Daily prayer in Lent 2026: 20, Monday 9 March 2026

They … led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff (Luke 4: 29) … looking down on Çavuşin in Cappadocia from a rock-hewn church in the ridge above the town (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

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

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.

They … led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff (Luke 4: 29) … a view from the edge of the Fortezza down to the streets of Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 4: 24-30 (NRSVA):

24 And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s home town. 25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.’ 28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

The story of the widow at Zarephath and her son has parallels with the story of the widow of Nain and her son in Luke 7 … a window in Saint Mary’s Church, St Neot’s, Cambridgeshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

In pastoral and parish ministry, priests find few crisis moments where they are confronted with the needs and challenges of kings and generals, but on a daily basis we come close to the plight of widows and the marginalised.

The prophets Jesus names in today’s Gospel reading (Luke 4: 24-30), Elijah and Elisha, respond to the plight of a king’s general and a widow in crisis moments, and both are outsiders.

The king’s general, Naaman the Syrian, is a gentile, an Aramean, who is afflicted with a skin disease. When he seeks help from King Jehoram of Israel, his appeal is misinterpreted as a threat, yet he is healed trough the intervention of Elisha. Naaman was unclean, a gentile and a perceived enemy. But his story holds out the promise of all being counted in when it comes to the fulfilment of God’s promises.

The widow at Zarephath offers to share with the Prophet Elijah what might have been the last supper she and her son can put on their table. In turn, they find their food does not run out and Elijah brings the widow’s dying son back to life. Commentators note the parallels in this story with the story of the raising of the son of the widow of Nain later in Luke 7. But there are parallels too with the story of the Syrophoenician woman from Tyre and Sidon and her daughter, which is not found in Saint Luke’s Gospel (see Matthew 15: 21-28; Mark 7: 24-30).

This unnamed widow is a reminder of the central role widows, often unnamed, play in the Bible. Think of the widowed Naomi and her widowed daughter-in-law Ruth; the widowed Anna in the Temple (Luke 2: 37); the widowed mother of Peter and Andrew; the poor widow who offers all she has in the Temple Treasury (Mark 12: 42-43); Mary the widowed mother of Jesus; or how the office of deacon is created in the early church in response to the needs of the widows (Acts 6: 1-6).

Today’s Gospel reading follows on from the temptations in the wilderness (Luke 4: 1-13), where Jesus too was confronted with the prospect from being hurled from precipices, and comes immediately after reads from the scroll in the synagogue and the place where it was written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’ (Luke 4: 18-19).

In ministry, it is easier to succumb to the temptations offered by the kingdoms and kings of the world, seldom though they may be, than it is to deal with the day-to-day, everyday problems faced by the widows, those in need of health care and the misunderstood, of the poor, the captives, the blind and the oppressed.

When priests side with the powerful and presidents, generals and despots, we have our rewards on this earth; when we name with empathy the needs of those who would remain nameless on the margins, we are vilified from bring politics into religion.

Last year, Saint Joseph’s Day (19 March) was marked at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, private club in Palm Beach with a $1,500-a-head cocktail reception and dinner, at which the speakers included Bishop Joseph Strickland, who was forced by Pope Francis to stand down as Bishop of Tyler, Texas, in 2023 because of his extreme views.

Strickland’s cosying up to the Trump regime is in sharp contrast to the empathy and prophetic bravery expressed by Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde in Washington two months earlier.

While Strickland was dining at Mar-a-Lago and hundreds of migrants were being deported by the Trump regime forcibly and illegally to El Salvador, the home of the martyred saint and bishop Oscar Romero, who once declared: ‘I must tell you, as a Christian, I do not believe in death without resurrection. If I am killed, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people.’

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus faces death threats after he challenges the authority of religious and civil leaders of the day, and he does so by quoting from Scripture, with Biblical authority. He speaks truth to power, and the crowd tries to kill him.

Being a true prophet is risky and dangerous. Lent leads us to the Cross, but it also brings the promise of Resurrection.

They … led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff (Luke 4: 29) … looking from the edge of the Acropolis down on the streets of Athens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 9 March 2026):

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

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 9 March 2026) invites us to pray:

Gracious God, we give thanks that when fear, pain, and uncertainty surround us, your Word brings hope and healing.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain,
and entered not into glory before he was crucified:
mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross,
may find it none other than the way of life and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

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

Additional Collect:

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

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

They … led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff (Luke 4: 29) … looking from the edge of a precipice at Dromana in Villierstown down on the River Blackwater below Cappoquin, Co Waterford (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

Childhood memories of waiting for Tomorrow with Petticoat Loose by the shores of Bay Lough

Bay Lough, the ‘bottomless’ lake near the Vee in the Knockmealdown Mountains … ‘Petticoat Loose’ and the monsters were condemned to its waters until ‘Tomorrow’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I was musing a few evenings ago about the Greek word for tomorrow and how we can joke that the word avrio (αύριο) can never convey the same urgency that mañana has in Spanish.

Our anxieties about tomorrow are raised again in the Gospel reading tomorrow (Matthew 6: 25-34), when Jesus says: ‘But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith? … Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own’ (Matthew 6: 30, 34).

Tomorrow seemed to be a far-away world to us as children on those Sunday afternoons when we were regularly brought on family outings to the ‘Vee’, a scenic, V-shaped hairpin bend in the Knockmealdown Mountains, with spectacular views across the Golden Vale and three counties, Waterford, Tipperary and Cork.

At the Vee we were halfway between Cappoquin and Clogheen, and only a few miles from my grandmother’s farm, we were entertained with stories and tales about Samuel Grubb and the grave where he was buried standing, and about ‘Petticoat Loose’ and the monsters in Bay Lough, the ‘bottomless’ lake, who came up and asked, day after day, ‘Is it tomorrow.’

The grave of Samuel Grubb overlooking the Vee and the Golden Vale (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Samuel Richard Grubb (1855-1921) was a wealthy landowner of Quaker descent and a former High Sheriff of Co Tipperary. His distinctive, beehive-shape grave stands on Sugarloaf Hill overlooking the Vee and the Golden Vale. He said he wanted to be buried on the mountainside, standing upright, so that he could keep watch over ‘his people’ and ‘his fields’ at Castle Grace, where he farmed over 1,600 acres.

Before he died, Grubb designed his grave of rubble stone, looking like one of the clochans on the Great Skellig. Some say he asked to be buried there because the Grubb family had been by the Society of Friends or Quakers before Samuel was born for attending ‘balls at which music and dancing form a chief part’.

Grubb died on 6 September 1921 and was buried four days later, with the Revd J Talbot of Clogheen conducting the burial service. Grubb was buried standing up, with his dog beside him, although some people in the area said the men who buried him put him in the grave upside down.

