Daily prayer in Easter 2025: 24, Tuesday 13 May 2025

‘My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me’ (John 10: 27) … street art in Carlingford, Co Louth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (20 April 2025) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (8 June 2025), or Whit Sunday. This week began with the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Easter IV, 11 May 2025), sometimes known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’.

Later this evening, I hope to take part in a meeting of the Town Centre Working Group in Stony Stratford. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon’ (John 10: 23) … the Temple-like portico at Plassey House in the University of Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 10: 22-30 (NRSVA):

22 At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. 24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, ‘How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.’ 25 Jesus answered, ‘I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; 26 but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. 27 My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. 30 The Father and I are one.’

‘Jesus was walking in the Temple, in the portico of Solomon’ (John 10: 23) … the portico of the Duomo di Sant’Andrea in Amalfi (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

This week’s theme in the lectionary of the Good Shepherd in the ‘Good Shepherd Discourse’ (John 10: 1-42) continues in the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today. We read verses 1-10 yesterday, and today we return to verses 22-30, which we also read on Sunday.

Saint John’s Gospel focuses on major biblical festivals, such as Passover and Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles (which this year begins on 1 June 2025), and Jesus is seen to connect his mission with each of the these major festivals.

In Saint John’s Gospel, Jesus celebrates Hanukkah or the Festival of Lights in Jerusalem: At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon (John 10: 22-23, NRSVA).

Hanukkah is not one of the major Jewish festivals. It is not included in the Torah, nor is it referred to in the writings of the Prophets. It is a feast of dedication, remembering the Maccabees who recaptured the Temple from Antiochus Epiphanius after it had been captured and desecrated more than 150 years before Jesus was born (see I Maccabees 3-4; II Maccabees 8: 1 to 10: 18).

The Books of Maccabees describe the events over eight days that Hanukkah commemorates. The requirements for the rededication of the Temple seemed impossible, with only one day’s supply of oil for the temple menorah or lampstand remaining. According to these accounts, God miraculously allowed the oil to last the full eight days so that the dedication would be complete.

The name of Antiochus Epiphanes means ‘god manifest’. He was one of the successors of Alexander the Great and sought to unify his empire by establishing a single religion. Judaism and its practices, including Sabbath observance, scripture reading and the circumcision of eight-day-old boys, were outlawed, and the Temple was desecrated when a pig was sacrificed to Zeus there.

Under the leadership of Judas Maccabeus, a nickname meaning ‘hammer’, the Jewish people fought a guerrilla-style war against the forces of Antiochus Epiphanes. Although greatly outnumbered, the Jewish rebels were victorious and retook the Temple. On the 25th day of the month Kislev 164 BCE, the defiled Temple was reconsecrated and sacrifices were offered to God.

The people joyfully celebrated the rededication of the Temple for eight days. At the conclusion of the festivities, it was decreed that a similar festival be held each year beginning on 25 Kislev (I Maccabees 4: 36-39).

Hanukkah was not one of the required pilgrimage festivals (see Exodus 23), but those who attended celebrated the days with great rejoicing.

According to Saint John’s Gospel, Jesus is in Jerusalem during Hanukkah or the Festival of Lights, a celebration of hope and justice against dark oppression and tyranny. The account in John 10: 22-42 concludes a festival cycle in John 5: 1 to 10: 42: Sabbath (John 5), Passover (John 6), Tabernacles (John 7: 1 to 10: 21), and Dedication (John 10: 22-42).

In other places, Jesus tells his followers that they are the light of the world and should not be hidden away but to be like a lamp stand (or menorah), and to ‘let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven’ (Matthew 5: 14-16).

Hanukkah continues to be celebrated in Jewish homes and communities. Hanukkah and Christmas are not the same, nor are they equivalent. But, during both festivals, we are called to be lights in the midst of darkness.

With all the evil, division, oppression and injustice that is taking place in the world today, it is important for us too to be the lights of this world for all around us who desperately need light in their darkness.

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

‘Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon’ (John 10: 23) … the Temple-like portico built by the Williamson brothers at Emo Court in Co Laois (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 13 May 2025):

‘Health and Hope in the Manyoni District’ provides the theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update from Dr Frank Mathew Haji of the Integrated Child Health and End Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV Programme in Tanzania.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 13 May 2025) invites us to pray:

Lord, we pray that this project contributes to lowering the national rate of mother and child mortality in the Manyoni district. May lives be saved, and families strengthened as husbands and relatives all gain a greater knowledge and understanding of the issue.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life:
raise us, who trust in him,
from the death of sin to the life of righteousness,
that we may seek those things which are above,
where he reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Merciful Father,
you gave your Son Jesus Christ to be the good shepherd,
and in his love for us to lay down his life and rise again:
keep us always under his protection,
and give us grace to follow in his steps;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
faithful shepherd of your Father’s sheep:
teach us to hear your voice
and to follow your command,
that all your people may be gathered into one flock,
to the glory of God the Father.

