Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 43, Sunday 17 May 2026, Seventh Sunday of Easter, Easter VII

The Seventh Sunday of Easter is an ‘in-between’ time in the 10 days between Ascension Day and the Day of Pentecost … confusing signs on the beach in Bettystown, Co Meath (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (5 April 2026) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (24 May 2026), or Whit Sunday, next Sunday. Today is the Seventh Sunday of Easter (Easter VII, 17 May 2026), an ‘in-between’ Sunday, between Ascension Day and the Day of Pentecost, a question full of questions and waiting.

Later this morning, I am leading the intercession at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, and singing with the choir. 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.

‘For the words that you gave to me I have given to them’ (John 17: 8) … Christ as the Great High Priest with an open Bible in an icon in the Church of the Transfiguration in Piskopiano, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 17: 1-11 (NRSVA):

1 After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. 5 So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

6 ‘I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; 8 for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. 11 And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.’

‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven?’ (Acts 1: 11) … the Ascension window by Sir Edward Burne-Jones in Saint Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections

This Sunday is a strange ‘In-Between Time’ in the calendar of the Church. On Thursday (14 May 2026), we celebrated the Day of the Ascension; next Sunday (24 May 2026), we celebrate the Day of Pentecost.

In the meantime, we are in what we might call ‘in-between’ time.

It is still the season of Easter, which lasts for 50 days from Easter Day until the Day of Pentecost. But, this morning, we are still in the Easter season, in that ‘in-between’ time, these 10 days between the Day of Ascension and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the Church at Pentecost.

Following the Ascension, two angels in white robes ask the disciples why they are standing around looking up into heaven. In the Gospel account of the Ascension (Luke 24: 44-53), they return to ‘Jerusalem with great joy,’ and seem to spend the following days in the Temple.

As the story unfolds in the Acts of the Apostles, the disciples, as well as the Virgin Mary and other women (see verse 14), spend their time in prayer, choosing a successor to Judas, as we are told in this morning’s first reading (Acts 1: 6-14).

Ten days after the Ascension, they are going to be filled with Holy Spirit, who comes as a gift not only to the 12 but to all who are gathered with them, including the Virgin Mary and the other women, the brothers of Jesus (verse 14), and other followers in Jerusalem – in all, about 120 people (see verse 15).

But during these 10 days, they and we are in that ‘in-between’ time, the 10 days between the Ascension and Pentecost. Their faith persists, but the promise has not yet been fulfilled.

They wait in hope. But until that promise is fulfilled they are, you might say, transfixed, believing without doing, unable to move from Jerusalem out into the wider world.

This Gospel reading follows Christ’s ‘Farewell Discourse’ at the Last Supper (John 14: 1 to 16: 33), Christ has just ended his instructions to his disciples, which conclude with the advice, ‘In the world you face persecution But take courage; I have conquered the world!’ (John 16: 33).

We now read from his prayer to the Father (John 17: 1-26), in which he summarises the significance of his life as the time for his glory – his Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension – has arrived.

This prayer is often referred to as the High Priestly Prayer, as it includes many of the elements of prayer a priest offers when a sacrifice is about to be made: glorification (verses 3-5, 25), remembrance of God’s work (verses 2, 6-8, 22, 23), intercession on behalf of others (verses 9, 11, 15, 20, 21, 24), and a declaration of the offering itself (verses 1, 5).

In the Orthodox Church, this passage is also read on the Seventh Sunday of Easter, a day remembering the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in the year 325. That council condemned the heresy of Arianism that taught that the Son of God was created by the Father and that there was a time when the Son of God did not exist. Christ’s words here bear witness to his divinity and to his filial relationship with the Father.

Verses 1-2: the Father gives this glory to the Son, and this adds to the Father’s glory because of the authority the Father has given to the Son over all people, with the promise of eternal life.

Verse 3: this eternal life is knowing the Father and Christ, who has been sent by the Father.

Verses 4-5: Christ glorifies the Father by finishing the work he has been given, and he is being restored to glory in the Father’s presence, a glory Christ had in God’s presence before the world existed.

Verse 6: Christ has made God’s name known in the world, and those who have heard him and have been obedient to the word of God.

Verses 7-8: the disciples now know that the Father is the source of all that the Christ has been given, they know that he has been sent from the Father, and that the Father sent him into the world.

Verse 9: Christ’s petitions are on behalf of his followers.

Verse 10: Those who follow Christ are committed to God’s care.

Verse 11: Looking forward to the time after his departure – after his Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension – Christ now asks the Father to protect the disciples in the world, and prays that they may have a unity that reflects the unity of the Father and the Son … ‘that they may be one, as we are one.’

Too often we are caught between Ascension Day and Pentecost, waiting but not sure that the kingdom is to come, frightened in the terror and the pain of the present moment. Feeling powerless and fearful and not knowing what to do combine to make a deadly cocktail that not only immobilises us but robs us of hope.

But I remember how during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, we came to see reflections of our hope for the future in the nurses, the doctors, the police, the emergency responders, who responded immediately, without considering how they were putting themselves in danger … the supermarket staff, the delivery drivers, the people in communities who delivered shopping, the postal workers who checked on the elderly and the vulnerable, the police who take smiles and verbal abuse with equal stoicism.

In those ‘In-Between Times’, we came to see ourselves in them and even to see the face of God in them. And this too is our Easter hope and faith. This is the hope that we will never lose our capacity as Christians to live with the Risen Christ, listening to his desire that we should be not afraid, and that we should love one another.

This is the hope we wait for between the glory of the Ascension and the empowering gifts the Holy Spirit gives us and promises us at Pentecost.

Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

‘So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed’ (John 17: 5) … Christ the Pantocrator in a fresco in the Church of the Transfiguration, Piskopiano (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers:

The theme this week (17-23 May 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) has been ‘Breaking Barriers: Gender Justice in Malawi’ (pp 56-57). This theme is introduced today with Reflections from Tamara Khismisi, Projects Coordinator, Anglican Church in Malawi:

The Gender Justice through Girls’ Education Advocacy Campaign, supported by USPG, seeks to address low retention and transition rates for girls in rural Malawi, where child marriages and limited access to sexual reproductive health information are major barriers. Implemented in the Mchinji and Chiladzulu districts under the Anglican Church in Malawi (ACM), the programme mobilises faith leaders, local authorities, and community volunteers to advocate for girls’ education. By raising awareness, influencing policy, and partnering with rights groups, the initiative promotes sustainable change and creates supportive environments for girls to remain in school.

A shining example of change is Lina*, a teenage girl from Kapiri Parish, Saint Peter’s Anglican Church in Mchinji. Life for Lina had not been easy – her family, relying on small-scale farming, struggled to make ends meet, and she had to leave school several times to help at home. Adding to these challenges, the significant lack of menstrual health education leaves many girls like Lina without guidance or support.

Thanks to the Anglican Church in Malawi’s advocacy campaign, Lina’s life began to change. She received guidance on her health and partners in global mission 56 rights, learned how to manage her menstrual hygiene with dignity, and was given a school uniform that allowed her to attend school consistently. Today, Lina sits confidently in Class 7, attending school regularly and dreaming of pursuing higher education in the future.

* name changed

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 17 May 2026) invites us to pray as we read and meditate on John 17: 1-11.

The Collect of the Day:

O God the King of Glory,
you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ
with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven:
Mercifully give us faith to know
that, as he promised,
he abides with us on earth to the end of time;
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Eternal Giver of love and power,
your Son Jesus Christ has sent us into all the world
to preach the gospel of his kingdom.
Confirm us in this mission,
and help us to live the good news we proclaim;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘For the words that you gave to me I have given to them’ (John 17: 7) … Christ as the Great High Priest with an open Bible … an icon in the Church of Saint Spyridon in Palaiokastritsa, Corfu (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

Finding the other Lady Fitzgerald who had family roots in Lichfield, who was married three times, and whose life was marked by tragedy

Dam Street, Lichfield, where Lady Fitzgerald’s grandfather Christopher Heveningham was a mercer and draper (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I was recalling last night (15 May 2026) the social scandal that became a point of gossip in Staffordshire in the mid-18th century when Sir William Wolseley took his supposed second wife Anne Whitby to court in Lichfield seeking a divorce or annulment. The case involved allegations and accusations of greed, manipulation, cheating, forgery, desertion, perjury, bigamy, adultery, bribery, drugged drinks and corrupt and dishonest clergy.

Quite separately, I wrote some time ago (4 June 2020) about Sir James Fitzgerald who lived decades later at Wolseley Hall and in Lichfield and who managed to convincingly persuade people far and wide – and even Burke’s Peerage – that he was the rightful holder of an Irish title of baronet given to a different branch of the Fitzgerald family in Co Limerick.

Fitzgerald’s wife, Augusta Henrietta Fremantle (1803-1863), was known in polite circles as Lady Fitzgerald. They married in 1826 and lived for some years at Maple Hayes Hall near Pipe Hall and Lichfield. When he died in France in 1839, he was described as living at Wolseley Hall, but his widow continued to live at Maple Hayes and in 1841 she was attending Holy Cross Church, Lichfield. She later moved to Castle Ishen, Co Cork, where she died in 1863.

But there was another Lady Fitzgerald, the wife of a real Irish baronet, who also lived in Lichfield in the 19th century, and who had strong connections with Lichfield through her immediate ancestors, her mother and grandparents, her cousins and her grandchildren, and who was a direct descendant of the Comberford family of Comberford Hall.

Margaret (Warner) Fitzgerald was a direct descendant of Margaret Comberford and William Stanley who lived at Comberford Hall 250 years before she was born (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Margaret Warner (1806-1883), who eventually became the other Lady Fitzgerald in Lichfield, was a cousin of a number of prominent clergy in Victorian Lichfield, she was married three times, and the family of her third husband is still remembered in Ireland for the tragedies that befell successive generations, decade after decade, until the family line died out in 1917. Her life is a sad tale that includes drownings, suicide, a child’s death at play, crushing family debts, being widowed three times and her final days lived out in genteel poverty with fading memories of life among minor aristocracy.

This Lady Fitzgerald was born Margaret Warner in 1806, the daughter of Elizabeth Heveningham (1774-1823) from Lichfield and William Warner (1762-1835). They were married in Saint Philip’s Church, Birmingham, now Birmingham Cathedral.

Her mother Elizabeth Heveningham was born in Lichfield on 18 August 1774, the daughter of Charles Heveningham (1737-1782), a mercer and draper of Dam Street, Lichfield. He may have spent part of his childhood at Pipe Hall, the Heveningham ancestral home near Lichfield, and he was a direct descendant of Charles Heveningham (1540-1574) of Pipe Hall and his wife Dorothy Stanley (1530-1587), only daughter of William Stanley of Comberford Hall and Margaret Comberford (1494-1568). I have written last year (23 July 2025) about the Heveningham family and their links with the Comberford family.

Saint Mary’s Church, Lichfield, at night … many members of the Heveningham family were baptised and buried from there (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Charles Heveningham’s first cousin Mary married the Revd Daniel William Remington, Vicar of Saint Michael’s (1757-1772) and of Saint Mary’s (1772-1789), Lichfield, and sub-chanter of Lichfield Cathedral; Elizabeth (Heveningham) Warner was a second cousin of two successive Vicars of Saint Mary’s, the Revd William Remington, who founded the first Sunday school in Lichfield, and the Revd Edward Remington; another second cousin Mary Remington married Thomas White, Procurator of the Ecclesiastical Court in Lichfield and a cousin of the poet Anna Seward, the ‘Swan of Lichfield’.