From his grave 2,000 ft up in the mountains, there are panoramic views across the Golden Vale, and of the Galtee Mountains, the Comeragh Mountains and Slievenamon. On clear summer days as we looked across the valley below, and the villages of Clogheen, Ardfinnan and Ballyporeen (later known as the ancestral home of Ronald Reagan) were pointed out to us, and the towns of Cahir and Clonmel. The Grubb family sold Castle Grace near Clogheen in 2019, although many of his descendants continue to live in the area, including Nicholas Grubb who lives in Dromana House at Villierstown, near Cappoquin.

The panoramic view from the Vee across south Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Close to the Vee Gap, on the county boundaries of Waterford and Tipperary, Bay Lough is on the side of Knockaunabulloga in the Knockmealdown Mountains, close to Saint Declan’s Way, the path Saint Declan trod as he made his way from Ardmore to Cashel.

Bay Lough is easily accessed from a car park on the Co Waterford side of the lake. Many people believe it is a ‘bottomless’ lake and that it is not possible to swim across it, even though it is quite small. In late May and early June, the rhododendrons are in bloom at the lake, providing spectacular views from Bay Lough to Clogheen.

Folklore in South Tipperary and West Waterford says the lake is the place where Petticoat Loose was banished, condemned as penance to drain the ‘bottomless’ lake with a thimble until tomorrow came.

Local folklore portrays Petticoat Loose as a vengeful ghost, a banshee or a haunting witch and sometimes identify her as Mary Hannigan. She was said to be a 6-ft tall, strong woman who did a man’s work on the farm, drank like a man, fought like a man and wrestled and fought the local men when they mocked her. But she was known too for adulterating milk and for her wicked behaviour. They say she killed a bull with a single blow of her first, killed a farmhand with his own spade, and threatened to kill anyone who told on her.

Mary Hannigan was born in the early 19th century, the only child of a well-to-do farming family who lived in the townland of Colligan, near Clogheen, and she was known for her love of dancing and drinking. During one drunken dance, as she spun around, her skirt was caught on a nail and fell to the ground, causing mirth and leading to laughter and jeering. The incident raised her anger and left her with the name ‘Petticoat Lucy’ or ‘Petticoat Loose’.

She met her future husband on the dance floor, but the marriage lasted only a year, and he met an early death. Local people whispered that Mary’s lover, a local hedge-school teacher, had murdered him.

Then, one night during a drinking session in a pub in Dungarvan, Mary drank half a gallon of beer, suddenly slumped forward onto the table and died. There was a big wake but no priest was called, even for the burial.

Seven years after her death, there were several sightings of Petticoat Loose, seen as a ghost with red hair or as a monstrous horse-headed figure who had returned to haunt people on the Vee road. She was also seen in the pubs and dance halls and became the terror of the Vee road, although – for some inexplicable reason – she never harmed any man with the name John.

She continued to haunt the Vee road close to Bay Lough, and it became a common practice for people travelling at night to carry religious relics or hazel sticks as protection.

Finally, people who were living in fear of Petticoat Lucy called on a local priest to rid the area of Mary and her nightly visits. One night, the priest and two men spotted her coming across a field. When the priest asked her name, she replied ‘I’m Petticoat Loose’, telling him she would do evil wherever she was.

‘We will see’, the priest replied. ‘I will place you head downwards.’ He took out a bottle of holy water and sent her to the far banks of the deepest lake, telling her: ‘You shall be condemned until judgment day to empty it with a thimble!’

The priest is said to have died two weeks later – some say she had drained the life out of him.

Many people say Petticoat Loose still sits on the far bank of Bay Lough with her thimble, vainly trying to empty the lake, waiting for tomorrow. Some say she sometimes appears out of the water and asks the same questions over and over again: ‘When will judgment day come?’ ‘Is it tomorrow?’

She is often associated with other spirits and monsters trapped in the lake by Saint Patrick. He told them to stay there and wait, and that he would be back tomorrow. So, they are still there, deep in the dark waters, waiting for tomorrow. Petticoat Loose, or one of the monsters, is said to surface occasionally to ask ‘Is it tomorrow?’

It is only possible to walk about half way around Bay Lough and few ever swim in the lake (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Bay Lough is a favourite for walkers and family outings, although it is only possible to walk about half way around the lake, and few ever swim in it, frightened off by tales that Petticoat Loose waits below to grab your legs and pull you down.

Perhaps the idle tale that Samuel Grubb was buried upside down was conflated or confused with the story that Petticoat Loose had been sent head down into the lake. As children we revelled in those stories, pretending to be only slightly scared. But in the 1950s and the early 1960s, the men in the family had probably driven up to the Vee and Bay Lough to get better radio reception.

Back on my grandmother’s farm near Cappoquin, in a valley below the Knockmealdowns, the mountains often blocked reception of what was then Radio Éireann. Instead, I grew up listening to the BBC Light Programme, nourished by a daily diet of programmes that included the Archers, Mrs Dales Diary, Hancock’s Half Hour, Housewives’ Choice, Listen with Mother, Woman’s Hour, and, of course, the Goons. Petticoat Loose may have been as far from Petticoat Lane as I could imagine, yet I understand how I grew up in rural Ireland with Received Pronunciation or ‘BBC English’ as my first language.

In those years, the Waterford hurlers were at their peak, reaching the All-Ireland finals in 1957, 1959 and 1963, and the men in the family needed better reception to hear the match commentaries. The ‘wireless’ was taken from the house, brought with us up to Bay Lough or Grubb’s Grave and connected to the car battery so my uncles could listen to Mícheál Ó hEithir’s match commenaties while we children played and picknicked by the lake shore or on the mountainside.

As a treat later, we were brought back to the ‘Cats’ near Melleray for lemonade and crisps, while the men celebrated the match result – or drowned their sorrows. Later we might even be allowed to listen to the music or watch the dancing at the ‘Stage’ … if we behaved ourselves.

The working week resumed on Monday morning. Cows were to be milked, animals had to be fed, there was shopping to do in Cappoquin, and children had to go to school. Tomorrow always came.

Tomorrow brought work, school and shopping in Cappoquin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 161, Monday 20 October 2025

An old barn at Comberford Manor Farm, between Lichfield and Tamworth in Staffordshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and the week began with the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVIII, 19 October 2025).

Before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading 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.

An empty barn near Comberford Hall, between Lichfield and Tamworth in Staffordshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Luke 12: 13-21 (NRSVA):

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ 14 But he said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’ 15 And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ 16 Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” 18 Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” 20 But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

Old barns at Frating Hall Farm, east of Colchester in Essex (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Reflections:

If money was no barrier, what would I buy?

Would it make me happy?

Would it make anyone else happy?

Would it tell anyone that they are loved, loving, worth loving, that I love them, that I really enjoy their love?

On the other hand, I understand why the man in today’s Gospel reading (Luke 12: 13-21) does many of the things he does.

He has a bumper crop one year, and not enough room to store it in. Was he to leave what he could not store to rot in the fields?

It is a foundational principle of all economics, whatever your political values – from Marx and Malthus to Milton Friedman – that the production of surplus food is the beginning of the creation of wealth and the beginning of economic prosperity.

Even if you are a complete suburbanite, it should have brought joy to your heart the see the fields of green and gold in recent week, for the abundance of the earth is truly a blessing from God.

