Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 126, Friday 11 September 2026

‘Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye?’ (Luke 6: 41) … an image in the Talbot Inn in Loughton, Milton Keynes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and the week began with the and the week began with the Festival of Creation in Christ or the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XIV, 6 September 2026).

In the Jewish Calendar, Rosh Hashanah (ראש השנה) begins at sunset tonight (Friday 11 September 2026) and ends at nightfall on Sunday (13 September 2026). Rosh Hashanah, literally ‘head of the year’, is the Jewish New Year. According to Jewish tradition, the holiday commemorates the creation of humanity and serves as a day of divine judgment. It is the first of the High Holy Days and begins the Ten Days of Repentance, culminating in Yom Kippur, which begins at sunset on Sunday 20 September and ends at nightfall on Monday 21 September.

Later today, many of us, I am sure, will be reflecting on the horrific events of ‘9/11’ 25 years ago on 11 September 2001. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye?’ (Luke 6: 41) … street art in Plaza de Judería in Malaga (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 6: 39-42 (NRSVA):

39 He also told them a parable: ‘Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit? 40 A disciple is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher. 41 Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? 42 Or how can you say to your neighbour, “Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye”, when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbour’s eye.’

‘First take the log out of your own eye’ (Luke 6: 39) … autumn logs by the River Ouse in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

For some days, the Gospel readings have taken us through the ‘Sermon on the Level Place’, Saint Luke’s equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount, which we began reading yesterday with Saint Luke’s version of the Beatitudes (Luke 6: 20-38).

As we continue this sequence of readings from Saint Luke’s Gospel, we read sayings whose parallels in Saint Matthew’s Gospel (see Matthew 15) are addressed to the Pharisees, but here are addressed to the disciples.

In this reading, Christ makes two points.

Firstly, the blind cannot lead the blind. The disciple, left to himself or herself, does not know very much and depends on the teacher. But once the disciple is fully trained and has learnt everything it is possible to discern from the teacher, then the learner becomes an extension of the teacher. At that point, the disciple shares the teacher’s knowledge and wisdom and can, in turn, be a guide to others.

We ought to listen carefully to what Christ says to us and make it part of our own lives. Only then can we effectively lead others to him.

But, secondly, we need to be mindful about sitting in judgment on others. Christ uses a graphic image of someone trying to remove a speck of dust from another person’s eye while there is a large ‘log’ in their own. How can I see properly to correct the vision of my fellow disciple or Christian when my own vision is so distorted?

The faults I so easily see in others are often trivial in comparison with my own shortcomings. Of course, much of the energy I exert in gossip and in putting down others may be sub-conscious attempts to compensate for my own shortcomings. Instead of lifting myself up by changing my ways, I can try to drag others down.

But then, our judgments so often are based purely on external behaviour. We usually have no idea of the inner motives or intentions of other people, or an awareness of their inability to behave in way other than the way then do.

How often, when I am quick to criticism other people behind their backs am I equally quick to say those things to face-to-face. Yet, how often, when I am asked professionally to offer an objective evaluation of a person’s behaviour or their fitness for some responsibility, do I shy away from those responsibilities?

What is true sight and true light?

During a visit to Liverpool many years ago, I visited Hope Street, and there above the Hope Street entrance to the former Royal School for the Blind was the inscription: ‘Christ heals the blind, for who denies that in the mind dwell truer sight and clearer light than in the eyes?’

Both this morning’s reading and that inscription also find interesting parallels in Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’ (The Republic, Book VII).

No one, of course, denies the idea that the mind possesses truer sight and clearer light than the eyes. In an account of Socrates in The Republic, Plato argues that our earthly senses can be misleading and that true understanding is found through the intellect and the forms, not the physical senses.

In Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’, prisoners mistake shadows on a wall for reality. When one prisoner is freed and sees the true objects and the light of the sun, he finds the ‘reality’ of the cave far less clear than the true world, even though his eyes are pained by the light. This illustrates that physical sight can be deceptive, while the intellect understands a higher reality.

Plato believed that the intellect and reason, not the senses, provide true understanding and wisdom. The mind's perception is superior to the deceptive nature of physical vision.

He recalls Socrates’ allegory of the cave. Socrates has compared a philosophic education to leaving a dark cave and emerging into the light. He notes that, when you leave the dark and enter the light, it takes your eyes awhile to adjust; you cannot see at first.

Imagine leaving a dark cinema in the middle of a sunny day: it is hard to see outside at first.

So, the philosophers need to leave the cave and have their eyes adjust to the bright outside world. Once this happens, though, Socrates argues that they must be forced to go back into the dark cave, to rule.

The cave, it turns out, is an image of the city with its conventional opinions, as opposed to the truth. Socrates notes that, when the philosophers go back into the cave, it will also take some time for their eyes to adjust to the darkness.

Imagine, now, going back into that dark cinema in the middle of that sunny day; it is hard to see inside at first.

Socrates is comparing bodily vision to intellectual vision. There are two possible causes for someone who has bad bodily vision: they might be going from the dark to the light; or they might be going from the light to the dark. So too with intellectual vision: someone with bad intellectual vision may be going from the dark cave of opinions to the light of the truth, or they may be going from the light of the truth back to the dark cave of opinions.

Today’s Gospel sayings warn us against either form of blindness, but also warn us against leading others when we are not aware of suffering from one or other – or both – forms of blindness.

Blind Socrates … a statue by Pietro Magni (1817-1877) of Milan in the Botanic Gardens, Dublin, and previously in the gardens of Iveagh House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 11 September 2026):

In my prayers this morning, I am remembering the horrific events of 9/11 25 years ago, on 11 September 2001, the dead, the injured, the maimed and the traumatised, all who lost family members, friends, colleagues and livelihoods, the brave first responders, and journalists like my colleagues in The Irish Times who worked hard through that difficult day to make sure the world knew the truth and the facts.

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, from 6-12 September 2026 (pp 36-37), is ‘Turning Pain into Glory’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Reflection by Nolene Sheppard, Leader of a Women’s Empowerment Group, Magnificat, and Ukraine Aid Project Support Lead at Saint Thomas à Becket, Hamburg, Germany.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 11 September 2026) invites us to pray:

Father in heaven, we pray that by your grace the work of the Magnificat group may be strengthened to bring guidance, stability, and hope to refugee women and children residing in Germany too.