Elizabeth’s daughter Margaret Warner was married three times, and she was 47 and twice widowed when, on 27 April 1854, she married her third husband, Sir John Judkin-Fitzgerald (1787-1860), an Irish baronet, as his third wife.

Margaret was only 20 – perhaps even younger – when she married her first husband, Robert Jones Parry of Aston-juxta-Birmingham and Hendre, Flintshire. They were the parents of three children, a daughter and two sons:

1, Margaret Parry (1827-1894), who married the Revd Evan Pughe (1807-1869); her son-in-law, Major Philip Halliley Carter (1866-1949) of Birmingham, continued the research into the history of the Heveningham family. Some of her descendants returned to live in the Lichfield area.
2, Robert Jones Parry, who died an infant.
3, (the Revd) William Warner Parry, (born 1832), a naval chaplain whose research into the Heveningham family tree is also an important source.

Margaret Warrners’s second husband was Samuel Banks of Rugeley, but he died soon after their marriage.

The Town Hall in Cashel, Co Tipperary … Margaret Warner’s husband, Sir John Judkin-Fitzgerald, was Mayor of Cashel and High Sheriff of Co Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Margaret was twice widowed and was 47 when she married the widowed 67-year-old Irish baronet, Sir John Judkin-Fitzgerald (1787-1860). He was her third husband and she was his third wife. He was the son of Sir Thomas Judkin-FitzGerald (1754-1810) of Cashel, Co Tipperary, who was given the title of baronet in 1801 as a reward for his role in suppressing the United Irish Rebellion of 1798 in Co Tipperary, his support for the Act of Union, and for his time as High Sheriff of Tipperary (1798-1803).

During the 1798 Rising, he became known as ‘Flogging Fitzgerald’, When he died in 1810, an obituary’ referred to his excessive use of the cat o’ nine tails as a magistrate, saying: ‘The history of his life and loyalty is written in legible characters on the backs of his fellow countrymen.’

Margaret’s husband, Sir John Judkin-Fitzgerald, was born on 27 August 1787. He was 23 when he succeeded to his father’s estates in Cashel and his title as the second baronet in 1810. He lived in Golden, near Cashel, and was the Mayor of Cashel and High Sheriff of Co Tipperary (1819-1820).

Sir John married his first wife, the widowed Elizabeth Moore (née Pennefather), in Cashel Cathedral in 1816. They were the parents of one child, Margaret’s future husband, Sir Thomas Judkin-Fitzgerald (1820-1864). Elizabeth died on 26 April 1835, and Sir John married his second wife, Geraldine Fitzgerald, on 10 November 1837. They were the parents of one child, Geraldine Caroline (1839-1916), and this second Lady Fitzgerald died in childbirth on 11 February 1839.

By the time Margaret Warner married Sir John married on 27 April 1854, he was selling off large tracts of land in furtive attempts to clear his mounting debts. The land he sold between 1852 and 1856 included over 3,800 acres in Co Wexford, Co Waterford, Co Tipperary and Co Cork, and he sold another 1,500 acres in Co Cork in 1857. He was living at Golden Hills, near Golden and Cashel, when that too was advertised for sale in 1858, though it remained unsold.

Less than six years after he married Margaret, and now heavily indebted, Sir John was drowned on 28 February 1860. He was onboard the PS Nimrod, an Irish paddle steamer plying between Cork and Liverpool, when it ran aground at St David’s Head in Wales, smashed into three pieces and sank with the loss of 45 lives, 25 crew and 20 passengers. He was 72, Margaret was 52 and now a widow for the third time.

Sir John’s title, his remaining lands and his crushing debts were inherited by his only son, Margaret’s stepson, Sir Thomas Judkin-FitzGerald (1820-1864), as the third baronet. He was a magistrate and a Deputy Lieutenant for Co Tipperary, and continued to live at Golden Hills, which had not yet been sold off.

Three years before succeeding his father, Sir Thomas’s eldest son and heir, nine-year-old John Judkin Judkin-FitzGerald, died in another family tragedy in 1857 when he accidentally hanged himself in the garden. Two stories try to explain what happened: one account says it was an accident while the boy was playing on a swing; the other version says he was showing his younger siblings how their great-grandfather hanged rebels in 1798 when he slipped and accidentally hanged himself.

Sir Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald drowned himself in the River Suir at Golden on the night of 26/27 April 1864 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

But the family tragedies do not end there. Margaret’s stepson, the boy’s father, Sir Thomas Judkin Fitzgerald, drowned himself in the River Suir at Golden on the night of 26/27 April 1864 when he was only 43.

A letter in the Clonmel Chronicle said reports that he was living in ‘greatly embarrassed circumstances’ and ‘greatly in debt’ were ‘much exaggerated’. But he was living with financial difficulties, finding he was liable for the debts of his father, Sir John Judkin Fitzgerald, totalling £7,000, or about £1.1 million today. Sir Thomas had insured his life for several thousand pounds so his family might not suffer from ever-mounting debts.

The jury reached a verdict of death as a result of temporary insanity. But local people tried to stop him being buried in consecrated ground in Ballygriffin churchyard because of his suicide. On the day of his funeral they packed the graveyard in Ballygriffin, filled the fresh-dug grave with stones, and blocked the priest from continuing with the burial. When he was buried eventually, his funeral was guarded by a large police presence.

By then, his step-mother, Margaret (Warner) Fitzgerald, now a widow for the third time, had moved to Moss Side, Manchester, with her son William Warner Parry and her step-daughter Geraldine Fitzgerald. Geraldine married Dr Walter Bourne in 1870 and they lived in Calcutta and later in Bradford. The Revd William Warner Parry, studied at Oxford, became a naval chaplain, and his research into the Heveningham family tree has been an important source.