Collect on the Eve of Saint Matthias:

Almighty God,
who in the place of the traitor Judas
chose your faithful servant Matthias
to be of the number of the Twelve:
preserve your Church from false apostles
and, by the ministry of faithful pastors and teachers,
keep us steadfast in your 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.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

A Hanukkiah or Hanukkah menorah in Murano glass in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Daily prayer in Easter 2025: 22, Sunday 11 May 2025

‘What my Father has given me is greater than all else … The Father and I are one’ (John 10: 29-30) … Christ the Pantocrator depicted in church domes in Rethymnon, Panormos and Iraklion in Crete (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (20 April 2025) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (8 June 2025), or Whit Sunday. Today is the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Easter IV, 11 May 2025), sometimes known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’.

Later this morning I hope to take part in the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, when I am reading the second lesson (Revelation 7: 9-17). But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

A menorah in the chapel in Milton Keynes University Hospital … this morning’s Gospel reading is set during the Festival of the Dedication or Hanukkah (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

John 10: 22-30 (NRSVA):

22 At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. 24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, ‘How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.’ 25 Jesus answered, ‘I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; 26 but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. 27 My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. 30 The Father and I are one.’

The Stoa of Attalos beneath the Acropolis in Athens … it gives us an idea of what the Stoa or Portico of Solomon in Jerusalem may have looked (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

The Gospel reading this morning (John 10: 22-30) is a portion of the ‘Good Shepherd Discourse’ (John 10: 1-42), in which Jesus twice repeats the fourth or middle of the seven ‘I AM’ sayings in Saint John’s Gospel: ‘I am the Good Shepherd’ (John 10: 11, 14).

The setting for this portion of the ‘Good Shepherd Discourse’ (verses 22-30) is the Portico or Stoa of Solomon in the Temple on the Festival of the Dedication, or Hanukkah. Jesus is walking in the Portico of Solomon or Solomon’s Porch or Colonnade (στοα του Σολομωντος, see also Acts 3: 11; 5: 12), a stoa or colonnade on the east side of the Temple’s Outer Court or Women’s Court, named after King Solomon.

The Feast of the Dedication, sometimes known as the Festival of Lights and known today as Hanukkah, falls between late November and the end of December (this year, it begins on 14 December and ends on 22 December 2025).

The holiday commemorates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 164 BCE after its destruction by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV (see I Maccabees 4: 52-59). The festival is observed by lighting the candles of a menorah or candelabrum with nine branches (hanukkiah). One branch is typically placed above or below the others and its candle (shamash) is used to light the other eight candles. Each night, one additional candle is lit by the shamash until all eight candles are lit together on the final night of the festival.

The lights recall the miracle of the one-day supply of oil in the Temple miraculously lasting eight days, first described in the Talmud. According to the Babylonian Talmud (b Shabbat 21B), after the Greek forces of Antiochus IV had been driven from the Temple, the Maccabees discovered that almost all the ritual olive oil had been profaned. They found but a single container still sealed by the High Priest, with enough oil to keep the menorah in the Temple lit for just a single day. They used this, yet it burned for eight days – the time it took to have new oil pressed and made ready.

Josephus says John Hyrcanus was unique in Jewish history as the only man to unite the offices of priest, prophet and king. He reigned from 135 to 104 BCE, and by 124 BCE he had built a new Jerusalem.

Christ’s claims to oneness with God and pre-existence with him (John 8: 58) have aroused some listeners. Some think he is demented but others doubt it, for he heals (verses 20-21). If Jesus really is the Messiah, the people in this reading may have hoped that he too, like John Hyrcanus, would unite the offices of priest, prophet and king, and that he would rescue the people from the foreign tyranny of the Romans, just as God rescued an earlier generation from the evil reign of Antiochus.

In the stoa or portico of Solomon, they now ask whether he is the Messiah (verse 24). How long will he keep them in suspense? (verse 24).

Jesus answers with a rebuke, ‘I have told you, and you do not believe’ (verse 25). Faith is needed to understand the answers he has given – and at this stage they are lacking in faith.