The Collect of the Day:

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.

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.

Additional Collect:

Merciful God:
your Son came 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

An inscription above the Hope Street entrance of the former Royal School for the Blind, Liverpool (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

No passport to Pimlico is needed for an afternoon visit to the streets and squares of Thomas Cubitt

‘Passport to Pimlico’ … a scene in the Ealing comedy includes stopping an Underground train and demanding passports (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

The Ealing comedies, produced between 1947 and 1957, were known for their gentle irony, eccentric characters, and sharp social satire, often pitting the ordinary, well-meaning underdog against pompous authority or rigid social systems.

Three of those classics from Ealing Studios were produced in 1949 alone: Kind Hearts and Coronets, a dark comedy in which a disinherited man tries to murder eight relatives to claim a title, with Alec Guinness playing all the family victims; Passport to Pimlico, where a London neighbourhood discovers it is legally a part of Burgundy in France, leading to absurd stand-offs with bureaucracy and officialdom; and Whisky Galore!, when remote Scottish islanders scramble to salvage 50,000 cases of whisky from a shipwreck during a wartime drought.

Other well-remembered films in the series include The Lavender Hill Mob (1951); The Man in the White Suit (1951) and The Ladykillers (1955).

Present-day Pimlico was first laid out over 200 years ago in 1825 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The story of Passport to Pimlico involves the discovery of lost treasure and legal documents that lead to a small part of Pimlico being declared a legal part of the Duchy of Burgundy, exempting the area from the post-war rationing and other bureaucratic restrictions. The film evokes nostalgia for the spirit and unity in London during the Blitz after the war and looks at what is regarded as English resilience, and celebrates working class heroes in a quintessentially middle class area.

When an unexploded bomb detonates in Miramont Gardens in Pimlico, the explosion reveals a long-buried cellar filled with artwork, coins, jewellery and an ancient charter from Edward IV that cedes a house and its estates to the last Duke of Burgundy after the Battle of Nancy in 1477 As the charter had never been revoked, an area of Pimlico is declared a left-over legal part of Burgundy.

When rationing and other post-war restrictions is abolished in Pimlico, the enclave is flooded with black marketeers and shoppers. In responses and recriminations, area is surrounded with barbed wire, the residents stop an Underground train as it passes through Burgundy demanding to see passports, and all water and food are cut off at the new border. After tense diplomatic negotiations, Burgundy is reunited with Britain – and ration books return, along with British weather as a summer heatwave turns to a torrential downpour.

‘Rus in Urbe’ … the squares of Pimlico still have private gardens for the sole use of residents (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

I spent the afternoon in Pimlico yesterday, wandering around its elegant Georgian terraces and squares, enjoying its architectural legacy and visiting is churches. To my disappointment, but not to my surprise, there is no Miramont Gardens in Pimlico. But no one asked to see my passport, and in the street cafés and the spillover onto the streets from the bars and restaurant it can be seen there is not even a hint of the memory of post-war rations and restrictions.

Pimlico in central London is part of the City of Westminster, between Victoria Station and the River Thames. It was built as a southern extension to neighbouring Belgravia, and has more than 350 Grade II–listed buildings and many Grade II* listed churches.

The grid of residential streets at the heart of Pimlico was laid out by the planner Thomas Cubitt, beginning over 200 years ago in 1825. It includes three garden squares, Saint George’s Square, Warwick Square and Eccleston Square, and the wider avenues of Belgrave Road and Saint George’s Drive.

Pimlico also includes Dolphin Square, built in 1935-1937, and Churchill Gardens and Lillington and Longmoore Gardens, built after the war. Churchill Gardens, developed in 1946-1962, replaced several terraces designed by Cubitt terraces and damaged in the Blitz.

The name Pimlico may sound Spanish or Italian, but the originsof the name remain shrouded in legend and local lore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The name Pimlico sounds Spanish or Italian, but various legends ascribe it to either Ben Pimlico, a publican in Hoxton, or from trade on the river with American Indians.

Pimlico dates back to the royal Manor of Ebury, which was sold off by James I In 1623. It was inherited by Mary Davies, a young heiress in 1666, whose dowry included what are present-day Pimlico and Belgravia, and much of Mayfair and Knightsbridge. At the age of 12, she married Sir Thomas Grosvenor of Eaton Hall, Cheshire, in 1677. Their descendants in the Grosvenor family became Marquesses and later Dukes of Westminster.

Thomas Cubitt was contracted by Lord Grosvenor to develop the once marshy lands of Pimlico in 1825. Cubitt developed Pimlico as a grid of attractive white stucco terraces along Saint George’s Drive, Belgrave Road and Lupus Street, and on Eccleston Square, Warwick Square and Saint George’s Square. Smaller, three-storey houses were built on the side streets.

Several Peabody estates were designed to provide affordable, quality working class housing in the late 19th century, and when the Revd Gerald Olivier, father of Laurence Olivier, moved from Notting Hill to Pimlico as the curate of Saint Saviour’s in 1912, he came as a ‘slum priest’ for west London.

Pimlico is close to the Houses of Parliament and so it became a lively area for political life in the early 20th century. The Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress once shared offices at 33 Eccleston Square. Sir Winston Churchill lived at 33 Eccleston Square and Morpeth Terrace for a time. The fascist leader Oswald Mosley lived at Dolphin Square, until his arrest in 1940, and it was the headquarters of Charles De Gaulle and the Free French for much of World War II.

The statue of Thomas Cubitt by William Fawke (1948-2018) at the corner of Denbigh Street and Saint George’s Drive (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

After World War II, many of the larger Victorian houses were converted into small hotels. The Duke of Westminster sold off much of the Grosvenor estate, including Pimlico, in 1953. Pimlico was designated a conservation area in 1968 and successive waves of development since then have given Pimlico an interesting social mix.

The Anglican churches in Pimlico included Saint Gabriel’s, Saint Saviour’s and Saint James the Less, and Saint Peter’s, Eaton Square, Belgravia, was known as Saint Peter’s, Pimlico, until the 1870s. I visited Saint Gabriel’s, Saint Saviour’s and Saint Peter’s during my stroll around Pimlico yesterday, but more about them in the days to come, hopefully.