Margaret died in genteel poverty in Southsea on 8 September 1883 at the age of 77. By then, her step-grandson, Sir Joseph Capel Judkin-FitzGerald (1853-1917), had succeeded to the Fitzgerald title as the fourth baronet as an eight-year-old in 1864. Golden Hills was advertised for sale again in 1878, when it was described as a ‘large castellated building’ with a drawing room opening into a conservatory, dining room and morning room, eight bedrooms and a servants’ hall. Most of the house had disappeared by the early 1940s, or was incorporated into a modern farmyard.

Sir Joseph Capel Judkin-Fitzgerald was the last and final baronet in his family. He lived a sad and dissolute life in England, accused of stealing jewellery, defrauding gullible divorcees, defaulting on loans and debts, leaving unpaid hotel and restaurant bills in London and Paris, and working as an unlicensed cab driver. He was threatened with imprisonment and was eventually declared bankrupt. He outlived his two sons, and when he died in 1917 his family title of baronet died out.

Saint Michael’s Church, Greenhill, Lichfield … many members of the Heveningham family are buried in the churchyard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Meanwhile, some of Margaret Warner’s descendants through her first marriage to Robert Jones Parry would return to live in Lichfield and some of them had interesting roles in Church and academic life.

In 1847, her daughter Margaret Parry (1827-1894) married the Revd Evan Pughe (1807-1869), Vicar of Bangor, and later Rector of Llantrisant. Their large family included: Margaret Constance Pughe (1862-1930), whose family returned to live in Lichfield; and Alice Gertrude Pughe (1869-1892), whose husband Major Philip Halliley Carter (1866-1949) of Birmingham, continued the research into the Heveningham family history.

Margaret Constance Pughe (1862-1930) married the Very Revd Charles Walter Carrington (1859-1941) in Cambridge in 1890. He became the mission chaplain to the Bishop of Lichfield, and some of their children were born in Lichfield before the family moved to West Bromwich and then to New Zealand, where he was the Dean of Christchurch.

Margaret and Charles Carrington were the parents of a large family, including Philip Carrington (1892-1975), who was born in Lichfield and became Bishop of Quebec (1935-1960) and Metropolitan of Canada (1944-1960). Another son, the historian Charles Edmund Carrington (1897-1990), was Professor of History at Cambridge and the biographer of Rudyard Kipling and Graham Greene.

According to Margaret’s great-grandson, CE Carrington, writing in 1966, Lady Fitzgerald had ‘brought up her family to believe that they were the last survivors of one of the most ancient families in England, the Heveninghams of Heveningham, from whom she had inherited some old documents and a great deal of family pride.’

The two women known as Lady Fitzgerald had strong family links with Lichfield in the 19th century and both married Irish baronets. I sometimes wonder whether their paths ever crossed either in Lichfield or in Ireland, whether they knew each other, and whether they were ever confused with one another.

Most of the remains of the Fitzgerald estate in Golden, near Cashel, Co Tipperary, have had disappeared by the early 1940s and are difficult to find (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Sources and references include:

The Visitations of Staffordshire and Warwickshire.
Michael Greenslade, Catholic Staffordshire 1500-1850 (Gracewing, 2006).

The Heveningham family tree on Geni (last accessed 21 July 2025).
‘The Heveningham Family of Staffordshire’ (last accessed 21 July 2025).
The St. Leger-May Family Home Page (last accessed 15 May 2026).
‘Townships: Wall with Pipehill’, in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14, Lichfield, ed MW Greenslade (London, 1990), pp 283-294. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/staffs/vol14/pp283-294 (last accessed 21 July 2025).
‘Burntwood: Manors, local government and public services’, in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 14, Lichfield, ed MW Greenslade (London, 1990), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/staffs/vol14/pp205-220 (last accessed 21 July 2025).
Aleyn Lyell Reade, Johnsonian Gleanings, ‘Notes on Dr Johnson’s Ancestors and Connexions’, pp 1-41 (London: 1909).

Saint Bertelin’s Chapel is part of the story of early Stafford, but archaeologists disagree about interpreting the site

The site of Saint Bertelin’s Chapel, in front of Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church, Stafford, is said to date from the year 700 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I was writing yesterday about my visit to Stafford last week and to Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church in the centre of the town. At the west end of the church is the site of a chapel associated with Saint Bertelin or Saint Beorhthelm, who is said to have established a hermitage ca 700 CE that is said to mark the beginnings of Stafford.

Saint Bertelin was an obscure Anglo Saxon saint. He is said to have established his hermitage ca 700 CE on the Isle of Bethnei in the marshes around the River Sow. Bertelin – whose name gradually took the form Bertram in some areas – later moved his hermitage to Ilam in Derbyshire, where his shrine and well made Ilam a popular place of pilgrimage.

The first building on the site in Stafford seems to have been a Late Saxon timber chapel, commemorating Saint Bertelin, although The first historical reference to Saint Bertelin at Stafford appears in a list of tombs of saints for pilgrims by Hugh Candidus of Peterbrough, who died ca 1175, in a reference ‘in Stefford sanctus Berthelmus martyr’.

Saint Mary’s Church was rebuilt in the late 12th and early 13th century, and was joined to Saint Bertelin’s chapel through a doorway in the west wall. The chapel became a shrine to Saint Bertelin, and was a place of pilgrimage throughout the Middle Ages.

The chapel was later used as a council chamber and a school, before it was pulled down in 1801 to allow more room for burials in the churchyard. Following the demolition, the site of Saint Bertelin’s Chapel was destroyed largely by burials in the 19th century and only patches of wall and floor and several early graves definable.

The blocked former west entrance into Saint Mary's was the only surviving evidence for the existence of the chapel until the local authority decided to clear the gravestones and create a garden of remembrance.