And it would have been wrong for this man to leave the surplus food to rot in the fields because he failed to have the foresight to build larger barns to store the surplus grain.

It provides income, creates wealth, allows us to export and so to import. Surplus food is the foundation of economics … and makes possible generosity, charity and care for the impoverished.

For the people who first heard this story, just image those people who first heard this parable – they would have imagined so many Biblical images of the benefits of producing surplus food.

Joseph told Pharaoh to store surplus food in Egypt and to prepare and plan ahead for years of famine (see Genesis 41: 1-36). In the long run, this provides too for the survival of the very brothers who had sold him into slavery (see Genesis 42), and, eventually, for the salvation of the people of God.

The production of extra grain in the fields at the time of the harvest allows Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi to glean in the corners of the field behind the reapers (Ruth 2: 1-4). In the long run, this provides too for the survival of Boaz and his family line, and, eventually, for the salvation of the people of God.

When the people of God go hungry, the provision of surplus food is seen as a sign of God’s love and God’s protection … whether it is:

• the hungry people in the wilderness who are fed with manna (see Exodus 16), which is also referred to in the psalm (see Psalm 107: 1-9, 43);

• or the way the Prophet Hosea reminds the people that God is the God who can say throughout their history: ‘I bent down to them and fed them’ (Hosea 11: 4);

• or the hungry people who are fed with the abundant distribution of five loaves and two fish (Matthew 14: 13-21; Mark 6: 30-44; Luke 9: 10-17; John 6: 1-14; see Mark 8: 1-9);

• or the Disciples who find the Risen Christ has provided for their needs with breakfast (John 21: 9-14).

Surplus food, wealth, providing for the future, building bigger and better barns … it is never an excuse to ‘relax, eat, drink, [and] be merry.’

Today’s Gospel reading offers the abundance and generosity of God’s provision as a sign of God’s love, for us as individuals and for all around us.

The rich man is not faulted for being an innovative farmer who manages to grow an abundant crop.

The rich man is not faulted for storing up those crops.

The rich man is not condemned for tearing down his barns and building larger ones to store not only his grain but his goods too.

The rich man is not even condemned for being rich.

The man condemns himself, he makes himself look foolish, for thinking that all that matters in life is our own pleasure and personal satisfaction.

We are human because we are made to relate to other humans.

There is no shared humanity without relationship.

We are made in the image and likeness of God, but that image and likeness is only truly found in relationship … or God is already relational, God is already revealed as community, in God’s existence as Trinity.

This man thinks not of his needs, but of his own pleasures. He has a spiritual life … we are told he speaks to his Soul. But he speaks only to his own soul. His spiritual life extends only to his own spiritual needs, to his own Soul, it never reaches out to God who has blessed him so abundantly, the God who reminds us in the Psalms that he ‘fills the hungry soul with good’ (Psalm 107: 9).

His spiritual persona never reaches out to or acknowledges God who has blessed him so abundantly, or to the people around him who have needs and who could benefit from his charitable generosity or from his business acumen.

In failing to take account of the needs of others, he fails to realise his own true needs: for a true and loving relationship with God, and a true and loving relationship with others.

He has no concern for the needs of others, physical or spiritual. He is spiritually dead. No wonder Saint Paul says that greed is idolatry (Colossians 3: 5).

But if he has stopped speaking to God, God has not stopped speaking to him. And God tells him that night in a dream that this man is spiritually dead.

God says to him in that dream that his life is being demanded of him (Luke 12: 20).

Curiously, we never hear how he responds, we never hear whether he dies.

The story ends just there.

Unlike the story of the rich man who kept Lazarus at the gate, and then died (Luke 16: 19-31), we are never told what happened to the rich man in today’s Gospel reading.

Did he die of fright?

Did he die after drinking too much?

Did he wake up and carry on regardless?

Or, like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, did he wake up and realise his folly, and embrace the joys of the Incarnation?

I am challenged not to pass judgment on this Rich Man. Instead, Christ challenges me, in the first part of this reading (Luke 12: 13-15), to put myself in the place of this man.

If we are to take the earlier part of this Gospel reading to heart, perhaps we might reserve judgment on this foolish rich man.

Perhaps, instead of judging this young man with the benefit of hearing this story over and over again, perhaps in the light of the first part of this Gospel reading, I might reflect on this Gospel reading by asking myself two questions again:

‘If money was no barrier, what would I buy?’

and:

‘Would that choice reflect the priorities Christ sets us of loving God and loving one another?’

A full barn on my grandmother’s former farm near Cappoquin, Co Waterford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 20 October 2025):

The theme this week (19 to 25 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Advancing Theological Education for Young Women in Africa’ (pp 48-49). This theme was introduced yesterday with reflections from Esmeralda (Essie) Pato, Chair of the Communion-Wide Advisory Group for USPG; she is based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 20 October 2025) invites us to pray:

Lord, we pray for The Revd Rachel Moshanah and her studies at the College of the Transfiguration. May her education strengthen her faith and equip her to serve your people with wisdom and grace.

The Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
increase in us your gift of faith
that, forsaking what lies behind
and reaching out to that which is before,
we may run the way of your commandments
and win the crown of everlasting joy;
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:

We praise and thank you, O Christ, for this sacred feast:
for here we receive you,
here the memory of your passion is renewed,
here our minds are filled with grace,
and here a pledge of future glory is given,
when we shall feast at that table where you reign
with all your saints for ever.

Additional Collect:

God, our judge and saviour,
teach us to be open to your truth
and to trust in your love,
that we may live each day
with confidence in the salvation which is given
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Filling the barn at harvest time in Calverton, near Stony Stratford (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

Smeared blackberries, childhood memories, and Michaelmas reflections on the beauty of creation

Michaelmas blackberries ripening on Mill Lane in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

This was a bumper summer for fruit, with the extra sunshine and rain at the right time giving bumper crops of apples and pears. Most of this year's blackberries are gone by now, but there are still some blackberries coming to full fruit along Mill Lane in Stony Stratford. I I wonder, though, how many people will reach up to pick them and taste them after today, Michaelmas (29 September).

In Irish, sméar dubh or the definite form sméar dhubh is the word for blackberry, and it translates literally as ‘black berry’: smear is the base word for ‘berry’, while dubh means black.

Smearagan is another but less common term for blackberry, while the words dris and dris-choille refer to brambles and blackberry bushes.

The phrase sméar dubh translates directly as ‘black berry’. But when I first heard it as a young boy I imagined – with childish humour – how descriptive the phrase was, thinking how often and how easily I smeared my face and mouth and hands black while picking and eating blackberries on the brambles and hedgerows by the lanes around my grandmother’s farm near Cappoquin in Co Waterford.

A well-known belief states that blackberries should not be picked after Michaelmas Day on 29 September because it is believed the devil spits on them after this date.

