A walk though Soho to ask why there is no Greek restaurant or church on Greek Street

The Pillars of Hercules on Greek Street, Soho, celebrates the feats of Hercules in Greek mythology (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

One of the silly conundrums I pose when I find myself in Soho is: why is there no Greek restaurant on Greek Street?

Greek Street, which runs from Soho Square to Shaftesbury Avenue, takes its name from the small Greek church that stood on Hog Lane, now buried under Charing Cross Road, roughly where the Montague Pyke pub now stands.

An early map by Fairthorn and Newcourt in 1658 shows the location as a rectangular field that may have been owned by the Crown. A parcel of land known as Soho Fields was steadily sold off to developers.

Henry Jermyn, 1st Earl of St Albans, acquired the ownership of the area in the 1660s, and then leased out the land to Joseph Girle. He received permission to develop the area and then, in turn, passed on the lease for development to a builder, Richard Frith, who gives his name to Frith Street, where Mozart stayed at No 20 in 1764-1765.

Work on developing Greek Street began in 1680. William Morgan’s map in 1682 shows Greek Street with 17 plots on its east side and 12 on the west side, and the street was bisected by Queen’s Street, now Bateman Street.

The Pillars of Hercules, a half-timber pub dating from the early 18th century, on Greek Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The origins of the first Greek Orthodox Church in London dates back to the late 17th century. The first church was founded to meet the needs of a growing Greek community in London.

The main driving force behind the new church was Metropolitan Joseph Georgerinis of Samos. A Greek priest, Father Daniel Voulgaris, and number of Greeks living in London signed a petition in 1674 seeking permission ‘to build a church in any part of the city of London, where they may freely exercise their religion according to the Greek Church’.

Permission was granted in 1675 and work began in 1677 on building a small church. The church was completed in 1681, and was dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin Mary.

The church stood at what was then the edge of the city in Soho in Hog Lane, off Charing Cross Road, and Hog Lane eventually became known as Greek Street. Most Greeks in London at the time were refugees from the oppression of the Ottoman Turks, but lived and worked in the City and around the ports of London. The church was too far from those Greek residents and they found they were unable to attend the Divine Liturgy regularly or support its function.

The church ended up being sold in 1682 and the building was taken over by another group of refugees, French Protestant Huguenots who had fled to England. There were more than 30 Huguenot churches and chapels in London by the early 18th century.

Although the church changed hands, the name Greek Street stuck with the street, which was laid out in the 1670s and 1680s, with taverns, coffee houses and tradesmen’s workshops.

William Hogarth’s painting and print, ‘Noon’ (1736-1738) shows a scene outside the former Greek church on Greek Street

William Hogarth produced a set of four paintings and prints in 1736-1738, including one called ‘Noon’ that shows a scene outside the Greek church, which by then had become the French Church. The spire in the background is either Saint Anne’s Church, Soho, or Saint Giles-in-the-Fields.

The early residents of Greek Street included Arthur Annesley (1678-1737), 5th Earl of Anglesey and 6th Viscount Valentia, who was MP for Cambridge and for New Ross, Co Wexford, in the English and Irish Houses of Commons at the same time. He owned large estates near Camolin, Wexford, and his offices in Ireland included Vice-Treasurer and Paymaster General and Governor of Co Wexford.

Casanova stayed on Greek Street when he was visiting London in 1764. No 1 was once the home of Sir William Beckford (1709-1770), twice Lord Mayor of London (1762, 1769). Other residents included Josiah Wedgwood in 1774-1797.

The writer Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859), author of Confessions of an Opium-Eater (1821), also stayed on Greek Street for a time. Sir Joseph Bazalgette (1819-1891) began designing London’s sewer system in the offices of the Westminster Commissioners Sewers at No 1 Greek Street. No 1 later became the House of Saint Barnabas.

The passageway through the arch seen from Manette Street, with the name of the Pillars of Hercules seen above (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

With no Greek restaurants, and the long disappearance of the Greek church, the only hint of a Greek presence, past or present, on Greek Street is through the name Greek mythology has given to the Pillars of Hercules, a half-timbered pub at No 7, at the north end of Greek Street.

The name celebrates the feats of Hercules, who was renowned for his strength and courage, and two landmarks, the Rock of Gibraltar on the north side and Mount Hacho on the south side that mark the entrance to the Mediterranean. Greek mythology says Hercules set up the pillars after cleaving a path through the land to create the Straits of Gibraltar during his tenth laboir. The northern pillar is the Rock of Gibraltar, while the southern pillar is either Jebel Musa in Morocco or Monte Hacho in Ceuta.

Most of what exists of the Pillars of Hercules today was built around 1910. But a pub has been on the site since before 1700, and it was first recorded in 1709.

The passageway through the arch at the side of the pub through leads into Manette Street, named after Dr Manette, one of the characters in A Tale of Two Cities, who is described by Charles Dickens as living near Soho Square.

Greek mythology says Hercules created the Straits of Gibraltar when he pushed two pillars apart, separating Europe from Africa (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A sign at the pub says the Pillars of Hercules was also frequented in the 19th century by the poet, cricket lover and Catholic mystic Francis Thompson (1859-1906), author of the poem The Hound of Heaven.

Those literary associations were revived in the 1970s when the Pillars of Hercules was known as a literary pub and the meeting place of writers such as Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Ian McEwan, Clive James and Ian Hamilton. Clive James named his second book of literary criticism At the Pillars of Hercules, apparently because most of the pieces were commissioned, delivered or written there.

The pub closed on 24 February 2018, but reopened later that year as Bar Hercules under new owners Be At One. In 2022, the cocktail bar chain Simmons took over the pub, and the pub continues to serve under the name of the Pillars of Hercules above the arch and the sign of Hercules above the Greek Street façade.

Other premises on Greek Street today include the Coach and Horses (No 29), the Gay Hussar restaurant (No 2) and Maison Bertaux (No 28), the oldest French pâtisserie in London. Three of the mirrors in the shop contain the inscriptions Liberté, égalité, fraternité, and each year, the shop creates a tableau vivant on 14 July to celebrate Bastille Day – so, even if you can’t get a good Greek meal on Greek Street, there is always a good French patisserie.

As for the former Greek church on Greek Street, it was demolished in 1934. However, the inscription commemorating the foundation of the first Greek Orthodox Church in London has survived and can still be seen in the left part of the narthex of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Sophia in Bayswater.

Sunlight on the waters of the Straits of Gibraltar between the Pillars of Hercules and the coasts of Spain and Morocco (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 103, Thursday 21 August 2025

Waiting for a wedding reception at the Boot and Flogger in Southwark … we are all invited to the heavenly banquet, but are we ready to accept the invitation? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Ninth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity IX, 17 August 2025).

I hope to be involved in a drama group meeting in Stony Stratford this evening. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and 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.

‘Go therefore into the … streets, and invite everyone you find to the … banquet’ (Matthew 22: 9) … empty tables at restaurants in the side streets in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Matthew 22: 1-14 (NRSVA):

1 Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: 2 ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. 3 He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other slaves, saying, “Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.” 5 But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his slaves, maltreated them, and killed them. 7 The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. 8 Then he said to his slaves, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” 10 Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.

11 ‘But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, 12 and he said to him, “Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?” And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, “Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.’

‘A Peasant Wedding’ (1620), Peter Brueghel the Younger, the National Gallery of Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

‘For many are called, but few are chosen.’