Artistic, literary and other notable figures who have lived in Pimlico include the illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, the writers Joseph Conrad, Bram Stoker and Barbara Pym, Jomo Kenyatta, first president of Kenya, the Hindu philosopher Swami Vivekananda, Walter Clopton Wingfield, the father figure in lawn tennis, the designer Laura Ashley, and the dancer Isadora Duncan.

‘Passport to Pimlico’ celebrates working class heroes and resilience in a quintessentially middle class area (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Surprisingly, the outdoor scenes in the Ealing comedy Passport To Pimlico were shot not in Pimlico but about a mile away in Lambeth. The scene of food airlifts into the enclave of Burgundy may have been inspired by the flights during the Berlin Blockade in 1948-1949.

For many, the film continues to celebrate English values of individualism, tolerance and compromise. But even today it points to the absurdity of passport border checks between Britain and France.

It is a reminder that England has always shared a common cultural legacy and identity with the rest of Europe, and a reminder too of the absurdity of trying to live in insular isolation in a post-war Europe that sought to bring us closer to one another as a way of countering war and the potential rise again of authoritarianism.

Past residents of Pimlico have included Sir Winston Churchill (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 66, Sunday 12 July 2026, Sixth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VI)

The gardens at the Hedgehog Vintage Inn in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and today is the Sixth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VI, 12 July 2026). Later this morning, I hope to sing with the choir at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford.

The calendar of the Orthodox Church today also commemorates the memory of Saint Paisios (1924-1994) of Mount Athos. Because of his close associations with Saint Sophrony the Athonite, Saint Paisios has had a strong influence in the monastic and spiritual life of the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of Sain John the Baptist in Tolleshunt Knights, founded in 1958. Saint Paisios was canonised by the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2015.

But, before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

The garden in the cloisters in Arkadi Monastery in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23 (NRSVA):

13 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the lake. 2 Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. 3 And he told them many things in parables, saying: ‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. 5 Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. 6 But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8 Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. 9 Let anyone with ears listen!’

18 ‘Hear then the parable of the sower. 19 When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. 20 As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; 21 yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. 22 As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. 23 But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.’

A shaded corner in the Municipal Gardens in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

Despite my enjoyable visit to the Urban Farm in Wolverton a few days ago, I have to admit I am not good at sowing, not good in a garden, not good at growing plants or trees, and certainly not good at growing them from seed.

I try to explain this away with excuses such as heavy hay fever since childhood or claiming I do not have green fingers. But to tell the truth, it may be because of a combination of faults: because I expect quick results and because I expect perfection.

I enjoy sitting in a garden, reading, eating in the open, listening to the fountain, but not weeding the flower beds, tending the plants or mowing the lawn.

In short, I do not do gardening, I do not do garden centres.

But during the times I spend in Crete, I often find myself unexpectedly appreciating gardens and growing and growth.

Over the years, I have stayed regularly in places in Rethymnon like Julia Apartments or Varvara’s Diamond in Platanias, La Stella in Tsesmes and the Pepi Hotel on Tsouderon Street – places where I have enjoyed breakfast on terraces overlooking gardens with tall, leafy trees and a variety of flowers and plants, many of them over 100 years old.

Vasilis Vogiatzis and his family at the Taverna Garden in Platanias explained how it took over a century to grow the plants, flowers and trees at Julia Apartments. It was careful nurturing, a gentle and loving task handed on from one generation to the next in his family, with no expectation of immediate, personal reward for any one generation.

Platanias is a suburb and resort about 5 km east of Rethymnon. In the very heart of Rethymnon itself, the Municipal Garden is an attraction that few tourists visit or appreciate. But the garden is a welcome, cool and refreshing place in the middle of the heatwaves in Crete, when temperatures at this time of the year are often in the very high 30s, and can even hit 40.

The garden is near the city centre and close to the old city walls and the Venetian gates into the Old Town.

This is a green area that includes a playground, drinking fountains, the busts of writers and politicians, and a cafeteria. Originally, it was a Turkish Muslim cemetery. After the Turks left Crete in the 1920s, the city council decided not to build on the site. Instead, they created a garden that respected the dead and gave pleasure to the living.

Now it is a home to rare plants, a place for the people of the town to stroll in the shade away from the summer heat, and a venue for political and cultural events, including a festival that was running all last week.

This 100-year-old garden, dating from 1925, has taken a century, more than three full generations, to reach its present mature beauty.

It takes that span of time to plant, grow, develop and shape two gardens like these. The people who had the vision for them, who laid out the pathways, who sowed the seeds and tended the first saplings in their early stages of growth, knew they would never see their work come to maturity, they would never see the fruits of their dreams.

At times, they must have been frustrated. In the old graveyard, inevitably some of their seeds and saplings ended up being sown or planted on stony ground and never grew properly. In the summer heat and drought, many seeds and plants must have found too little water and been burned by the sun. Some must have been trampled on by people dining in the taverna garden or eager to see the new phenomenon of a municipal public garden.

But the planners passed on their vision, and in over the years I have benefitted from their vision, their persistence and their tenacity.

Too often we expect immediate results. And too often we judge whether a project is a success or a failure by asking whether it is producing immediate, measurable, visible, tangible results. If not, we dismiss that project as an immediate failure.

In the Old Testament reading this morning (Genesis 25: 19-34), Rebekah knows about postponed and delayed expectations. She is married for 20 years and Isaac is 60 before she conceives. To add to her surprise after all those years, she finds she is pregnant not with one child but with two, twin boys.

Their father Isaac does not expect Jacob to grow and become his heir.

Instead, Esau is the hunter gatherer, while Jacob seems to be the stay-at-home boy, the ‘Mammy’s boy,’ with a hint that he is good at stirring up trouble, cooking a stew (see verse 29).

Esau expects immediate results, to the point that he is willing to give up his long-term prospects, his rights and inheritance as the first-born son, for the immediate satisfaction of the lentil stew Isaac has been brewing up.

Esau expects immediate results. He lacks the patience to wait and see what may happen, he does not have the ability, the commitment or the endurance to stick with things.

The Psalmist too (Psalm 119: 105-112) is challenged to consider his own need for patience and endurance, to see not his immediate predicament but to look to the future. He thinks he is a failure because of his present circumstances, but does the rejection he feels today shape his tomorrow?

Perhaps the dominant theme running through this stanza of Psalm 119 is our need for patience and determination. The psalmist learns patiently in the face of the wicked, in living with deep troubles, insults, innuendoes and immediate risks to his life to remain in awe of God.