Saint Bertelin’s Chapel was pulled down in 1801 to provide more space for burials in Saint Mary’s churchyard (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Before the clearance work began, an archaeological investigation was carried out in 1954 at the site of Saint Bertelin’s Chapel by Adrian Oswald (1908-2001), curator of archaeology at Birmingham City Museum.

Oswald found a set of stone foundations interpreted as belonging to Saint Bertelin's mediaeval chapel. Beneath the stone was a set of post-holes with a central grave-shaped pit in the centre of the structure containing a large lump of oak with a cylindrical base that had been placed in a pit.

The archaeologist and historian CA Ralegh Radford (1900-1998) initially interpreted this as a 1,000-year-old a wooden cross of the Mercian period and a later reconstruction was put on the site.

In the popular retelling of these interpretations, it was said that the remains of a timber cross buried 5 ft below the surface, and from this it was deduced that ‘it is entirely possible that this cross was the one used by Saint Bertelin himself. Beneath the cross were the remains of a timber building, which it seems reasonable to assume was the one built by Bertelin.’

The site of Saint Bertelin’s Chapel at the west front of Saint Mary’s Church, Stafford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

However, a re-assessment of the site was made in in 1984 by Professor Martin Carver, who considered the finds in the context of other archaeological investigations at Stafford. Carver is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of York and director of the Sutton Hoo Research Project. He founded the Birmingham University Field Archaeology Unit (BUFAU), later called Birmingham Archaeology, at the University of Birmingham, and is the author of The Birth of a Borough. Archaeological studies of Anglo-Saxon Stafford (2010).

Carver argues that the shape of the wood lump, with a cylindrical base, and the leather attached inside to the top, all suggest that this was a coffin, not a cross, resembling the tree-trunk coffins known from the seventh century onwards in East Anglia.

The general sequence reported by Oswald was largely endorsed, seeing the site as one of a timber structure succeeded by a later stone chapel. However, the earliest part of the sequence associated with the timber structure and coffin was found to be inverted in respect of the dates. A layer of ninth century charcoal (830-845 CE) lay above the layer containing a Saxon farthing of Athelred II (971-1016) lost before 1000 CE, which in turn lay above the 12th century log coffin.

From this evidence, it could be argued that the coffin was buried in a late 12th century stone chapel, and the coffin was simply part of a late 12th century foundation process.

Carver suggests the log coffin was buried within a timber structure dated to the period 800-1000, and so too late to be used to support legends of an eighth century foundation associated with an ‘Isle of Bethnei’.

The timber chapel, or possible mortuary house, may have burnt down in the ninth century, which would account for the charcoal layer. Carver rejected the date 1180 for the log coffin. The timber chapel was superseded by a stone chapel with a truer east-west alignment. The floor of this stone chapel would have sealed the log coffin and the layers above it.

This stone chapel appears to have fallen into disuse and was probably demolished around the time of the Conquest and then rebuilt in stone on an improved alignment. A layer of brown soil, interpreted as a layer of ‘disuse’ appears to separate the floor of the first stone chapel from the second, later stone chapel rebuilt on the same site, slightly offset to the south, laid out in dressed stone indicating a small nave and a narrower chancel, with a tiled floor laid in the 14th century.

The muddled evidence may suggest the first chapel was built of timber between 800 and 1000. A tree-trunk burial was placed centrally in this structure, and presumed to be an object of veneration. The date range of other finds allows the construction of the timber chapel to belong to the foundation of the burh by Æthelflæd in 913 CE, and it seems likely the chapel was built during the reconquest of English Mercia.

The plaque marking the site of Saint Bertelin’s Chapel at Saint Mary’s Church, Stafford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Still, local publications continue to maintain this was Saint Bertelin’s preaching cross and this is echoed on the plaque at the site:

‘Site of St. Bertelin’s Chapel

‘This site was excavated in 1954 AD. The foundation stones have been restored upon the exact plan of the chapel built about 1000 AD.

‘The wooden cross is a replica of the cross lying five feet below with indications of a wooden building of much earlier date. The position of the cross indicates that it was regarded with great sanctity and may be the preaching cross of St. Bertelin the founder of the town of Stafford circa 700 AD.’

Meanwhile, the name of the early hermit and saint is continued in Saint Bertelin’s Church, the parish church for the north end of Stafford, on the corner of Holmcroft Road and Eccleshall Road.

Saint Chad’s Church is the oldest surviving building in Stafford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

After visiting Saint Mary’s Church and Saint Bertelin’s Chapel, I went to see Saint Chad’s Church opposite the Ancient High House on Greengate Street. Saint Chad’s is the oldest surviving building in Stafford, with a story stretching back to the 12th century, and perhaps even back to the time of Saint Chad, the first Bishop of Lichfield (669-672).

Saint Chad’s was built ca 1150-1190 and an inscription names the founder as Orm: Orm vocatur qui me condidit (‘He who made me is called Orm’). Orm was a major landowner of Danish origin and the dragons in the carvings are a pun on his name ‘Orm’ or ‘Worm’.

Saint Chad’s was restored from a forgotten and ruinous state in the mid-19th century. The restoration was carried out by Henry Griffiths, Robert Ward and George Gilbert Scott, who also built the Norman-Romanesque front and donated the statue of Saint Chad in the central niche. At the same time, Scott was carrying out extensive restorations of Lichfield Cathedral.

Saint Paul’s Church, which I passed on the way to Rugeley and Lichfield, is a Grade II building on Lichfield Road. It was designed by Henry Ward and built in 1844. The steeple was added in 1887 by Robert Griffiths. The stained glass includes late 19th and early 20th century work by Hardman and Co, AJ Davies of Bromsgrove, and Smith of St John’s Wood, including a particularly good 19th century east window.

