Holy Trinity Church, Oxford, the church on Blackfriars Road lost in 1950s slum clearances

Blackfriars Road, Oxford … Holy Trinity Church was built in 1845 and demolished in 1957 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

As I made my way from the Grandpont area of south Oxford, crossing the River Thames and Gasworks Pipe Bridge to search for the site of the former Greyfriars at Westgate, I could not but notice the ecclesiastical tone to many of the street names between the river and Westgate Oxford: Friars Wharf, Preachers Lane, Blackfriars Road, Trinity Street …

This southern part of Saint Ebbe’s parish was once known as the Friars, recalling the Greyfriars or Franciscans and Blackfriars or Dominicans who settled in Saint Ebbe’s in the early decades of the 13th century.

The two friaries were abolished in the 1530s at the dissolution of the monastic houses during the Tudor Reformation, and most of their buildings were demolished. But their memory lived on in the local placenames such as Greyfriars, Friars Wharf, Preachers Lane, Trinity Street and Blackfriars Road.

That part of Saint Ebbe’s parish changed dramatically in the early decades of the 19th century when the gasworks opened on the north bank of the River Thames in 1818. As the population of Saint Ebbe’s increased, a schoolroom was licensed for services in 1842 and a new parish – Holy Trinity – was formed from the southern part of Saint Ebbe’s parish, with a stipend of £150 provided for the incumbent.

Holy Trinity, Blackfriars Road, Oxford ca 1910 … opened in 1845 and closed in 1954 (Photograph © Oxfordshire History Centre, Oxfordshire County Council)

The new parish church, Holy Trinity Church, was designed in Early English style by the Oxford-based architect Henry Jones Underwood (1804-1852). It was built on the corner of Blackfriars Road and Trinity Street in 1844-1845 and opened in 1845.

Around the same time, a similarly-named Holy Trinity Church was being built in the village of Headington Quarry, Oxford, in 1848-1849. That church was designed by the architect George Gilbert Scott and later became known for its associations with CS Lewis.

Henry Jones Underwood, the architect of Holy Trinity Church, Blackfriars Road, was a brother of the architects Charles Underwood and George Allen Underwood, and spent most of his career in Oxford. He trained in London as a pupil of Henry Hake Seward and then joined the office of Sir Robert Smirke.

Underwood moved to Oxford in 1830 to work on alterations to the Bodleian Library. Much of his subsequent work involved designing churches and educational buildings as the city and the university expanded and the Oxford Movement increased in influence. He designed the library of the Oxford Botanic Garden (1835), and Saint Paul’s Church, Walton Street (1836), the first new parish to be created in Oxford and the first new church to be built in Oxford since the Reformation. Both were built in the Greek Revival style, but Underwood is best known for his work in the Gothic Revival style.

Underwood also designed Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas Church in Littlemore for John Henry Newman in 1835, and it became a model for his other churches. The church was originally built as a chapel of ease to the parish of the University Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Oxford. Littlemore became its own parish in 1847 and in time the church became a centre of Anglo-Catholicism.

Underwood’s other works in Oxford included Saint John the Baptist Church, Summertown (1831, demolished 1924); buildings for Exeter College on Turl Street and Broad Street (1833-1834); rebuilding Cardinal Wolsey’s Almshouses to make a grander entrance for Pembroke College (1834); and the north aisle of Saint Thomas’s Church (1846). Underwood died by suicide in 1852 at the White Hart Hotel, Bath, and JC Buckler completed his extension to Oxford Prison, now the Malmaison Hotel.

A legacy photograph of the interior of Holy Trinity Church, Blackfriars Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Holy Trinity parish was in one of the poorest quarters of Oxford and the church was built from cheap materials. There were two services each Sunday in 1854 and a monthly Communion service. The parish was a densely populated and very poor area to the south of the city centre. Great poverty, many beer shops, Sunday work in the colleges, ‘unbelieving masters’, and people tainted with ‘Calvinism and infidelity’ were blamed for what were regarded at the time as small church attendance figures.

By 1869, there were four Sunday services, with Holy Communion every Sunday and on holy days, and daily Morning and Evening Prayer. At the request of the churchwardens and ‘principal parishioners’ a surpliced choir had been introduced, all indicating the influence of the Tractarian movement and early Anglo-Catholicism.

Daily Morning Prayer was abandoned in 1872, but the number of Easter communicants rose steadily from 135 in 1872 to 199 in 1884. The patronage of Holy Trinity belonged alternately to the Crown and the Bishop of Oxford until 1881, when the Revd Edward Penrose Hathaway (1818-1897) bought the advowson and vested it in the Oxford Churches Trust.

Hathaway was a former barrister and ‘an austere old-fashioned evangelical’ who founded the Oxford Churches Trust in 1864 to appoint evangelical clergy to local parishes and to counter the increasing influence of the Tractarian movement and early Anglo-Catholicism. Through his zeal, he played a central role in establishing a strong evangelical tradition at several Oxford churches, including Saint Ebbe’s, Saint Aldate’s, Saint Clement’s, Holy Trinity, and Saint Peter-le-Bailey, and his trust appointed him the Rector of Saint Ebbe’s from 1868 to 1874.

Hathaway paid £1,000 for the advowson of Holy Trinity in 1881 and this was used to increase the stipend. A further augmentation was made in 1890 to meet the gift of a house for the living. The net income of the benefice in 1898 was £228.

Attendance figures at Holy Trinity remained steady or even increased until World War I, when most of the adult parishioners were either in the army or employed in war work. During World War I, 90 men from the parish died in the war and they were later commemorated on the Holy Trinity War Memorial.

The Oxford Churches Trust, founded by Hathaway in 1864, exchanged the advowson of Holy Trinity with Simeon’s Trustees in 1914 for that of Saint Matthew’s, Grandpont, and Simeon’s Trustees remained patrons of Holy Trinity until Holy Trinity was united with Saint Aldate’s in 1956.

Photographs of Holy Trinity Church, inside and outside, ‘appear to be rarer than rocking horse droppings’

Some of the poorer houses in the area were cleared in the 1930s, but a major redevelopment plan was delayed by World War II.

By 1951, the fabric of Holy Trinity Church was in poor condition. Meanwhile, the population of the area was declining as slum clearance programmes gathered pace. Holy Trinity Church was closed in 1954 and the parish of Holy Trinity was united with Saint Ebbe’s in 1956. The building was deemed unsafe, and with encroaching urban clearance the church was demolished in 1957.