His godly actions or works show who he is. To those who do believe, who are his sheep (verse 27), he gives eternal life (verse 28) and assurance that they will not perish, that they will not be condemned to annihilation at the end-time. He will ensure that they remain his. And once again, he repeats that he and the Father are one.

This Gospel reading also reminds us that we are part of the Communion of Saints: ‘I give them eternal life, and they will never perish’ (John 10: 28). We are not just one part of the Communion of Saints, but part of the whole Communion of Saints, heirs to the full apostolic legacy of the Church.

In today’s reading from the Book of Revelation, we are reminded that the Communion of Saints is drawn from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages. All are gathered together, across time and space, breaking down all the barriers of history and discrimination, to give blessing and glory, wisdom and thanksgiving, and honour and power and might to the Lamb of God (Revelation 7: 9, 12).

In the Gospel reading, we are told that the saints, those who have eternal life, are those who hear Christ’s voice, answer his call, follow him and do his will. He knows them, they know him, and they have the promise of eternal life (John 10: 22-30).

I truly enjoy the way Greeks and other Orthodox Christians emphasise celebrating their name days rather than their birthdays. For when we join the saints in glory before the Lamb on the Throne, the only birthday that will matter will be the day in which we join that wonderful company of saints.

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

‘My sheep hear my voice. I know them’ (John 10: 27) … sheep on a small farm in Platanias near Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 11 May 2025, Easter IV):

‘Health and Hope in the Manyoni District’ provides the theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). This theme is introduced today with a programme update from Dr Frank Mathew Haji of the Integrated Child Health and End Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV Programme in Tanzania:

The Integrated Child Health and End Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV Programme is making a significant impact on maternal and child health in the Manyoni district, Singida region, Tanzania. Focused on improving health services for women of childbearing age and children under five, the programme particularly targets the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

Ruth [name changed for privacy], who contracted HIV in 2018, feared for her future and struggled with her husband as they faced difficulties conceiving. When a mobile clinic from the Anglican Church of Tanzania visited her village, Ruth attended with a friend and received vital medication and counselling. This support not only helped her manage her health but also allowed her and her husband to navigate their challenges together. Today, they are excitedly expecting a healthy baby, thanks to the programme’s interventions.

Ruth’s story illustrates how the programme brings hope and better health to families, ensuring that children are born HIV-free and that communities are empowered with the knowledge and resources they need to thrive.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 11 May 2025, Easter IV) invites us to pray reflecting on these words:

‘Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ’ (Galatians 6: 2).

The Collect:

Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life:
raise us, who trust in him,
from the death of sin to the life of righteousness,
that we may seek those things which are above,
where he reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Merciful Father,
you gave your Son Jesus Christ to be the good shepherd,
and in his love for us to lay down his life and rise again:
keep us always under his protection,
and give us grace to follow in his steps;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
faithful shepherd of your Father’s sheep:
teach us to hear your voice
and to follow your command,
that all your people may be gathered into one flock,
to the glory of God the Father.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Christ as the Good Shepherd in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna (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

Playing party games at Hanukkah becomes a reminder of the long Jewish history in Greece

Chanukiot with a colourful array of candles at the Chanukah party in Milton Keynes and District Reform Synagogue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

Hanukkah this year began on the evening of Christmas Day, 25 December – coinciding in a rare convergence with Christmas Day for the first time in 19 years – and Wednesday night is the last night of Hanukkah, with the eight days of celebration coming to a close on Thursday (2 January 2025).

I was invited to a Hanukkah party in Milton Keynes and District Reform Synagogue yesterday. Each evening, Jewish families everywhere light the Chanukiah or nine-branch Hanukkah menorah, commemorating both the miraculous lasting of a single day's cruse of oil for eight days in the Temple and the triumphant victory of the Hasmoneans over Antiochos Epiphanes and their Greek oppressors.

A variety of chanukiot, with a colourful array of candles, were lit at the end of yesterday’s party. Traditionally, Sephardic Jews light their chanukiot at nightfall, Ashkenazi Jews light their chanukiot about 12 minutes after the sun has set. Sephardic custom calls for the head of the household to light the menorah for everyone, while Ashkenazi tradition has each family member light their own menorah.

Each night follows a traditional order for lighting, from right to left, adding a new candle to the left each evening, to symbolise how light and holiness should always increase, never diminish and the menorah is placed in a visible place, such as a window facing the street. The last candles will be lit in Jewish households this evening.