I remember too the way the phrase ‘Blackmouth’ was used a derogatory label for Presbyterians, especially in parts of Northern Ireland. It goes back to the times in the 18th and 17th century, when Presbyterians were seen as political radicals due to their opposition to the established Church and monarchy.

Before that, in Tudor and Stuart England, a ‘blackmouth’ was a railer, a slanderer, a foulmouthed or malicious person. In the north of England it later referred to a seditious person, and was even used occasionally in the sense of Blackleg.

Some say the phrase was used in Ulster for fugitive Presbyterians or Covenanters eating blackberries as sustenance while they hid, staining their lips and tongues black, although others relate it to their refusal to take the ‘Black Oath’ in 1639.

In Scotland, ‘Blackneb’ emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as a label to denote a person who had sympathies with French revolutionaries.

The phrase ‘Blackmouth’ gained prominence in Ulster once again at the end of the 18th century as an insult, used in a contemptuous way to demean Presbyterians who supported the United Irish rebellion in 1798. Many Presbyterians were seen as politically disaffected and radical and were suspected of being a threat to church and state in Ireland. They were reviled and accused of republican sympathies and revolutionary activities, and the epithet came to be applied to the whole Presbyterian community.

Sadly, as my friend and former Irish Times colleague Andy Pollak observes in a blog posting earlier today, much of Presbyterian Ulster has, ‘unfortunately … become … right-wing, fundamentalist, separatist and Orange.’

Saint Michael depicted in a window by Charles Eamer Kempe in the tower of Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

As I was looking at those blackberries along Mill Lane in Stony Stratford at the weekend, I was brought back to childhood memories of West Waterford, and how we were told as children that Michaelmas Day is the last day for picking blackberries.

According to folklore, when the Archangel Michael expelled the Devil from Heaven on this day, he fell into a blackberry bush, cursed the brambles he had fallen into, and continues to spit on them after this day. It is a superstition shared across these islands, from Achill to Lichfield, and from Wexford to Essex and Cambridge.

In his poem ‘Trebetherick,’ the late John Betjeman seems to link ripening blackberries and the closing in of the autumn days with old age and the approach of death:

Thick with sloe and blackberry, uneven in the light,
Lonely round the hedge, the heavy meadow was remote,
The oldest part of Cornwall was the wood as black as night,
And the pheasant and the rabbit lay torn open at the throat.

Betjeman had spent much of his childhood in Trebetherick, and he died there on 19 May 1984, at the age of 77. But the former poet laureate had a more benign view of blackberries on a visit to the Isle of Man, when he described ‘wandering down your late-September lanes when dew-hung cobwebs glisten in the gorse and blackberries shine, waiting to be picked.’

Saint Michael in a statue at the tower in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In his poem ‘At the chiming of light upon sleep,’ first drafted on this day 79 years ago [29 September 1946], the poet Philip Larkin links Michaelmas and a lost paradise with the chances and opportunities that he failed to take in his youth.

In contrast to Larkin’s dejection, I was reminded earlier today of a well-known story in Orthodox piety:

The devil appeared to three monks and said to them: ‘If I gave you power to change something from the past, what would you change?’

The first monk replied with great fervour: ‘I would prevent you from making Adam and Eve fall into sin so that humanity could not turn away from God.’

The second monk pondered awhile and then said: ‘I would keep you far from God so that you condemn yourself eternally.’

The third monk was the simplest. Instead of responding, he fell to his knees, made the sign of the cross and prayed: ‘Lord, free me from the temptation of what could be and was not’.

The devil cried out, shuddered in pain, and vanished.

The other two, surprised, asked: ‘Brother, why have you responded like this?’

He replied: ‘First, we must never dialogue with the devil. Second, Nobody in the world has the power to change the past. Third: satan’s interest was not to prove our virtue, but to trap us in the past, so that we neglect the present, the only time God gives us his grace and we can cooperate with him to fulfil his will.’

Of all the demons, he continued, the one that catches the most people and prevents us from being happy is that of ‘what could have been and was not’. The past is left to the mercy of God and the future to his Providence. Only the present is in our hands. ‘Live in God, in the moment.’

I was listening yesterday to Morning Worship broadcast from Lichfield Cathedral on BBC Radio 4. The theme was drawn from the Nicene Creed – ‘Maker of all that is, seen and unseen’ – and Canon Gregory Platten reminded us of what it means to believe in God as Creator in a world facing climate change, extinction, and disconnection from nature.

The ripening blackberries along Mill Lane in Stony Stratford these days are yet another reminder that Michaelmas today is a day to allow my mind to wander back to childhood memories, and a time for contemplation and unstructured prayers, but to think less of lost opportunities not taken in youth and more about giving thanks for the beauty of the creation and taking responsibility for it.

‘Thick with sloe and blackberry, uneven in the light’ … ripening blackberries in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in Easter 2025: 39, Wednesday 28 May 2025

An icon of the Trinity in Saint Nektarios Church in Tsesmes, near Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (20 April 2025) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (8 June 2025), or Whit Sunday. This week began with the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Easter VI, 25 May 2025), and tomorrow is Ascension Day (29 May 2025).

The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Lanfranc (1089), Prior of Le Bec, Archbishop of Canterbury and Scholar. Later this evening, There are no choir rehearsals in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, this evening. 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.

A modern copy of Andrei Rublev’s icon, the Hospitality of Abraham or the ‘Old Testament Trinity’, by Eileen McGuckin

John 16: 12-15 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 12 ‘I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.’

The Visitation of Abraham or the ‘Old Testament Trinity’ … a fresco in the Monastery of Saint John the Baptist in Tolleshunt Knights, Essex (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

The Gospel reading provided in the Lectionary today (John 16: 12-15) continues our readings from the ‘Farewell Discourse’ at the Last Supper in Saint John’s Gospel ((John 14: 1 to 17: 26), where Christ continues to prepare his followers for his departure, and reminds them of his promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost: ‘When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth’ (verse 13).

Today’s reading is also the Gospel reading provided this year for Trinity Sunday (15 June 2025).

Allow me to introduce us this morning to some ways of thinking of God as the Trinity.

If I were to introduce you to my world, to my story, I might invite you to visit the places that have shaped and made me.

I might invite you to imagine what it was like for a small boy to lay awake in his grandmother’s farmhouse in west Waterford, it was so bright outside on a balmy summer’s evening. Downstairs, I can hear the old clock chiming out the time: it’s ten, and a hush descends on the house as the adults settle down in their chairs to listen to the news on the wireless. I hear the old black kettle boiling over the open fire as someone prepares to make a pot of tea. Outside, a pigeon is still cooing in the thatch, I imagine I can hear the abbey bells ringing out the time across the fields, and I know I am safe and loved in this world.

Twenty or so years later, once again it’s late at night, in the top storey of a tall house in a narrow street in Wexford town.

It’s comforting to hear the clock of Rowe Street church count out the hours. Is that a late train I hear trundling along the quays? A lone voice in the Theatre Royal braving a late rehearsal for one of next week’s operas? And I am so looking forward to the Festival Service in Saint Iberius’s Church.