I had visited four churches and chapels in Stafford – Saint Mary’s, Saint Bertelin’s Chapel’s Chapel, Saint Chad’s Church and Saint Paul’s Church. But before leaving Stafford last week I also visited Sir Martin Noel’s Almshouses on Earl Street, which still has its chapel.

As for Saint Bertelin, his feast day is celebrated on 10 August.

Saint Paul’s Church on Lichfield Road, Stafford, was designed by Henry Ward and built in 1844 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Mowbray Stephen O’Rorke, the bishop with the ‘tallest mitre in Christendom’ and his family roots in Ballinasloe

Daily prayer in Lent 2026: 18, Saturday 7 March 2026

Minarets and church domes on the skyline in Rethymnon in Crete … the Parable of the Prodigal Son is an important aid in the Christian-Muslim dialogue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford; click on images for full-screen viewing)

Patrick Comerford

Lent began over two weeks ago on Ash Wednesday (18 February 2025), and tomorrow is the Third Sunday in Lent (Lent III). The Church Calendar today remembers Perpetua, Felicity and their Companions (203), Martyrs at Carthage.

I am back in Stony Stratford after two weeks in Kuching and a long and arduous journey that took me through Oman in the Gulf on Thursday and Friday. Later this morning, I hope to drop in to Το Στεκι Μας, Our Place, the pop-up Greek café which opens every first Saturday of the month at the Swinfen Harris Church Hall beside the Greek Orthodox Church on London Road, Stony Stratford, between 10:30 am and 3 pm. Later in the day I hope to find somewhere appropriate to watch this afternoon's Six Nations rugby matches between Scotland and France (14:10) and England and Italy (16:20).

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.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son depicted in a window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32 (NRSVA):

1 Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’

3 So he told them this parable:

11 … ‘There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.” So he divided his property between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and travelled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to himself he said, “How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.’” 20 So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” 22 But the father said to his slaves, “Quickly, bring out a robe – the best one – and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” And they began to celebrate.

25 ‘Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27 He replied, “Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.” 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29 But he answered his father, “Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!” 31 Then the father said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found”.’

The Church of the Annunciation in Kaş in southern Turkey was converted into the Yeni Cami or New Mosque in 1963 … how does the Parable of the Prodigal Son assist Christian-Muslim dialogue? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

Today’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist in the Lectionary (Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32) is the Parable of the Prodigal Son, one of the best-known parables, even among people who seldom go to church, and it is one of the parables that are unique to Saint Luke’s Gospel.

I have spent two weeks in Kuching, where I was woken each morning by the bells of Saint Thomas’s Cathedral and the call to prayer from neighbouring mosques, and my journey back to England has brought me back through Muscat and the Middle East. During these weeks, both in Malaysia and in Oman, I have conscious of the way in which Lent and Ramadan overlap for Christians and Muslims this year. This morning I am also reminded this morning of a course on Muslim-Christian dialogue I did over 30 years ago, back in 1995, when how I learned how the Parable of the Prodigal Son is an important resource in this dialogue.

At the time, I was the newly-appointed Foreign Desk Editor of The Irish Times, and I was writing a number of features on Islam and on Muslim-Christian dialogue. I realised I needed to ‘upskill’ myself in these areas, building on my theological education, and the editor, Conor Brady suggested I identify some short courses that could equip me in these fields.

I took two courses, one year after another. The first was a short residential course at CME level in the then Church of Ireland Theological College (now CITI) in Dublin in 1995, organised by my friend the Revd Declan Smith of the Church Mission Society (CMS), who died earlier this year (2 January 2026)`.

That course was delivered by the Revd Dr Colin Chapman, a British missiologist who specialises in Islamic studies. He worked in the Middle East for 18 years for CMS and the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES). He taught in Cairo, Bethlehem and Beirut, where he was a lecturer in Islamic studies at the Near East School of Theology (1999-2003). He also taught at Trinity College, Bristol, and was the principal of Crowther Hall, the CMS college in Selly Oak, Birmingham.

Colin Chapman’s publications include Cross and Crescent: Responding to the Challenges of Islam (1988, 2007), Islam and the West (1998), Whose Promised Land?: the continuing conflict over Israel and Palestine (1983, 1992, 2002, 2015), Whose Holy City? Jerusalem and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2004) and ‘Islamic Terrorism’: Is There a Christian Response?’ (2005).

His Cross and Crescent was submitted in conjunction with his thesis ‘Teaching Christians about Islam: a Study In Methodology’ at the Centre for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Selly Oak, at the Department of Theology in the University of Birmingham in September 1993, a year before I took his course in Dublin.

He was strongly influenced by the work of the American theologian Professor Kenneth Bailey (1930-2016), who also taught at the Near East School of Theology in Beirut (1962-1985) and at the Ecumenical Institute for Theological Research in Jerusalem.

On that course in Dublin, as throughout his work, Colin Chapman drew heavily on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, which he finds unique in the context of Christian-Muslim dialogue. He finds it especially valuable as a story told by Jesus himself, because it presents the message of Jesus and as a story that can be told, elaborated, dramatised and discussed in ways that are culturally familiar within Middle East contexts.

Kenneth Bailey, in his study of the parables of Jesus, believes that the basic message of Jesus can be summed up as the costly demonstration of unexpected love, God’s yes to all people. Not only does he proclaim his love, but he actually defines and declares his love in action. As Colin Chapman interprets Kenneth Bailey’s writing, this demonstration of God’s unexpected love is costly for him, since in a sense he suffers in the process of forgiving.

Colin says the Parable of the Prodigal Son expresses all these points with special force. The father loves his sons – both the rebellious son who wants to leave home, and the older son who has such a cold and formal relationship with him. He goes on loving them, even when we might expect him to want to punish us and reject us. He demonstrates his love to both of them in ways that would have been considered surprising, if not shocking, in Middle East societies. And in demonstrating his love to them, the father suffers in the process.

