Open hands, open minds, open hearts

Christ appearing to his disciples at the table, Duccio, ca 1308-1311

Patrick Comerford

Sunday, 22 April 2012, The Third Sunday of Easter,

11.30: The Eucharist,

Church of Ireland Theological Institute

Acts 3: 12-19; Psalm 4; I John 3: 1-7; Luke 24: 36b-48.

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

If you were not a regular church-goer but went along on Easter morning and paid close attention you may have gone home with two clear impressions:

● Easter is all about chocolate and fluffy little bunnies
● Easter is over once Easter Day is over.

In conversations over the past week with full-time and part-time students, it appears that Easter is over for many of our priests and parishes. Not because the children are back at school and most Easter Vestries have met. But the special Easter greetings, preface, blessings and dismissals are gone, we have stopped singing the Easter Anthems and Easter hymns, and the readings from the Acts of the Apostles have been forgotten.

Many of our clergy seem to have forgotten – and so people in our parishes so often are not taught – that Easter is not just for Easter Day. The Risen Christ is not placed back into the tomb nor is the stone rolled back across it after Easter Day is over.

This season is a celebration of our new creation in the Risen Christ, and is a full season of 50 days. The whole season is Easter, just as the twelve days of Christmas are Christmas. Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost do not form three seasons. This Easter Season celebrates the three dimensions of the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the sending of the Spirit.

These 50 days amount to one-seventh of the year, and form our great “Sunday” of the year. Just as Sunday is the first and the eighth day, so the “great Sunday” of the 50 days of Easter begins with the day of the Resurrection and continues through eight Sundays, or an octave of Sundays, a “week of weeks.”

The Gospel reading this morning (Luke 24: 36b-48) and the collect of the day (the Third Sunday of Easter) are reminders that we are still in the Easter Season, that we ought still to be rejoicing that Christ is Risen! The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

This year, the Easter season continues until 27 May, the Day of Pentecost. But to walk in the light of the Risen Christ is a call to us not just on Easter Day, not just on Sundays, but every day, for ever and ever. And our reading from the Acts of the Apostles this morning (Acts 3: 12-19) shows how the Apostles lived out that life in the Risen Christ even after the Day of Pentecost.

Peter and John are on their way to the Temple when, at the gate to the Temple courtyard, they meet a man who has been lame from birth. This man, like Lazarus outside the gates of Dives (Luke 16: 19-31), or the blind man outside the gates of Jericho (Luke 18: 35-43), is forced outside the gates, outside the community, outside the social and religious community, because of his disability, marginalised and forced to beg to survive.

But Peter challenges custom and convention, and commands him “in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk” (Acts 3: 6). The man jumps to his feet like a child filled with joy, walks into the Temple precincts with Peter and John, “leaping and praising God” to the astonishment of all the people.

And this is where our story picks up this morning, with Peter preaching to the crowd, telling them it is not by the power of Peter and John that this man has jumped up and walked, but rather by God’s power, through Christ.

The titles of God that Peter uses (verse 13) are the same titles God identifies himself by to Moses in the burning bush (Exodus 3: 6). And this is the God who has “glorified” or lifted up Christ. Peter says that only recently, at the crucifixion, people “acted in ignorance,” yet God’s plan is accomplished, and there is a second chance.

The Resurrection is a second chance. And that is how it is presented in our reading from Saint Luke’s Gospel this morning.

The Risen Christ has appeared to two disciples on the road to Emmaus and has shared bread with them (Luke 24: 13-32). Instead of staying on in Emmaus, these two return to Jerusalem, and they hear from “the eleven and their companions” (verse 33) that Christ has also appeared to Peter. As they are talking, the Risen Christ comes and stands among them, and declares: “Peace be with you” (verse 36).

The peace he proclaims is the peace the angels proclaim at the birth of Christ (Luke 2: 14). Luke begins and closes his Gospel with similar promises. The appearance of the incarnate Christ at the first Christmas and the appearance of the Risen Christ at the first Easter are heralded by angels proclaiming peace (Luke 2: 9-15; 24: 4-7).

And as the shepherds, once counted out, once left in the dark and in danger, outside the city and outside the community, socially and religiously, make haste and give praise to God for what they have heard, so too in our reading in Acts the man left in physical darkness and forced into the role of an outsider is soon “walking and leaping and praising God” (Acts 3: 10).

The initial response to the incarnation was one of terror and fear (Luke 2: 9-10). The initial responses to the Resurrection are ones of fear and terror too, on the part of the women at the grave and on the part of the eleven hiding in the Upper Room (Luke 24: 5, 37).

With the horrors of Calvary still in their minds, it is no wonder the presence of the Risen Christ is too much to comprehend. Resurrection is not easy to grasp, and so there is this story is filled with a mixture of too much fear and too much joy for belief. Saint Luke gives us a powerful description of the disciples disbelieving for joy – “while in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering” (Luke 24: 41).

But the Risen Christ calms both their fears and their disbelief by eating fish – the fact that it is broiled fish provides an earthy detail in an event beyond belief – and he begins to interpret, as he had earlier in the day on the road to Emmaus, all that is written about him in Scripture.

Fish and fear: you will recall how Christ calms the storm on the sea and the fear of the disciples earlier in this Gospel (Luke 8: 22-26). And the bread at Emmaus and the fish in the Upper Room recall the five loaves and the two fish with which Christ feeds the multitude in this Gospel (Luke 9: 12-19).

So Saint Luke is using the beautiful literary form of enclosure in his Gospel. He is linking the incarnation with the resurrection, weaving them together in so many ways. God becomes human in Christ and identifies with us. Now God in Christ is inviting us to be like him, not just in some abstract, philosophical way, but in a real, incarnate way.

In my beginning is my end …
… In my end is my beginning. (TS Eliot, East Coker)

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from … (TS Eliot, Little Gidding)

The incarnate Christ is the Risen Christ in flesh. Touch me and see (verse 39). Just as he takes the fish in his hands, we are invited to take hold of the Body of Christ. It is no accident that the Greek word here for fish, ἰχθύς (ichthus) is a common acronym in the Early Church for Ἰησοῦς Χρειστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ (Iēsous Christos, Theou Yios, Sōtēr), “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.”

Christ feeds us spiritually and physically, and he comes to dine with us, not just in the past, not just on one Easter Day, but now, today, this Sunday morning. And we are to be his witnesses, proclaiming his name to all nations, all ethnicities, all languages, across all divisions.

There is no room for division in the Body of Christ. Instead, there is “repentance and forgiveness” (verse 47).

With a play on words in Latin, Tertullian, one of the patristic writers, wrote: Caro cardo salutis, the flesh is the hinge of salvation (Tertullian, De resurrectione mortuorum VIII, 6-7). The Paschal Mystery, the mystery of life, and our personal and collective participation in those mysteries, “hinges” on the flesh. “Handle me,” says the Risen Christ to the startled disciples. “See my hands and feet, that it is I myself.” If touching him does not convince them, his asking for food does. He eats, this friend who came among them eating and drinking, “a glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11: 19), who changed in his body this innermost reality of our flesh.

On the great day of the Resurrection, Saint Luke portrays the Risen Christ doing precisely what Christ does before the Crucifixion: he eats with us, he dispels fear, he proclaims peace, especially to those caught up in spirals of violence from which they cannot escape, he opens the meaning of the Scriptures to those who listen – just as he does at the very beginning of his public ministry when he opens the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah in the in the synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4: 16-19).

It is he who tells us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick, attend to the stranger, uncover the structures that mask injustice and challenge the institutions that perpetuate suffering. Now, on the Easter morn, he commissions us to be his witnesses (Luke 24: 47-48). We are to do the same.

Today the scripture has been fulfilled in our hearing, every time we eat with him, proclaim his word and invite the world into the kingdom.

Today is the day to do that. Today is the day of salvation, the glorious day of the Lord, the day of Resurrection, the day of the coming of God’s kingdom.

Today is the day of resurrection, of the in-breaking of God’s kingdom, and no regrets of yesterday or anxieties about tomorrow should keep us from it. Christ is Risen!

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

Collect:

Almighty Father,
who in your great mercy gladdened the disciples
with the sight of the risen Lord:
Give us such knowledge of his presence with us,
that we may be strengthened
and sustained by his risen life
and serve you continually in righteousness and truth;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post Communion Prayer:

Living God,
your Son made himself known to his disciples
in the breaking of bread.
Open the eyes of our faith,
that we may see him in all his redeeming work;
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This sermon was preached at the Eucharist in the Institute Chapel on Sunday 22 April 2012, during a residential weekend for part-time MTh students.