The 1914-1918 war memorial was removed from the church during demolition. It was later discovered in the 1980s resting against a wall in the rear garden of the former Holy Trinity Rectory. The memorial was eventually moved to Saint Aldate’s Parish Centre in Pembroke Street, and was later stored in a wooden case at Saint Ebbe’s Church. The memorial has since been removed from its rotten mounting and is said to be in a poor condition, covered in patina or crust.

Eventually, over 900 properties in the area were demolished, the last – 84 Blackfriars Road – in 1978. Many streets were wiped from the map or renamed. The records of Holy Trinity Church were deposited with the Bodleian Library in 1975 by the then Rector of Saint Aldate’s, and were transferred to Oxfordshire Archives in the 1980s. Further records were deposited in 2019.

No trace remains today of what was perhaps one of the shortest-lived churches in Oxford. One site says photographs of Holy Trinity Church, inside and outside, ‘appear to be rarer than rocking horse droppings’. The name of the church survives in the full name of Saint Ebbe’s Parish, which is formally Saint Ebbe with Holy Trinity and Saint Peter le Bailey, while the names of Friars Wharf, Preachers Lane – once known as Gas Street – Blackfriars Road and Trinity Street are reminders of the ecclesiastical communities that were once part of life the area.

Preachers Lane … a reminder of the ecclesiastical presence in the area in the past (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

A search for the site of Greyfriars and the heart of Franciscan intellectual life in mediaeval Oxford

‘The new religion is consumerism and massive malls are its cathedrals’ … Westgate Oxford was built on top of the extensive remains of the mediaeval Greyfriars friary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

The large shopping centres throughout Britain represent the consumer-driven urban environment that thrived with Thatcherism. The new religion became consumerism and massive malls became its cathedrals, where people are found like sheep with a shepherd, shopping around for salvation.

As Brian Appleyard pointed out in the Independent back in 1993, we have turned many run-of-the-mill towns into cities by building cathedrals called malls: ‘The religious parallel is precise and detailed: these malls have naves, aisles, triforia, clerestories, cruciform plans and holy water features. Here, through shopping, we seek out ‘value’, apply the moral code of consumerism and aspire to a better life.’

Westgate Oxford, previously known as the Westgate Centre and built as Westgate Shopping Centre, is the main shopping centre in the centre of Oxford. It was first built in 1970-1972 to designs by Douglas Murray and it was extensively remodelled and extended in 2016-2017.

When the centre was first built in the 1970s, part of the work destroyed archaeological remains of part of mediaeval Oxford. During the redevelopment in 2015-2017, Oxford Archaeology carried out architectural investigations into the extensive remains of the mediaeval Greyfriars friary (1244-1538), and the discoveries included stone foundations, wooden and other artefacts, and part of a mediaeval tiled floor.

My search for the remains of the vast Greyfriars site in Oxford began at Friars Wharf (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

I had a brief view of the modern Greyfriars buildings in Oxford recently, including the Church of Saint Edmund and Saint Frideswide or Greyfriars on Iffley Road in East Oxford. So, when we were back in Oxford a few days ago, one of the ecclesiastical sites I went in search of was the original Greyfriars or Franciscan friary, founded by Saint Agnellus of Pisa in 1224.

After visiting two neighbouring churches, Holy Rood Church on Abingdon Road and Saint Matthew’s Church on Marlborough Road, last week, I crossed back over the River Thames at the Gasworks Pipe Bridge to the site of the former gasworks and Friars Wharf to begin a search for the once extensive site of the medieval friary that had been an influential establishment in Oxford for over 300 years.

A new interactive archaeological and history trail has been developed at Westgate, showcasing artefacts uncovered during the excavation of the site, the largest exposure of medieval buildings yet seen in the city. The trail has been created in partnership with Oxford Archaeology and involves several marker in and around Westgate.

Each marker includes information and items of significance uncovered in archaeological excavations, including:

• the vanished suburb of St Ebbe’s
• original pavement from the Franciscan Friary
• art inspired by the Franciscan theologian and philosopher Roger Bacon

Visitors and local people are invited to interact with the trail and to find out more about the dig by scanning the QR codes on the totems in the centre, or by visiting the Westgate Oxford website with their smartphones. Printed maps are also available.

The trail signposts other locations in Oxford, including the Weston Library, the Bates Collection at Saint Aldate’s Church, the Pitt Rivers Museum and Oxford Castle Quarter. The trail was the culmination of many years work alongside Oxford Archaeology.

Roger Bacon Lane … one of the street names remembering the Franciscans of Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Franciscans were founded by Saint Francis of Assisi in 1210. He sent nine friars to England in 1224 under Saint Agnellus of Pisa, who founded the Franciscan or Greyfriars Friary in Oxford between Saint Ebbe’s Church and the city wall.

The friary started in a single house between Saint Ebbe’s Church and the mediaeval city wall. The popularity of the Franciscan friars as teachers in the University of Oxford meant they soon outgrew their original site. In 1244, Henry III granted the Greyfriars land and water south of the city wall and they received royal permission to demolish part of the wall to build their new church. The Franciscans were given permission to make a ‘little gate’ in the city wall to give them access to the city, and this is reserved in the name of Littlegate Street.

The T-shaped plan of the friary church provided the largest possible preaching area. Pieces of stained and painted glass, decorated floor tiles and a small statue, probably of a saint, were among the archaeological finds and give a glimpse of what the church might have looked like. Burials were found under the floor of the church, but the body of Saint Agnellus was not identified. Other burials were excavated from the graveyard.

The cloisters were to the south of the church and a complex of other buildings south of that probably included the monks’ sleeping quarters or dormitory, their washhouse or reredorter, the chapter house, the sacristy, and possibly a watermill.

More friars minor moved to Oxford when the University of Paris was dispersed in 1229-1230. The Franciscan friars of Oxford quickly earned their international academic and intellectual reputations, they had the ear of kings and popes, and they put Oxford more prominently on the map. They were politically influential and that in turn helped to give the university greater status, attracting more top teachers and students.

The friary became one of the greatest mediaeval teaching institutions in Oxford and it had a pivotal importance in the history of Oxford University. Along with the Dominicans of Oxford, the Franciscans were a major force in transforming the university, focusing on intellectually rigorous and challenging subjects.