At the party on Sunday afternoon, we were served traditional Hanukkah foods, including food fried in oil, commemorating the miracle of the oil cruse, variety of sufganiyot or doughnuts with a variety of fillings, latkes and chocolate coins, and we heard traditional Hanukkah songs in Hebrew, English and Ladino (Ocho Kandelikas).

The Cheder children taught us the significance of playing with dreidels, one of the Hanukkah customs. The dreidel has the Hebrew letters נ (nun), ג (gimel), ה (hey), פ (peh) and ש (shin), representing the initials of the Hebrew phrase ‘A Great Miracle Happened There’.

It is interesting how the story of Hanukkah is so often told as throwing off the shackles of an oppressive Greek ruler. Antiochos Epiphanes (Ἀντίοχος ὁ Ἐπιφανής) claimed to be a successor to Alexander the Great, but was seen by many as a usurper.

His eccentric, cruel and capricious rule included outlawing Jewish religious practices, desecrating the Temple in Jerusalem, setting up a statue of Zeus in the holy of holies and sacrificing a pig. The name Antiochos comes from the city of Antioch, while the title Epiphanes (Ἐπιφανής ) means ‘God Manifest’. But his behaviour led to contemporaries, in a wordplay, to call him Epimanes (Ἐπιμανής, ‘The Mad’).

A menorah in the Monasterioton Synagogue, the only surviving, pre-war working synagogue in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

But I wonder how the Jewish community in Greece responds to some traditional presentations of Hanukkah as a conflict between Jews and Greeks.

A new short film from the World Jewish Congress released last week shows how the presence of Jews in Greece predates Antiochos Epiphanes and the Maccabean revolt, going back thousands of years to the Babylonian exile, ca 585 to 549 BCE. Alexander the Great's conquest of the ancient Kingdom of Judah and the incorporation of the region into his empire coincided with the founding of a long-term Jewish community in Greece. Under his rule, the Jewish communities flourished and many lived a largely Hellenised lifestyle, speaking Greek rather than Hebrew. The words synagogue, Pentateuch and Pentecost are Greek, for example.

The Hellenised Jews in Greek-speaking cities such as Alexandria and Antioch were known as ‘Romaniote’ communities. They translated Jewish prayers into Greek and the first translation of the Bible was the Septuagint in Greek. Romaniote communities developed throughout the Byzantine era and many Jews completely assimilated into Greek culture.

The Ottoman Turkish capture of Constantinople in 1453 changed the life of Jews and in the Greek-speaking world. But it also marked the beginning of a Sephardic Jewish presence in Greece, and Ladino eventually language became the official language of Greek Jews.

Thessaloniki became the largest Jewish city in the Mediterranean, with about 50 synagogues and Jews making up more than half of the population, so that the city was known as the ‘Mother of Israel’.

The Jewish Holocaust Memorial at Liberty Square … a bronze sculpture by Nandor Glid of a menorah whose flames are wrapped around human bodies (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

On the eve of the Shoah, over 70,000 Jews lived in Greece and were part of the country’s everyday life and culture. But the Holocaust devastated the Greek Jewish community, and only 10,000 Jews were left in Greece at the end of World War II: 96.5% of the Jewish community had been murdered in the Nazi death camps in Poland. Fewer than 2,000 of the 50,000 Jews of pre-war Thessaloniki survived; almost all the Jews of Rhodes were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz.

The Greek Jewish community today numbers 4,200 to 6,000 people. The majority of Greek Jews live in Athens, followed by Thessaloniki. Jews are also present in Corfu, Chalkis, Ioannina, Larissa, Rhodes, Trikala, Volos and Crete, and 10 active synagogues. In Athens, there are two functioning synagogues opposite each other on the same street – one Romaniote and the other is Sephardic – Thessaloniki has three active synagogues, and there are several Jewish day schools throughout Greece.

Daily prayer in Christmas 2024-2025: 5, Sunday 29 December 2024, Christmas I

‘They found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers’ (Luke 2: 46) … a window in Saint Paul’s Church, Bedford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me … ‘five golden rings, four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree’.

This is the fifth day of Christmas, the First Sunday of Christmas and we are still in the Festival of Hanukkah. Later this morning, I hope to attend the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, and we have been invited to a Hanukkah party this afternoon.

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

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘They found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers’ (Luke 2: 46) … a window in Saint Peter’s Church, Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)


Luke 2: 41-52 (NRSVA):

41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. 44 Assuming that he was in the group of travellers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. 45 When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.’ 49 He said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ 50 But they did not understand what he said to them. 51 Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.

