do this outreach component, too. We’ll really discuss the messages. How do we deal with a bully? What does that mean to our children? And why do they need to know this story, so history doesn’t repeat itself again?’ Rebecca Comerford said.

‘It’s our obligation as a human family to share the story,’ Rebecca told her audience in Etz Chaim.

The memorial to the victims of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp 1936-1945 … the victims included gays, Gypsies, political prisoners and disabled people (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A recent visit to Sachsenhausen reminded me that as well 6 million Jews, the victims of the Nazis during the Holocaust included Gypsies, Gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, conscientious objectors, people with disabilities, and people who joined the Resistance throughout Europe.

Some of the people I mention are distant – very distant – branches on a very extended family tree. But we have to cherish the memory of everyone who died in the Holocaust. We must refuse to distance ourselves from them, to classify these victims as ‘them.’

Contrary to the thinking in the Daily Mail, however briefly, VE Day was not ‘Britain’s victory over Europe.’ It was the victory of the Allies in Europe, the end of the Holocaust, and the end of a conflict that finally united most of the world in the struggle against fascism, and the beginning of the European project. ‘It’s our obligation as a human family to share the story.’

‘Stumbling Stones’ on the streets of Thessaloniki name the city’s Jews deported to Auschwitz (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This feature was published in the June 2020 edition of the ‘Church Review’, the Dublin and Glendalough diocesan magazine

The Holocaust memorial in the Ghetto in Venice … a reminder of why we must never forget (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)