The Good Shepherd: John 10: 11-18

Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλός

Patrick Comerford

Introduction:

The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) for tomorrow week, Sunday 29 April 2012, the Fourth Sunday of Easter, are: Acts 4: 5-12 or Ezekiel 34; Psalm 23; I John 3: 16-24; John 10: 11-18.

This morning, in our Bible study, we are looking at the Gospel reading for that Sunday, which is one that is so familiar to many of us, and to the vast majority of people who are going to be in church that Sunday that it may be difficult for us to find an original and challenging approach to this Gospel reading.

Kατά Ιωάννην 10: 11-18

11 Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλός: ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλὸς τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ τίθησιν ὑπὲρ τῶν προβάτων: 12 ὁ μισθωτὸς καὶ οὐκ ὢν ποιμήν, οὗ οὐκ ἔστιν τὰ πρόβατα ἴδια, θεωρεῖ τὸν λύκον ἐρχόμενον καὶ ἀφίησιν τὰ πρόβατα καὶ φεύγει καὶ ὁ λύκος ἁρπάζει αὐτὰ καὶ σκορπίζει 13 ὅτι μισθωτός ἐστιν καὶ οὐ μέλει αὐτῷ περὶ τῶν προβάτων. 14 Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλός, καὶ γινώσκω τὰ ἐμὰ καὶ γινώσκουσί με τὰ ἐμά, 15 καθὼς γινώσκει με ὁ πατὴρ κἀγὼ γινώσκω τὸν πατέρα: καὶ τὴν ψυχήν μου τίθημι ὑπὲρ τῶν προβάτων. 16 καὶ ἄλλα πρόβατα ἔχω ἃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τῆς αὐλῆς ταύτης: κἀκεῖνα δεῖ με ἀγαγεῖν, καὶ τῆς φωνῆς μου ἀκούσουσιν, καὶ γενήσονται μία ποίμνη, εἷς ποιμήν. 17 διὰ τοῦτό με ὁ πατὴρ ἀγαπᾷ ὅτι ἐγὼ τίθημι τὴν ψυχήν μου, ἵνα πάλιν λάβω αὐτήν. 18 οὐδεὶς αἴρει αὐτὴν ἀπ' ἐμοῦ, ἀλλ' ἐγὼ τίθημι αὐτὴν ἀπ' ἐμαυτοῦ. ἐξουσίαν ἔχω θεῖναι αὐτήν, καὶ ἐξουσίαν ἔχω πάλιν λαβεῖν αὐτήν: ταύτην τὴν ἐντολὴν ἔλαβον παρὰ τοῦ πατρός μου.

John 10: 11-18

11 ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.’

Introducing the text:

We are still in the Easter season, as I intend to remind us in my sermon at the Eucharist tomorrow morning. The Easter Season is not just Easter Day and a day or two after while the bank holiday weekend lasts or the children are still out of school, or until the Easter vestry meets.

Easter is a season that lasts for a full 50 days. So, while this is not on first reading an Easter or post-Resurrection reading, we have this Gospel reading on Sunday week to challenge us to think and to ask who the Risen Christ is for us.

In Saint John’s Gospel, there are seven I AM sayings in which Christ says who he is. The Dominican author and theologian, Timothy Radcliffe, points out that that in the Bible, seven is the number of perfection. We know of the six days of creation and how God rested on the seventh. In Saint John’s Gospel, we have seven signs and seven “I AM” sayings disclosing for us who Christ truly is.

The seven signs in Saint John’s Gospel are:

● Turning water into wine in Cana (John 2: 1-11);
● Healing with a word (John 4: 46-51);
● Healing a crippled man at Bethesda (John 5: 1-9);
● The feeding of 5,000 (John 6: 1-14);
● Walking on water (John 6: 16-21);
● The healing of the man born blind (John 9: 1-7); and
● The Raising of Lazarus from the dead (John 11: 1-46), which was our Gospel reading the Sunday before last.

The seven “I AM” sayings In Saint John’s Gospel, disclosing for us who Christ truly is, are:

● I am the Bread of Life [John 6: 35, 41, 48-51];
● I am the Light of the World [John 8: 12, 9: 5];
● I am the Door of the Sheepfold [John 10: 7, 9];
● I am the Good Shepherd [John 10: 11, 14];
● I am the Resurrection and the Life [John 11: 25];
● I am the Way, the Truth and the Life [John 14: 6];
● I am the True Vine [John 15:1, 5].

In the book of Revelation, we have the seven churches and the seven seals. And I could go on.

The Good Shepherd ... a stained glass window in Saint Mark’s Church, Armagh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

On Sunday week, the Gospel passage presents us with the best-known and best-loved I AM sayings, which is repeated twice in this passage: “I am the Good Shepherd” (John 10: 11, 14).

This is such a popular image – one that has been with many of us since our Sunday School and childhood days. I think, perhaps, that the image of the Good Shepherd is one of the most popular images to fill stained-glass windows in our church buildings, surpassed in popularity only by windows showing the Crucifixion or the Last Supper.

But sometimes I have problems with our cosy, comfortable image of the Good Shepherd. Christ is so often portrayed in clean, spick-and-span, neatly tailored, nicely dry-cleaned, red and white robes, complete with a golden clasp to hold all those robes together.

And the lost sheep is a huggable, lovable, white fluffy Little Lamb, a little pet, no different from the Little Lamb that Mary had in the nursery rhyme and that followed her to school.

But shepherds and sheep, in real life, are not like that.

I remember once, on Achill Island, hearing about a shepherd who went down a rock-face looking for a lost sheep, and who lost his life. Local people were shocked – lambs don’t fetch a price in the mart that makes them worth losing your life for.

The sheep survived. But as you can imagine, in the process of being lost, it had been torn by brambles, had lost a lot of its wool, was bleeding and messy. Any shepherd going down after a lost sheep will get torn by brambles too, covered in sheep droppings, slip on the rocks, risk his life. And all for what?

And yet Christ says he is the Good Shepherd who seeks out the lost sheep, in the face of great risks from wolves and from the terrain, and against all common wisdom, as the hired hands would know.

Christ, against all the prevailing wisdom, identifies with those who are lost, those who are socially on the margins, who are smelly and dirty, injured and broken, regarded by everyone else as worthless, as simply not worth the bother.

God sees us – all of us – in our human condition, with all our collective and individual faults and failings, and in Christ totally identifies with us.

Looking at the text:

Christ has already told those who are listening: “I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved ... and find pasture ... the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have [spiritual] life, and have it abundantly” (verse 9-10). Now when he speaks of himself as the good shepherd, the image is one that is familiar to those who hear him. True followers, he tells them, recognise the good shepherd.

Perhaps they are prompted to recall that David too had been a good shepherd (I Samuel 17: 34-35), but this was when he lived on the margins, and before he became king. Would they recall the many Old Testament promises that God would come to shepherd his people (Isaiah 40: 11; Jeremiah 23: 1-6; Ezekiel 34: 11)?

When Moses, Aaron and Miriam led the ex-slaves out of Egypt and into freedom, the people learned as they went to appreciate the value of a nomadic life.

They learned, first, that everything is a gift from God, symbolised by the manna, the first Bread of Life. And they learned, too, that worship need not be centred in one place. They came to value Tent over Temple and sheep over settled land. To be a shepherd was a noble occupation – a continuing theme in Jewish history.

Entering the Promised Land, these nomads found themselves surrounded by nations whose powerful elites ruled by subjugating the poor and weak. Yet this new community understood themselves to be completely differently. They were equal partners with each other. And they were equal partners because – as they learned in their wilderness – they were partners with God, the true owner of the land, with God who, as with the manna in the wilderness, called them to share in common all they had.

They had come to value equality and mutual respect. From the beginning, these ex-slaves understood themselves as one people, who lived in an equal partnership with each other and with God by holding fast to the values of the Exodus, when they shared the manna in the wilderness.

But by the time of Christ, however, all this had changed. With the development of a royal aristocracy and the adoption of Temple worship under King Solomon, nomadic values faded and social divisions appeared.

Social strife and class warfare appeared, and any understanding of the land as an equally shared resource belonging to God disappeared.