He has an inheritance that is not only for the here and now, but for future generations, for ever (verse 111), and for ever and to the end (verse 112).

In the face of adversity, this is his real joy, even though he may not see the fruits of his faithfulness, it will be of benefit to future generations.

Just because something works now does not mean it is right for the future. Just because something does not work now does not mean it is wrong for the future.

It is not the fault of the seed that it has fallen on rocky soil, or landed on the roadway, or been burned up in the mid-day sun. God scatters where he will, abundantly and generously.

On the other hand, we can achieve little by our own innate qualities or abilities. We are all inter-dependent – just like the seed, which depends on the sower and on soil, sun, rain and the right conditions.

Why does some of the seed yield better results? – some of it is immeasurably better than that other seed.

Growth occurs without us seeing or knowing it. Yet we can have such limited expectations of God.

Why does God allow certain people to do this, that or the other?

Why does God allow particular people or nations to prosper?

Why does God seemingly reward the wayward and the careless, those I would prefer to see left on rocky soil or would pass by on the side of the road?

If only God behaved a little more like I do, or like I want God to, would this not be a far, far better world?

Would this not be a far, far better society?

Would this not be a far, far better Church?

And so on.

Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob too, do not see the working out of God’s plans in future generations. Like the sower who sows so that others may reap, how could Isaac and Rebekah know what Jacob’s bowl of lentils would lead to?

Sometimes in the Church, we become very exercised about attendance figures and with this anxiety comes talk of Church growth, Church planting, and reaching the unchurched. But sometimes, just sometimes, I wonder whether we are neglecting our own inheritance, the harvest of the seeds that have already been planted by previous generations, the promises that were made to past generations.

Success in ordinary parishes like this is not to be judged by business models of rapid growth or charts that track increases in sales and profits. Our measures for growth must be so different. We are to be as salt and light in our communities. True growth may be found not in quantity but in quality: how we love our neighbours, how we encourage and help them to grow in their faith, how we are faithful witnesses to the love of God and the love of others.

And, as we know, love, hope and faith cannot be measured, because they cannot be bought or sold, and their true value bears fruit not in the now and the immediate but over decades, over time.

There is hope. There is hope for small or dwindling congregations. If we have hope in the seeds sown in the past, if we pay attention to the potential harvest, if we look with faith and hope to the future, then there is no reason to fret about present figures.

Like the garden planners in Crete who had vision in Rethymnon a century ago, we may not see the growth that follows our faithful attention to our own little patches today. But there is no need to dismiss congregations that are small in numbers as being small in the benefits that they bring to the wider community.

I like to think of small churches as having the real potential to be the spiritual gardens of our wider communities. As Thomas More once said: ‘The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden.’

Summer flowers in the gardens of houses in Platanias near Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 12 July 2026, Trinity VI):

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, from 12 to 18 July 2026 (pp 18-19), is ‘The Land of the Highlanders’. This theme is introduced today with a reflection by the Most Revd Mark Strange, Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church:

The Scottish Highlands are vast, amounting to an area roughly the size of Belgium, yet home to only 230,000 people. This is a land shaped by Gaelic, Scots, and English cultures, and by a long history of exclusion. After 1689, the Scottish Episcopal Church endured persecution, particularly following Culloden, when Highland culture and language were deliberately suppressed, leaving us as ‘the last remnant of the non-dealing Church of the North’.

The emptiness of the Highlands is rooted in land dispossession, especially during the Highland Clearances, when people were removed from ancestral lands to make way for sheep and estates owned by the wealthy. Though communities named the mountains, rivers and seas, those names were often erased. For example, Ben Nevis’ real name is Beinn Nibheis. Today around 80% of the land is owned by just 300 people, many of whom have never lived here.

Local people are increasingly priced out of housing and forced to leave; over 80% of young people from this diocese no longer live here, and communities face declining services and fragile local economies. The Church, too, is stretched, sustaining ministry across great distances with limited resources, yet remains committed to pastoral care, witness and being present.

Even so, we hold on to hope. We long to see the Highlands filled once more with Highlanders, communities renewed, and the land recognised not as the possession of a few, but as a shared gift; we ask for prayer that the Church may continue to serve faithfully, speak with courage, and stand alongside its people in seeking justice and life.

The USPG prayer diary today (Sunday 12 July 2026, Trinity VI) invites us to pray as we read and meditate on Matthew 13: 1-9, 18-23.

Tables in the Taverna Garden in Platanias, near Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect of the Day:

Merciful God,
you have prepared for those who love you
such good things as pass our understanding:
pour into our hearts such love toward you
that we, loving you in all things and above all things,
may obtain your promises,
which exceed all that we can desire;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

God of our pilgrimage,
you have led us to the living water:
refresh and sustain us
as we go forward on our journey,
in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect

Creator God,
you made us all in your image:
may we discern you in all that we see,
and serve you in all that we do;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

Tall trees and a shaded corner by Varvara’s Diamond in Platanias, near Rethymnon (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

Saint Paisios of Mount Athos … an icon by Alexandra Kaouki in Rethymnon (Icon © Αλεξανδρα Καουκι, 2026)

The Old Palace Lodge and its Tudor walled gardens prompted a search for a lost Eleanor Cross in Dunstable

In the Tudor walled gardens at the Old Palace Lodge in Dunstable on a summer afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I was in Dunstable last week, mainly to visit the Priory Church of Saint Peter and Saint Mary’s Church on West Street, the 1960s church by Peter Williams that typifies his work and the liturgical insights that came at the time of the Second Vatican Council.

But throughout Dunstable, there is no escaping the fact that this town in Bedfordshire owes much to a continuous royal presence from Henry I building a small palace or hunting lodge and then endowing the foundation of the Augustinian priory, to the choice of Dunstable as one of the stopping places for Queen Eleanor’s funeral cortege in 1290 and the erection of one of the 12 Eleanor Crosses, to the annulment of the marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon in the Lady Chapel of the Priory Church in 1533.

Today, the Old Palace Lodge on Church Street, opposite the Priory Church of Saint Peter, is an ivy-clad hotel and restaurant. The building was converted from a farmhouse in the 18th century, but it stands on the site of Kingsbury Palace, frequented by monarchs and royalty ever since the 12th century. The wood panelling and furnishings create an ambience of warm old English charm in the Old Palace Lodge that dates back several hundred years.