Colin has summarised Bailey’s understanding of the significance of the Prodigal Son’s homecoming: ‘On his return, the prodigal is overwhelmed by an expected visible demonstration of love in humiliation. He is shattered by the offer of grace, confesses unworthiness, and accepts restoration to sonship in genuine humility. Sin is now a broken relationship which he cannot restore. Repentance is now understood as acceptance of grace and confession of unworthiness. The community rejoices together. The visible demonstration of love in humiliation is seen to have dear overtones of the atoning work of Christ.’

This parable comes from a culture that is similar to the culture of the Islamic world, Colin argues. The strong emphasis in Islam on the unity of the family and family loyalties and the fact that most of the Muslim world is in Africa and the Middle East should make it easy for Muslims to understand what is happening in the story, he suggests.

But the parable also raises question for Muslims, he points out. What Muslim could imagine a younger son asking for his share of the inheritance while his father is still alive? Should a father not punish his sons when they dishonour the name of the family? Has the elder brother got to swallow his pride and welcome home his younger brother who has disgraced himself?

The second course was a year later, in 1996, in the College of the Ascension in Selly Oak, Birmingham. It was led by the Principal, the Revd Canon Dr Andrew Wingate, in association with USPG. That course in 1996 included Saint Patrick’s Day, and Andrew surprised me by asking me to preach at the Eucharist in his college chapel that Sunday.

CMS moved some of its training to Cowley, Oxford, in 2005 and closed Crowther Hall. The United College of the Ascension closed in 2006. Some of its work, and that of the Department of Mission, continues in the Selly Oak Centre for Mission Studies, based in the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham, an ecumenical theological foundation close to Birmingham University.

Later, Andrew Wingate was the founding director of Saint Philip’s Centre for Study and Engagement, Leicester, where I was involved in yet another a course in interfaith dialogue 2012. He continued to be available as a consultant and teacher in Inter-Faith Relations, and we continued to meet at USPG conferences and events.

I drew heavily on Colin Chapman’s work when I produced resources on Christian-Muslim dialogue for CMS and when I was a lecturer in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. Later, in semi-retirement in Milton, Cambridge, he assisted at All Saints’ Church. We met occasionally at Saint Bene’t’s Church, Cambridge, when I was studying at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies and staying ay Sidney Sussex College.

I have been a lifelong supporter of USPG, and I sometimes wondered whether some people in USPG saw me as a ‘Prodigal Son’ when I worked for CMS for four years (2002-2006), or did CMS see me as a ‘Prodigal Son’ when I subsequently joined the boards of USPG in Ireland and became a trustee of USPG?

The former College of the Ascension in Selly Oak, Birmingham, where I studied Christian-Muslim dialogue in 1996 (click on image for full-screen viewing)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 7 March 2026):

The theme this week (1-7 March 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been: ‘Saint David’s Day’ (pp 34-35). This theme was introduced last Sunday with Reflections by the Revd Sarah Rosser, Team Vicar in the Netherwent Ministry Area, Diocese of Monmouth, Church in Wales.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 7 March 2026) invites us to pray:

We pray for ourselves: help us to know your love, to listen for your call, and to live as salt and light in the world.

The Collect:

Holy God,
who gave great courage to Perpetua, Felicity and their companions:
grant that we may be worthy to climb the ladder of sacrifice
and be received into the garden of 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:

Eternal God,
who gave us this holy meal
in which we have celebrated the glory of the cross
and the victory of your martyrs Perpetua, Felicity and their companions:
by our communion with Christ
in his saving death and resurrection,
give us with all your saints the courage to conquer evil
and so to share the fruit of the tree of life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of Lent III:

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.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Lent and Ramadan overlap for Christians and Muslims this year … a sign by the Floating Mosque in Kuching. Can the Parable of the Prodigal Son assist Christian-Muslim dialogue? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

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: 4, Saturday 21 February 2026

The Crucifix above the High Altar in Saint Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Lent began this week with Ash Wednesday, and tomorrow is the First Sunday in Lent (Lent I). After our marathon journey that began in Heathrow on Ash Wednesday (18 February) and that included stopovers and connections in Muscat and Kuala Lumpur, we are settling into our flat in Kuching today.

As I wake this morning, I wonder whether I am going to find a suitable place later today to see the Six Nations Championship fixtures between England and Ireland (14:10 Irish and British time) and Wales and Scotland (16:40). In any event, I am looking forward to dinner with friends and extended and family in the Sarawak Club in Kuching this evening.

But, even before this day 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.

‘Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house’ (Luke 5: 29) … in the Great Dining Room in Aston Hall, Birmingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 5: 27-32 (NRSVA):

27 After this he went out and saw a tax-collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ 28 And he got up, left everything, and followed him.

29 Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax-collectors and others sitting at the table with them. 30 The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, ‘Why do you eat and drink with tax-collectors and sinners?’ 31 Jesus answered, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; 32 I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.’

‘The Bull’ by Laurence Broderick is a popular feature in Birmingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

In the Gospel reading at the Eucharist yesterday (Matthew 9: 14-15), Christ discussed the question about fasting put to him by the disciples of John the Baptist. The same question comes up again in today’s reading (Luke 5: 27-32) in the response to the lavish banquet Levi arranges in his house to welcome Jesus. It is especially relevant during Lent, which we are supposed to mark with ‘prayer, fasting, and self-denial’, and I suppose I ought to reflect on it in before this evening’s dinner in the Sarawak Club.

However, the difference between the welcome Jesus receives from Levi and the large crowd of tax-collectors and sinners at the banquet on one hand, and on the other hand, the criticism levied at him by those who complain about this eating and drinking reminds me of ‘Indifference’, or ‘When Jesus came to Birmingham,’ a poem by the priest-poet Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy (‘Woodbine Willie’).