The kingdom then split into two nations, Israel and Judah, and Judaism split into rival branches. Some were centred on the Temple in Jerusalem, while Samaritan Judaism had its own rival temple on Mount Gerizim. Two kingdoms, two Temples, fear and hatred, injustice and inequality, were in sharp contrast to Christ’s message of radical inclusion, symbolised in Saint Luke’s image of the Good Samaritan and Saint John’s image of the Good Shepherd.

In Christ’s time, shepherds are the dispossessed, the lowest rung of society. They no longer own their own land. And when they longer owned their own sheep they often ended up as the hired hands of the wealthy urban dwellers, the absentee landlords who feature in so many of the Gospel parables.

These hired shepherd-servants depend for their livelihood on work that requires them to be out in the fields and away from their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters, the family members any honourable man would have stayed home to protect. As a result, shepherds were considered to be men without honour. At best, they were unreliable; at worst they were borderline bandits. Shepherds are despised as much as Samaritans. In this context, a good shepherd, like a good Samaritan, is a contradiction in terms.

As with Saint Luke’s story of the Good Samaritan, Christ uses the image of the Good Shepherd, a despised external “other,” to challenge our preconceptions about others. The invitation is to think about what is really important in human relationships. And Christ’s answer is always the same: compassion, individual moral character, and generous, inclusive action. We are not to condemn by assigning human beings to hated categories.

Christ constantly challenges his followers to live out the Gospel on the margins as he consistently placed himself among those who society had rejected: tax collectors, sinners, Samaritans, shepherds …

“I am the Good Shepherd” (John 10: 11)

Verse 11:

Now he says that he is the “good,” the real or proper “shepherd,” the one who dies for his “sheep,” his flock (verse 11).

Verse 12:

But the “hired hand” (verse 12) does not care enough to save the sheep from the “wolf.” Old Testament prophets spoke of leaders of Israel in these terms, so Jesus probably speaks of them here – shepherds who are not worthy of the name.

Verse 15:

Christ’s relationship to people is like the Father’s relationship with him (verse 15).

Verse 16:

Who are the “other sheep” in verse 16? Are they the Samaritans? Are they non-Jews, the gentiles, the nations? They will have equal status with those who already follow Christ, as part of one Church.

Verse 18:

Christ has been given the authority to choose to die and the power to rise again from the dead. He is in control of his own death and resurrection.

A truly Easter theme for the Fourth Sunday of Easter.

The context of the other Sunday readings:

And how should we respond to that?

The answer to that is provided by the context in which people are going to hear this Gospel reading tomorrow week: the context of the other readings.

Psalm 23:

The most obvious and most likely connections to be made between the readings tomorrow week is that between the Gospel reading and the Psalm (Psalm 23).

In the ancient Near East, the king was seen as shepherd (verse 1-4) and as host (verses 5-6). God faithfully provides for, and constantly cares for, his sheep. He revives our very lives, the “soul” (verse 3), and guides us in godly ways or “right paths.”

Even when we are beset by evil or find ourselves in the “darkest valley” (verse 4), we have nothing to fear. God’s “rod,” the shepherd’s defence against wolves and lions, protects us. His “staff” (verse 4), used for rescuing sheep from thickets, guides us.

The feast (verse 5) is even more impressive, for it is laid out for us, the table is set for us, in the presence of his foes. Kings were plenteously anointed with oil, a symbol of power and dedication to a holy purpose.

The psalmist trusts that God’s “goodness and mercy” and God’s steadfast love (verse 6) will follow or pursue him, as do his enemies, throughout his life. He will continue to worship in the Temple or “dwell in the house of the Lord,” as long as he lives.

Acts 4: 5-12

The RCL provides for either an Old Testament reading or a reading from the Acts of the Apostles as the first reading: either Acts 4: 5-12 or Ezekiel 34; Psalm 23; I John 3: 16-24. And the intention is that you should prefer to opt for the reading from Acts rather than Ezekiel for the first readings.

In the previous Sunday’s reading, the one we hear tomorrow morning (Acts 3: 12-19; the Third Sunday of Easter), we hear how Peter and John go to the Temple to pray, how Peter heals a crippled man, who then walks and leaps and praises God (Acts 3: 8), and enters the Temple with them. Peter then calls on the people to repent of their waywardness and to “turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord ...” (Acts 3: 19-20). While Peter and John are speaking (Acts 4: 1), they are arrested for “proclaiming that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead” (verse 2).

Now, on the Sunday we are preparing for, we hear how the Sanhedrin meets the next day (4: 5). The elders were religious and local judges; the “scribes,” mostly Sadducees who did not believe in an afterlife, were experts in the Mosaic law and its interpretation.

Among them (in verse 6) we find Annas, a former high priest who is the power behind the throne – five of his sons became high priests. Caiaphas, the high priest 18-36 AD, is his son-in-law. John may be Jonathan, Caiaphas’ successor. We do not know who Alexander is.

John and Peter are asked to explain who gave them power or authority to cure the lame beggar (verse 7).

It is interesting that the power and authority that challenges and perplexes the ruling hierarchy in Jerusalem is not a challenge to their right to monopolise the office of High Priest, but their work with someone who, because he is both disabled and poor must sit outside the Temple gates, has been excluded from full religious rights, is not accepted as a member of the religious community, is one of the lost sheep.

I John 3:16-24

In our Epistle reading, Saint John the Divine, Saint John the Evangelist, tells us that our response to this outpouring of love from God, an outpouring that is risky and beyond all human understanding of generosity, is to love. To love not just those who are easy to love, but to love those who are difficult to love too. And to love beyond words.

He says: “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”

Jerome, in his commentary on Chapter 6 of the Epistle to the Galatians 6 (Jerome, Comm. in ep. ad. Gal., 6, 10), tells the well-loved story that John the Evangelist continued preaching even when he was in his 90s.

Saint John was so enfeebled with old age that the people had to carry him into the Church in Ephesus on a stretcher.

And when he was no longer able to preach or deliver a long discourse, his custom was to lean up on one elbow on every occasion and say simply: “Little children, love one another.”

This continued on, even when the ageing John was on his deathbed.

Then he would lie back down and his friends would carry him back out.

Every week, the same thing happened, again and again. And every week it was the same short sermon, exactly the same message: “Little children, love one another.”

One day, the story goes, someone asked him about it: “John, why is it that every week you say exactly the same thing, ‘little children, love one another’?”

And John replied: “Because it is enough.”

If you want to know the basics of living as a Christian, there it is in a nutshell. All you need to know is. “Little children, love one another.”

If you want to know the rules, there they are. And there’s only one. “Little children, love one another.”

As far as John is concerned, if you have put your trust in Christ, then there is only one other thing you need to know. So week after week, he would remind them, over and over again: “Little children, love one another.”

That is all he preached in Ephesus, week after week, and that is precisely the message he keeps on repeating in his first letter (I John), over and over again: “Little children, love one another.”

Love one another. God loves us. We ought to – no, we must – love one another.

That’s what it’s all about. That’s what you will find when you leave here and are working in ordained ministry.

All of your concerns – which may include global warming, the causes and effects of poverty, the AIDS crisis, healing and wholeness, how we cope with new life and with death in our parishes – come back to that core question: how do we love another?

That is why it is important that love is our priority in ministry, rather than ego, career, or worrying over the divisions that constantly into the Church.

“Little children, love one another … because it truly is enough.”

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This essay is based on notes prepared for a bible study in a tutorial group with part-time MTh students on Saturday 21 April 2012.

From Temple Bar to Templeogue in cherry blossom time

Cherry blossom and cherry trees lining Cypress Grove Road and framing the Dublin Mountains in the distance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Patrick Comerford

The bright and beautiful Easter continued today. I was still smiling about this at the Cathedral Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral this morning as I listened to Epistle reading, which included these words: “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another ...” (I John 1: 5-7).

At the Cathedral Eucharist, on the Second Sunday of Easter, I had the liturgical role of deacon, reading the Gospel and assisting with chalice at the administration of Holy Communion. After lunch in ‘The Larder’ in Parliament Street, some book buying in the second bookshops of Temple Bar, and coffee in La Dolce Vita, I was back in the Cathedral for Evensong, at which I read the lessons (Isaiah 26: 1-9, 19, Luke 24: 1-12) and led the intercessions.