Sometimes, the ways I can behave as a snob can catch me off-guard and unexpectedly, and I shame myself.

When I was growing up, the snobberies and class distinctions of previous generations were challenged over 60 years ago in an old-fashioned way in the film My Fair Lady (1964), based on George Bernard Shaw’s earlier play, Pygmalion (1913).

But Pygmalion also inspired what I think is a much funnier film, Hoi Polloi (1935), with the Three Stooges, Larry, Curly and Moe.

Two professors are arguing about whether our social behaviour is caused by environment or heredity. It is a very funny take on the old Nature v Nurture argument.

To settle a bet, the two professors take three binmen – Larry, Curly and Moe – train and coach them for three months, dress them up, and send them off to a posh society dinner.

Their behaviour descends into farce, and it looks as if one professor has won his bet: our social behaviour is dictated by inherited class.

But then the tables are turned – literally. Everyone else at the party descends to the same riotous behaviour. At a base level, we are all the same, even if some refuse to accept it.

Nature or nurture? It was an important statement that we all share the same humanity, coming as racism and the Nazis were on the rise in the 1930s.

The title of the film, Hoi Polloi, is a way of expressing class-based social prejudice. It is a Greek phrase, meaning ‘the many’ and it was used in Victorian England by people who had the benefit of a classical education in English public schools and the universities, to describe the masses, who they presumed did not understand the phrase.

Gilbert and Sullivan use the phrase to mock those who used it in their comic opera Iolanthe. Later, it was used by English public schoolboys in the 1950s and the 1960s, when they referred to ‘oips’ and ‘oiks’.

The term hoi polloi also appears in a scene in the film Dead Poets Society (1989). Professor John Keating, played by Robin Williams, speaks negatively about the use of the definite article ‘the’ in front of the phrase.

Steven Meeks (Allelon Ruggiero) raises his hands and speaks: ‘The hoi polloi. Doesn’t it mean the herd?’

Keating replies: ‘Precisely, Meeks. Greek for the herd. However, be warned that, when you say “the hoi polloi” you are actually saying “the the herd.” Indicating that you too are “hoi polloi”.’

This morning’s Gospel reading (Matthew 22: 1-14) begins with a very joyful occasion – a posh nosh, a planned wedding, and generous invitations to a lavish banquet. But, instead of the farce in that film with the Three Stooges, it quickly descends into very difficult images: slaves who are kidnapped, mistreated and killed; cities that are burned down; a man who is bound hand and feet and thrown into outer darkness.

The images of the wedding banquet and the wedding covenant are important ways of describing our relationship with God.

But the parable in this morning’s Gospel reading is particularly difficult.

The king has invited a long list of guests, but even after being repeatedly sought out, none of these guests comes to the banquet.

To refuse to come, to refuse a king’s command, is treason; to kill his slaves amounts to insurrection. So the king sends out troops to put down the rebellion.

The king then sends his slaves into the streets to find enough people to sit at the tables at the wedding banquet. The phrase translated as ‘the main streets’ (διεξόδους τῶν ὁδῶν, verse 9), means not the main fashionable, shopping streets in a chic part of a city centre. It refers to dirty, gritty, street corners and junctions, perhaps the main junctions outside the city gates.

This is the place where those who want to be hired as labour gather, where those who are refused entry wait without hope, this is where those who are on margins are found. Other translations catch these images when they talk about the highways and the byways.

And the king’s invitation, in verse 10, goes out to all people, ‘both good and bad.’

Yet, when the king sees that a man is not dressed appropriately for the event, the king throws him into the outer darkness. In this case, the robe probably symbolises the white robe worn for baptism.

Do we wear that robe all the time? In other words, do we live up to our promises of discipleship made at Baptism – summarised in the call to love God and to love others?

If you were to imagine yourself as one of the characters in this parable, who would you be?

And would you behave that way?

Are you the king, throwing a lavish wedding banquet?

Are you a wedding guest who has denied the generosity of the king?

Are you the bride or groom, sidelined and marginalised at our own wedding, incidental to all the power playing and role playing?

Are you one of the people brought in from the streets, but not prepared for the celebration about to take place?

Where do you find Good News in this parable?

What is meant by the many and the few here?

In our western way of thinking, the word many is a quantity much more than the majority, while few is many less than the majority. But in eastern thought, one less than 100% would be considered few.

We could put the Greek use of ‘few’ and ‘many’ by Christ in this parable in its cultural context. Pericles, in his ‘Funeral Oration’ in Athens, according to Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War, uses ‘the many,’ οἱ πολλοί (hoi polloi), in a positive way when he extols democracy in Athens.

He contrasts ‘the many’ with ‘the few’ (οἱ ὀλίγοι, hoi oligoi), the few who abuse power and create an oligarchy, rule by the few. Pericles demands equal justice for ‘the many’, ‘the all’, before the law, against the selfish interests of the few.

When we celebrate the Eucharist, we remember that Christ is the victim, and that he said his blood is shed ‘for you and for many.’ The word ‘you’ here means us, the Church, the few in this parable. But the phrase ‘the many’ here, οἱ πολλοί (hoi polloi), refers to the masses, the multitude, the great unwashed, who are called to the banquet too.

Christ’s invitation is not just to you and me, who know we are invited to the banquet. It is also for the many, the lumpen masses, all people, the ones who are not usually invited to the posh nosh, the Larry, Curly and Moe in our midst.

The invitation to come in, to celebrate at the banquet, symbolised in the Eucharist this morning, is not just for the few, the oligarchs. The many are invited to this banquet this morning.

Who are we to behave like a tyrannical despot and exclude them? For if we exclude them, we are in danger of excluding Christ himself.

‘Look, I have prepared my dinner … and everything is ready’ (Matthew 22: 3) … waiting for diners at the Black Horse in Great Linford, Buckinghamshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 21 August 2025):

The theme this week (17 to 23 August) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Tell the Full Story’ (pp 28-29). This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections from Dr Jo Sadgrove, Research and Learning Advisor, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 21 August 2025) invites us to pray:

Heavenly Father, we pray for all trapped in modern-day slavery and exploited labour. Bring freedom, dignity, and hope to those who suffer, and help us be a voice for the voiceless.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty God,
who sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church:
open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love and joy 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:

Holy Father,
who gathered us here around the table of your Son
to share this meal with the whole household of God:
in that new world where you reveal the fullness of your peace,
gather people of every race and language
to share in the eternal banquet of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Gracious Father,
revive your Church in our day,
and make her holy, strong and faithful,
for your glory’s sake
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

‘Those who had been invited to the wedding banquet … would not come’ (Matthew 22: 3) … empty tables at the Moat House on Lichfield Street, Tamworth (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

A grave in Kerameikós, Athens, where Pericles delivered his funeral oration (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Greeks have a word for it: 55, εκκλησία (ekklesia), the Church

The Pnyx in Athens, the original meeting place of the assembly or ekklesia (Photograph: Mirjanamimi/Wikipedia CCL)

Patrick Comerford

In my morning prayers and reflections this morning, I came across the word εκκλησία (ekklesia) once again in the Gospel reading (Matthew 17: 22-27). It is a rare use of this Greek word in the Gospels – though not in other parts of the New Testament – and so its use in this particular place tells us a lot about what should be our understanding of the nature and structure of the church as an institution or organisation, as opposed to a church as a building or place of worship and liturgy.