52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour.

‘They found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers’ (Luke 2: 46) … a window in Newman University Church, Saint Stephen’s Green, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Reflection:

The Christian interpretation of the song ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’ often sees the five golden rings as figurative representations of the Torah or the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

The Fifth Day of Christmas, 29 December, falls on a Sunday this year, but in other years is the Feast of Saint Thomas Becket in many parts of the Anglican Communion. In 1170, on the Fifth Day of Christmas, four knights from the court of King Henry II burst into Canterbury Cathedral as the archbishop is on his way to Vespers. Inside the cloister door, they murder Thomas Becket, whose defence of the rights of the Church has angered the king.

In his play, Murder in the Cathedral, TS Eliot reconstructs from historical sources the archbishop’s final sermon, preached in Canterbury Cathedral on Christmas Day. It is a remarkable meditation on the meaning of Christmas, martyrdom, and the true meaning of ‘peace on earth.’

Many people may not be expecting this morning’s Gospel story (Luke 2: 41-52) as the Gospel reading on this, the First Sunday of Christmas? Perhaps they are expecting another traditional Christmas story, such as:

• the visit of the Shepherds and the naming of Jesus (Luke 2: 15-21), the Gospel reading on Wednesday, New Year’s Day (1 January 2025)

• the Presentation in the Temple and the encounter with Simeon and Anna (Luke 2: 22-40), the Gospel reading on Wednesday, New Year’s Day (1 January 2025)

• the visit of the Magi (Matthew 2: 1-12), the reading for the feast of the Epiphany next week (Monday 6 January 2025)

• or, perhaps the flight into Egypt, part of yesterday’s reading (Matthew 2: 13-18)

Some may wonder why are we jumping from the story of Jesus’ birth in a stable in Bethlehem on Christmas Day to the story of the teenage Christ who is lost in the Temple on this first Sunday after Christmas. What happened to the intervening years, between the story of the stable and Jesus at the age of 12?

But this story completes the early identification of who Jesus is in Saint Luke’s Gospel. The Angel Gabriel tells the Virgin Mary that her child will be ‘holy’ and will be called the ‘Son of God’ (Luke 1: 35). At the Presentation, he is identified as ‘holy’ (Luke 2: 23). Now, in this reading, he identifies himself as God’s Son.

In the reading, the family travels from their provincial home to Jerusalem to worship in the Temple and there they find their young son ministering in the Temple. But this morning we might ask ourselves where do we find Christ?

Where do we seek him? Where is God’s Temple, the place where we are found to be truly in communion with God? And who got lost … the child or the parents?

I still remember with dread how I once lost sight of one of my children on an evening out in Crete 30 years ago. He was about three or four at the time and was missing only for a few moments. It may have been for only three or four minutes, but the fear and panic that struck me made it feel not like three or four minutes as I searched and shouted out his name, but like an eternity.

Temporary fears seemed to have everlasting consequences that I could not even bear to contemplate in my furtive search. I still remember the horror of that moment, it was so vivid and so real. When I found him, he knew where he was all the time, and could not grasp the enormity of my fears.

What was he doing that he lost sight of me? What was I doing that I lost sight of him? Who did I blame? Did I ever thank those who helped my search?

Did that experience inhibit me in his later years when I should have let my sons have the freedom to grow and to mature?

Christ is no longer a child in this reading. But Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary do not yet see him as an adult. I can fully identify with them in their panic and in their fear in this reading.

It was my pattern to go on holiday in Greece each summer, and I had felt safe, perhaps naively safe, wherever I was. Perhaps, because they went to Jerusalem for the Passover each year, Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary felt comfortable and relaxed as they moved through the courts and the arcades of the Temple, and through the side streets and the market stalls of Jerusalem.

On the way home, if Jesus was still seen as a child, he might have travelled with the women in the caravan; if he was now seen as a man, he might have been expected to travel with the men in the caravan. Any family travelling through a modern airport on holidays today, with the father taking some children through and the mother taking others, understands completely what may have happened at that Passover.

If it is an experience you have forgotten, gone without or have yet to go through, you can catch some of the flavour of the setting for this story in one of the all-time favourite Christmas movies, Home Alone (1990).

In the opening chapters of this Gospel, Saint Luke portrays Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary as a devout and righteous couple. They observe the religious rites and practices of Judaism, they have Jesus circumcised (Luke 2: 21), and three times he emphasises how they acted ‘according to the law’ (verses 22, 24, 39).