Oxford University claims to have been founded in 1096, and it grew rapidly from 1167, when Henry II prohibited English students from attending the University of Paris. Before the Franciscans arrived in Oxford, it was already specialised in teaching practical vocationally oriented courses like letter writing, Latin grammar, classical speech-making, basic maths and practical law.

However, the Franciscans and their Dominican contemporaries and rivals introduced a new emphasis on theology in the curriculum that in turn led to teaching advanced philosophy, physics, natural history, geology and even optics. At that stage, theology was regarded as the cutting-edge intellectual discipline, and was known as the ‘Queen of the Sciences’.

The friars used theology and the Bible as ways to approach all other intellectual disciplines, and these mediaeval friars made Oxford the international centre of scholarship it remains to this day.

A plaque remembering Roger Bacon, the Franciscan philosopher known as Doctor Mirabilis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Among the eminent mediaeval scholars who taught at Greyfriars were:

• Robert Grosseteste, one of mediaeval Europe’s first great mathematicians and physicists was also Bishop of Lincoln and the first Chancellor of the University of Oxford;

• Roger Bacon, a philosopher, linguist and pioneer of empirical science whose work included research into light, lenses and gunpowder;

• Haymo of Faversham, a diplomat who taught in Paris, Tours, Bologna and Padua, as well as Oxford;

• John of Peckham, who became Archbishop of Canterbury;

• John Duns Scotus, considered among the most important philosopher-theologians in Western Christendom during the late medieval period, alongside Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure and William of Ockham;

• Alexander of Hales, a theologian and philosopher instrumental to the development of scholasticism;

• William of Ockham, a philosopher and radical political theorist who gives his name to the problem-solving principle known as ‘Ockham’s Razor’;

• the Italian friar Peter Phillarges, who was born in Neapoli in Crete and was later widely recognised as Pope Alexander V during the schism in the early 14th century, although he is now generally listed as an antipope.

Four of these great intellectual friars had interesting Latin monikers: Alexander of Hales, Doctor Irrefragabilis; Roger Bacon, Doctor Mirabilis; John Duns Scotus, Doctor Subtilis, and William of Ockham, Doctor Invincibilis.

The Castle on Paradise Street … the names of Paradise Square and Paradise Street are reminders of the ‘Paradise’ orchard at Greyfriars (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Franciscan order divided into two branches in 1517: the friars who had been living in city-convents and teaching in universities became known as Conventuals, while the friars who lived a more eremitical life became known as Observants; the Capuchins developed in 1528.

Greyfriars continued as an educational and religious centre until it was dissolved at the Tudor Reformations in 1538. After the dissolution of the monastic houses, the Greyfriars buildings were pulled down and many of the foundations were removed to provide building materials. The Capuchins did not return to Oxford until 1905.

The site of the Greyfriars gardens, known as Paradise, was turned into famous market gardens. By the end of the 19th century, the whole site of the Greyfriars had been was built over with streets of terraced housing, known as ‘The Friars’.

The footprint of the mediaeval friary at the south-west corner of the city walls was extensive, running between the present-day Paradise Street and the Westgate Oxford Shopping Centre.

The archaeological investigations are uncovering what life in Oxford was like during that crucial transition. The archaeological investigations are also important because the Franciscan Friary or Greyfriars was home to some of the most important scholars in mediaeval Oxford and in wider European academic life.

The first archaeological excavations of the Greyfriars were carried out in 1967-1972, before Westgate Shopping Centre was built. These uncovered the T-shaped plan of the friary church and the different phases of its construction over almost 300 years, from the 1240s until the Reformation.

Only a small part of these buildings were identified in the 1970s, but much more was discovered with further excavations in 2015-2016, revealing many more stone buildings south of the friary church. Combined, these excavations constitute some of the most extensive plans of any mediaeval urban friary in England.

Paradise Garden (2017) is a sculpture by William Cobbing (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Paradise Garden (2017) is a sculpture by William Cobbing that consists of seven quarried stone boulder forms inlaid with glazed ceramic tiles. They reference the archaeology, history and flora of the place, and the constellation of sculptures complements the landscaping design of Greyfriars Place, inviting the viewer to reflect on the history of the site.

Many of the street names and placenames in the area recall the presence of the Franciscan friars and the Dominicans in the area until the 16th century, including Old Greyfriars Street, Blackfriars Road, Friars Wharf, Preachers Lane, Trinity Street.

Roger Bacon gives his name to Roger Bacon Lane, where Saint Ebbe’s Church has its offices. The names of Paradise Square and Paradise Street are reminders of the ‘Paradise’ orchard at Greyfriars.

Old Greyfriars Street at Westgate Oxford is a reminder of the presence of the Franciscans in Oxford for over 300 years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Remembering Wittgenstein’s links with Cambridge, Dublin and Co Wicklow 75 years after his death

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) … died 75 years ago on 29 April 1951

Patrick Comerford

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the death of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, who died in Cambridge 75 years ago, on 29 April 1951.

Wittgenstein was a Viennese-born Cambridge philosopher who had been influenced at an early stage by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. He taught at the University of Cambridge from 1929 to 1947 and worked primarily in the fields of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.

During his lifetime, he published just one small, 75-page book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), one article, one book review and a children’s dictionary. His major work, Philosophical Investigations, was not published until two years after his death, yet it has become an important modern classic.

Bertrand Russell said he was ‘the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived; passionate, profound, intense, and dominating.’

A plaque at the Ashling Hotel in Parkgate Street, Dublin, recalls Wittgenstein’s time as a guest (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna in 1889. A family tree shows his paternal great-great-grandfather was Moses Meier, a Jewish land agent who lived with his wife Brendel Simon in Bad Laasphe in the Principality of Wittgenstein, Westphalia. Napoleon decreed in 1808 that everyone, including Jews, must adopt an inheritable family surname. Moses Meier’s son, also Moses, became Moses Meier Wittgenstein.

His son, Hermann Christian Wittgenstein (1802-1878), took the middle name Christian to distance himself from his Jewish background. He married Franziska (Fanny) Figdor (1814-1890), who was also Jewish and a first cousin of the violinist Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), who worked closely with Brahms. They both became Protestants before they married, and the couple began a successful wool trading business trading in Leipzig.