In Temple Bar on the Second Sunday of Easter (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

On the way home to Knocklyon, the cherry trees lining Cypress Grove Road were in full bloom in riotous display of pink and white, like a grove of cherry blossoms framing the view towards Templeogue Bridge, with the blue mountains in the distance.

Cypress Grove Road runs along the former avenue that once led from Templeogue Bridge, first built in 1800, to Cypress Grove House, which stands in front of an open green space on Cypress Grove, off Cypress Grove Road.

In the evening sunshine, I stopped to photograph the cherry trees and Cypress Grove House, a Georgian, three-storey former country house that was built between 1740 and 1760. The house has timber sash windows throughout, a large, double-leaf timber panelled door with large sidelights, framed by slender engaged columns and all under a wide, simple radial fanlight with an internal iron grille. The walls are rendered, ruled and lined; there is a hipped slate roof behind the parapet, with three rendered chimney stacks. The wings and extensions include a later chapel and an external exit stair.

Cypress Grove House was built in the first half of the 18th century by a Mr Paine and later became the residence of Sir William Cooper, Master in Chancery and MP, who died here in 1761.

After Cooper’s death, Cypress Grove House passed to the Countess of Clanbrassil, widow of James Hamilton (1694-1758), 1st Earl of Clanbrassil. Lower and Upper Clanbrassil took their names from this family because they were on the route from Dublin city centre to Templeogue and Cypress Grove House.

Cypress Grove House ... home to aristocrats, an errant bishop, merchants and missionaries (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Lady Clanbrassil’s daughter, Lady Anne Hamilton, married the Earl of Roden, and so Cypress Grove House later passed from Lady Clanbrassil to her grandson, Robert Jocelyn (1756-1820), Viscount Jocelyn, who became the 2nd Earl of Roden in 1797. He had been an MP for Maryborough and later for Dundalk in the Irish House of Commons, and

Roden was an older brother of the notorious Percy Jocelyn (1764-1843). A clerical contemporary, the Revd Thomas Hore, said Jocelyn was the “most idle of all reverend idlers” and asked him rhetorically: “Do you ever write a sermon? Most worthy Rector of Creggan – not you.” But Jocelyn still managed to become the Church of Ireland Bishop of Ferns (1809-1820) and then Bishop of Clogher (1820-1822) before he was forced out of office after he was caught on 19 July 1822 in a compromising position with a soldier from the Grenadier Guards, John Moverley, in the back room of The White Lion, a public house in St Albans Place, off The Haymarket in Westminster.

The bishop and the soldier were released on bail, provided by the Earl of Roden and others. But Percy Jocelyn broke bail and absconded to Scotland, where he worked as a butler under an assumed name. He was deposed and defrocked in his absence by the Metropolitan Court of Armagh in October 1822 for “the crimes of immorality, incontinence sodomitical practices, habits, and propensities, and neglect of his spiritual, judicial, and ministerial duties.”

Jocelyn was the most senior bishop to be involved in a public homosexual scandal in the 19th century. His story became a subject of satire and popular ribaldry, resulting in more than a dozen illustrated satirical cartoons, pamphlets, and limericks. Indeed, the scandal was so great that in the days following “it was not safe for a bishop to show himself in the streets of London,” according to Charles Manners, who was Archbishop of Canterbury at the time.

On 9 August 1822, Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, who was both the Foreign Secretary and the leader of the House of Commons, told King George IV that he was being blackmailed and that he was “accused of the same crime as the Bishop of Clogher.”

The king is said to have advised Castereagh to “consult a physician.” Instead, he went to his country seat in Kent, and three days later he slit his throat with a penknife.

Cypress Grove House was later occupied by the Orr family, who were merchants, the Duffys, who had calico print works at Ballsbridge, and Charles King. From 1908 to 1925, GH Stepney lived at Cypress Grove House and changed the name of the house to Alberta. But the original name was restored by the next owner, Patrick Walshe.

The house is now owned by the Missionaries of Africa (White Fathers), a missionary order founded in 1863 by Cardinal Martial Lavigerie (1825-1892) Archbishop of Carthage and Algiers.

Three of the original cypress trees that give their name to the house and the streets around it are still standing to the east of the house. But it was the cherry trees that caught my imagination for a short time in the springtime lights of this April evening.

Poems for Easter (7): ‘The Easter Day’ by Dionysios Solomos

Sunset in Thessaloniki ... the location for the 1998 film Eternity And A Day (Μια αιωνιότητα και μια μέρα) by Theodoros Angelopoulos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Patrick Comerford

Tomorrow is Easter Day in the calendar of the Greek Orthodox Church, and so for my last Poem for Easter this year I have chosen the poem <Η ημέρα της Λαμπρής> (‘The Easter Day’) by Greece’s National poet, Dionysios Solomos (1798-1857).

This poem regained fame and popularity in Greece some years ago with the 1998 film Eternity And A Day (Μια αιωνιότητα και μια μέρα) by Theodoros Angelopoulos, who died earlier this year (24 January 2012).

Alexandros (Bruno Ganz) walks along the seafront in Thessaloniki in Eternity And A Day

The film tells the story of Alexandros (Bruno Ganz), a poet in Thessaloniki with a terminal illness who is spending his last day getting his affairs in order before checking himself into a hospital. He lives in his old seaside family home near Thessaloniki, but his daughter Katerina (Iris Chatziantoniou) and her lover Nikos (Vassilis Seimenis) plan to sell the house.

Alexandros thinks if he checks himself into the hospital, he shall die. But he has one final project – to complete the unfinished poem, ‘The Free Besieged,’ by Dionysios Solomos. He recalls his dead wife, Anna (Isabelle Renauld), and he lets his daughter read a letter her mother had written to him right after her birth in 1966.

Later in the day, he saves a young boy (played by Achilleas Skevis), a Greek-speaking illegal immigrant from Albania, first from police in traffic in Thessaloniki and later from child kidnappers in a warehouse, and tries to help the boy return home. In one eerie scene, with recollections of the Crucifixion, man and boy are at the snowy mountain border between Greece and Albania, where a barbed wire fence has the bodies of fleeing refugees clinging to it after being killed by border police.

In one scene, Alexandros and the boy, who remains unnamed throughout the film, are on a bus journey when they come across the poet Solomos (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), who recites verses from this poem <Η ημέρα της Λαμπρής> (‘The Easter Day’), with the opening line: «Καθαρότατον ήλιο επρομηνούσε ...»

Solomos (1798-1857) was born on the Greek island of Zakynthos, to an elderly count and his teenaged housekeeper. Solomos was educated in Italy, where he studied law and literature, but on returning to Greece he relearned Greek, and decided to write in demotic, or common modern, Greek. He gained fame early on with his ‘Hymn to Liberty’ (1823), a 158‐quatrain poem – the first two stanzas are sung as the Greek national anthem.

However, Solomos became more and more obsessed with perfection and he left many poems unfinished, including ‘The Free Besieged.’

The ‘White Tower’ ... the symbol of Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

During the bus journey the dying Alexandros and the boy take through Thessaloniki, the poet Solomos gets on the bus. He sits across from Alexandros and the boy, and recites his unfinished poem, ‘The Easter Day.’ When Solomos gets to the unfinished last line of the poem, “Sweet is the life ... and, ...” he repeats these first few words and is unable to complete the line. As he leaves the bus, Alexandros asks: “Tomorrow, how long does it last?”

Close to the end of the film, the dying Alexandros imagines he has met Anna once again, and he says to her: “One day, I had asked you, how long does tomorrow last?” Anna answers: “An eternity and a day.” She leaves, and Alexander is left alone, facing the sea.

This is a story of love, regret, life and memory, light and darkness, hope and despair and ultimately, life and death. It is about death and new life, about a dying man who gives his life to save a child all others regard as useless, about captivity and redemption, about hope in tomorrow, faith in the future, and truths about time and eternity.

Eternity and a Day ... a story of love, regret, life and memory, light and darkness, hope and despair and life and death

Η ημέρα της Λαμπρής, ∆ιονυσιος Σολωμος

Καθαρότατον ήλιο επρομηνούσε
της αυγής το δροσάτο ύστερο αστέρι,
σύγνεφο, καταχνιά, δεν απερνούσε
τ' ουρανού σε κανένα από τα μέρη,
και από εκεί κινημένο αργοφυσούσε
τόσο γλυκό στο πρόσωπο τ' αέρι,
που λες και λέει μες της καρδιάς τα φύλλα
«γλυκειά η ζωή κι ο θάνατος μαυρίλα».