In this reading, we are told that they go to the Passover festival in Jerusalem ‘every year’ and they observe the ‘custom of the feast’ (see KJV, NIV). With this emphasis on the family’s religious devotion, Saint Luke is saying the Jewish boy Jesus grew up in a thoroughly Jewish world. It is a story that challenges antisemitism whenever and wherever it finds its ugly expressions today.

The setting for this story is the festival of the Passover, celebrating the deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Every year, Joseph, Mary and Jesus go to Jerusalem for this festival (verse 41), and they are still doing this when he is a 12-year-old (verse 42).

When the eight-day festival ends, the people they have travelled with begin the long journey back home to Nazareth. The entourage in this caravan includes both ‘relatives and friends’ (verse 42), which makes it a safe group but also a large crowd. They have gone a full day when Joseph and Mary realise Jesus is missing. Perhaps they were about to have a meal together, perhaps they were putting up the tents for the night or they had arrived at a hostel or inn were they found a room for the night.

They search for him there first of all before returning to Jerusalem. After three days, they find Jesus in the Temple, ‘sitting among the teachers’ (verse 46), the experts in Jewish law or rabbis. He not only listens and asks questions, but he also answers their questions. This was the rabbinical style of teaching at the time.

When Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary find him, they are distraught as Mary asks, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety’ (verse 48). In their eyes, Jesus is still a child.

But the words in verse 49 mark a turning point in this Gospel. These are the first words Christ speaks in the Gospels. And Jesus speaks of his bounden duty to do the work of God, the work of God the Father.

The Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph do not understand what Jesus says to them (verse 50). Now they have found Jesus, they probably have to travel back north to Nazareth by themselves, which was much more dangerous than traveling with the caravan they had had to leave. This danger is understood by everyone who first heard the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37). Perhaps this too is a literary hint at the later dangers in the journey that Jesus makes to Jerusalem.

When the family returns to Nazareth, Jesus is obedient to his parents in everyday life. In spite of not understanding what has happened and what has been said, Mary ‘treasured all these things in her heart’ (verse 51) – just as she ‘treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart’ after she heard the shepherds’ report of what the angels proclaimed (Luke 2: 19).

Saint Luke says that after this story Jesus spent his years in Nazareth, growing ‘in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favour’ (verse 52). But, in the meantime, something has changed. Jesus is now on the way, on the path.

Saint Luke says Joseph and Mary search for Jesus for three days. When early Christians heard this story in the context of the Passover (verses 41-42) and the phrase ‘after three days’ (verse 46), they would have thought immediately of the Passover when Christ was raised from the dead after three days. So, we should also read this story in the light of the Resurrection.

In the Resurrection, the new family of God supersedes our earthly family, the Temple becomes the place where Christ is at the centre. He is in dialogue with the tradition, yet with a new understanding.

There can be no true meaning in Christmas unless it looks forward to Easter.

When we next meet Jesus in this Gospel, he is at the Jordan, about to be baptised by Saint John the Baptist, which is the Gospel reading (Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22) for Sunday week, the First Sunday after the Epiphany (12 January 2025).

‘They found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers’ (Luke 2: 46) … ‘Jesus and Doctors’ by Rod Borghese

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 29 December 2024, Christmas I):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘We Believe, We Belong: Nicene Creed’. This theme is introduced today with Reflections by Dr Paulo Ueti, Theological Advisor and Regional Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean, USPG:

Let us reflect critically on the significance of the Council of Nicaea and its legacy in shaping the Christian faith. Convened by Emperor Constantine in 325 AD, the council profoundly impacted Christian doctrine, but it was also a moment when faith and imperial power intersected in complex ways. While the Nicene Creed was intended to unite the church and ensure that the divinity of Christ was firmly established, we must acknowledge the historical context in which this took place – within the framework of the Roman Empire.

The Council of Nicaea was called to resolve the Arian controversy* and stabilise the empire through religious cohesion. This raises important questions about how imperial power shaped the decisions made at the council. Unity was as much a political goal as a theological one. While the creed brought Christians together around shared beliefs, we must be aware of the dangers of equating unity with uniformity. When faith becomes entangled with political power, there is always a risk that diversity will be suppressed in the name of order.