Their 11 children included the philosopher’s father, Karl Otto Clemens Wittgenstein (1847-1913), who became an industrial tycoon. By the late 1880s, he had an effective monopoly on Austria’s steel cartel and was one of the richest men in Europe. The Wittgensteins became one of the wealthiest families in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, second only to the Rothschilds.

Karl Wittgenstein married Leopoldine ‘Poldie’ Maria Josefa Kalmus in 1873. Her father, Jakob Maximilian Kalmus (1814-1870) was a Bohemian Jew from Prague; her mother, Marie Stallner (1825-1921) was a German-speaking Catholic born in Sevnica in present-day Slovenia, and was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s only non-Jewish grandparent.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born on 26 April 1889 in the ‘Wittgenstein Palace’ at Alleegasse 16, now the Argentinierstrasse, near the Karlskirche in Vienna. He was one of nine children who were all baptised as Catholics and received formal Catholic teaching. Gustav Klimt painted Ludwig’s sister for her wedding portrait, and Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler gave regular concerts in the family’s many music rooms.

In an interview, his sister Gretl Stonborough-Wittgenstein said their grandfather's ‘strong, severe, partly ascetic Christianity’ was a strong influence on all the Wittgenstein children.

While Ludwig Wittgenstein was at school at the Realschule, he decided he had lost his faith in God and became an atheist. But his religious faith and his relationship with Christianity and religion in general would change over time. He resisted formal religion, saying it was hard for him to ‘bend the knee,’ although he once said, ‘I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.

With age, his personal spirituality deepened, and he wrestled with language problems in religion. At a time when he was finding it difficult to work, he wrote in 1947, ‘I have had a letter from an old friend in Austria, a priest. In it he says that he hopes my work will go well, if it should be God’s will. Now that is all I want: if it should be God’s will.’

In Culture and Value, Wittgenstein asks, ‘Is what I am doing really worth the effort? Yes, but only if a light shines on it from above.’ His close friend Norman Malcolm later wrote, ‘Wittgenstein’s mature life was strongly marked by religious thought and feeling. I am inclined to think that he was more deeply religious than are many people who correctly regard themselves as religious believers.’

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s steps in the Great Palm House in the National Botanic Gardens, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Wittgenstein visited his Irish friend, the psychiatrist Dr Maurice O’Connor (‘Con’) Drury (1907-1976) in Dublin in August 1947. They first met in the chapel Westcott House, Cambridge, when Drury had been an Anglican ordinand.

When Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge he resigned his professorship, planning to move to Dublin. From December 1947 to April 1948, Wittgenstein lived at Kilpatrick House, the home of the Kingston family near Redcross, Co Wicklow, where he worked on one of his major treatises, Philosophical Investigations, now accepted as a classic of 20th century philosophy.

By April 1948, he had moved from Kilpatrick House to Dr Con Drury’s holiday home in the west of Ireland, Rosro Cottage in Renvyle, Co Galway, and stayed there until the following October. This is now the Killary Harbour Youth Hostel.

From Co Galway, Wittgenstein moved to Dublin and to Ross’s Hotel, now the Ashling Hotel in Parkgate Street. A plaque by steps in the Great Palm House in the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin recalls how Wittgenstein liked to sit and write there in the late 1940s.

He remained in Dublin until June 1949. In all he spent 18 months in Ireland before returning to Cambridge.

Kilpatrick House near Redcross, Co Wicklow … Wittgenstein lived and wrote there from December 1947 to April 1948 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Back in Cambridge, Wittgenstein became very ill on the evening of 27 April 1951. When his doctor told him he might live only a few days, he reportedly replied, ‘Good!’

Four of his former students arrived at his bedside – Ben Richards, the Limerick-born philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, Yorick Smythies, and Con Drury, once an Anglican ordinand at Westcott House, Cambridge, and later a regular communicant at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

Anscombe and Smythies were both Roman Catholics. At their request, the Dominican friar and philosopher, Father Conrad Pepler (1908-1993), also attended; he was the founding warden of the Dominican retreat centre at Spode House near Rugeley, Stafforshire, which I revisited in a posing last week (22 April 2026). Wittgenstein had asked for a ‘priest who was not a philosopher’ and had met Father Conrad several times before his death.

His friends were unsure at first what Wittgenstein would have wanted. But they remembered he had said he hoped his Catholic friends would pray for him, and so they did. He was pronounced dead shortly afterwards, 75 years ago, on 29 April 1951, and was given a Catholic burial in Cambridge.

A plaque in the chapel of Trinity College Cambridge recalls Wittgenstein’s time as a fellow and professor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Wittgenstein’s influence reaches almost every discipline in the humanities and social sciences, and he has influenced many current Anglican theologians, including Andrew Davison and Alison Milbank.

On his religious views, Wittgenstein was said to be greatly interested in Catholicism and was sympathetic to it. However, he did not consider himself a Catholic. According to Norman Malcolm, Wittgenstein saw Catholicism as a way of life rather than as a set of beliefs he personally held.

So, did Wittgenstein see himself as Jewish?

Wittgenstein wrote repeatedly about Jews and Judaism in the 1930s, and many biographical studies present that his writings about Jewishness as a way in which he thought about the kind of person he was and the nature of his philosophical work.

On the other hand, as David Stern points out, many philosophers regard Wittgenstein’s thoughts about Jews as relatively unimportant, and many studies of his philosophy do not even mention the topic.

Yet, some writers have referred to Wittgenstein as a ‘rabbinical thinker’ and a far-sighted critic of anti-Semitism.

There is much debate about the extent to which Wittgenstein and his siblings, who were of three-quarters Jewish descent, saw themselves as Jews. The 1935 Nuremberg laws in 1935 defined as Jewish someone with three or four Jewish grandparents.

In a diary entry shortly after the German-Austrian Anschluss, he described the prospect of holding a German Judenpass or Jewish identity papers as an ‘extraordinarily difficult situation’ and compared it to hot iron that would burn his pocket.

In his writings, Wittgenstein frequently referred to himself as Jewish, at times as part of an apparent self-flagellation. For example, while berating himself for being a ‘reproductive’ as opposed to ‘productive’ thinker, he attributed this to his own Jewish sense of identity.

He wrote, ‘The saint is the only Jewish genius. Even the greatest Jewish thinker is no more than talented. (Myself for instance).’