Χριστός ανέστη! Νέοι, γέροι και κόραις
όλοι, μικροί, μεγάλοι ετοιμασθήτε,
μέσα στις εκκλησιές τες δαφνοφόραις
με το φως της χαράς συμμαζωχθήτε,
ανοίξατε αγκαλιές ειρηνοφόραις
ομπροστά στους Αγίους, και φιληθείτε,
φιληθείτε γλυκά χείλη με χείλη,
πέστε Χριστός ανέστη, εχθροί και φίλοι.

Δάφναις εις κάθε πλάκα έχουν οι τάφοι,
και βρέφη ωραία στην αγκαλιά οι μαννάδες,
γλυκόφωνα, κοιτώντας ταις ζωγραφι-
σμέναις εικόνες, ψάλλουνε οι ψαλτάδες,
λάμπει το ασήμι, λάμπει το χρυσάφι
από το φως που χύνουνε οι λαμπάδες,
κάθε πρόσωπο λάμπει απ' τ' αγιοκέρι,
οπού κρατούνε οι Χριστιανοί στο χέρι.

The Day of Easter, by Dionysios Solomos

The last cool star of dawn was
foretelling the brightest sunshine;
no cloud, no drift of mist was travelling
across any part of the sky.
Coming from there, the breeze
blew so sweetly across the face,
so gently, that it seemed
to whisper to the depths of the heart:
‘Life is sweet and death is darkness.’

‘Christ is Risen!’ Young and old, maidens,
everyone, little and great, prepare!
Inside the laurel-covered churches,
gather in the light of joy!
Open your arms and with them offer peace,
that the icons of the saints may see.
Embrace and kiss other sweetly, lip on lip,
let friend and foe proclaim, ‘Christ is Risen!’

Laurels are placed on every tomb,
beautiful babes are held in mothers’ arms,
the choristers sing sweetly
as they come before the icons.
Bright is the silver, bright is the gold,
under the light of the Easter candles.
Each face alights before the holy candles,
that Christians bear in hand.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.

Poems for Easter (6): ‘Easter Hymn 6,’ by Tom Wright

Easter Oratorio by Paul Spicer, with words by Tom Wright, was recorded on a double CD for the BBC in 2005

Patrick Comerford

My choice of a Poem for Easter today is a modern hymn with poetic qualities. ‘Easter Hymn 6’ is one of six hymns in the libretto written by Tom Wright for Paul Spicer’s Easter Oratorio.

At the time, the two men were neighbours in the Cathedral Close in Lichfield – Tom Wright was then the Dean of Lichfield and Paul Spicer was still the Artistic Director of the Lichfield International Arts Festival. The oratorio was conceived in 1998 to mark the 1,300th anniversary of the founding of Lichfield Cathedral, and while its first performance was in Ely Cathedral, it received its proper première at the Lichfield Festival on 15 July 2000. The celebrations that year of the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death also left its mark on the score.

The Easter Oratorio begins where the Passion narratives end, with Christ’s body in the tomb and is divided into two parts: Part 1, The New Day; Part 2, The New Calling. It is based on the ground plan of one of Bach’s Passions, with a mixture of choruses, recitatives, arias, chorales and hymns.

Paul Spicer says he “tried to write the work so that it is accessible to good choral societies.”

One reviewer praised the libretto by Tom Wright, divided into a regular succession of choruses, recitatives, arias, chorales and a sequence of six Easter hymns, as “a model of poetic concision and dramatic lucidity.” He divides the work into a regular succession of choruses, recitatives, arias, chorales and a sequence of six Easter hymns.

The words are based closely on Saint John’s Gospel (Chapters 20 and 21), beginning where the Passion ends, with Christ entombed

It was recorded on a double CD in 2005 for the BBC over several days in the spacious acoustics of Hawksyard Priory, near Armitage – I have many happy memories, including musical memories of Spode House and Hawksyard Priory from my late teens and early 20s, when the folk masses organised by the Dominicans there were popular with my friends from around Lichfield and Rugeley.

On that BBC recording, Spicer’s own Birmingham Bach Choir, under his baton, is joined by the Lichfield Cathedral Choristers and the Lichfield Cathedral Special Choir, the English Symphony Orchestra, organist Alexander Mason and an impressive array of soloists headed by the soprano Rachel Nicholls as Mary. The Independent described it as “almost operatic in its inherent drama and memorable tunes.”

Paul Spicer hopes that his Easter Oratorio “will prove useful and attractive to choirs who might be seeking an alternative to the Bach repertoire to be performed around that time of year.” It would be good to hear it one of our cathedrals next year.

Lichfield Cathedral: Paul Spicer’s ‘Easter Oratorio’ was first commissioned for the Lichfield Festival to mark the cathedral’s 1,300th anniversary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

Easter Hymn 6, by NT Wright

Ye choirs of new Jerusalem
Your sweetest notes employ,
The Paschal victory to hymn
In strains of holy joy.

How Judah’s Lion burst his chains,
And crushed the serpent’s head;
And brought with him, from death’s domains,
The long-imprisoned dead.

From hell’s devouring jaws the prey
Alone our Leader bore;
His ransomed hosts pursue their way
Where he hath gone before.

Triumphant in his glory now
His sceptre ruleth all,
Earth, heaven, and hell before him bow,
And at his footstool fall.

While joyful thus his praise we sing,
His mercy we implore,
Into his palace bright to bring
And keep us evermore.

All glory to the Father be,
All glory to the Son,
All glory, Holy Ghost, to thee,
While endless ages run. Alleluia! Amen.

‘Triumphant in his glory now / His sceptre ruleth all’ (Tom Wright, Paul Spicer) … John Piper’s East Window in the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Poems for Easter (5): ‘Easter Poem’ by Ted Walker

Punters in summer sunshine on the River Cam below the Bridge of Sighs at Saint John’s College, Cambridge ... Ted Walker read modern languages here (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Patrick Comerford

For my Poem for Easter this morning I have chosen ‘Easter Poem’ by the prize-winning English poet and writer Ted Walker (1934-2004).

This poem was read on Easter Day last year in the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, by the chaplain, the Revd Richard Lloyd Morgan, who introduced it simply saying: “The paradox of Easter is explored in the English countryside.” Since then, recordings of this reading have received many hits on YouTube.

Ted Walker was born in Lancing, West Sussex, and went to school at Steyning Grammar School before reading modern languages at Saint John’s College, Cambridge.

This poem is dedicated to Ted Walker’s school friend, John Cotton. Together they had founded a poetry magazine, Priapus, and Walker published some work in the early numbers, which mark the beginning of his poetic career. Key figures who influenced Walker’s literary development included the Welsh poet, Canon Leslie Norris (1921-2006), whom he knew as a canon of Chichester Cathedral.

Walker’s first published poem, ‘Breakwaters,’ appeared in The New Yorker in June 1963. This poem was first published two years later in his first collection, Fox on a Barn Door (1965), which focuses on the Sussex countryside and coast.

Walker also wrote plays for the BBC and adapted Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1995) for a television animated production with a voice cast including Alan Bennett, Rik Mayall, Michael Palin and Michael Gambon. But for most of his working life (1971–1992) Walker earned a living as Professor of Creative Writing at New England College, an American liberal arts academy with a campus in West Sussex.

The Revd Richard Lloyd Morgan (right) at King’s College, Cambridge ... he has introduced Ted Walker’s poem to a wider audience through YouTube (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Easter Poem (for John Cotton), by Ted Walker

I had gone on Easter Day
early and alone to be
beyond insidious bells
(that any other Sunday
I’d not hear) up to the hills
where are winds to blow away

commination. In the frail
first light I saw him, unreal
and sudden through lifting mist,
a fox on a barn door, nailed
like a coloured plaster Christ
in a Spanish shrine, his tail

coiled around his loins. Sideways
his head hung limply, his ears
snagged with burdock, his dry nose
plugged with black blood. For two days
he’d held the orthodox pose.
The endemic English noise

of Easter Sunday morning
was mixed with the mist swirling
and might have moved his stiff head.
Under the hill the ringing
had begun. As the sun rose red
to press on seemed the best thing.

I walked the length of the day’s
obsession. At dusk I was
swallowed by the misted barn,
sucked by the peristalsis
of my fear that he had gone,
leaving nails for souvenirs.