Henry I came to the throne in 1100 and soon became engaged in the development of Dunstable at the junction of two roads dating back to the Roman era. He built a palace near these crossroads, appointed a steward, and Kingsbury Palace was finished and furnished ready for a royal visit in 1109.

When the old palace became too costly to maintain, King John gave handed it over to the Augustinian Priory. In 1290, Dunstable became one of the stopping points along the elaborate funeral procession of Queen Eleanor.

The Old Palace Lordge had been owned in the past by kings, monks, cardinals, merchants, doctors and farmers and is now an hotel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey’s secretary and biographer, George Cavendish (1497-1562), bought the old palace immediately before the dissolution of the monastic houses, perhaps saving it from destruction. Cavendish married Margery Kemp, a niece of Sir Thomas More, and was related to Bess of Hardwick and the ancestors of the Dukes of Devonshire.

William Marshe and his wife Elizabeth were living at Kingsbury by 1600 and their children grew up there. Later generations of the Marshe family built the Marshe Almshouses further along Church Street in 1743.

When the Old Palace Lodge was depicted in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1816, the house was part of Kingsbury Farm, which included 164 acres across the three parishes of Dunstable, Houghton Regis and Caddington. The east end of the house was re-roofed in the 1920s, with a gable end facing Church Street that altered the appearance of the façade.

The house was divided in two in the 1930s, one part being Kingsbury Court, Dr Ashton’s house, the other the home for a time of a Mr Wallis who re-named it the Old Palace Lodge. Creasey Hotels bought the premises in 1959 and opened as the Old Palace Lodge Hotel in 1960. That year, a barn that once belonged to Kingsbury Farm, and was later Kingsbury Stables, was converted into a public house that became the Norman King. When the inn was built, stone was brought from a Norman castle and a cottage near Cambridge, with panelling from a mediaeval inn in Caxton, Cambridgeshire.

Wood panelling and warm furnishings create an ambience of old English charm in the Old Palace Lodge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The thatch of the Norman King caught fire in in August 2011, the fire burned all night, and the pub was destoyed. The Tudor Walled Gardens at the Old Palace Lodge were designed by Matthew George Garden Design in 2018-2019. They have been laid out on the site of the Norman King Inn in an ambitious heritage project of classic gardening.

Ornamental grasses give a modern feel to the planting and provide year-round interest with seasonal flowering bulbs and annual flowers in beds and linear zinc jardinières. The main planting compliments the hard landscape materials of the classic English garden style, while evergreen clipped hedges, box and yew topiary set within borders of hardy perennial plants and small ornamental trees bring the Tudor theme to life.

Shrubs and climbing roses add colour and scent, with some fruit trees along the walls. Outside the hotel entrance, topiary yew cones are growing in large stylish terracotta planters. Along the red brick wall, bordered with pearls of lights in the evening, evergreen hedges create natural alcoves for private seating while at the centre is a terrace of grey porcelain pavers with rattan sofas and a fire pit.

An aged zinc water feature set in front of the Norman stone wall is surrounded by exotic grasses and herbaceous plants, sweet shrubs and yew trees. There is an oak-framed gazebo on the left hand side of the garden, a shaded pergola walkway and two glass pods that can be hired for private dining.

The Eleanor Cross erected by Edward I in Dunstable in 1291-1293 was razed by parliamentarians in 1643 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Dunstable was the location of one of the 12 tall decorated stone columns or Eleanor Crosses erected by King Edward I to mark the route of the funeral of his wife, Eleanor of Castile. She died at Harby, near Lincoln, on 28 November 1290 and her body was brought to Westminster Abbey on a journey that took 12 days, following a route that stopped at several important religious houses.

A chapel was built In Harby, the village where she died. When she was taken to Lincoln, her viscera or internal organs were removed and buried in a tomb in the cathedral and her body was embalmed. The original viscera tomb and what remained of Eleanor were destroyed by Cromwell’s troops in the 1640s, and it was restored in 1891.

The entourage continued south towards Watling Street and crossed the Great Ouse at Stony Stratford on the journey to Woburn Abbey. A stop at Stony Stratford was not part of the original plan and flooding and short winter days meant crossing the river took some time. It is unclear where Eleanor’s body stayed in Stony Stratford, but it was possibly at the parish church of Saint Mary Magdalene, whose tower still stands.

From Stony Stratford, the procession continued on to Woburn Abbey before reaching Dunstable on 11 December. There her coffin rested on a bier in the middle of the town’s marketplace before being taken to the Priory Church, where it stayed overnight before going on to St Albans the next day.

Dunstable is the only place on the route where the king did not stay in the same town as his wife’s body. Instead, he had gone ahead to St Albans for the election of the new abbot, John of Berkamsted. In London, her heart was buried at Blackfriars while her body was buried in Westminster Abbey.

A modern sculpture of Queen Eleanor by Dora Barrett was a gift to the people of Dunstable in 1985 (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

In all, 12 Eleanor Crosses were erected along the funeral route. All were tall, stone monuments, almost 40 ft high. They differed in detail, but all were built in three tiers, decreasing in size as they ascended, surmounted with a cross, and all elaborately carved with statues and coats of arms.

The first Eleanor Cross to mark the journey was at Lincoln, but only three survive: Geddington Cross, Northamptonshire, the best-preserved and most complete of the crosses; Hardingstone, Northampton, on a hill overlooking Delapré Abbey; and Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. The original crosses at Charing Cross, London, and St Albans were destroyed during the Reformation and Civil War, but are marked by modern replicas and plaques.

The Eleanor Cross at Stony Stratford was also destroyed during the Civil War, and no trace remains of it, although there is a plaque on the arch at 157 High Street. The local artist Luke McDonnell has also created a mural of Eleanor at the corner of High Street and New Street, diagonally opposite the Old George.

In the Tudor Walled Gardens at the Old Place Lodge in Dunstable (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

For about two years, from 1291 to 1293, stonemasons and sculptors worked to create the Eleanor Cross in Dunstable, with its effigies of the queen and other carved decorations. It remained a landmark in Dunstable until the English Civil War, when Cromwell’s Roundhead troops smashed it to pieces in 1643. Nothing above ground has survived.

It is difficult today to identify the exact location of the Eleanor Cross in Dunstable, and the layout of the crossroads and the site of the market have changed over the years. Most sources seem to agree that the foundations of the cross probably lay beneath the crossroads, near the Church Street exit, and a plaque on street corner recalls the cross.