There are only two places in all the four Gospels where Christ uses the word for the Church that is found in this Gospel reading, the word εκκλησία (ekklesia): the first time is in Matthew 16: 18, when Christ relates the Church to a confession of faith by the Apostle Peter, the rock-solid foundational faith of Saint Peter, which I was reading about last Thursday (Matthew 16: 13-23, 7 August 2025).
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His second use of this word is not once but twice in one verse in the reading (Matthew 18: 17) I was reading this morning (Matthew 18: 1-5, 10, 12-14). It is a peculiar word for Christ to use, and yet he only speaks of the Church in these terms on these two occasions.

In total, the word εκκλησία (ekklesia) appears 114 times in the New Testament (four verses in the Acts of the Apostles, 58 times by Saint Pauline in his epistles, twice in the Letter to the Hebrews, once in the Epistle of James, three times in III John, and in 19 verses in the Book of Revelation). But Christ only uses the word twice, in these incidents in Saint Matthew’s Gospel.

How does Christ define the Church?

What makes up and defines the Church?

And why, throughout the Gospels, does Christ use this word to describe the Church only twice?

During the pandemic shutdown, when many of our church buildings remained closed, many of us comforted ourselves with phrases such as ‘the church is not a building’ and ‘people make the church.’

Modern Greek uses two other separate words, ναός (naos) and ἱερόν (ieron, for a church when we are speaking of a church as a building. They come from the classical Greek words for a temple, and they are both used in the New Testament also for the Temple in Jerusalem.

The word εκκλησία (ekklesia) is used in Greek for the Church as an institution, so that, for example, the Church of Greece is Ἐκκλησία τῆς Ἑλλάδος (Ekklēsía tē̂s Helládos), the Church of Crete is Εκκλησία της Κρήτης (Ekklēsía tē̂s Kritis), and the Church of Cyprus is Ἐκκλησία τῆς Κύπρου (Ekklisia tis Kyprou).

The Irish language has adapted these words in a different way. The Irish word eaglais, which comes from this same word εκκλησία, is usually used for a church building, although the word teampaill is used too, and eaglais is also used for the Church as institution, so that the Church of Ireland is called Eaglais na hÉireann in Irish. But when referring to the Church as the people, the Irish language uses the phrase Pobal Dé, the ‘People of God.’

The English word ‘church’ that we use in everyday English can be traced through Old English (cirice) and Old High German (kirihha) to a Greek word κυριακόν (kuriakón), that simply means ‘of the Lord.’

But the word εκκλησία (ekklesia) does not mean ‘belonging to the Lord.’ Even if that is implied, the word is different.

The word Christ uses in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, εκκλησία, means ‘called out,’ an assembly of people that is involved in social life, religion and government. The word comes from the Greek words ἐκ (ek), meaning ‘out of’, and καλέω (kaleo), ‘to call’. So, etymologically, the word ekklesia refers to or describes a called-out assembly or those called out.

This word εκκλησία goes all the way back to classical Athens, when the city assembly or εκκλησία consisted of all the citizens who had kept their civil rights. From ca 300 BC, the ekklesia met in the Theatre of Dionysus, beneath the slopes of the rock of the Acropolis.

The powers of the εκκλησία were almost unlimited. It met three or four times a month, and it elected and dismissed judges, directed the policy of the city, declared war and made peace, negotiated and ratified treaties and alliances, chose generals and raised taxes.

It was a city assembly in which all members had equal rights and duties, and all citizens took part, regardless of class or status. It had the final say.

When Christ is talking about the church as εκκλησία then, he is talking about all the members of the church community, who have equal rights, equal power, equal duties and an equal and respected say in what is going on.

Baptism makes us all equal, without discrimination, in the Church. And the Holy Communion, the Eucharist, is the lived continuation of our Baptism. There is only one Body of Christ, and so there is only one Baptism and only one Eucharist.

For the Apostle Paul, the Church is one body, the Body of Christ, where there is no discrimination among those who are baptised and who share in the sacramental mysteries (see I Corinthians 12: 12-13 and Ephesians 1: 22-23).

And what Christ does in Saint Matthew’s Gospel by using the word εκκλησία for his gathered followers collectively is not to give power to the Church but to warn us as the Church about the power we already have as the εκκλησία and the consequences of how we use that power.

A few verses earlier, in the previous day’s Gospel reading (see verses 10-13), Christ reminds us not to despise the little ones, to go after the one sheep from among the 99 that might go astray, to make sure that not even one of the little ones is left to be lost.

Now he tells us that in the Church there is no room for us to refuse to talk to one another, to bear grudges, to refuse to listen to one another.

And he warns us against the real dangers of trying to use the powers that the Church has in the wrong way.

In the culture and context of the Greek-speaking world of the East Mediterranean, people would know that the εκκλησία, this very particular type of assembly, had the last and final say.

For Christ to say that what the Church approves of or disapproves of has implications of the highest order is not Christ endowing the Church with supernatural powers. Rather, it is warning us of making decisions, going in directions, exercising discrimination, in the Church that will have not merely temporal and worldly but also eternal and spiritual consequences.

There can be no petty divisions in the Church, if we are to be true to the meaning of Baptism and the Eucharist which form and sustain us in one body, the Body of Christ. And the Church has to be a haven for those who are the victims of division, discrimination and disaster. Our haven can be their heaven.

When we discriminate against others, the consequences are not just for them, or even for us, but for the whole Church.

In the US, many megachurch and evangelical leaders are supporting Donald Trump’s campaign for re-election and yet are hauntingly silent when it comes to his bullying, illegality and corruption, to racism, to the plight of refugees, the rise of Islamophobia and antisemitism, and to other pressing issues such as climate change. In those instances, that part of the Church that claims the moral high ground is being found to be morally impoverished.

As for those other two words used in modern Greek for the church as a building, ναός (naos) and ἱερός (ieros), let’s look at these words on another day.

The ekklesia in classical Athens met in the Theatre of Dionysus, beneath the slopes of the Acropolis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Previous words in this series:

1, Neologism, Νεολογισμός.

2, Welcoming the stranger, Φιλοξενία.

3, Bread, Ψωμί.

4, Wine, Οίνος and Κρασί.

5, Yogurt, Γιαούρτι.

6, Orthodoxy, Ορθοδοξία.

7, Sea, Θᾰ́λᾰσσᾰ.

8,Theology, Θεολογία.

9, Icon, Εἰκών.

10, Philosophy, Φιλοσοφία.

11, Chaos, Χάος.

12, Liturgy, Λειτουργία.

13, Greeks, Ἕλληνες or Ρωμαίοι.

14, Mañana, Αύριο.

15, Europe, Εὐρώπη.

16, Architecture, Αρχιτεκτονική.

17, The missing words.

18, Theatre, θέατρον, and Drama, Δρᾶμα.

19, Pharmacy, Φᾰρμᾰκείᾱ.

20, Rhapsody, Ραψῳδός.

21, Holocaust, Ολοκαύτωμα.

22, Hygiene, Υγιεινή.

23, Laconic, Λακωνικός.

24, Telephone, Τηλέφωνο.

25, Asthma, Ασθμα.

26, Synagogue, Συναγωγή.

27, Diaspora, Διασπορά.