While Wittgenstein would later claim that ‘my thoughts are 100% Hebraic,’ as Professor Hans Sluga has argued, if so, ‘His was a self-doubting Judaism, which had always the possibility of collapsing into a destructive self-hatred (as it did in [Otto] Weinberger’s case) but which also held an immense promise of innovation and genius.’

Wittgenstein once wrote, ‘Bach wrote on the title page of his Orgelbüchlein, “To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may be benefited thereby.” That is what I would have liked to say about my work.’

In a letter to Bertrand Russell in 1912, he said Mozart and Beethoven were the actual sons of God – both composers died in Vienna.

The plaque at the entrance to Kilpatrick House marking the 50th anniversary of Wittgenstein’s death (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 25, Wednesday 29 April 2026

‘I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness’ (John 12: 46) … looking out into the village of Piskopiano in Crete from the Church of the Transfiguration (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (5 April 2026) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (24 May 2026), or Whit Sunday. This week began with the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Easter IV, 26 April 2026), sometimes known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’.

The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), Teacher of the Faith. Today also marks the 75th anniversary of the death of the philsopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and I hope to say more about that anniversary in a blog posting later today. Later this evening, I hope to take part choir rehearsals in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘Whoever sees me sees him who sent me’ (John 12: 45) … the Ancient of Days depicted in a fresco in the Church of the Transfiguration in Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 12: 44-50 (NRSVA):

44 Then Jesus cried aloud: ‘Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. 45 And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. 46 I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness. 47 I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. 48 The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge, 49 for I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me.’

‘The Light of the World’ by William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) in a side chapel in Keble College, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

In the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (John 12: 44-50), we come to the end of what is known as the ‘Book of Signs’ in Saint John’s Gospel (chapters 1 to 12). Through these seven signs, Christ clearly indicates who he is and what his mission is.

Today’s reading recapitulates all that Christ has said in the ‘Book of Signs’. We hear how Jesus ‘cried aloud’ and spoke. This gives extra emphasis to what he is proclaiming. It is once again a call to believe in Jesus where ‘believing in’ means much more than mere acceptance of the truth of his words. It implies too a personal commitment to Christ and to his mission.

To believe in Christ is also to believe in, to surrender oneself entirely to, the One who sent him, the Father. All through this Gospel, Jesus emphasises the inseparability of the Father and the Son.

The Father sends Christ as light into the world so that ‘whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness’ (John 12: 45-46).

One of the first images of Christ that I remember being show as a child by my grandmother in her house in Cappoquin, Co Waterford, is Holman Hunt’s ‘The Light of the World’. It remains my favourite image of Christ and my favourite Pre-Raphaelite painting.

Saint Catherine of Siena, the Dominican doctor of the church remembered today, says, ‘It is only through shadows that one comes to know the light.’ Addressing Chrit in The Dialogue of Saint Catherine, where she touches topics on prayer, divine providence, and obedience, she writes, ‘You are the Fire that takes away the cold, illuminates the mind with its light, and causes me to know the truth’.

The ‘word’ of Christ is a challenge. It offers a way of living and of inter-relating with God, with others and with ourselves. Christ tells us that his Father’s commands – which he also observes – mean eternal life. Everything that Jesus did was the carrying out of his Father’s will. We are called to follow the same path, which is the way to total freedom.

But how do we follow that path, how do we walk that path?

During the week, I found myself re-reading the hymn ‘Attend and Keep this Happy Fast’ by the English Roman Catholic theologian and one-time Dominican priest, Roger Ruston. He has been strongly influential in Christian CND and similar movements. He is best known for both his careful critique of the ‘deterrence’ theory and the reliance on nuclear weapons and for his work on human rights, including his book Human Rights and the Image of God (SCM-Canterbury Press, 2004), and the conference with that name organised that year by the Dominican Justice and Peace Commission at Blackfriars, Oxford.

Roger Ruston’s insights have a pressing relevance in today’s dismal global political realities. He has also written a number of hymns that are informed by his theological priorities. His hymn ‘Attend and Keep this Happy Fast’ is based on Isaiah 58: 5-9 and expresses the idea that love is better than fasting, and looks to ‘the dawn your light will break’ and that time when ‘the glory of the Lord will shine’:

Attend and keep this happy fast
I preach to you this day.
Is this the fast that pleases me,
that takes your joy away?
Do I delight in sorrow’s dress,
says God, who reigns above,
the hanging head, the dismal look,
will they attract my love?

But is this not the fast I choose,
that shares the heavy load;
that seeks to bring the poor man in
who’s weary of the road;
that gives the hungry bread to eat,
to strangers gives a home;
that does not let you hide your face
from your own flesh and bone?

Then like the dawn your light will break,
to life you will be raised.
And all will praise the Lord for you;
be happy in your days.
The glory of the Lord will shine,
and in your steps his grace.
And when you call he’ll answer you;
He will not hide his face.

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

Rembering Mika Chrysaki who gave her name to Mika Villas in Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 29 April 2026):

I have been recalling my own grandmother in my reflections this morning. In my prayers, I am also remebering a family of dear friends in Crete who are burying a dear mother, mother-in-law and grandmother, in Iraklion this afternoon. Mika was a warm, welcoming member of the family, and her son proudly gave her name to the family hotel in Piskopiano in the hills above Hersonissos. I have stayed in or visited there countless times since the mid-1990s.

‘Prayer and Action in Pakistan’ provides the theme this week (26 April to 2 May 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 50-51. This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections from the Revd Davidson Solanki, Senior Regional Manager for Asia and the Middle East.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 29 April 2026) invites us to pray:

Lord, bless the Church of Pakistan as they seek to serve all neighbours. Particularly after the devastation of the floods, may their acts of care demonstrate Christ’s love in action even across faiths.

The Collect:

God of compassion,
who gave your servant Catherine of Siena
a wondrous love of the passion of Christ:
grant that your people may be united to him in his majesty
and rejoice for ever in the revelation of his glory;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God of truth,
whose Wisdom set her table
and invited us to eat the bread and drink the wine
of the kingdom:
help us to lay aside all foolishness
and to live and walk in the way of insight,
that we may come with Catherine to the eternal feast of heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘It is only through shadows that one comes to know the light’ … Saint Catherine of Siena seen in a window in Saint Giles Church, Cambridge (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: 137, Friday 26 September 2025

When is it appropriate to be silent? (see Luke 9: 21) … an icon of Christ the Blessed Silence

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIV, 21 September). Wednesday, Friday and Saturday in this week in the Church Calendar are also known as Ember Days.