A small shopping precinct opened in 1985 on the west side of High Street North, opposite the Quadrant shopping centre, and was named Eleanor’s Cross Shopping Precinct. A modern sculpture of Queen Eleanor by Dora Barrett was a gift to the people of Dunstable and was unveiled on 23 October 1985 as a symbolic replacement for the long-lost cross, though no-one claims that this was the site of the 13th century Eleanor Cross.

Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon … portraits in the Old Palace Lodge in Dunstable (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

If Edward did not stay at the priory or the old palace in Dunstable during Eleanor’s funeral, then neither did Henry VIII during the hearing of his annulment and the proceedings against Catherine of Aragon in the Lady Chapel in the priory church. Instead, he stayed at the White Horse Inn on High Street North during his visit in 1533.

When Catherine of Aragon died in 1536, she did not receive an elaborate funeral like Eleanor in 1290. Instead, she was buried in the monastic church that is now Peterborough Cathedral. Henry returned to Dunstable with Anne Boleyn in 1537 and once again stayed at the White Horse Inn.

The entrance to the site of the White Horse Inn at No 13 High Street North incorporates the Anchor Gateway, an early 17th century gatehouse. A paved setting on the street recalls that Henry VIII stayed at the White Horse Inn and played a game of bowls on the green behind the inn, near the site of Christ Church today.

At the end of last week’s walk around Dunstable, I sat in a shaded area in the Old Palace Lodge, lazily nurturing a long cool drink and looking out on the recreated Tudor Walled Gardens. The panelled walls are filled with mementoes of Henry VIII, including portraits of Henry, Catherine of Aragon and Cardinal Wolsey. One portrait frames Henry between all his six wives – perhaps a light-hearted talking point for wedding guests who might otherwise find any conversation of annulments, divorces or even beheadings, inappropriate in the company of a bride and groom.

Summer thoughts of royal residents in the Old Palace Lodge in Dunstable (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

A return visit to Wolseley after 55 years and lunch in the Wolseley Arms

The Wolseley Arms, by the River Trent, near Rugeley in Staffordshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I think it must be about 55 years since I previously Wolseley and interviewed Sir Charles Wolseley for the Lichfield Mercury and the Rugeley Mercury.

I was supposed to be training as a chartered surveyor through Jones Lang Wootton in Dublin and London and at the College of Estate Management, then part of Reading University, Charles Wolseley even offered to take me on as a trainee with him at Smiths Gore in Lichfield. Butat that age I had my heart set on becoming a journalist instead.

I was about 19 at that time, and that interview and feature secured my first freelance contract, writing a short series of features for the Lichfield Mercury and the Rugeley Mercury.

I have since passed Wolseley on the route between Stafford and Lichfield a number of times, but some inexplicable reason had never paid a return visit in all those years. I revisited it for the first time last week, when I decided to hop off the Stafford-Lichfield bus at Wolseley Bridge to have lunch at the Wolseley Arms, to walk by the River Trent and the lakes, and to visit the Wolseley Centre on the former Wolseley estate.

Woseley Bridge replaced a mediaeval bridge swept away in a flood in 1795 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Family tradition says the Wolseley estate was given to the family in Anglo-Saxon times by King Edgar in 975 AD as a reward for ridding the area of wolves. As a reminder of that tradition, the Wolseley family adopted the motto Homo Homini Lupus (‘Man is a wolf towards his fellow man’), with a hunting dog in the shield of their coat of arms and a wolf’s head as the crest.

The Wolseley Arms sits on the banks of the River Trent, beside Wolseley Bridge, about 3 km (2 miles). A mediaeval wayfarers’ chapel was built on the bridge, supposedly on the central arch, but it was swept away with the rest of the bridge in 1795.

The pub is said to date back to the 15th century and originally was a hunting lodge on the Wolseley estate before being transformed into a coaching inn on the Liverpool-London route, and at one time, as a staging post for coaches, over 100 horses were kept at the Wolseley Arms.

The Wolseley Arms, said to date back to the 15th century, was known for some decades as the the Roebuck Inn (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Wolseley Arms was the regular meeting place of the founder members of the Trent and Mersey Canal Co over 250 years ago. The first public meeting of the canal company, chaired by Granville Leveson-Gower (1721-1803), Earl Gower and later Marquess of Stafford, met there on 30 December 1765. When work on building the canal started, the inaugural spade-full of soil was dug out by Josiah Wedgewood at a point close by the inn. The stone section of the canal was completed in 1771.

Much to the chagrin of Sir Charles Wolseley (1769-1846), the seventh baronet, the coach traffic at the Wolseley Arms included the ‘Convict Van’ that stopped there in June 1834 to change horses and feed the convicts. The 18 prisoners were each offered a meal of white bread, cold beef and half a pint of ale.

Wolseley had a radical reputation and might have been expected to be more sympathetic to the plight of prisoners: as a young man in Paris, it is said, he took part in the storming of the Bastille in 1789; and in 1820, a year after his election as an MP, he was jailed for 18 months on charges of sedition and conspiracy.

A faded image of Wolseley Hall in the Wolseley Arms (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Wolseley Arms changed its name to the Roebuck Inn after the original Roebuck on the other side of the road closed in the 1870s. Apparently, the pub had become known as a place of ill-repute and the Wolseley family did not want their name linked with a place like that.

The old name was partly restored and it became the Roebuck and Wolseley Arms around 1952, and it was still known as both the Wolseley Arms and the Roebuck Inn in 1963, when the Rugeley Times suggested it was one of the few pubs in England known by two names and with two signs to reflect this.

However, only the Wolseley Arms sign remained by 1973. The Wolseley Arms was enlarged that year and given a makeover with a mediaeval theme. It was renovated again in July 1982 when it was officially opened by the photographer Patrick Anson, 5th Earl of Lichfield.

Viscount Wolseley’s coat-of-arms from his ex libris bookplate

The interior decorations and fittings include many mementoes of the Wolseley family, including a faded and jaded image of Wolseley Hall, the seat of the Wolseley family, which was damaged by fire in the 1950s and finally demolished in 1966.