28, School, Σχολείο.

29, Muse, Μούσα.

30, Monastery, Μοναστήρι.

31, Olympian, Ολύμπιος.

32, Hypocrite, Υποκριτής.

33, Genocide, Γενοκτονία.

34, Cinema, Κινημα.

35, autopsy and biopsy

36, Exodus, ἔξοδος

37, Bishop, ἐπίσκοπος

38, Socratic, Σωκρατικὸς

39, Odyssey, Ὀδύσσεια

40, Practice, πρᾶξις

41, Idiotic, Ιδιωτικός

42, Pentecost, Πεντηκοστή

43, Apostrophe, ἀποστροφή

44, catastrophe, καταστροφή

45, democracy, δημοκρατία

46, ‘Αρχή, beginning, Τέλος, end

47, ‘Αποκάλυψις, Apocalypse

48, ‘Απόκρυφα, Apocrypha

49, Ἠλεκτρον (Elektron), electric

50, Metamorphosis, Μεταμόρφωσις

51, Bimah, βῆμα

52, ἰχθύς (ichthýs) and ψάρι (psari), fish.

53, Τὰ Βιβλία (Ta Biblia), The Bible

54, Φῐλοξενῐ́ᾱ (Philoxenia), true hospitality

55, εκκλησία (ekklesia), the Church

56, ναός (naos) and ἱερός (ieros), a church

57, series to be continued.

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 67, Tuesday 15 July 2025

The Crying Women of Sidon … a sarcophagus from Sidon now in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and the week began with the Fourth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity IV, 13 July 2025). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Swithun (862), Bishop of Winchester, and Saint Bonaventure (1274), Friar, Bishop, Teacher of the Faith.

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 Syro-Phoenician or Canaanite Woman … a modern icon by Brother Robert Lentz OFM

Matthew 11: 20-24 (NRSVA):

20 Then he began to reproach the cities in which most of his deeds of power had been done, because they did not repent. 21 ‘Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. 22 But I tell you, on the day of judgement it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. 23 And you, Capernaum,

will you be exalted to heaven?
No, you will be brought down to Hades.

For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. 24 But I tell you that on the day of judgement it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for you.’

Iokasti, a restaurant in Koutouloufari in Crete … are there comparisons between Iocasta and her daughter in ‘The Phoenician Women’ and the Greek-speaking Syro-Phoenician or Canaanite woman in Tyre and Sidon? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The short Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (Matthew 11: 20-24) seems to threaten judgement and doom for two pairs of cities – Chorazin and Bethsaida, and Tyre and Sidon – and links Capernaum with Hades, but not Sodom with Gomorrah.

But what deeds of power are going to be done in Tyre and Sidon? What signs of the day of judgement are going to be seen in Tyre and Sidon?

Perhaps this passage should not be read without also skipping forward a few chapters to Matthew 15: 21–28:

21 Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22 Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ 23 But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ 24 He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ 25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ 26 He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ 27 She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ 28 Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.

One of the first decisions of Jesus on that visit to Tyre and Sidon is to hear the cry for mercy from a Canaanite or Syro-Phoenician woman, to heal her daughter, and to commend their faith. The outsiders are counted in, and judgement is experienced as love and mercy, compassion and inclusion.

Can you recall a moment, a place, or an occasion when you felt rejected? To be rejected I do not need to be an outsider. We can be rejected by our own brothers or sisters, by those who live around us, by those who share our religious or cultural values.

We can be rejected because of our lifestyle, our family background, our ethnic or religious backgrounds, our personal habits, our family circumstances, our sexuality, or marital status or lack of marital status … the list is endless.

Can you think of how you feel when you are made to feel rejected, an outsider, sent away?

And, have you found yourself blaming yourself rather than those who reject or marginalise you?

If so, then you know what it is like to become a double victim: a victim of the prejudices of others, and a victim of the perceptions that are projected onto you.

The disciples reject the Canaanite woman who is pleading for mercy, seeing her as unclean and an outsider, and bring judgement down on this woman and her daughter in Tyre and Sidon.

Having heard the Pharisees suggest Jesus should reject them, they now say to Jesus, ‘send her away’ (verse 23).

But there is a paradox in their rejection of her, for they use a word (ἀπόλυσον, apoluson) that also means to set free, to let go, to give liberty to, to release.

The same verb is used to set a debtor free of debts, or to allow a woman to divorce her husband, setting her free from the bonds that tie husband and wife. In wanting to be free from her demanding calls, they – ironically – call for mother and daughter to be freed from their torments.

In our feelings of rejection and marginalisation, how do we find acceptance, liberation, and a place in God’s unfolding plan for his people, for all people, God’s future for us?

The disciples want to turn her away. They see her as a pest, a nuisance, a pushy woman, breaking into their closed space, their private area.

Christ and the Disciples are in the coastal area of Tyre and Sidon, an area of small villages, perhaps looking for a quiet break for a few days. But if they are planning to get away for a few quiet days, those plans are frustrated when this woman arrives with her pressing demands.

This is foreign territory, inhabited by Canaanites or Phoenicians, who were culturally Hellenised and mainly Greek-speaking. It is also the territory associated with Elijah, who raised the widow’s child from death (I Kings 17: 9-24) and who ‘was markedly open to foreigners.’

So, Christ could expect to find himself among a large number of Greek-speaking ‘Gentiles.’ Would the Disciples expect him to behave like Elijah and break all the rules in being open to them, taking miraculous care of a lone mother and her child?

In the classical world, Phoenician women were pushy women. About 400 years earlier, the great Greek playwright Euripides wrote his tragic play The Phoenician Women (Φοίνισσαι, Phoenissae).

The title of the play, The Phoenician Women, refers to the Greek chorus, which is composed of Phoenician women on their way to Delphi and who are trapped in Thebes by war.

The two key women in the play are Jocasta and her daughter Antigone, who have survived against all odds. They challenge the accepted concepts in Classical times of fate and free-will.

In the face of death, they refuse to accept what others see as their destiny, they refuse to be pushed aside, marginalised and dismissed as the men around then compete for power.

So, in Christ’s time, educated people could expect a Phoenician woman and her daughter to be pushy in the face of what appears to be a cruel fate, even if this involves confronting successful or ambitious men: they are prepared to stand up to kings and rulers, prepared to challenge them, and prepared to risk judgement that means rejection and exile.

Faced with her daughter’s needs, this woman ignores the disciples: she is direct and aggressive in demanding healing and justice. And in demanding justice and healing for her daughter, she is, of course, demanding these for herself too.

Nothing is said about the response of the disciples to the woman. They had been trying to push her away, despite her crying, her tears, her distress, her plight over her daughter.

Perhaps nothing is said about the response of the disciples … because we are the disciples. How do you and I respond to encounters like this?

As a social response, for example, we might consider that the confrontation is an illustration of how we might respond to the needs of strangers and foreigners.

Do we find them pushy and demanding?

How do we respond when the foreign woman in our society wants the same treatment in hospital for her child as a child born here?

How do we respond when foreigners who are more open and joyful in conversation, appear to be encroaching on our privacy on the bus, on the street or in a shop?

Are we like the Disciples, and want to send them away? Or are we like Jesus, and engage in conversation with them?

Do we think we have some privileges that should not be shared with the outsider and the stranger?

How do we respond to people who are pushy and continue to demand care for their children in the face of society’s decision to say no?