The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Wilson Carlile (1847-1942), founder of the Church Army. In the Jewish Calendar, the Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur begins this evening. It is called Shabbat Shuvah (שבת שובה‎), Sabbath of Return, or Shabbat Teshuvah (שבת תשובה‎), Sabbath of Repentance, a name derived from the special Haftorah reading, from the prophet Hosea, that begins with the words ‘Shuvah Yisrael’ (‘Return, O Israel’).

Before today 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 reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

When is it appropriate to be silent? (see Luke 9: 21) … an icon of Christ the Blessed Silence

Luke 9: 18-22 (NRSVA):

18 Once when Jesus was praying alone, with only the disciples near him, he asked them, ‘Who do the crowds say that I am?’ 19 They answered, ‘John the Baptist; but others, Elijah; and still others, that one of the ancient prophets has arisen.’ 20 He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered, ‘The Messiah of God.’

21 He sternly ordered and commanded them not to tell anyone, 22 saying, ‘The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.’

When is it appropriate to be silent? (see Luke 9: 21) … an icon of Christ the Blessed Silence

Today’s Reflection:

In today’s Gospel reading (Luke 9: 18-22), after his profound confession of faith, Saint Peter is ‘sternly ordered and commanded them not to tell anyone.’ This is in sharp contrast to the response to this confession of faith in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, when Christ tells Saint Peter: ‘I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church …’ (Matthew 16: 18, NRSVA).

When is it appropriate to be silent and not speak out?

In Saint Mark’s Gospel, when Bartimaeus the blind beggar realises he is in the presence of Christ outside the gates of Jericho, ‘many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly’ (Mark 10: 48).

But are there times when words are not enough, when words are simply not appropriate?

In the midst of the unsettling and shocking turn events in the US in recent weeks, many people who speak out against racism, hatred and oppression, are being silenced by people who once claimed they defended free speech, while the name of Christianity is being misappropriated, hijacked and politically manipulated by people whose values and lifestyles show no commitment to living according to principles and values.

I am reminded of a saying attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi: ‘Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary use words.’

There are moments when actions speak louder than words, and when our lifestyle and discipleship offer far better sermons than anything we may say in a sermon.

There are moments to cry out loudly in the presence of God, and there are moments when silence is so appropriate.

So, in my prayers and silent reflections this morning, my thoughts are turning to the icon of Christ the Blessed Silence, an icon found in some traditions in the Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches, but that is not so well known outside Orthodoxy.

In this icon, Christ is portrayed as a youthful figure looking like a winged angel, his hands crossed against his chest, sometimes wearing a bishop’s mitre and dressed in a sakkos (σάκκος), the vestment worn by Orthodox bishops. In most of these icons, Christ is shown with an eight-pointed, shining nimbus.

The icon of Christ the Blessed Silence represents his sacrifice, through his young face and crossed hands, and his ecclesiastic mission in his attire. His angel-like face and the wings point to his ministry. In some of these icons, Christ is bareheaded, in others he wears the crown of a bishop, to show that he is both the Great High Priest and the King of Kings. In some icons of Christ the Blessed Silence, Christ holds the cross, spear and sponge of the Crucifixion.

The tradition of icons of Christ the Blessed Silence developed in the 14th and 15th centuries on Mount Athos, in Greece and in the Balkans. In Greece it was associated in Greece with the tradition of Hesychia. This Blessed Silence of Christ associates this icon with the hesychasts in the Eastern Orthodox tradition – the Greek ἡσυχία (hesychia) is a word for silence or quiet.

This icon is known in Russian as Spas Blagoe Molchanie or the Saviour of the Blessed Silence, and even as the Angel of Great Counsel. The earliest icon in this tradition in mediaeval Rus dates from the late 15th century. Christ is portrayed on the iconostasis or icon screen in the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Kremlin in Moscow, above the entrance to the sanctuary and dates from ca 1482 or perhaps later (1514-1515).

This image was widespread in the 17th century, and it is found special reverence in the 18th and 19th centuries among the Old Believers in Russia. Many of these icons were confiscated from the Old Believers and kept in archives in St Petersburg.

The icon of Christ the Blessed Silence Saviour is one of the few types in which Christ is represented in the form of an angel. In these icons, Christ is young and without a beard, looking like an angel or messenger, the angel of the blessed silence.

The sacred silence of Christ in this icon is also associated with the Christ who was born in time to be the Suffering Servant who died in Silence. In the traditional interpretations of Isaiah, the Suffering Servant passages are associated with the crucifixion of Jesus:

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth. (Isaiah 53: 7)

So, the suffering Christ was silent, and Christ the Angel of Great Counsel is the Son of God begotten in the Silence of Eternity.

Isaiah also says:

He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street (Isaiah 42: 2).

These icons often also bear inscriptions from another passage in Isaiah:

The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. (Isaiah 11: 2)

Sometimes Christ holds in his hand a scroll that reads: ‘You are the God of Peace, Father of Mercies, the Angel of Great Counsel.’ These words are in Irmos 5 in the Liturgy of the Nativity:

O God of peace and Father of mercies
Thou has sent to us the Angel of Great Counsel who grants us peace.
So we are guided to the light of the knowledge of God.
Waking early from the night we praise Thee, O Lover of men.

Traditionally, the words of Isaiah 9: 6 are associated with the birth of Christ and the Nativity narratives. They are best known in the English-speaking world because of their use in the libretto by Charles Jennens for Handel’s oratorio Messiah:

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given:
and the government shall be upon his shoulder:
and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor,
The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.

Jennens was drawing on the text of the Authorised Version or King James Version of the Bible, which reflects the Hebrew text of the Bible as it was known in the 17th century. However, early Christians knew the Biblical texts not in Hebrew, but in the Greek of the Septuagint. In Greek, Isaiah 9: 6 reads somewhat differently:

The ‘Messenger of Great Counsel’ (Ο Μεγάλης Βουλής Άγγελος) in the Septuagint may also be understood as the ‘Angel of Great Counsel.’ Greek versions of the icon of the Angel of Great Counsel sometimes include the inscription:

ἐγὼ γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐξῆλθον καὶ ἥκω:
οὐδὲ γὰρ ἀπ’ ἐμαυτοῦ ἐλήλυθα, ἀλλ’ ἐκεῖνός με ἀπέστειλεν.