Let us move forward another two decades or so. I can’t sleep in the suburban house in south Dublin. But I can hear my children snoring contentedly in their own rooms. Outside, the unseasonable rain is pelting down, the wind is rustling through the cherry tree outside, and I wonder whether all the cherry blossom will be shaken down and washed onto the grass below by the time morning dawns. An apposite memory this morning as I realise the coincidence that both Trinity Sunday and Father’s Day are going to fall on the same day this year.

We can use words not only to tell our stories, but to paint pictures, to invite others into our communities, into our families, and into our lives. Now that you have heard and seen what has shaped me, where I have been formed, what made me feel loved and secure, now that you have been invited into my story, my family` and know me, we are ready to sing the same songs, to sit together at the same table. Why, we might even dance.

The Trinity is an image of God, a perfect community, a community of God that invites us to share God’s story, to sit at table with God, to sing songs with God, … all the things we’re doing at this Festal Eucharist. Why, as Karen Baker-Fletcher says in her book, the Trinity could be God’s invitation for us to dance with God. [Karen Baker-Fletcher, Dancing With God: A Womanist Perspective on the Trinity (St Louis: Chalice Press, 2006; 2007)]

Two of the great Early Fathers of the Church, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint John of Damascus, use the term perichoresis, an image of going around, enveloping, to describe the mysterious union of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Clark Pinnock writes: ‘The metaphor suggests moving around, making room, relating to one another without losing identity.’ [Clark Pinnock, Flame of Love, A theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996)].

There is a play on words – a pun on the Greek origins of the word – that allows us to think of creative choreography, to imagine a dance of reciprocal love. This divine unity is expressed in the relationship of the three as one, for relationship is at the heart of the unity of the three-in-one. It is a relationship that is mutual and reciprocal. The Trinity tells us that shared life is basic to the nature of God: God is perfect social relationship, perfect mutuality, perfect reciprocity, perfect peace, perfect love.

‘As a circle of loving relationships, God is dynamically alive.’ The three persons of the Trinity are caught up in an eternal dance of reciprocity, so intertwined that at times it may appear difficult to tell who is who. They move with choreographed harmony. The love emanating from within cannot help but create, for it is the nature of love not to harbour and to hoard but to expand and to create.

God has, from the beginning, been wooing creation to dance. The community of God desires community with us. You and I are being courted, God wants to dance with you, and with me. The love that created us and our world is the same love that longs to be in fellowship with us.

When we worship in spirit and in truth, do others, does the world see us united as one, bound by love, dancing in harmony and flinging out new creation from within our midst? And do we call others to dance with us?

The Russian icon writer Andrei Rublev tried to create the same picture in a different way. In his famous icon of ‘The Visitation of Abraham’ – a modern interpretation of which you can see in this cathedral – he depicts three visitors who arrive at Abraham’s door. The guests become the hosts, the host becomes the guest, and Abraham is invited to a meal that is past, present and future. It is every domestic meal, it is a foretaste of the Eucharist, it is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. In welcoming strangers, he is entertaining angels; but in entertaining angels, he is invited into communion with God as Trinity.

It is a moment in the past, a moment in the present and a moment in the future, when we shall all be restored to being in the image and likeness of God our Creator. God, in creating us, creates out of love, making our destiny eternal life with him. We are created to experience life within the Trinitarian communion of persons.

For there are three things we all encounter in our lives: we all need to be cared for; we all encounter suffering; we all need company. God the Father creates us and cares for us; God in Christ identifies with our suffering, takes on and takes away our suffering; God the Holy Spirit enlivens our communities, gives us that divine measure. God has, in a very real way, entered into the mystery of our humanity, so that we may enter into the mystery that is his communio personarum.

‘This deifying union has, nevertheless, to be fulfilled ever more and more even in this present life, through the transformation of our human nature and by its adaptation to eternal life.’ [Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Press, 2002), p 196.]

The Communion reflection in the notices leaflet last Sunday in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, included a ‘Meditation on the Holy Icon of Rublev’ by Saint Evdokimos of Vatopedi Monastery, Mount Athos:

‘Tell me, did you ever feel inhabited? Can you not feel life palpitating in your depths? Yes, the three are there, in all their mystery. Yes, you are inhabited! “If only you knew what God is offering.” “If anyone me, my father will love him, and we will come to him, and live with him.” Yes, you live in the Trinity, who lives in you; you are his guest, and he is your guest. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit; because the tears of the Spirit are in us. He will never impose himself. He will never violence your freedom. Let your three guests love each other within you, praise each other in you, and sing of each other, let them dance for joy in your tent. Your secret is the secret that God is in you. Become aware of that in the land of silence!’

God invites us in creation, in Christ, in the Church, in the Word, and in the Sacrament, to be in union with God, to share God’s story, to sit down and dine with God, to sing and dance with God, to find our inner dwelling with God, and to be at one with God. And that is the purpose and the fulfilment of Christian life.

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

The Trinity in an icon of the Heavenly Divine Liturgy by Michael Damaskinos, ca 1585-1591, in the Museum of Christian Art in Iraklion, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 28 May 2025):

The Feast of the Ascension is tomorrow (29 May 2025) and provides the theme for this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections from Dr Paulo Ueti, Theological Advisor and Regional Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 28 May 2025) invites us to pray:

God of land, sea, and sky, you have entrusted us with your creation. Forgive us the ways we have failed in our stewardship. As we rejoice in the Ascension, guide us to renew our commitment to care for the earth and all its creatures.

The Collect:

God our redeemer,
you have delivered us from the power of darkness
and brought us into the kingdom of your Son:
grant, that as by his death he has recalled us to life,
so by his continual presence in us he may raise us
to eternal joy;
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 our Father,
whose Son Jesus Christ gives the water of eternal life:
may we thirst for you,
the spring of life and source of goodness,
through him who is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
by the lakeside you renewed your call to your disciples:
help your Church to obey your command
and draw the nations to the fire of your love,
to the glory of God the Father.

Collect on the Eve of Ascension Day:

Grant, we pray, almighty God,
that as we believe your only–begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ
to have ascended into the heavens,
so we in heart and mind may also ascend
and with him continually dwell;
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

‘God of land, sea, and sky, you have entrusted us with your creation’ (USPG Prayer Diary today) … sunrise on the mouth of the River Slaney at Ferrycarrig, Co Wexford (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 day with USPG at Saint Jame’s, Piccadilly, and memories of a day with ‘a Very Dangerous Man’

Saint James’s Church, Piccadilly, where USPG and SPCK celebrated Founder’s Day or Bray Day today (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I spent much of today at the celebrations of Founder’s Day with the Anglican mission agency USPG and the publishers SPCK in Saint James’s Church, Piccadilly. The day celebrates the life of the Revd Dr Thomas Bray, who was commemorated in the Calendar of the Church of England on Saturday (15 February) and who was the founder of both the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and SPG (the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, now USPG).