The parents who want teaching support for children with learning disabilities, the parents who want to know why children’s hospitals are so badly funded that they have to raise funds with charity events while their children wait for treatment.

But this Gospel story also raises questions at a personal, spiritual level too, when it comes to matters of faith.

How many people do you know who give up when they turn to God in prayer and find those who are supposed to represent Jesus appear to turn them away?

How many times have I dismissed the needs and prayers of others because they appear to be outside the community of faith as I understand it?

This woman is insistent, she is persistent; she refuses to accept what other people regard as her fate and destiny.

In the end, she receives the mercy and help she asks for, and much, much more … she is commended in front of the disciples for her faith, and her daughter is healed instantly.

We do not have to accept misery and rejection, especially when others see them as our fate or our destiny. And, in simple prayers, we may find more in the answer than we ever ask for.

‘What overwhelms us?’

‘What can we do about being overwhelmed?’

These questions were put to us some years by Bishop Margaret Vertue of the Diocese of False Bay in South Africa, at the USPG conference in High Leigh.

Bishop Margaret, who is the second woman to become a bishop in Africa, was leading that morning’s Bible study in 2017 on Matthew 11: 20-24.

She challenged us to think of how we respond in love and not in judgement. And, drawing on the wisdom of the Carthusian monks of Grand Chartreuse, she asked: ‘I became human for you, will you become God with me?’

To illustrate how we might respond in love and not in judgement, she shared ‘The Story of a Sign’ by Alonso Alvarez Barreda, with music by Giles Lamb. This short film from Purplefeather illustrates the power of words to radically change our message and our effect upon the world.

She challenged us that morning to consider our own contexts and to discuss: ‘What overwhelms us? What can we do about being overwhelmed?’

And she asked, in the words of the wisdom of the Carthusian monks of Grand Chartreuse: ‘I became human for you, will you become God with me?’

‘The Story of a Sign’ by Alonso Alvarez Barreda / Purplefeather, music by Giles Lamb

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 15 July 2025):

The theme this week (13 to 19 July) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Shaping the Future: Africa Six.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update from Fran Mate, Senior Regional Manager: Africa, USPG.

The USPG prayer diary today (Tuesday 15 July 2025) invites us to pray

Loving Lord, bless the Centre for Anglican Women’s Leadership and Research in Africa as they work to equip and empower women to lead with strength, faith, and compassion. We pray this work will bear lasting fruit.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
by whose grace we celebrate again
the feast of your servant Swithun:
grant that, as he governed with gentleness
the people committed to his care,
so we, rejoicing in our Christian inheritance,
may always seek to build up your Church in unity and love;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God, shepherd of your people,
whose servant Swithun revealed the loving service of Christ
in his ministry as a pastor of your people:
by this eucharist in which we share
awaken within us the love of Christ
and keep us faithful to our Christian calling;
through him who laid down his life for us,
but is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

The Theatre of Dionysus, beneath the slopes of the Acropolis in Athens … plays by the great playwrights, Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles were first performed there (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 Ordinary Time 2025: 66, Monday 14 July 2025

‘Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me’ (Matthew 10: 38) … the cross outside Water Eaton Church Centre, Milton Keynes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and yesterday was the Fourth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity IV, 13 July 2025). The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers John Keble (1792-1866), Priest, Tractarian and Poet.

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.

‘I have not come to bring peace, but a sword’ (Matthew 10: 34) … the Sword of State of James Brooke, first Rajah of Sarawak (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Matthew 10: 34 to 11: 1 (NRSVA):

Jesus said:

34 ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth;
I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

35 For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
36 and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.

37 ‘Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;

38 and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

39 Those who find their life will lose it,
and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

40 ‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me,
and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.
41 Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet
will receive a prophet’s reward;
and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person
will receive the reward of the righteous;

42 and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple –
truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.’

11 Now when Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and proclaim his message in their cities.

‘Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones’ (Matthew 10: 42) … ‘Christ the Beggar’, a sculpture by Timothy Schmalz on the steps of Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

In the weekday Gospel readings at the Eucharist in recent days, we have been reading in Saint Matthew’s Gospel how Christ calls the Twelve together and prepares them for their ministry and mission. In today’s reading, he concludes that preparation of the Twelve for this mission, as both their teacher and their master.

It is a wonderful piece of drama and poetry. Most English-language versions of this passage present it as prose narrative. But the original Biblical Greek is drama and poetry, so that its impact is powerful.

At the Last Day, Christ will speak out on behalf of those who are his faithful witnesses faithfully, but will deny those who deny him. The smallest act of kindness to those who marginalised and despised is the same as taking up my cross and following Christ.

To re-present that poetic and dramatic impact, I have presented the Greek text in poetic form at the end of this reflection.

In verses 34-36, Christ gives a new interpretation to the apocalyptic vision in Micah 7: 6, a verse thought to foretell the breakdown of society as the end-times approach (see also Ezekiel 38: 21). Spreading the gospel will have unfortunate consequences. There will be tension and division, even within families, between those who accept Christ’s message and the demands it makes, and those who oppose it.

Christians must put loyalty to Christ above family loyalties (verse 37). Following Christ involves the risk of death, and involves taking up the cross, a sure and certain death for those who rebel against the rulers of the day (verse 38). We are then presented with a paradox: those who try to save their own earthly lives will lose all, but those who die for Christ will find eternal life (verse 39).

Many years ago (2008), I was reading through some insightful essays submitted as part of an adult education course in theology. I was excited so many thinking people were engaging with their faith in a challenging, questioning way, seeking to explore and deepen their understanding of how relevant Christianity and the Church are to the world and its problems.

These were not raw, naïve students. They displayed a wide variety of age, experience, and background, and came with a variety of experiences that challenge our stereotypical image of the Church. Yes, there were suburban housewives and businessmen, and young people from rectory families. And they brought amazing, often unconventional, questions and insights to the discussions.

But they sat side-by-side – and sat comfortably side-by-side – with the other students: the single mother with teenage sons; the refugee who had seen horrific outrages, only to find herself marginalised in a new country; a farmer who travelled a round trip of hundreds of miles just to learn more, and to be challenged more deeply by the Christian faith.

Well, no-one said it was going to be easy, did they?

The Christian faith should be challenging. Our reflections on it should be challenging and should challenge us. And, as we integrate that reflection, our discipleship should be challenging to the world … even when that means that there is a price to pay.

If we are unable or unwilling to speak up about our beliefs in time of plenty, how difficult will it be to speak up for Christian values, the Christian point of view, when things are difficult, when things are tough?

Staying quiet when I should speak out will deal a death blow to my morals and my morale. Silence in the face of injustice and suffering is a silent denial of my faith, and of Christ.

For me, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gonville ffrench-Beytagh and Desmond Tutu stand out as people who knew the consequences but nevertheless took up their cross and followed Christ, and are worthy of the name Christian (Matthew 10: 38). They knew that despite their physical fears were, and the fears they had for the families, who would also suffer socially and physically, that they had little to fear spiritually.

How often do we take the easy option out? How often do we give nice names to the bad things we do? How often do we pretend that we are doing the wrong thing for the right reasons? Or simply because we are doing what is expected of us, what were told to do?

How often good labels have been hijacked to disguise the dreadful. The slogan on the gates outside Auschwitz, Dachau and other Nazi death camps was: Arbeit mach frei – ‘Work makes you free.’