For I came from God and now I am here.
I did not come on my own, but he sent me (John 8: 42).

As I think of the icon of Christ the Blessed Silence, I think too of the Logos begotten from God in Eternity and of the birth of the Christ Child in time. He is the one who was, who is and who is to come, the one to cry out loud to and the one in whose presence we should be silent too.

I have said with humour and full sincerity that when my coffin is being taken into the church at my funeral (later than sooner, I hope), that I want to hear Leonard Cohen’s ‘If it be your will’ … and when my coffin is being carried out I want to hear his ‘Dance me to the end of love.’

So often I want to be in control. I want to control the agenda, I want to control conversations, I want to control discussions. And I particularly want to control the words I use, the words others are going to hear me say.

And so, I am humbled at times when I listen to Leonard Cohen’s song, ‘If it be your will.’

Leonard Cohen ended many of those concerts singing this poem, which for me is about submission to God’s will, accepting God’s will, leaving God in control of my spirit:

Leonard Cohen sings of his nearly complete subjection to the divine will.

If he is told to be silent, he will be silent; if he is told to sing, he will sing.

If he is allowed to express his true voice (‘if a voice be true’), he will sing in praise of God from ‘this broken hill’ … from Calvary?

The mercy of God, the compassion of God, the love of God, redeems the burning hearts in hell … if it is God’s will.

Leonard Cohen’s great hope in this will leads to prayer, to the one who can ‘make us well’ if we devote ourselves to God, pray to God, sing to God. But he still prays to God to act on behalf of the suffering.

Cajoling God in song and poetry, Cohen says God has the power to ‘end this night’ of the darkness of the human condition, in which people are dressed in only dirty ‘rags of light’ that are fragmented, that are not fully whole and illuminated.

In this song, I imagine Christ on the cross as he speaks to God the Father as his agony comes to its close:

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before.

The broken hill is Golgotha where he has been crucified, the rugged and rocky Mount of Calvary.

‘Let the rivers fill’ may refer to the water of his thirst, the water of his sweat, the water that streams from his side, the waters of baptism, the Living Water that will never leave us to thirst.

If it be your will
To make us well
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell.

The Dominican theologian Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe of Oxford says: ‘We must wait for the resurrection to break the silence of the tomb.’ We must speak up when it is necessary, and to have the courage to speak is ‘ultimately founded upon the courage to listen.’

Leonard Cohen, If it be your will:

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will

If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

If it be your will
If there is a choice
Let the rivers fill
Let the hills rejoice
Let your mercy spill
On all these burning hearts in hell
If it be your will
To make us well

And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will

If it be your will.

When is it appropriate to be silent? (see Luke 9: 21) … an icon of Christ the Blessed Silence

Today’s Prayers (Friday 26 September 2025):

The theme this week (21 to 27 September) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Malayiaha Jesus: The Co-Sufferer’ (pp 40-41). This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections from the Revd Rajendran Ruben Pradeep, Vicar of Holy Trinity Church, Nuwara Eliya, Diocese of Colombo, Church of Ceylon (Sri Lanka).

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 26 September 2025) invites us to pray:

Lord, we give thanks for the Church of Ceylon and its faithful service, bringing hope and love to all in need. Bless its work and strengthen all who serve in your name.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
whose only Son has opened for us
a new and living way into your presence:
give us pure hearts and steadfast wills
to worship you in spirit and in truth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Collect (for the ministry of all Christian people):

Almighty and everlasting God,
by whose Spirit the whole body of the Church
is governed and sanctified:
hear our prayer which we offer for all your faithful people,
that in their vocation and ministry
they may serve you in holiness and truth
to the glory of your name;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

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

The Post Communion Prayer (Ember Days):

Heavenly Father,
whose ascended Son gave gifts of leadership and service to the Church:
strengthen us who have received this holy food
to be good stewards of your manifold grace,
through him who came not to be served but to serve,
and give his life as a ransom for many,
Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Merciful God,
your Son to save us
and bore our sins on the cross:
may we trust in your mercy
and know your love,
rejoicing in the righteousness
that is ours through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow


‘If It Be Your Will’ … Leonard Cohen and The Webb Sisters, Live in London

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: 41, Thursday 19 June 2025, Corpus Christi

The emblem of the Guild of Corpus Christi in Leicester, the Host and Chalice, seen in 15th century glass fragments in the Guildhall in Leicester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time: this week began with Trinity Sunday (15 June 2025), and today is the Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion or the Feast of Corpus Christi (19 June 2025).

Later this morning, I plan to attend the mid-week Eucharist in All Saints’ Church, Calverton. But before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

Christ present in the Eucharist … an icon in the central door of the iconostasis in the Church of Aghia Triada in Kalamitsi Alexandrou in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 6: 51-58 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 51 ‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.’

52 The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ 53 So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55 for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 57 Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live for ever.’

The emblem of the Guild of Corpus Christi in Leicester, the Host and Chalice, seen in 15th century glass fragments in the Mayor’s Parlour in the Guildhall in Leicester (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Reflection:

The Feast of Corpus Christi is marked in the calendar of many Anglican churches on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, and is being celebrated in many English churches and cathedrals today. For example, there is a Solemn Eucharist in Lichfield Cathedral at 5.30 this evening. Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, is celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi with the Sung Eucharist at 7:30 pm, followed by a sherry and shortbread reception.

Traditionally, there has been a Corpus Christi procession in Cambridge each year, with the Sung Eucharist at St Bene’t’s Church at 7 p.m., then moving along Trumpington Street, passing Corpus Christi College, Fitzbillies and the Fitzwilliam Museum as it processes to Little Saint Mary’s for Benediction, followed by refreshments. The guest preacher this evening is Mother Alice Goodman, Rector of Fulbourn.

Pusey House in Oxford is celebrating Corpus Christi this week evening with High Mass at 6:30 pm with Procession and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. The preacher is Bishop Norman Banks, sometime Bishop of Richborough.

At All Saints’ Church, Margaret Street, London, the Corpus Christi celebrations include High Mass at 6.30 pm, the Procession down Oxford Street and Benediction. The preacher is Father Grant Naylor, Vicar of Saint Matthew’s, Carver Street, Sheffield, who preached at the Corpus Christi Celebrations in Pusey House last year.