Woodbine Willie wrote this poem while he was a chaplain during World War I. He felt God’s heartbeat for people and ministered faithfully, through practical love and through his poetry, to the ordinary soldiers living through ‘hell on earth’ in the trenches.

In this poem, Kennedy compares the behaviour of Christ’s contemporaries with our behaviour today towards the stranger and the outcast, and challenges us in Lent to consider whether we are following Christ to Golgotha.

Kennedy once wrote: ‘We have taught our people to use prayer too much as a means of comfort – not in the original and heroic sense of uplifting, inspiring, strengthening, but in the more modern and baser sense of soothing sorrow, dulling pain, and drying tears – the comfort of the cushion, not the comfort of the Cross.’

Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy was given his nickname ‘Woodbine Willie’ during World War I because of his reputation for giving Woodbine cigarettes along with pastoral and spiritual support to injured and dying soldiers.

He was born in Leeds in 1883, the seventh of nine children born to Jeanette Anketell and William Studdert Kennedy, a vicar in Leeds. His family came from Co Limerick, Co Clare and Clonfert, Co Galway, places I know well from my parish and cathedral ministry. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School and then went to Trinity College Dublin, where he received a degree in classics and divinity in 1904.

After a year’s training for ordination, he was appointed a curate in Rugby. He was appointed Vicar of Saint Paul’s, Worcester, in 1914. On the outbreak of World War I later that year, he volunteered as a chaplain on the Western Front, and it was there he was given the nickname ‘Woodbine Willie.’

In 1917, he ran into ‘No Man’s Land’ at the Messines Ridge, to help the wounded during an attack on the German frontline. For his bravery, he was decorated with the Military Cross.

His poems about his war-time experiences were published in Rough Rhymes of a Padre (1918), and More Rough Rhymes (1919).

But during the war, he was also converted to Christian Socialism and pacifism, which influenced his books Lies (1919), Democracy and the Dog-Collar (1921) – which included chapters such as ‘The Church Is Not a Movement but a Mob,’ ‘Capitalism is Nothing But Greed, Grab, and Profit-Mongering,’ and ‘So-Called Religious Education Worse than Useless’ – Food for the Fed Up (1921), The Wicket Gate (1923) and The Word and the Work (1925).

After the war, he was appointed to the Church of Saint Edmund, King and Martyr, in Lombard Street, London. But he soon moved to work for the Industrial Christian Fellowship, travelling throughout Britain on speaking tours.

He addressed the Anglo-Catholic Congress in London in July 1923, when he said:

‘It is not enough to make the devotional life our main concern, and allow an occasional lecture or preachment on social matters to be added as a make-weight. The social life must be brought right into the heart of our devotion, and our devotion right into the heart of our social life. There is only one spiritual life, and that is the sacramental life – sacramental in its fullest, its widest, and its deepest sense, which means the consecration of the whole man and all his human relationships to God.

‘There must be free and open passage between the sanctuary and the street. We must destroy within ourselves our present feeling that we descend to a lower level when we leave the song of the angels and the archangels and begin to study economic conditions, questions of wages, hours and housing. It is hard, very hard, but it must be done. It must be done not only for the sake of the street, but for the sake of the sanctuary, too. If the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament obscures the Omnipresence of God in the world, then the Sacrament is idolatrous, and our worship is actual sin, for all sin at its roots is the denial of the Omnipresence of God.

‘I have been to Mass in churches where I felt it was sinful – sinful because there was no passion for social righteousness behind it. When ye spread forth your hands I will hide mine eyes from you; yea, when ye make long prayers I will not hear you; your hands are full of blood … Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Seek judgement. Relieve the oppressed. Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

‘Remember that medieval ritual was a natural expression of medieval life, which, at any rate, tried to consecrate all things to God – tried to build the Kingdom of God on earth, and dedicated all arts and crafts, all human activities to him. In that setting it meant much; apart from that setting it means nothing, and worse than nothing – it is a hollow mockery. The way out is not to destroy ritual, but to restore righteousness, and make our flaming colours the banners of a Church militant here on earth …’

Woodbine Willie was taken ill on one of his speaking tours and he died in Liverpool 97 years ago on 8 March 1929.

Indifference, by GA Studdert Kennedy

When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary;
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.

When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed Him by.
They would not hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die;
For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain.

Still Jesus cried, ‘Forgive them, for they know not what they do,’
And still it rained the winter rain that drenched Him through and through;
The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall, and cried for Calvary.

The Crucified Christ and candlesticks by Peter Eugene Ball in the north aisle of Saint Philip’s Cathedral, Birmingham … the cross is made from a simple wooden sleeper, the Crucified Christ from copper and bronze foil (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 21 February 2026):

The theme this week (15-20 February 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been: ‘Look to the Amazon!’ (pp 28-29). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by the Most Revd Marinez Bassotto, Bishop of Amazonia and Archbishop of the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 21 February 2026, International Mother Language Day) invites us to pray:

God of all peoples, bless the preservation of language and culture. May communities celebrate and pass on their heritage, strengthening identity and pride for future generations.

The Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing that you have made
and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent:
create and make in us new and contrite hearts
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may receive from you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
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,
you have given your only Son to be for us
both a sacrifice for sin
and also an example of godly life:
give us grace
that we may always most thankfully receive
these his inestimable gifts,
and also daily endeavour
to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Holy God,
our lives are laid open before you:
rescue us from the chaos of sin
and through the death of your Son
bring us healing and make us whole
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of Lent I:

Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness,
and was tempted as we are, yet without sin:
give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your Spirit;
and, as you know our weakness,
so may we know your power to save;
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 Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘When Jesus came to Birmingham’ (‘Woodbine Willie’) … inside Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church in Aston, Birmingham (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