Interestingly, the only portraits on the walls of the Wolseley Arms of members of the Wolseley family are two of Field Marshal Garnet Joseph Wolseley (1833-1913), 1st Viscount Wolseley. But he was actually from the Irish branch of the family, seated at Mount Wolseley in Co Carlow, and was born in Golden Bridge House, Inchicore, Dublin. When his military career was recognised with a peerage in 1885, he paid tribute to his family’s roots in Staffordshire, taking the title of Viscount Wolseley, of Wolseley in the County of Stafford.

In a similar vein, the only heraldic emblem of the Wolseley family decorating the interior of the Wolseley Arms is Viscount Wolseley’s coat-of-arms from his ex libris bookplate.

A portrait of Dublin-born Field Marshal Garnet Joseph Wolseley (1833-1913), 1st Viscount Wolseley, in the Wolseley Arms (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Outside, the Wolseley Arms has managed to mistakenly present the Wolseley coat-of-arms that gives the pub its name. The original arms display a white shield with a red talbot or hunting dog (argent, a talbot passant gules), but on the pub sign the dog has turned in colour to black (argent, a talbot passant sable), the helmet is that of an untitled man rather than a baronet, black and white feathers – seen often in ‘bucket shop’ or AI generated cheap versions of heraldry – have replaced the wolf’s head that was a play on the family’s name and the legend of clearing wolves from this part of Staffordshire, and the displays are devoid of the motto echoing the family legend, Homo Homini Lupus.

I admit to being a heraldry nerd, but I also have a life-long familiarity with the Wolseley arms in heraldry: they are an inversion of the colours on the Comberford and Comerford coat-of-arms (gules, a talbot passant argent), and there were close links between the two families over many generations.

I remember an earlier sign with the correct colours, and hope that this mistake in presenting the Wolseley arms can be rectified by the Wolseley Arms, of all places.

The Wolseley arms at the Wolseley Arms … with the wrong colours and missing the wolf's head crest and the motto referring to the wolf legend (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Wolseley Arms is a charming country pub and one of the 180 country pubs in Vintage Inn group that includes the Hedgehog in Lichfield and the Fish and Eel at Dobb’s Weir, near Hoddesdon.

After an enjoyable lunch there, I walked along the banks of the River Trent and under Wolseley Bridge, and then across to the Wolseley Centre in the former gardens of Wolseley Hall. Sir Charles Wolseley took a brave step in 1987 when he returned to Wolseley with plans to open the 45-acre landscaped gardens, attracting 250,000 visitors a year.

Wolseley Garden Park cost £1.73 million and was opened by Lord Rothschild in 1990. But the place only took in between £26,000 and £30,000 on gate receipts in its first year. The bank withdrew funding before the garden park was completed, and so had little chance of succeeding. Charles was made bankrupt in 1996 with mounting debts of £2.5 to £3 million, which he blamed on the recession and high interest rates.

The sad failure of that promising venture ended with the Wolseley family losing the 1,490 acre estate and a home that had passed down through successive generations for 1,000 years or more – the latest generation had failed to keep the wolf from the door.

The Wolseley Visitor Centre and Nature Reserve opened in the ground of the former Wolseley estate in 2019 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Wolseley Visitor Centre and Nature Reserve has been a nature reserve and the headquarters of the Staffordshire Wildlife Trust since 2003.

Sir Charles Wolseley died at the age of 73 on 5 March 2018, and his funeral took place in Saint Joseph and Saint Etheldreda Catholic Church, Rugeley. The site at the Wolseley Centre was redeveloped later that year, and opened as the Wolseley Visitor Centre and Nature Reserve in 2019. The grounds extend to 11 ha (26 acres), including woodlands, lakes, pools and marshland with wildlife habitats, a boardwalk around the pools and marshland, wildflower meadows and display gardens, a sensory garden a café with views across the lake.

In the afternoon April sunshine, I hopped back on the Stafford to Lichfield bus outside the Wolseley Centre, and on a whim decided to stop off in Rugeley before continuing on to Lichfield and Evening Prayer in Lichfield Cathedral. But more about Rugeley, its churches, and some more memories from 55 years ago in the days to come, hopefully.


A walk in April sunshine by the lakes at the Wolseley Centre and nature reserve (Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 5, Thursday 9 April 2026, Thursday in Easter week

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

Patrick Comerford

Our Easter celebrations continue in the Church Calendar, and this is still Easter week.

Before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, 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.

Jesus … stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you’ (Luke 24: 36) … ‘Humanity’s Contempt for Humanity’ by Peter Walker in the ‘Consequence of War’ exhibition in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 24: 35-48 (NRSVA):

35 Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

36 While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ 37 They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38 He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ 40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41 While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate in their presence.

44 Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things.’

‘They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence’ (Luke 24: 42-43) … a variety of fish in a seafood shop at Easter in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

This morning’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Luke 24: 35-48) is a Resurrection story that continues on immediately from yesterday’s reading about the encounter of two disciples on the road to Emmaus with the Risen Christ.

In today’s reading, as the those two report back to their friends in Jerusalem of their encounter, the Risen Christ appears and greets his disciples, ‘Peace be with you’ (verse 36). He goes on to ask them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? (verse 38).

I have to admit to being not just frightened but absolutely terrified for the future of the world with the direction Donald Trump has taken the conflict in the Gulf and the Middle East, despite his claims he has agrred to a ceasefire for two weeks.

Tomorrow is Great and Good Friday in the calendar of the Greek Orthodox Church. So I have a second opportunity to celebrate Easter this year with the Greek Orthodox community in Stony Stratford this coming weekend. Easter is so important in the Greek calendar that our celebrations in England or Ireland pale into insignificance.

The common Easter greeting in Greece is Χριστός ἀνέστη! (Christós anésti!), Christ is Risen! And the automatic, reflex response, between friends and strangers alike, on the streets and in the shops, is Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη! (Alithós anésti!), He is Risen Indeed!

And this is not just for Easter Day, or even a week or two after. Easter is celebrated for 50 days.

It is often forgotten here that Easter is not just for Easter Day. The Risen Christ is not put back into the tomb, nor is the stone rolled back across it after Easter Day or after the Easter holiday is over.

The Easter Season is a celebration of our new creation in the Risen Christ, and it is a full season of 50 days. It brings together 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 they 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’.

But the Easter promise of peace that we hear this morning is in sharp contrast to the Trump’s threat this Easter-tide that the people of Iran will ‘be living in Hell.’ His vulgar language shows no appreciation or understanding of the fact that the Persian civilisation is one of the oldest great classical cultures.