As we commemorate the anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, let us pray for a church that embraces unity in diversity, recognising the richness of different expressions of faith without imposing uniformity. In a global context where the church has often been used as an instrument of colonialism and control, we are called to reflect critically on our history and to seek a form of unity that respects cultural and theological diversity. Let us pray for a church that resists the temptation of imperial conformity and instead embodies Christ's message of love, justice and inclusion for all creation.

[* The Arian controversy was a series of theological disputes about the nature of Jesus Christ.]

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 29 December 2024, Christmas I) invites us to pray:

Lord, we give thanks for the wisdom and discernment granted to the church at the Council of Nicaea, where the foundation of our faith was affirmed. We praise you for the clarity provided through the Nicene Creed, which proclaims Jesus as fully divine and fully human, one with you in substance and essence.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
who wonderfully created us in your own image
and yet more wonderfully restored us
through your Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as he came to share in our humanity,
so we may share the life of his divinity;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Heavenly Father,
whose blessed Son shared at Nazareth the life of an earthly home:
help your Church to live as one family,
united in love and obedience,
and bring us all at last to our home in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God in Trinity,
eternal unity of perfect love:
gather the nations to be one family,
and draw us into your holy life
through the birth of Emmanuel,
our Lord Jesus Christ.

Yesterday’s Reflection

>Continued Tomorrow

William Holman Hunt, ‘The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple’ (1854-1860), Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Daily prayer in Christmas 2024-2025: 4, Saturday 28 December 2024, The Holy Innocents

The Killing of the Holy Innocents, by Giotto (ca 1304-1306), in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

On the fourth day of Christmas my true love sent to me … ‘four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree’.

This is the fourth day of Christmas and today the church calendar remembers the Holy Innocents. The eight days of Hanukkah continue, and this is the Sabbath in Hanukkah, known as Shabbat Mikets. Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

A detail from The Killing of the Holy Innocents, by Giotto (ca 1304-1306), in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)


Matthew 2: 13-18 (NRSVA):

13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ 14 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’

16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

18 ‘A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’

A detail from the Killing of the Holy Innocents, by Giotto (ca 1304-1306), in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

The Christian interpretation of the song ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’ often sees the four colly birds as figurative representations of the four evangelists or Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

It is theologically important to remind ourselves in the days after Christmas Day of the important link between the Incarnation and bearing witness to the Resurrection faith.

Saint Stephen’s Day on Sunday (26 December), Holy Innocents’ Day today (28 December), and the commemoration of Thomas à Beckett, usually on 29 December, are reminders that Christmas, far from being surrounded by sanitised images of the crib, angels and wise men, is followed by martyrdom and violence. Close on the joy of Christmas comes the cost of following Christ. A popular expression, derived from William Penn, says: ‘No Cross, No Crown.’

The Church Calendar today (28 December) recalls the massacre of the Holy Innocents, who are sometimes revered as the first Christian martyrs. The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the feast on 29 December.

These dates have nothing to do with the chronological order of the event. Instead, the feast is kept within the octave of Christmas because the Holy Innocents gave their life for the new-born Saviour. Saint Stephen the first martyr (martyr by will, love and blood, 26 December), Saint John the Evangelist (27 December, martyr by will and love), and these first flowers of the Church (martyrs by blood alone) accompany the Christ Child entering this world on Christmas Day.

This commemoration first appears as a feast of the western church at the end of the fifth century, and the earliest commemorations were connected with the Feast of the Epiphany (6 January), bringing together the murder of the Innocents and the visit of the Magi.

The story of the massacre of the Innocents is the biblical narrative of infanticide by King Herod the Great in today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 2: 13-18). According to Saint Matthew’s Gospel, Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem to save him from losing his throne to a new-born king whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi.

In Saint Matthew’s Gospel, the visiting magi from the east arrive in Judea in search of the new-born king of the Jews, having ‘observed his star at its rising’ (Matthew 2: 2). Herod directs them to Bethlehem, and asks them to let him know who this king is when they find him. They find the Christ Child and honour him, but an angel tells them not to alert Herod, and they return home by another way. Meanwhile, Joseph has taken Mary and the child and they have escaped to Egypt.

Saint Matthew’s Gospel provides the only account of the Massacre. This incident is not mentioned in the other three gospels, nor is it mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus, who records Herod’s murder of his own sons. When the Emperor Augustus heard that Herod had ordered the murder of his own sons, he remarked: ‘It is better to be Herod’s pig, than his son.’

Saint Matthew’s story recalls passages in Hosea referring to the exodus, and in Jeremiah referring to the Babylonian exile, and the accounts in Exodus of the birth of Moses and the slaying of the first-born children by Pharaoh.