But he was there still. I saw
no sign. He hung as before.
Only the wind had risen
to comb the thorns from his fur.
I left my superstition
stretched on the banging barn door.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Poems for Easter (4): Easter Communion, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Patrick Comerford

My choice of a Poem for Easter this morning is ‘Easter Communion’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), the English Jesuit poet, who is often associated with Dublin because he taught at Newman’s Catholic University.

During his time in Ireland, Hopkins was a regular visitor to Monasterevin, Co Kildare, between 1886 and 1889, and this town became one of his few sanctuaries in Ireland. He stayed there on at least seven occasions, as the guest of the Cassidy sisters and, although he was free of any pastoral duties, he said Mass in the oratory, occasionally assisting the parish priest, Father Michael Comerford (1830-1895), at the Holy Communion.

Norman White of University College Dublin has recalled many conversations on politics and history between Hopkins and Comerford, who had recently published a three-volume history of the Diocese of Kildare.

Michael Comerford, who was a cousin of my grandfather, was Parish Priest of Monasterevin from 1878, and Coadjutor Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin from 1888. He was consecrated bishop in Carlow Cathedral on 1 January 1889; Hopkins died later that year in Newman House, Dublin, on 8 June 1889.

Hopkins never gave permission for the publication of his poetry, and his Poems, edited by his friend, the poet laureate Robert Bridges, was not published until 1918.

This morning’s poem was written in 1865, when Hopkins 21 and still an Anglican, and a year before he was received into the Roman Catholic Church by Cardinal John Henry Newman.

Easter Communion, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Pure fasted faces draw unto this feast:
God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips.
You striped in secret with breath-taking whips,
Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced
To crosses meant for Jesu’s; you whom the East
With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips
Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships,
You vigil-keepers with low flames decreased,

God shall o’er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze
And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment
Give myrrhy-threaded golden folds of ease.
Your scarce-sheathed bones are weary of being bent:
Lo, God shall strengthen all the feeble knees.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Poems for Easter (3): ‘Loneliness’ by John Betjeman

‘The last year’s leaves are on the beech ... The Easter bells enlarge the sky,’ John Betjeman (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

My choice of a Poem for Easter this morning is ‘Loneliness’ by the former English poet laureate, John Betjeman (1906-1984).

John Betjeman’s witty tone often led to him being dismissed by critics as a light-weight poet. But beneath the surface, his poems are often profoundly serious.

Recurrent themes in his poems include religion, social class, the English countryside, loneliness and death. The chilling poem ‘Loneliness’ is from Betjeman’s 1974 collection, A Nip in the Air, and while it speaks of how” The Easter bells enlarge the sky,” it shows Betjeman’s deep fear of death.

Betjeman was a life-long Anglo-Catholic, but towards the end of his life, his belief in God waxed and waned. In ‘On a Portrait of a Deaf Man,’ written after his father’s death, he writes:

You, God, who treat him thus and thus,
Say ‘Save his soul and pray.’
You ask me to believe You and
I only see decay.

He suffered nightmares about Hell because he was married to one woman (Penelope Chetwode) but was living with another (Elizabeth Cavendish). When he died in Trebetherick on 19 May 1984, he was buried near the south side of the local parish church, Saint Enodoc’s.

Loneliness by John Betjeman

The last year’s leaves are on the beech:
The twigs are black; the cold is dry;
To deeps beyond the deepest reach
The Easter bells enlarge the sky.
O ordered metal clatter-clang!
Is yours the song the angels sang?
You fill my heart with joy and grief –
Belief! Belief! And unbelief...
And, though you tell me I shall die,
You say not how or when or why.

Indifferent the finches sing,
Unheeding roll the lorries past:
What misery will this year bring
Now spring is in the air at last?
For, sure as blackthorn bursts to snow,
Cancer in some of us will grow,
The tasteful crematorium door
Shuts out for some the furnace roar;
But church-bells open on the blast
Our loneliness, so long and vast.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Beach walks and a beach hut in the Beach House in Bray

Looking out at the beach and the sea from the Beach House in Bray this evening (Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Patrick Comerford

The bank holiday weekend is coming to an end but the Easter season is not over.

It seemed like a good idea to bring the weekend to a close this evening with a walk on the beach in Bray and diner in the Beach House.

There were grey clouds and a light rain when two of us arrived in Bray, and so after barely stepping onto the beach two of us went straight into the Beach House, where we were warmly welcomed and offered our choice between a table near the window or a “Beach Hut” looking out across the restaurant to the sea, with full window views.

Despite the grey feeling outside, the views were spectacular. The setting sun was being caught in sparkling glances on a small rock outcrop in the breaking waves and a few buoys a little further out. Traces of a rainbow appeared once or twice, only to disappear again each time. As the lights receded, the refraction in the windows added a blue hue to the skies and the water.

On the beach below the Beach House in Bray this evening (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Later, down on the beach, the tide was going out and there was a lengthy stretch of sand below the pebbled shore, and there was a clear view of Bray Head to the south.

Easter is such an appropriate time to think of the beauty of the contrast between darkness and light as the stones toll beneath my feet.

Poems for Easter (2): ‘Easter Wings’ by George Herbert

‘Easter Wings’ by George Herbert (1593-1633) ... a pattern poem in which the shape is meant to be appreciated by the reader

Patrick Comerford

Our Easter celebrations continue today [Monday, 9 April 2012] and my choice of a Poem for Easter this morning is ‘Easter Wings’ by the 17th century poet and priest George Herbert (1593-1633). This is a pattern poem in which the work is not only meant to be read, but its shape is meant to be appreciated by the reader. In this case, when the poem was first published in 1633, it was printed on two pages of a book, sideways, so that the lines suggest two birds flying upwards, with their wings spread out.

Herbert is using a form of poetry called carmen figuration, manipulating the overall shape of the poem to mimic its subject. In this way, he shapes both stanzas to look like wings when the poem is turned sideways, representing the ultimate flight of humanity when Christ claim his followers.

This style of writing poems with shapes that mirror their theme was adopted from the ancient Greeks and was popular when Herbert was writing in the early 17th century, with many poets adopting similar styles and forms of writing.

The shape of the poem represents a dying or falling, then rising pattern, which is the theme of the Easter story. The top half of each stanza focuses on the problems caused by human sin, while the bottom half reflects the hope made possible by Christ’s Resurrection at Easter. The wings may evoke also the angels present atin the empty tomb on that first Easter morning (John 20: 12).

But Herbert also adopts other styles in this poem about the fall of humanity and the Resurrection of Christ. He uses capitalisation at the beginning of each line and punctuation at the end of most lines in ‘Easter Wings,’ so that each line stands on its own with a capital letter at the beginning. This method of form, together with hard punctuation, gives each line more stress. In this way, Herbert gains the reader’s attention and invites us to consider the importance of each single line.

In the first two lines, Herbert writes:

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same

urging us to see the significance not only to see the creation and fall of humanity by reading the lines together, but also to see the importance and truth of each line when it is read alone.

Another form used by Herbert is the delegation of meaning, or alliteration in the ending lines of each stanza. As this poem describes the rise and fall of humanity, Herbert places the word “fall” in the last line of Stanza 1 and the word “advance” in the last line of Stanza 2:

Then shall the fall further the flight in me.
... Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

In this way, he invites us to see that “flight” cannot be accomplished without first “falling.”

Stanza 1 traces the decline of humanity. After their creation, Adam and Eve experience the wealth of God’s provision for them in the Garden of Eden, but they disobey God, eating the fruit of the forbidden tree. Expelled from the garden and alienated from God, they and their descendants are condemned to poverty and wretchedness. Rather than believing that humanity grows better and better through the centuries, Herbert reflects the view that humanity has enormous potential that has been wasted by turning away from God.

But there is hope. In the rising part of the stanza, Herbert talks of himself rising with Christ, like a lark that soars and sings in the spring, close to Eastertide.

The alliteration of “the fall further the flight in me” reinforces the paradox of the felix culpa or “happy fault” that teaches the fall of humankind actually had a positive outcome because it results in the coming of Christ to bring humanity into a new relationship with God. Herbert is now applying this hope to himself.

Stanza 2 is parallel in its form. It picks up a number of words and phrases from Stanza 1, and is more specifically autobiographical.