This year, Founder’s Day began with a celebration of the Eucharist in Saint James’s, and included reflections on the people who bring hope in the midst the ongoing conflict in the Holy Land, with an address by Dr Ruth Valerio, Advocacy Director at Embrace the Middle East. There was an opportunity too to meet many of friends during the buffet lunch that followed.

Canon Lucy Winkett, who presided at the Eucharist today, is a writer, broadcaster and musician. She has been the Rector of Saint James’s since 2010 and Priest-in-Charge of Saint Pancras, Euston Road, since 2023. She was one of the first generation of women to be ordained priest in the 1990s, and the first woman priest to be appointed to Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

She is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day and the author of Our Sound Is Our Wound, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book in 2010.

Canon Joseph McCormick (1834-1914), William Temple’s immediate predecessor at Saint James’s, played Cricket for Ireland

Saint James’s was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and was consecrated in 1684. Since then, it has had many distinguished rectors, including four future Archbishops of Canterbury: Thomas Tenison, William Wake, Thomas Secker and William Temple, who was the rector throughout World War I.

Temple’s immediate predecessor was a Liverpool-born Irish priest, Canon Joseph McCormick (1834-1914), whose father, William McCormick (1801-1878), was the MP for Derry City in 1860-1865. Joseph McCormick played Cricket for Ireland under the alias of J Bingley, the name of one of the schools he had attended, to disguise his participation from his parishioners in Dunmore East, Co Waterford. He also rowed in the Cambridge Boat in March 1856, helping to defeat Oxford in 22 minutes 45 seconds, and he was a well-known mountain climber.

Joseph McCormick was the Rector of Dunumore East, Co Waterford, before moving to England, where he was a chaplain to three successive monarch, Queen Victoria, Edward VII and George V. When I was working on doctoral research on Irish Anglican missionaries in South Africa, one of the people I came to know as ‘my missionaries’ was Joseph McCormick’s son, Canon (William) Patrick ‘Pat’ Glyn McCormick (1877-1940), who worked with SPG in the Transvaal in 1903-1910. Pat McCormick played cricket for Devon and had one first class match for MCC in 1907, and also played Rugby for Transvaal. He later succeeded Dick Shepherd (1880-1937) as the Vicar of Saint Martin in the Fields in London, and continued his work among the ‘down and outs.’

Another son, Joseph Gough McCormick (1874-1924) became the Dean of Manchester, and also played cricket with distinction for Norfolk 1899 to 1909, scoring four hundreds.

The Revd Donald Reeves (centre) at the Irish School of Ecumenics with Canon Patrick Comerford of the Church of Ireland Theological Institute (left) and Dr Andrew Pierce of the Irish School of Ecumenics in Dublin in 2011

Many years ago, I spent a memorable day with another former Rector of Saint James’s, the Revd Donald Reeves, who died a few months ago (31 October 2024) at the of 90. He was once described by Margaret Thatcher as ‘a very dangerous man’ and by The Times as the ‘radical rector’ and ‘the most extraordinary clergyman in the Church of England.’

While he was the Rector of Saint James’s, Donald Reeves developed a reputation among Thatcher’s allies as a ‘turbulent priest’ – an eminent and honourable place to hold in Anglican tradition.

I spent a day with Donald Reeves when he visited Dublin in June 2011. By then, he was in his late 70s, but he was still working on peace-building and peace-making projects in the Balkans. He had long been a thorn in the side of the Establishment, and when he heard Thatcher’s description of him as ‘a very dangerous man’, he was ‘rather pleased … it felt like a natural title.’ It is a sobriquet that he came to wear with pride and that inspired the title of his autobiography The Memoirs of a Very Dangerous Man.

But the man who enjoyed excoriating Thatcherite dogma and episcopal complacency in the 1980s, emphasised his role as a peacemaker rather than as a troublemaker. He continued to co-direct the Soul of Europe, working at peacemaking and peace-building in the Balkans. When we met, he was visiting Dublin, preaching in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and speaking about the work of the Soul of Europe at a seminar organised by the Irish School of Ecumenics and co-sponsored by the Church of Ireland Theological Institute.

Through the Soul of Europe project, Donald Reeves spent much of his time in the Balkans, trying to build durable trust between communities only nominally at peace after terrible conflicts. He sought to help people living through post-conflict situations to realise Nelson Mandela’s words first addressed to politicians in Northern Ireland: ‘If you want to make peace do not speak with your friends, you must speak with your enemies.’

He was frustrated by the way in which ignorance of religion has become an embedded in official thinking, so that religion is seen as matter of choice and that a real illiteracy of religion has emerged. It means churches and mosques are valued only and merely as places of cultural heritage and not as living religious communities. But ‘religion is the crucible in which the “chosen trauma’ of a community is held.’

He expressed a deep-seated ‘nervousness’ about growing Islamophobia in Europe, describing it as an ‘alarming phenomenon.’

‘The Muslims are the new Jews of Europe,’ he told us.

Inside Saint James’s Church, Piccadilly, where USPG and SPCK celebrated Founder’s Day today (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Donald St John Reeves was born in 1934 and was educated at Sherborne School, Queens’ College, Cambridge. While he was teaching in Beirut in the 1960s, he felt called to ordained ministry, and after training at Cuddesdon Theological College he was ordained deacon in 1963 and priest in 1964. After two years as a curate, he became chaplain to Bishop Mervyn Stockwood of Southwark, who had a reputation for controversy and socialist politics.

His heyday was as the Rector of Saint James’s, Piccadilly, a space he filled with extraordinary worship, celebrated pulpit dialogues, a coffee house and street market. Those who passed through the church doors included leading international film-makers, writers, theologians and politicians.

He was the Rector of Saint James’s for 18 years (1980-1998). When he first arrived there, it was not an auspicious place. Although the church was known for society weddings, there was little evidence of a congregation rooted in the community. ‘On my arrival,’ he said, ‘I could see no justification for keeping the church open.’

The church where William Blake was baptised was in decay and facing closure. Four years later, as the church celebrated it tercentenary, he was able to tell the Guardian: ‘There’s only one thing to do with a church which is slap in the centre of London and whose congregation has dwindled ever since the 19th century brought business to where town houses used to be: you use the site and turn it into a showcase for Christianity.’

Gradually, he turned Saint James’s into a thriving institution, closely linked to local people, both rich and poor, and a place for exploring ideas. Saint James’s soon had its own orchestra, a full-time arts director, a programme of lectures called ‘Turning Point,’ and a programme called ‘Dunamais’, offering lectures, workshops and the opportunity to explore issues of personal, national and international security in the nuclear age. The church became a centre of both liturgical innovation of theological debate and radical politics. He encouraged debate across the boundaries, inviting speakers as diverse as Norman Tebbit and Tony Benn, non-believers as well as believers.

‘Jesus wasn’t exactly into garden parties. He was regarded as a nuisance,’ he said. ‘The churches shouldn’t be creating little managers of sectarian communities but should be places of dissent.’