The word ‘apartheid’ does not mean racism. It actually means ‘separate development,’ which sounds good except there were no hopes of development and opportunity for anyone but the white people in South Africa.

As he was leading the United States further-and-further along the nuclear arms race, developing new nuclear missiles that would eventually contribute to economic recession, President Ronald Reagan declared in his second inaugural address in 1984: ‘Peace is our highest aspiration. The record is clear, Americans resort to force only when they must. We have never been aggressors.’ They even named one new nuclear weapon ‘Peacemaker’ and named a nuclear warship Corpus Christi.

But it was always so throughout history. In an oft-quoted passage in De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae, the Roman orator and historian Tacitus quotes a British chieftain Calgacus speaking about Rome’s insatiable appetite for conquest and plunder: ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant (‘where they make a desert, they call it peace’).

The British chieftain’s sentiment was meant as an ironic contrast with the slogan, ‘Peace given to the world,’ frequently inscribed on Roman medals.

This phrase from Tacitus is often quoted alone. The poet Lord Byron, for instance, adapts the phrase in Bride of Abydos (1813):

Mark where his carnage and his conquests cease!
He makes a solitude, and calls it – peace.

The same poetic irony is found when Christ says to his disciples in this Gospel reading: ‘Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have come not to bring peace, but the sword’ (Matthew 10: 34).

It is not that Christ is encouraging his disciples to be warmongers – what a gross misreading of his teachings that would be. Nor is he encouraging family rows, encouraging sons to storm out on their fathers, mothers to nag and niggle at their daughters (Matthew 10: 35).

But he is warning his disciples it is not going to be easy. They are not going to have a quiet time. Those who want a quiet life as Christians can forget about it. And their hopes of a quiet life as passive Christians will vanish quickly.

Are we prepared to stand up for our faith and its values even at the risk of being ridiculed? Even when this upsets the peace of our families, our communities, our society and our land?

Some of those essays I was reading from those students on that adult education course encourage me when it comes to worrying whether people prefer peace at any price or taking a costly stand, even when it challenges prevailing values today.

Many of them had looked at the way we treat immigrants, migrants and refugees in our society. Yes, they observed the rising levels of racism in our society. Yes, they noticed the inadequate welfare and support payments they receive. But they were even more challenging about the way they thought the Church was too comfortable about the problems we are facing in society today. We are too inward-looking, most of them said in their essays. We are too much of a club.

They had stopped and looked at ordinary, everyday parishes. There is no fear of fathers being set against their sons, mothers against their daughters, daughters-in-law against mothers-in-law, or of finding foes within the household (Matthew 10: 35-37). Most of them found our parishes were too like comfortable families or clubs, not open to the worries, concerns and fears of the outsider.

Do we love the clubbish atmosphere in the Church more than we love the Church, the Gospel and Christ?

Or are we prepared to speak out, not worrying about the consequences, knowing that ‘whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it’ (Matthew 10: 39).

Matthew 10: 34-42 in Greek:

34 Μὴ νομίσητε ὅτι ἦλθον βαλεῖν εἰρήνην ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν·
οὐκ ἦλθον βαλεῖν εἰρήνην ἀλλὰ μάχαιραν.

35 ἦλθον γὰρ διχάσαι ἄνθρωπον κατὰ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ
καὶ θυγατέρα κατὰ τῆς μητρὸς αὐτῆς
καὶ νύμφην κατὰ τῆς πενθερᾶς αὐτῆς,
36 καὶ ἐχθροὶ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου οἱ οἰκιακοὶ αὐτοῦ.

37 Ὁ φιλῶν πατέρα ἢ μητέρα ὑπὲρ ἐμὲ οὐκ ἔστιν μου ἄξιος·
καὶ ὁ φιλῶν υἱὸν ἢ θυγατέρα ὑπὲρ ἐμὲ οὐκ ἔστιν μου ἄξιος·

38 καὶ ὃς οὐ λαμβάνει τὸν σταυρὸν αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀκολουθεῖ ὀπίσω μου, οὐκ ἔστιν μου ἄξιος.

39 ὁ εὑρὼν τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἀπολέσει αὐτήν,
καὶ ὁ ἀπολέσας τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἕνεκεν ἐμοῦ εὑρήσει αὐτήν.

40 Ὁ δεχόμενος ὑμᾶς ἐμὲ δέχεται,
καὶ ὁ ἐμὲ δεχόμενος δέχεται τὸν ἀποστείλαντά με.
41 ὁ δεχόμενος προφήτην εἰς ὄνομα προφήτου
μισθὸν προφήτου λήμψεται,
καὶ ὁ δεχόμενος δίκαιον εἰς ὄνομα δικαίου
μισθὸν δικαίου λήμψεται.

42 καὶ ὃς ἂν ποτίσῃ ἕνα τῶν μικρῶν τούτων ποτήριον ψυχροῦ μόνον εἰς ὄνομα μαθητοῦ, ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, οὐ μὴ ἀπολέσῃ τὸν μισθὸν αὐτοῦ.

‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me’ (Matthew 10: 40) … a multilingual welcome at Saint Paul's Church, Marylebone (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 14 July 2025):

The theme this week (13 to 19 July) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Shaping the Future: Africa Six.’ This theme was introduced yesterday with a programme update from Fran Mate, Senior Regional Manager: Africa, USPG.

The USPG prayer diary today (Monday 14 July 2025) invites us to pray

Gracious God, we give thanks for the gathering in Lesotho. Thank you for the gift of time away together that helped the bishops and supporting staff to seek your wisdom and vision for the future. We pray for those unable to attend, continue to grow and sanctify your leaders by your Word.

The Collect:

Father of the eternal Word,
in whose encompassing love
all things in peace and order move:
grant that, as your servant John Keble
adored you in all creation,
so we may have a humble heart of love
for the mysteries of your Church
and know your love to be new every morning,
in Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God, shepherd of your people,
whose servant John Keble revealed the loving ervice of Christ
in his ministry as a pastor of your people:
by this eucharist in which we share
awaken within us the love of Christ
and keep us faithful to our Christian calling;
through him who laid down his life for us,
but is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me’ (Matthew 10: 40) … a warm Greek welcome in Rethymnon

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

A new interpretation of ‘Electra’ comes to Stony Stratford with the Carabosse Theatre

Elektra (Electra, Ἠλέκτρα), one of the most enduring figures in classical tragedy, comes to Stony Stratford tomorrow night for five nights (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I am staying in Oxford tonight in advance of a medical procedure early tomorrow. But it looks as though I am going to miss the Carabosse Theatre Company’s production of Electra Unbound, which opens in the Greek Church Hall or Swinfen Harris Hall in Stony Stratford tomorrow (11 July 2025) and continues for five nights until next Tuesday (15 July).

This presentation continues the Carabosse Theatre exploration of the electrifying scope of ancient Greek theatre, and is their original adaptation of plays by Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus.

This new interpretation of the ancient story is written by Tim Dalgleish and Sally Luff of Carabosse, and features original music by the acclaimed songwriter Mark Denman. The same team previously interpreted Medea at the same venue.

They promise that this is a bold, immersive reimagining of the classic Greek tragedy, breaking theatrical boundaries to deliver an unforgettable experience, with their audiences invited into a world where vengeance and grief collide with electrifying intensity.