During the Babylonian exile, Persian thinking and philosophy interacted creatively with Jewish religious concepts, and contributed to many thoughts in Second Temple Judaism such as the resurrection of the dead, the sharp contrasts between angels and demons, reward and punishment and heaven and hell, and the concept of a final judgment, and the ultimate triumph of good over evil.

Hebrew adopted several Persian loanwords, such as our word paradise which comes from an old Persian word meaning an enclosed or walled garden or orchard.

In the first fourth century BCE, Xenophon adapted the Persian phrase into Greek as παράδεισος (paradeisos). Xenophon provides an early description of a Persian garden in his Οἰκονομικός (Oeconomicos), in which Socrates recalls the visit of the Spartan general Lysander to the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger and his ‘paradise at Sardis.’

Lysander is ‘astonished at the beauty of the trees within, all planted at equal intervals, the long straight rows of waving branches, the perfect regularity, the rectangular symmetry of the whole, and the many sweet scents which hung about them as they paced the park.’

Xenophon is writing about household management and agriculture in one of the earliest-known works on economics. It is also a treatise on leading an army and a state.

As another catastrophic conflict in the Middle East continues, it still holds the potential of developing into a global conflagration.

Often, the rush to war abroad can be a symptom of ineffective leadership at home, offering bravado abroad as an alternative to delivering on election promises at home.

The Prussian general Clausewitz famously declared: ‘War is the continuation of politics by other means.’ But, as Tony Benn told the House of Commons in 1991: ‘All war represents a failure of diplomacy.’

War represents the failure of diplomacy, the failure of politics and the failures of politicians. When inept leaders who cannot meet their responibilities and commitments resort to blaming some outsiders, people then believe the scapegoat is the real problem, and demand resolution through war. War is an aberration of politics rather than an extension of politics.

It was only in the Second Temple era Judaism that the Persian and Greek word paradise came to be associated with the Garden of Eden, and by extension its meaning was transferred to heaven.

In the New Testament, the word paradise is used only three times: by Christ on the cross, in response to the penitent thief, ‘Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise’ (Luke 23: 42-43); by Saint Paul in his visionary description of being ‘caught up into Paradise’ (II Corinthians 12: 3-4), and in the Book of Revelation in a reference to ‘the tree of life that is in the paradise of God’ (Revelation 2: 7; see Genesis 2: 9).

The Persian, Greek, classical and Biblical images, which bring together the concepts of a garden, the enclosed place of peace, Eden, a restored earth, the coming kingdom and beatific visions of heaven are in sharp contrast to the Valhalla of Norse mythology, which is ruled over by Odin, the god of war, and is reward for those who die in conflict and combat.

In time, I hope to see Trump and his collaborators facing charges of war crimes, crime and against humanity. Bombing the people of Iran in their hospitals, schools and homes is hardly going to bring solace, comfort or peace to the over-bombed and much-victimised people of Iran, certainly not going to bring them into paradise. Instead, there is a real danger of creating a Valhalla or even a hell on earth rather than bringing the people of Iran closer to a place of peace and comfort.

Meanwhile, some lines come to mind that are so familiar that they often seem trite:

The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on Earth.

This verse is on a plaque on a wall in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, and must be inscribed on millions of garden plaques, bird baths and sundials. The lines were penned by the English poet and hymnwriter Dorothy Gurney (1858-1932).

Dorothy Gurney was the daughter and wife of Anglican priests, her grandfather and her brother were both Anglican bishops, and ‘God’s Garden’ is her best-known poem. Quotations from her popular poem often miss the next and final verse that tells us why we are near to God in the garden:

For he broke it for us in a garden
Under the olive-trees
Where the angel of strength was the warden
And the soul of the world found ease.

Where is the soul of the world to find this peace in the face war in Iran and the Gulf?

Dorothy Gurney wrote her best-known hymn, O Perfect Love, in 1883 for her sister’s wedding:

O perfect Love, all human thoughts transcending,
lowly we kneel in prayer before thy throne,
that theirs may be the love which knows no ending
whom thou for evermore dost join in one …

Grant them the joy which brightens earthly sorrow;
grant them the peace which calms all earthly strife;
grant them the vision of the glorious morrow
that will reveal eternal love and life.

With imagination, Dorothy Gurney might have composed still another verse for ‘God’s Garden’, pointing out that when Mary Magdalene went to the empty tomb on the first Easter morning, she mistakenly supposed the Risen Christ to be the gardener (John 20: 15). As the Easter Gospel stories remind us, the constant words of the Risen Christ are ‘Peace be with you’ (Luke 24: 36; John 20: 19, 21, 26) and ‘Do not be afraid’ (Matthew 28: 10).

Saint Luke portrays the Risen Christ granting the disciples that ‘joy which brightens earthly sorrow,’ that ‘peace which calms all earthly strife,’ that ‘vision of the glorious morrow that will reveal eternal love and life.’

He eats with us, he dispels fear, he proclaims peace, and 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 – like every one of the 50 days in this season of Easter – is the day of resurrection, of the in-breaking of God’s kingdom.

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!
Christ is Risen!

In the gardens at the Hedgehog Vintage Inn in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 9 April 2026, Thursday in Easter Week):

‘In the Garden’ provides the theme this week (5-11 April 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 44-45. This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections by Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 9 April 2026, Thursday in Easter Week) invites us to pray:

Merciful God, we pray for schools and families who receive fresh vegetables from the garden. Protect the wellbeing of each person and help the church meet the practical needs of children and households.

The Collect:

Lord of all life and power,
who through the mighty resurrection of your Son
overcame the old order of sin and death
to make all things new in him:
grant that we, being dead to sin
and alive to you in Jesus Christ,
may reign with him in glory;
to whom with you and the Holy Spirit
be praise and honour, glory and might,
now and in all eternity.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God of Life,
who for our redemption gave your only-begotten Son
to the death of the cross,
and by his glorious resurrection
have delivered us from the power of our enemy:
grant us so to die daily to sin,
that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his risen life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God of glory,
by the raising of your Son
you have broken the chains of death and hell:
fill your Church with faith and hope;
for a new day has dawned
and the way to life stands open
in our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

The Gates of Paradise in Cambridge at Owlstone Croft, once known as Paradise Garden and now part of Queens’ College (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