His own challenge to Thatcherism was overt. He sparked lively debate by speaking out against the Falklands War and by helping the miners’ wives during their husbands’ bitter strike. After several brushes with Thatcher, she described him as ‘a very dangerous man’ – an acknowledgement that by then he was part of the Anglican tradition of ‘troublesome priests’ – apt to turn critical fire not only on the world but on the Church too.

Bishop Trevor Huddleston, a veteran campaigner against apartheid, who lived in the Saint James’s Vicarage for many years, was another significant influence.

Donals Reeves was made MBE in 2006 for his peace-building in Bosnia, received awards for fostering good relations between the Abrahamic Faiths, and was a Visiting Fellow in Peace Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University.

Canon Paul Oestreicher, in a tribute in the Church Times, wrote: ‘Donald was a spiritual activist whose own “Eucharistic Prayer” (below) will tell you all you need to know about him.’

We had lunch together before he left Dublin, and I said then how I hoped we continue to hear his radical voice for many years to come. His mark is still evident today in Saint James’s, Piccadilly, with its inclusiveness, its celebration of other faith traditions, its social justice ministries to the marginalised in greater London, and its continuing work with asylum seekers.

‘Eucharistic Prayer’

We break this bread for those who love God,
For those who follow the path of the Buddha
And worship the God of the Hindus;
For our sisters and brothers in Islam,
And for the Jewish people from whom we come.

We break this bread for the great green earth;
We call to mind the forests, fields and flowers
Which we are destroying,
That one day, with the original blessing, God’s creation will be restored.

We break this bread for those who have no bread,
The starving, the homeless and the refugees,
That one day this planet may be a home for everyone.

We break this bread for the broken parts of ourselves,
The wounded child in all of us,
For our broken relationships,
That one day we may glimpse the wholeness that is of Christ.

The south side of Saint James’s Church, Piccadilly, where USPG and SPCK celebrated Founder’s Day today (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Part of my childhood fades as the last monks leave Mount Melleray Abbey near Cappoquin at the weekend

Mount Melleray Abbey … founded in 1833, 6 km outside Cappoquin, Co Waterford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Part of my childhood came to an end at the weekend when Mount Melleray Abbey, near Cappoquin, Co Waterford, closed its doors after Mass on Saturday morning (25 January 2025).

The abbey has closed almost two centuries after it was founded in the 1830s by an Irish-born monk, Dom Vincent Ryan, returned to Ireland from the Cistercian monastery in Melleray in France, first settled in Rathmore, Co Kerry, and then became the first abbot of Mount Melleray in West Waterford.

The monks decided to close the abbey last November and agreed to form a union with Mount Saint Joseph Abbey in Roscrea, Co Tipperary, and Mellifont Abbey, Co Louth. The group, known as the Abbey of Our Lady of Silence, began to relocate to Roscrea on a temporary basis yesterday (Sunday 26 January 2025).

Throughout my childhood years, I was very familiar with Mount Melleray, which was the neighbouring farm to my grandmother’s farm at Moonwee.

The abbey bells rang across the farm and fields throughout the day. As children, we regularly traipsed through the fields at Moonwee, across brooks and stiles, to the farm and monastery at Melleray, feeling free to explore the abbey churches, buildings and farmyard, and to silently listen to the monks singing the daily offices.

I remember Moonwee and Mount Melleray, the fields around them and the streets of Cappoquin as my childhood idyll. In fact, Mount Melleray was even part of our postal address. However, I have been back to Mount Melleray only a few times since those childhood days, and my last visit was in August 2020. Twenty years earlier, I had decided against the idea of a pre-ordination retreat there in 2000. So, it was emotionally moving to return to Mount Melleray that summer five years ago and to reconnect with a spiritual tradition and monastic buildings I had once been familiar with more than half a century earlier.

Inside the monastic church at Mount Melleray Abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

For almost two centuries, Mount Melleray Abbey has been a community of Cistercian or Trappist monks on the slopes of the Knockmealdown Mountains, about 6 km north of Cappoquin, Co Waterford. It was founded in 1833 on land donated by the Keane family of Cappoquin House at a nominal rent.

James Joyce mentions Mount Melleray in ‘The Dead,’ the final short story in Dubliners (1914), in which the monks of Mount Melleray are noted for their exceptional hospitality and piety. The poet Seán Ó Ríordáin’s celebrated the abbey in his poem ‘Cnoc Mellerí’ in Eireaball Spideoige (1952).

The Cistercian order was founded as branch of the Benedictines by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century, and the Trappists date from the mid-17th century. After the French Revolution and the suppression of monastic houses in France, some dispossessed Trappist monks arrived in England in 1794 and established a community in Lulworth, Dorset.

The symbol of the abbot’s crozier in the choir stalls Mount Melleray Abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Following the restoration of the Bourbons, these monks returned to France in 1817 to re-establish the ancient Melleray Abbey in Brittany. During the July Revolution of 1830, the monks were forced to flee France once again and were sent by Dom Antoine, Abbot of Melleray, to found an abbey in Ireland.

The monastery was founded on 30 May 1832 at Scrahan, near Cappoquin, by a group of Irish and English monks from Melleray who had come to Ireland under the leadership of Father Vincent de Paul Ryan.

After many efforts to locate his community, he accepted an offer from Sir Richard Keane of Cappoquin House to rent 500 acres of mountain land, and this later increased to 700 acres.

The high altar and the sanctuary in the monastic church in Mount Melleray (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

William Abraham, Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, blessed the foundation stone of the new monastery on the feast of Saint Bernard 1833. The monastery was named Mount Melleray in memory of the mother house. It became an abbey in 1835, and Father Vincent was unanimously elected abbot. He received his abbatial blessing from Bishop Abraham, the first abbatial blessing in Ireland since the Reformation.

A small group of monks was sent from Mount Melleray to England in 1835 to found Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, near Coalville, Leicestershire. Abbot Vincent vigorously undertook the work of completing the abbey, but he died on 9 December 1845.

His successor, Dom Joseph Ryan, resigned after two years, and Dom Bruno Fitzpatrick became abbot in September 1848. Dom Bruno consolidated the initial work and the abbey and also devoted his energy to missionary work. During its earlier years, the monastery was directly subject to the bishop of the diocese, but in 1848 it came under the jurisdiction of the general chapter.

The life of Saint Bernard in a window by the Harry Clarke studios (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The seminary at Mount Melleray began as a small school formed by Abbot Vincent in 1843, and was developed by Abbot Bruno and his successors.

When the Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle visited Dromana House near Cappoquin in 1849, he also visited Mount Melleray and described the abbey in some detail, noting particularly the huge vats of ‘stir-about’ or porridge the monks prepared for the large number of Famine victims.

Abbot Bruno died in 1893, and was succeeded by Dom Carthage Delaney, who was blessed in 1894 and presided over Mount Melleray for 13 years. His successor, Dom Marius O’Phelan, was solemnly blessed by Bishop Sheahan of Waterford in 1908.