This new production breathes new life into an ancient tale, creating a powerful and emotionally charged theatrical journey into a world of raw emotion.

Electra Unbound is a classical story of a family torn by betrayal and bound by vengeance. It is the haunting and harrowing story of Electra, tormented by the brutal murder of her father, Agamemnon, at the hands of her mother, Clytemnestra, and her mother’s lover, Aegisthus.

Trapped in grief and sorrow, longing for justice, Electra clings desperately to hope for the return of her brother, Orestes. When he finally arrives – in disguise – they unite to confront the past, exact their revenge and reclaim their legacy and their destiny.

Many of the roles in Electra Unbound are double cast, giving the Carabosse actors the chance to bring something fresh and unique to each performance, so that no two shows are the same. The staging dissolves the line between stage and audience, and this adaptation reinvents classical theatre for a modern audience.

John Burgess has described Electra as being, along with The Cherry Orchard, ‘perhaps the most formally perfect play ever written’. Others have described Electra as ‘a female Hamlet’.

A West End production of Elektra by Sophocles at the Duke of York’s theatre earlier this year was the first major revival in over a decade of Sophocles’ electrifying and timeless tragedy. It was is a new translation by the Canadian poet and classicist Anne Carson and drew much attention because Elektra was played by Brie Larson, known for her roles in Captain Marvel, Room and Lessons in Chemistry, and because it was directed by Daniel Fish, whose production of Oklahoma! won a 2019 Tony for Best Revival of a Musical and was a West End hit.

The Electra Palace Hotel (left) is an integral part of Ernest Hébrard’s design of Aristotelous Square in the heart of Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Elektra (Electra, Ἠλέκτρα) is one of the most enduring figures in classical tragedy. She is the leading character in both Electra by Sophocles and Electra by Euripides, and a vengeful figure in The Libation Bearers, the second play of the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus. She is also the central figure in plays by Alfieri, Voltaire, Hofmannsthal and Eugene O’Neill.

In psychology, she gives her name to the Electra complex, analogous to a boy’s experience in the Oedipus complex, although the idea of the Electra complex is not widely used by mental health professionals today.

Elektra remains a powerful figure in Greek culture today. Aristotelous Square is the main square in the heart of Thessaloniki, and like the White Tower it is virtually synonymous with the city itself. It is a venue for many cultural and political events, and is lined with hotels, cafés and bars.

The two quarter-circle sides of the square are occupied by two culturally important and imposing buildings: the Electra Palace Hotel, where I stayed once while I was travelling to and from Mount Athos, and the Olympion Theatre cinema, the venue of the annual Thessaloniki International Film Festival. There are also Electra Hotels in Athens, Rhodes and Kefalonia.

Walking around the harbour of Rethymnon, I sometimes notice a boat named Elektra. It brings to mind both the plays by Sophocles and Euripides and the score Mikis Theodorakis wrote for the film Electra (1962). That film, starring Irene Papas, is based on the play by Euripides, and was the first in a Greek tragedy trilogy by Michael Cacoyannis, followed by The Trojan Women (1971) and Iphigenia (1977).

In his music, Theodorakis expressed his political values and fused his idealism and his commitment to freedom. His scores for Zorba and Electra show how he caught Greek cultural imaginations, combining Greek traditional music and classical composition, high art and popular culture.

• Electra Unbound is at the Swinfen Harris Hall, London Road, Stony Stratford, from 11 to 15 July 2025. Tickets are available at Ticket Source. For more information about the production and the Carabosse Theatre Company, visit their website HERE.

Elektra in Rethymnon … bringing together Euripides and Theodorakis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Greeks have a word for it: 54, Φῐλοξενῐ́ᾱ (Philoxenia), true hospitality

Philoxenia is much more than polite hospitality and has been embedded in the Greek collective psyche since antiquity and is priority for classical writers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The news from Greece in newspapers in these islands and on television is often about aspects of life that have (usually devastating) impacts on tourists, especially in places that headline writers like to label ‘tourist islands’.

The Irish Times gave much space in recent daysk to reports and feature on the thousands of Irish students taking part in post-exams holiday on the Greek island of Zakynthos that has become one of the most popular destinations from Niamh Brownes for this ‘rite of passage’.

It discussed how the island is ‘buzzing with Irish teenagers enjoying blistering heat, booze cruises and beach parties’, many of them staying on the Laganas strip. For many of them, the island’s natural beauty, crystal-clear waters and turtle sanctuary are all mere ‘incidental attractions’.

By the end of the week, The Irish Times had turned its attention the widespread fires on the island of Crete that are threatening forests, olive groves and resorts, and on other fires near Athens and its suburbs, whisked up by gale-force winds.

I suppose it was only to be expected that there the reports from Athens gave details of the difficulties at Athens International Airport and the ports, while the reports from Ierapetra gave details of the evacuation of tourists who took shelter at an indoor stadium, were transferred to hotels in the north of the island, and ‘an exodus of about 5,000 holidaymakers.’

This emphasis on tourism is not neglecting the economic crisis that faces Crete: tourism is a key income earner, but Crete is so much more than ‘the popular tourist island’ it is labelled as in so many reports.

Greeks pride themselves on their innate hospitality and the genuine hospitality they offer tourists is a matter of cultural pride and honour that goes beyond the profits gained or income earned in any part of the tourism and hospitality sector.

The concept of φῐλοξενῐ́ᾱ (philoxenia) in Greek runs so deeply in the collective psyche in Greece that it is almost impossible to translate its depth and scope. It is so much more than shaking your hand and putting on a smile. It is so important, that I thought I would look at this word yet again, although it was one of the early words I looked at in this series. And it has new and renewed relevance and urgency when we think of how ICE and Homeland Security are responding to strangers and foreigners in the dystopian world of Trump’s regime in the US.

That complimentary after-drink is more than a polite ‘thank you’. Waiting for your bill a little longer than in other countries is a way of being reminded that you are a guest first, and only a customer second. And guests find they have the potential and offer of becoming friends, and friendship sometimes even leads to a form of kinship, a welcome inside the fringes of the family circle.

Filoxenia Hotel in Tsilivi … treasured memories of welcoming the stranger to Zakynthos in 2002

The fires in Crete in recent days I have been heartbreaking, because I know they are heartbreaking for many people who showed me philoxenia and made me feel more welcome than a guest normally feels. I have stayed there so often over the past 40 years, that I know people in Crete understand why I see their island as a sort of second home. And, yes, I have even been to Ierapetra, seen the house where Napoleon may have had a welcome of sorts before he invaded Egypt, and I have seen those places that were burning in the fires last week.

I have been to Zakynthos too, though that was almost quarter of a century ago, and back in 2002 it did not have the party reputation it has among school-leavers today. But I still remember that the hotel where I stayed in Tsilivi, and its name: Filoxenia.

The tradition of philoxenia goes beyond welcome and hospitality and dates back beyond antiquity. Homer frequently describes the Greek virtues of hospitality that are deeply embedded in religious, social and political values.

True hospitality in classical Greece was regarded as a sacred responsibility watched over by Zeus Xenios and the gods of Olympus. To behave inhospitably was a severe transgression, while true hospitality entailed duties and responsibilities for hosts and guests alike.