This second part becomes a prayer that his previous suffering may help the poet to fly even higher. “Imp” is a technical term in falconry, meaning to graft feathers on to a damaged wing to restore a bird’s power of flight. Herbert is asking to become one with Christ’s rising from the dead into new life and to soar towards heaven with him. He may have in mind two passages from the Bible, Isaiah 40: 31 and Malachi 4: 2, that link the idea of flight and the experience of God’s healing and renewal.

In the last lines of the poem (lines 17-20), Herbert expresses his view that humanity will eventually fly away with Christ:

Let me combine
And feel this day thy victorie:
For, if I imp my wing on thine
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

In these closing lines, Herbert tells us that if humanity “flies” on the same path as Christ, then our ultimate victory will be to fly up to where Christ dwells.

‘Easter Wings’ in its original shape when the poem was first published in 1633

Easter Wings, by George Herbert

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poore:
With thee
Oh let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

My tender age in sorrow did beginne:
And still with sicknesses and shame
Thou didst so punish sinne,
That I became
Most thinne.
With thee
Let me combine
And feel this day thy victorie:
For, if I imp my wing on thine
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

A beautiful Easter ends with a walk along the shore in Malahide

Looking down on the city lights after the Easter Vigil in Orlagh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Patrick Comerford

This has been a busy, beautiful and very fulfilling Easter. Early on Thursday morning, we had a Maundy Thursday Eucharist with foot-washing for the institute students and staff. Later I was in Christ Church Cathedral for the chrism Eucharist and the renewal of ordination vows for all in ministry in the Diocese of Dublin and Glendalough.

Good Friday on the stairs to the Robing Room in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

On Good Friday, I was preaching at Matins and Evensong in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, before returning to Christ Church Cathedral for the Good Friday liturgy there, and then going on to Maynooth to preach at the Good Friday Evening Service in Saint Mary’s, the Church of Ireland parish church which nestles into a corner of the grounds of Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth.

I took Saturday afternoon off to watch the Cambridge-Oxford boat race – a joyful victory for Cambridge, and one the most dramatic sports events I have watched. Later, on Saturday evening, in the mountains above Knocklyon, I was at the Augustinian Priory in Orlagh for the Easter Vigil, celebrated by members of the Orlagh Team, Father John Byrne and Father Kieran O’Mahony.

Father John Byrne lights the Pascal Candle from the Pascal Fire at the Easter Vigil at Orlagh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

We began outside with the Pascal Fire, lighting the Pascal Candle as we looked up at the night sky above and down on the city lights below. After the liturgy in the chapel at Orlagh, we were entertained to Prosecco, Panetonne, and Colomba Pasquale, the Easter counterpart of Panetonne.

Easter eggs in a crown of thorns beneath the empty cross in the chapel in Orlagh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

I was back in Christ Church Cathedral once again this morning, when Archbishop Michael Jackson and Dean Dermot Dunne presided at the Easter Eucharist. And what a beautiful morning it was, with the choir and accompanying musicians giving us a wonderful interpretation of Mozart’s Coronation Mass or Krönungsmesse (Mass No 15 in C major, KV 317; sometimes Mass No 16).

Mozart completed this Mass in Salzburg on 23 March 1779 after he had been appointed court organist and composer at Salzburg Cathedral. The mass almost certainly had its premiere there on Easter Day, 4 April 1779. It appears to have been first called the “Coronation Mass” at the Imperial Court in Vienna in the early 19th century

Later, five of us went for lunch in Bar Italia, in Bloom’s Lane in the Italian Quarter off Ormond Quay. We strolled back to the cathedral through Temple Bar, and two of us later went on out to Malahide to visit Malahide Castle and then to have a stroll on the beach.

Malahide Castle ... home to the Talbot family for almost 800 years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Having visited Howth Castle and Clontarf Castle in recent weeks, I was looking forward to seeing another historic north Dublin family home. This is one of the busiest holiday weekends in Dublin – we had a congregation of about 400 in Christ Church Cathedral this morning, with visitors from all over the world. Yet Fingal County Council has fenced off Malahide Castle, with a tiny notice, almost invisible to the short-sighted visitor, saying the castle is closed until Summer 2012 – without saying when in summer.

Malahide Castle stands in over 260 acres of the remaining parkland from the Malahide Demesne, and the castle and estate have a history dating back to the 12th century, when Richard Talbot was granted the “lands and harbour of Malahide” in 1185. The oldest parts of the castle date back to the 12th century, and it was home to the Talbot family for almost 800 years, from 1185 until 1976, apart from a brief period in 1649–1660, when it was held by the Cromwellian Miles Corbet.

After Cromwell’s death, Corbet was hanged and the castle was restored to the Talbot family, who since 1445 have also held the unusual title of Hereditary Lord Admiral of Malahide and Adjacent Seas, which was given to the head of the family by King Edward IV.

On the morning of the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, 14 members of the Talbot family sat down to breakfast in the Great Hall of Malahide Castle – and all were dead by evening. After the Battle of the Boyle, the Duchess of Tyrconnell, wife of Richard Talbot, is said to have met the defeated and fleeing King James, who said “the rascally Irish have run away from me.” She replied: “Your majesty has won the race.” To this day, Jan Wyck’s canvas of the Battle of the Boyne hangs in the Great Hall of Malahide Castle.

Despite the Boyne defeat and the subsequent Penal Laws, the Talbot family held on to Malahide Castle, and the towers were added to the castle in 1765. The demesne is one of few surviving examples of 18th century landscaped parks, and has wide lawns surrounded by a protective belt of trees.

In 1831, the Irish peerage title of Baron Talbot of Malahide was given to Margaret Talbot, widow of Richard Talbot, heir of the ancient Lords of Malahide. She was succeeded by their eldest son, the second Baron. In 1839 he was made Baron Furnival, of Malahide in the UK peerage County of Dublin. That title died out on his death, when the Irish barony passed his younger brother, the third Baron. His son, the fourth Baron, was made Baron Talbot de Malahide, of Malahide, in the UK Peerage in 1856.

In the 1920s, the private papers of James Boswell were discovered in the castle, and sold to an American collector, Ralph H. Isham, by Boswell’s great-great-grandson, James Boswell Talbot, sixth Lord Talbot of Malahide.

When the sixth baron died in 1948, the peerages were inherited by his cousin, the seventh Baron, who was British Ambassador to Laos from 1955 to 1956.

When the seventh Lord Talbot of Malahide died in 1973, the barony of 1856 died out, while the Irish peerage title passed to his third cousin, the eighth baron, and Malahide Castle and Demesne passed to his sister, Rose. In 1975, she sold the castle to the Irish State, partly to fund inheritance taxes. But controversially many of the castle contents, including much of the furniture, had been sold in advance. Rose Talbot died at Malahide House in Tasmania three years ago.

Walking in the light rain along the shoreline in Malahide (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Later, we walked in the light rain along the shoreline at Malahide, with views out to the offshore islands of Ireland’s Eye and Lambay, with glimpses across the Broadway Estuary towards the pinnacles of Portrane Hospital, and view of the Marina, although there was no sign of Hereditary Lord Admiral of Malahide and Adjacent Seas.

We strolled through Malahide village, and stopped for coffee in Insomnia, before buying the Sunday papers and returning along the coast road through Portrmarnock, Baldoyle, Sutton and Dollymount to the city centre.

She sells sea shells by the seashore ... The Ammonite by Niall O’Neill near the Marina in Malahide (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Poems for Easter (1): ‘Easter’ by George Herbert

Christ is Risen ... a Resurrection scene in a stained-glass window in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Patrick Comerford

George Herbert (1593-1633) was a skilled priest, poet and teacher, and an accomplished musician, who in his poetry brings together poetry, music and architecture. His poem ‘Easter,’ first published in The Temple shortly after his death (1633), is a highly complex connotative poem that is often difficult to grasp.

This poem, in two parts, is an example of how Herbert’s poems sometimes take a double-poem organisation with two separate stanza forms – a structure he uses too in a companion poem, ‘Good Friday.’

‘Easter’ was originally written by Herbert as two separate poems, but the call in the first verse, ‘Rise heart; thy Lord is risen,’ and the musical images of verses two and three, find their fullest expression in the song of praise of the final three verses.

In this poem, Herbert addresses his heart as he prepares for Easter. Reflecting on the Resurrection, he is moved in the first part of the poem to compose a song (lines 1-18), and he then shares this song in the second part of the poem (lines 19-30). There is good reason to believe that Herbert intended the second, less formal part of this poem to be sung to the accompaniment of a lute.