In Rose Macaulay’s The Towers of Trebizond, Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg says Mass in a corner of the public gardens in Trebizond to mark the Feast of Corpus Christi. After Mass, he holds a procession round the gardens, chanting Ave Verum, stops, preaches a short sermon in English, and says that Corpus Christi is a great Christian festival and holy day, ‘always kept in the Church of England.’

The survival of Corpus Christi in the Anglican tradition is also illustrated in the history of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Formally known as the College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary, this is the only Cambridge college founded by the townspeople of Cambridge: it was established in 1352 by the Guilds of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Today, Corpus Christi is best known to visitors to Cambridge for its clock, the Chronophage or ‘Time Eater,’ which is accurate only once every five minutes. But the Old Court in Corpus is the oldest court in any Oxbridge college.

The new college acquired all the guild’s lands, ceremonies and revenues, including the annual Corpus Christi procession through the streets of Cambridge to Magdalene Bridge, during which the Eucharistic host was carried by a priest and several of the college’s treasures were carried by the Master and fellows, before returning to the college for an extravagant dinner.

The procession in Cambridge continued until the Reformation, but in 1535 William Sowode, who was Parker’s predecessor as Master (1523-1544), stopped this tradition. However, the college retains its pre-Reformation name and continues to have a grand dinner on the feast of Corpus Christi.

In the calendar of the Church of England, Corpus Christi is known as The Day of Thanksgiving for the Institution of Holy Communion (Corpus Christi) and has the status of a Festival. But in many parts of the Roman Catholic Church, it has now been moved from the Thursday after Trinity Sunday to the following Sunday. Yet, in the Roman Catholic Church, the feast of Corpus Christi is one of the five occasions in a year when a bishop must not to be away from his diocese unless for a grave and urgent reason.

Corpus Christi does not commemorate any one particular event in the life of Christ or in the history of the Church – but the same can be said too of Trinity Sunday (last Sunday, 15 June 2025) or the Feast of Christ the King (the Sunday before Advent). Instead, this day celebrates the presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Corpus Christi first made an appearance in the Church Calendar at the suggestion of Saint Juliana of Liège, a 13th century Augustinian nun, when she suggested the feastday to her local bishop, Bishop Robert de Thorete of Liège and the Archdeacon of Liège, Jacques Pantaléon.

The bishop introduced the feastday to the calendar of his diocese in 1246, and the archdeacon subsequently introduced it to the calendar of the Western Church when he became Pope Urban IV in 1264, when he issued a papal bull, Transiturus de hoc mundo.

A liturgy for the feast was composed by the great Dominican theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas, who also wrote the hymns Verbum Supernum Prodiens for Lauds and Pange Lingua for Vespers of Corpus Christi.

The last two verses of Pange Lingua are often sung as a separate Latin hymn, Tantum Ergo, while the last two verses of Verbum Supernum Prodiens are sometimes sung separately as O Salutaris Hostia.

This was the very first universal feast ever sanctioned by a Pope. Corpus Christi was retained in Lutheran calendars until about 1600, and continues to be celebrated in some Lutheran churches.

Anglicans generally and officially believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist – is there any ‘presence’ that is not ‘real’? But the specifics of that belief range from transubstantiation, to something akin to a belief in a ‘pneumatic’ presence, from objective reality to pious silence.

Anglican teaching thinking about the Eucharist is best summarised in the Prayer of Humble Access:

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen. – (Book of Common Prayer, 1662)

The classic Anglican aphorism with regard to this debate is found in a poem by John Donne that is often attributed to Queen Elizabeth I:

His was the Word that spake it;
He took the bread and brake it;
and what that Word did make it;
I do believe and take it.

This, in many ways, also reflects Orthodox theology, which does not use the term ‘transubstantiation’ to systematically describe how the Gifts become the Body and Blood of Christ. Instead, the Orthodox speak of the Eucharist as a ‘Sacred Mystery’ use only the word ‘change.’ That moment of transformation of change does not take place at one particular moment during the Liturgy, but is completed at the Epiclesis.

And that completion is affirmed by our ‘Amen’ at the distribution and reception.

But when we say ‘Amen’ to those words, ‘The Body of Christ,’ at the distribution we are also saying ‘Amen’ to the Church as the Body of Christ, as Corpus Christi: ‘He [Christ] is the head of the body, the church’ (Colossians 1: 18), ‘which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all’ (Ephesians 1: 23).

In the act of communion, the entire Church – past, present, and even future – is united in eternity. In Orthodox Eucharistic theology, although many separate Divine Liturgies may be celebrated, there is only one Bread and one Cup throughout all the world and throughout all time.

Corpus Christi is not just a celebration for Roman Catholics and Anglo-Catholics. It is part of the shared pre-Reformation heritage of the Church, and long pre-dates Tridentine teachings on the Eucharist and transubstantiation.

It is a reminder too that the Eucharist is supposed to be a regular celebration for the Church, and not just once a month, once a quarter or once a year. As someone reminded me recently, if Christ had meant us to celebrate the Eucharist only on special occasions, he would have used cake and champagne at the last Supper. But he used ordinary everyday bread and table wine.

The Corpus Christi procession at Pusey House in Oxford last year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 19 June 2025, Corpus Christi):

‘Crossing the Channel’ is the theme this week (15-21 June) 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 by Bradon Muilenburg, Anglican Refugee Support Lead.

The USPG prayer diary today (Thursday 19 June 2025, Corpus Christi) invites us to pray:

Lord Jesus, we thank you for the gift of Holy Communion, a symbol of your love and sacrifice. May we be strengthened in faith, united in your body, and empowered to share your love with the world.

The Collect:

Lord Jesus Christ,
we thank you that in this wonderful sacrament
you have given us the memorial of your passion:
grant us so to reverence the sacred mysteries
of your body and blood
that we may know within ourselves
and show forth in our lives
the fruits of your redemption;
for you are alive and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

All praise to you, our God and Father,
for you have fed us with the bread of heaven
and quenched our thirst from the true vine:
hear our prayer that, being grafted into Christ,
we may grow together in unity
and feast with him in his kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

Posters on the street in Oxford for today’s Corpus Christi celebrations in Pusey House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

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

Corpus Christi is being celebrated in many cathedrals, churches and college chapels throughout the Church of England today