Dom Marius is credited with resuming the building programme at Mount Melleray in 1925. He bought the great cut limestone blocks from Mitchelstown Castle, 42 km west, after it was burnt by anti-treaty republicans on 12 August 1922. The owners of Mitchelstown Castle dismantled the ruins in 1925 and the stones were transported by steam lorry in two consignments a day over a five-year period.

The foundation stone laid by Cardinal McRory in Mount Melleray Abbey in 1933 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Dom Marius died as the abbey was being laid out, and his successor, Dom Celsus O’Connell, continued the monumental task. The monks ended up with far more stones than they needed and these were eventually stacked in fields around the monastery.

In March 1932, the community of English Cistercian nuns of Stapehill, England, moved to Saint Mary’s Convent, Lismore, which was bought and prepared for them by the monks of Mount Melleray.

The monastery celebrated its centenary in August 1933. Cardinal John McRory, Archbishop of Armagh, laid the foundation stone of a new abbey church on 17 April 1933, just 12 days after Dom Celsus was elected the seventh abbot and a few months before the abbey celebrated its centenary.

The public church and the monastic church are the main elements of the church building project undertaken by Dom Celsus, and building work began in January 1935.

The words of the canticle Magnificat carved on the wooden screen at the west end of the monastic church in Mount Melleray Abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The monastic church, where monks of Mount Melleray celebrated the Divine Office every day until last week, was completed and solemnly blessed on 26 November 1940. Later, a high altar and some 20 lesser altars – all in marble and the gifts of benefactors – were installed, and a magnificent stained-glass window was erected behind the high altar.

President Séan T O’Kelly paid a state visit to Mount Melleray in June 1946. However, it was not until the 120th anniversary of Mount Melleray that the abbey church was solemnly consecrated by Bishop Coholan of Waterford on 20 August 1952. During the consecration festival from 20 to 29 August 1952, over 100,000 people visited Mount Melleray, including President Séan T O’Kelly.

The abbey church is Gothic in architectural style and cruciform in plan. Although extended, it follows mainly the lines of the original chapel built by the first community.

In the Cistercian tradition, a massive crucifix was suspended over the nave and contained relics of Saint Bernard and many Irish saints. However, this was removed during the post-Vatican II liturgical reforms.

The east window in the monastic church in Mount Melleray Abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The east window is the work of the Harry Clarke studio. The central panel represents Christ the King crowning the Virgin Mary at the Assumption. Each evening at the Office of Compline, the lights of the Church were extinguished and, according to Cistercian tradition, the figure of the Virgin Mary was illuminated for the singing of the Salve Regina.

To the right of the central panel are Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Carthage of Lismore; to the far right are Saint Robert, one of the three founders of the Cistercian Order, and Saint Patrick of Ireland.

To the left of the central panel are Saint Brigid of Kildare and Saint Columba; to the far left are Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, Doctor of the Church and the founder of the Cistercians, and Saint Malachy of Armagh, who invited Saint Bernard to send Cistercian monks to Ireland, leading to the foundation of Mellifont Abbey in 1142.

At the west end of the church, the words of the canticle Magnificat are carved in large letters on a wooden screen.

Inside the public church in Mount Melleray Abbey, facing the east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The public church was consecrated at the same time as the monastic church, with Dom Benignus Hickey, Abbot of New Mellifont, consecrating the High Altar.

The public church was dedicated to the Assumption and Saint Philomena, and was once the National Shrine of Saint Philomena. Her statue was removed when her name was removed from the Roman Calendar.

The interior of the public church has five bays consisting of aisles on either side and double lancets above. The sanctuary is decorated in mosaic, both in the nave and the aisles. The walls surrounding the side aisles are decorated with angels.

The walls of the sanctuary have the instruments of the Passion in quatrefoils on the lateral walls, the east wall has images of the Sacred Heart on the north side and Saint Joseph on the south side, each with a monogram in the quatrefoil beneath.

Inside the public church in Mount Melleray Abbey facing the west end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The east window of the public church is in two levels. Above, in the central panel is the Assumption of the Virgin Mary with angels. Below, from left to right, are Saint Brigid, Saint Malachy of Armagh, who introduced the Cistercians to Ireland, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, founder of the Cistercians, and Saint Patrick.

The seven main panels of this window were originally in the east window of the old monastic church.

Many of the stained-glass windows in the side aisles are also the work of Harry Clarke or the Harry Clarke Studios in Dublin.

Saint Peter and Saint Paul in a two-light lancet window by the Harry Clarke Studio in the public church in Mount Melleray Abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

From its early days, the school at Mount Melleray educated both clerical and lay students until the boarding school closed in 1974. Another local landmark that is part of my childhood memories, the ‘Cats’ bar, also closed a number of years ago.

The Abbot of Mount Melleray, Dom Eamon Fitzgerald, became the first Irish Abbot General of the Cistercian Order in 2008. He returned to Melleray in 2022 after 14 years in Rome as abbot general.

The last abbot, Dom Richard Purcell, was elected the Abbot of Mount Melleray at the age of 33 in 2017. He had previously been Abbot of Mount Saint Joseph Abbey, Roscrea, and had already received the abbatial blessing in 2009.

In the past, Mount Melleray was involved in founding New Melleray Abbey, near Dubuque, Iowa, Mount Saint Joseph Abbey, Roscrea, Co Tipperary, and the Southern Star Abbey in New Zealand.

In recent years, the number of monks living in the community at Mount Melleray had dwindled from almost 60 in 1991 to six last week – and two of those six were away last week. Two had died within the space of two years, and another was living as a hermit near Saint Mary’s Abbey of Cistercian nuns in Glencairn, near Lismore, where he celebrated Mass once a week for the sisters.

The farm is now leased to a neighbouring farmer, while the monks hire contractors to fell trees from its extensive forestry. The monastery’s apiary, which once yielded an abundance of heather honey, has also disappeared, its hives long dismantled and the bees long gone.

The Lamb of God depicted in a Harry Clarke window in the public church in Mount Melleray Abbey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Despite last week’s closing and move, the monks have not ruled out a possible return to Mount Melleray, according to Christina O’Flynn, who has been running the gift shop for the last 7½ years.

‘It’s not going to be a derelict building. It is not being sold … Some staff are being kept on to look after the grounds. It belongs to the monks. Anything else is just rumours,’ she told journalists. ‘They built a whole new wing that the order could walk right into it. Refurbishments are being carried out while they are away. If they do come back it will be different to how it was but we don't care about that. This is not about structures or buildings. What matters to us is having the liturgy back.’

‘We don’t see it as closing down,’ she said. ‘After 18 months they will make a decision about where they are going to live permanently. The hope is that it will be back here. All the monks want to come back.’

However, the present plans involve the monks from Mount Melleray remaining at the newly-formed Abbey of Our Lady of Silence in Roscrea for at least a year. The new community has 26 members, including three novices, with others interested in joining.

Meanwhile, the Cistercian order says its two other abbeys in Ireland – Bolton Abbey in Moone, Co Kildare, and Portglenone, Co Antrim – continue to operate autonomously.

The fields between Mount Melleray and Moonwee were my childhood idyll (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)