As an accomplished player of the lute, Herbert was a fan of the works of John Dowland (1563-1626). According to the historian of the Diocese of Ferns, WH Grattan-Flood, Dowland was born in Dalkey, Co Dublin. Dowland’s ‘The Most Sacred Queen Elizabeth, Her Galliard’ (1610) – from Varietie of Lute Lessons, prepared by his son Robert Dowland – perfectly matches the meter and rhyming scheme of Herbert’s ‘Easter’ and may have been intended as the music to which it would be sung.

Reading the poem

In this poem ‘Easter,’ Herbert turns to his lute to assist him in song, and he draws on Scripture to illustrate the poem, drawing on words in Psalm 57: 8-10 and on the theme of Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans, with its exploration of how we are made right with God through Christ’s death on the cross. Herbert may be reflecting on Romans 6: 4, where we participate in Christ’s death and resurrection, being re-created into a new creation.

In line 5, “calcined” is a chemical term referring to the process where impurities are removed from precious metals, or the means reducing things lime or some other similar substance. In this case, Herbert is thinking of how at death our bones are reduced to chalk or our lowest commonest denominator, the dust of which we all are made.

In line 11 (“His stretched sinews”), Herbert pictures Christ’s arms stretched tight on the cross, like lute strings, which in Herbert’s days were made from the muscle fibres of animals. Sacred music was traditionally set to higher keys than secular music – and the tighter the string, the higher the pitch. Christ, stretched out in death on the wood of the cross, becomes God’s instrument, playing a melody of love to the world. The heart responds to the melody by joining with it, as instrumentalists join together in consort to make music. But since none can sing this tune perfectly, a further strand needs to be woven: that of the Spirit who makes up “our defects with his sweet art.”

Just as the wooden cross proclaimed Christ’s saving work, so Herbert’s wooden lute resonates with the same message.

In line 15, “three parts” refers to the fact that most chords have only three different notes that are repeated and multiplied at different octaves in different voices or instruments. Music is an art form that appeals universally through notes and pauses. Herbert’s identification of all music as but “three parts vied and all multiplied” recalls the Trinity, and how this relationship is played out in each of us. As a result, our cacophony becomes euphony as we are harmonised according to the interplay of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A chord of three is not easily broken, and is at its most mysterious yet vibrant in music.

Just as chords are fundamentally composed of triads, Herbert sees the worship of his heart and lute as incomplete without the aid of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit makes “up our defects with his sweet art” (line 18).

The heart responds to the melody by joining with it, as instrumentalists join together in consort to make music. But since none can sing this tune perfectly, a further strand needs to be woven: that of the Spirit who makes up “our defects with his sweet art.”

The change of structure in line 19 indicates the beginning of the song alluded to in line 1. In this song of joyful celebration, Herbert sees the day of Christ’s resurrection as unsurpassed in glory. “Can there be any day like this” (verse 19) – the sun that rises each day of the year cannot shine as brightly as the Son of God as he brings light to the world.

The first allusion in the song, in lines 19 to 22, is to Palm Sunday (see Mark 11: 8-9).

The second allusion, in lines 23 to 26, is to the women who brought spices to Christ’s tomb on Easter morning (see Mark 16: 1-2).

However, the Risen Christ does not need their gifts. In fact, all gifts offered to Christ – including the sun illumining the empty grave, and the Magi providing gold, frankincense and myrrh years before – pale in comparison throughout the year (the “three hundred” days in line 29) to the glory of the Resurrection. For this reason Herbert sees Easter as the definitive moment in human history.

And so, in this poem, Herbert helps us see the love that our Creator holds for his creation. If we read this poem as a contemplative prayer, we find we are encouraged to consider the art of living and dying, as God has done for us, and how we, through faith, do in him. Herbert renders God an instrument – and even God’s body an instrument – and reminds us that we are all included as potential participants in the Christ’s Resurrection, and not just as passive observers.

Trinity Lane, Cambridge, in the snow earlier this year, with the walls of Trinity College on the right ... George Herbert was a Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge until he entered parish ministry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Easter, by George Herbert

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delayes,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him mayst rise:
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part
With all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name,
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long:
Or, since all musick is but three parts vied
And multiplied,
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.

I got me flowers to straw thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The Sunne arising in the East,
Though he give light, and th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we misse:
There is but one, and that one ever.

Noli me tangere ... a Resurrection image in a stained glass window in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Interpretation by Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams set these words to music in his Five Mystical Songs, which are being sung at Choral Evensong in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, this afternoon. The Five Mystical Songs, written between 1906 and 1911, sets four poems by Herbert from The Temple, including the first section of Easter, lines 1-18, and received its first performance on 14 September 1911, at the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester, with Vaughan Williams conducting.

The five Mystical Songs are among the more successful vocal efforts by Vaughan Williams in the years immediately before World War I. Like Herbert’s simple verse, the songs are fairly direct, but have the same intrinsic spirituality as the original text. They were supposed to be performed together, as a single work, but the styles of each vary quite significantly

Vaughan William admired George Herbert for his multiple talents and for his understanding of the nature of music. He collected four of Herbert’s poems, splitting the first poem, ‘Easter,’ to serve as the text for both the first and second of the five Mystical Songs. He set them to music and applied the name ‘Mystical’ to the assemblage, simply because he found George Herbert’s poetry to be rife with that quality.

The songs are generally better served when the optional chorus and orchestra are used, though in the second song a more intimate atmosphere may be preferable.

The first song, ‘Easter,’ shows the poet’s musical proclivities. Beginning with the second verse, Herbert uses a number of musical metaphors in his poetry concerning the passion and death of Christ. As we have seen, he writes:

His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Whatever mystical qualities Vaughan Williams saw here, he did not play up in his music, for his style in this song is closer to that of his Sea Symphony (1903-1909; revised 1923), and the overall style comes across as post-Romantic, intimately so in the middle section.

The second song, ‘I got me flowers,’ uses text from the second half of Herbert’s ‘Easter.’ Here again, Vaughan Williams clings to a Romantic approach, though the music is subdued in comparison with the more grandiose ‘Easter.’ The sparse scoring in the orchestral version is largely limited to winds and harp. The one outburst comes at the end when the chorus (or soloist) proclaims: “There is but one, and that one ever.”

The soloist takes a key role in the third song, ‘Love Bade Me Welcome,’ where the chorus has a wholly supporting role – quietly and wordlessly singing the plainsong melody O Sacrum Convivium, while the soloist sings the textual close. This is the longest of the five songs. The text relates a conversation between the poet and Love. The style again recalls that of the Sea Symphony.

The chorus does not feature at all in the fourth song, ‘The Call,’ which is the shortest of the songs. It has a mixture of stylistic elements, from the folk-like character of the melody to the Romantic style of the writing to the religious sense of its serenity.

The fifth and final song, ‘Antiphon,’ with its exuberant manner, its ecstatic energy, and its praiseworthy text – “Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing/My God and King” – is sometimes performed on its own as a church anthem for choir and organ: “Let all the world in every corner sing.”

Five Mystical Songs, by Ralph Vaughan Williams:

1, Easter, from George Herbert’s ‘Easter’

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen.
Sing his praise without delayes,
Who takes thee by the hand,
that thou likewise with him may’st rise;
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part with all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name, who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is the best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song pleasant and long;
Or since all musick is but three parts vied and multiplied.
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.

2, I Got Me Flowers, from the second half of George Herbert’s ‘Easter’

I got me flowers to strew thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The Sunne arising in the East.
Though he give light, and th’East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we misse:
There is but one, and that one ever.

3, Love Bade Me Welcome, from George Herbert’s ‘Love’ (III)

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back.
Guiltie of dust and sinne.
But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack’d anything.

A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah, my deare,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?
My deare, then I will serve.
You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.

4, The Call, from George Herbert’s ‘The Call’

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
Such a Life, as killeth death.

Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast, as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.

Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joyes in love.

5, Antiphon, from George Herbert’s ‘Antiphon’ (I)

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing:
My God and King.
The heavens are not too high,
His praise may thither flie;
The earth is not too low,
His praises there may grow.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing:
My God and King.
The Church with psalms must shout,
No doore can keep them out;
But above all, the heart
Must bear the longest part.

Let all the world in ev’ry corner sing:
My God and King.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.