Ancient hospitality was a sacred duty almost akin to a religious sacrifice. Any stranger who rang the bell could be a god in disguise, there to test the mortal homeowner’s hospitality. Zeus, as Zeus Xenios, was the divine embodiment of hospitality, and Hestia, goddess of the hearth and household order, was also linked to the custom, while Hermes, the herald and messenger of Zeus, assisted in overseeing hospitality and protecting travellers.

In Classical Greece, city-states selected citizens to serve as hosts for foreign ambassadors who relied on hospitality. A good proxenos needed diplomatic skills, and then, as now, both parties exchanged gifts. A guest was welcomed with food, drink and shelter, with the host and the guest exchanging gifts and sharing stories as sign of potential or continuing friendship. The best food, wine and seats were offered in line with a guest’s high social status.

At least 18 scenes of hospitality are found in Homer’s writings (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

At least 18 scenes of hospitality are found in Homer’s works, including four in the Iliad, 12 in the Odyssey and two in the Homeric Hymns.

In the Iliad, diplomatic hospitality is shown when Agamemnon sends an embassy to the disgruntled Achilles. The ambassadors, Odysseus, Ajax and Phoenix, are received in grand style and offer lavish gifts to Achilles, including ‘… seven tripods, that the fire hath not touched, and ten talents of gold and twenty gleaming cauldrons, and twelve strong horses … seven women skilled in goodly handiwork, women of Lesbos … and … the daughter of Briseus …’

Appropriate hospitality gifts also included finely crafted banquet equipment, such as the drinking cup and krater or mixing jar presented to Telemachus by King Menelaus in Sparta.

The Trojan War was the Greeks’ reaction to a blatant violation of xenia, when Paris, leaving Sparta, stole his host’s wife.

The Odyssey recounts the tireless search for hospitality by Odysseus on his homeward journey and also examines the nature of xenia. The hospitality recounted in the Odyssey ranges from the generosity shown to Odysseus by Nausicaa, daughter of Alcinous, King of the Phaeacians, or by the swineherd Eumaeus, to the amoral suitors’ final scene in which all the conventions of hospitality are inverted. The cruel giant Polyphemus, instead of feasting his guests, makes them the feast and offers Odysseus the gift of eating him last. The insolent suitor Ctesippus similarly mocks xenia by hurling the gift of a hoof at Odysseus.

The ill deeds of both the Cyclops and the suitors epitomise inhospitality and are later memorialised through Euripides’ artful terms xenodaites, one who devours guests, and xenoktonos, slaying guests and strangers.

The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens where ‘Medea’ was first staged … Euripides describes in ‘Medea’ how a host and guest would exchange distinctive tokens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In his play Medea, Euripides shows that in the 5th century BCE a host and guest would exchange a distinctive token that could be redeemed whenever hospitality might again be desired or that could be passed on to the next generation. It finds resonances in the Roman exchange known as sacramentum, which gives us the word sacrament. I must think a more again about the concept of the sacrament of hospitality or philoxenia.

Plato’s Laws record how four types of foreign visitors should be received by Athenians, depending on their purpose, position and social status.

In Roman times, Ovid tells the tale of Philemon and Baucis, an elderly couple who welcome Zeus or Jupiter and Hermes or Mercury into their humble home. They go to great lengths to offer their unknown visitors hospitality, and become a shining example of hospitality, so that they are spared from a sinkhole that swallows their area, and their house becomes a temple.

Often in ancient myth and literature, the rich and greedy declined to offer a proper welcome, while the poor but generous threw open their door to what is later revealed to be a deity. These values are shared in the Bible too and hospitality is central to understanding Biblical ethics.

A passage that is particularly relevant today, in the light of events in Trump’s dystopian America, tells us: ‘When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt’ (Leviticus 19: 33-34). In the epistles, we are told: ‘Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it’ (Hebrews 13: 1-2). The author uses the phrase τῆς φιλοξενίας μὴ ἐπιλανθάνεσθε.

The ancient Greek value of φῐλοξενῐ́ᾱ (phĭloxenĭ́ā), true and genuine hospitality, is still alive today, deep in the heart of every Greek. There is more to philoxenia than mere hospitality. For Greeks, it is about sharing their lives with others, inviting new-made acquaintances into the home to share a meal, offering food and drink, so that they become friends and may even become part of the family.

None of this is done for selfish reasons, or for self-gratification. Greeks genuinely want to share their culture, their customs and their homes with foreigners.

And that’s just who Greeks are.

Previous word: Τὰ Βιβλία (Ta Biblia), The Bible

Series to be continue

Plato’s ‘Laws’ record how four types of foreign visitors should be received by Athenians (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Previous words in this series:

1, Neologism, Νεολογισμός.

2, Welcoming the stranger, Φιλοξενία.

3, Bread, Ψωμί.

4, Wine, Οίνος and Κρασί.

5, Yogurt, Γιαούρτι.

6, Orthodoxy, Ορθοδοξία.

7, Sea, Θᾰ́λᾰσσᾰ.

8,Theology, Θεολογία.

9, Icon, Εἰκών.

10, Philosophy, Φιλοσοφία.

11, Chaos, Χάος.

12, Liturgy, Λειτουργία.

13, Greeks, Ἕλληνες or Ρωμαίοι.

14, Mañana, Αύριο.

15, Europe, Εὐρώπη.

16, Architecture, Αρχιτεκτονική.

17, The missing words.

18, Theatre, θέατρον, and Drama, Δρᾶμα.

19, Pharmacy, Φᾰρμᾰκείᾱ.

20, Rhapsody, Ραψῳδός.

21, Holocaust, Ολοκαύτωμα.

22, Hygiene, Υγιεινή.

23, Laconic, Λακωνικός.

24, Telephone, Τηλέφωνο.

25, Asthma, Ασθμα.

26, Synagogue, Συναγωγή.

27, Diaspora, Διασπορά.

28, School, Σχολείο.

29, Muse, Μούσα.

30, Monastery, Μοναστήρι.

31, Olympian, Ολύμπιος.

32, Hypocrite, Υποκριτής.

33, Genocide, Γενοκτονία.

34, Cinema, Κινημα.

35, autopsy and biopsy

36, Exodus, ἔξοδος

37, Bishop, ἐπίσκοπος

38, Socratic, Σωκρατικὸς

39, Odyssey, Ὀδύσσεια

40, Practice, πρᾶξις

41, Idiotic, Ιδιωτικός

42, Pentecost, Πεντηκοστή

43, Apostrophe, ἀποστροφή

44, catastrophe, καταστροφή

45, democracy, δημοκρατία

46, ‘Αρχή, beginning, Τέλος, end

47, ‘Αποκάλυψις, Apocalypse

48, ‘Απόκρυφα, Apocrypha

49, Ἠλεκτρον (Elektron), electric

50, Metamorphosis, Μεταμόρφωσις

51, Bimah, βῆμα

52, ἰχθύς (ichthýs) and ψάρι (psari), fish.

53, Τὰ Βιβλία (Ta Biblia), The Bible

54, Φῐλοξενῐ́ᾱ (Philoxenia), true hospitality

55, εκκλησία (ekklesia), the Church

56, ναός (naos) and ἱερός (ieros), a church

57, series to be continued.

The beach at Palaiokastritsa in Corfu … Odysseus is said to have been shipwrecked there on his way home to Ithaki and was found by Nausicaa (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)