Estimates of the number of infants at the time in Bethlehem, a town with a total population of about 1,000, would be about 20. But Byzantine liturgy estimated 14,000 Holy Innocents were murdered, while an early Syrian list of saints put the number at 64,000. Coptic sources raise the number to 144,000 and place the event on 29 December.

This morning, as I reflect on the day ahead, my heart is weighed down by the plight of the children caught in war and violence in Gaza, Isreal and Palestine, in Syria and Lebanon, and in Ukraine and Russia, the forgotten child refugees on Greek islands, in Lampadusa and in Calais, in cheap hotels across this land and across Europe, and the child refugees and innocent children soon to be the victims of the appalling decisions about to be made by the incoming Trump regime.

It was distressing, to say the least, to read a report by my former colleague Helena Smith from Athens in the Guardian on Christmas Eve of a refugee ‘children’s emergency’ facing Greece, where the number of unaccompanied minors reaching the country rises and concern grows over a lack of ‘safe zones’ to host them.

Large numbers of children arrived this year (2024) along a new trafficking route from Libya to Crete, prompting NGOs to urge Greek authorities to take emergency measures that would allow children to be transferred to protected shelters or other EU member states.

‘What we are seeing amounts to a children’s emergency of the kind that we haven’t witnessed in years,’ said Sofia Kouvelaki, who heads the Home Project, an organisation that supports refugee and migrant children in Athens.

Ten years after Greece was at the centre of a refugee crisis, when nearly a million EU-bound asylum seekers crossed its borders, child arrivals have doubled this year, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. More than 13,000 minors arrived in Greece by sea in the first 11 months of this year. Landings by unaccompanied and separated children have also risen sharply, from 1,490 in 2023 to approximately 3,000 so far this year.

‘There are a huge number of kids turning up on boats every day and an urgent need for the creation of more safe spaces to house them,’ Sofia Kouvelaki said. Recent arrivals referred to the Home Project included exceptionally young children from Syria and Egypt.

Greece’s migration minister, Nikos Panagiotopoulos, predicted last week that pressure on east Mediterranean migration routes to Greece was likely to continue in 2025. By the end of the year, 60,000 people are expected to have entered Greece. Camps on Aegean islands are at full capacity, he said.

Aid groups report hundreds of children on the frontline isles of Samos, Leros and Kos without clothes or shoes and little or no access to essential services. Spending cuts by the Greek government have resulted in fewer protective shelters and about 1,500 unaccompanied children have been forced to fend for themselves throughout Greece. Incidents of violence and abuse have proliferated in overcrowded state-run reception facilities that frequently host children and adults together.

There were shocking reports this month of a teenager from Egypt being gang-raped, beaten and burned at the Malakasa refugee camp outside Athens.

Save the Children and other aid organisations report critical failures in Greece’s reception system, overcrowding in camps and asylum seeker facilities, shortages in basic services, placing children at risk as their asylum requests are put on EU funding is blocked from reaching shelters.

The Greek Council for Refugees and Save the Children report alarming living conditions that minors continue to face in the camps. ‘It is unacceptable that, even now, when so much money has been invested in Greece and we are no longer in crisis mode, that we should be discussing such basic issues,’ says Lefteris Papagiannakis, the director of the Greek Council for Refugees.

Christian CND and the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship are coming together this evening to mark Holy Innocents’ Day to pray for peace with an online, half-hour vigil on Zoom at 7 pm with prayers, readings, singing and reflections on all the innocent victims of war and violencethe, especially children.

‘Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt’ (Matthew 2: 14) … a window in Saint Peter’s Church, Kuching, which opened on Christmas Eve (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 28 December 2024, The Holy Innocents):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘Love – Advent’. This theme was introduced last Sunday with Reflections by the Revd Lopa Mudra Mistry, Presbyter in the Diocese of Calcutta, the Church of North India (CNI).

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 28 December 2024, The Holy Innocents) invites us to pray:

Lord, heal all who are hurt by injustice – mend spirits, wipe tears, comfort with divine love, bring assurance that justice will prevail.

The Collect:

Heavenly Father,
whose children suffered at the hands of Herod,
though they had done no wrong:
by the suffering of your Son
and by the innocence of our lives
frustrate all evil designs
and establish your reign of justice and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ,
in your humility you have stooped to share our human life
with the most defenceless of your children:
may we who have received these gifts of your passion
rejoice in celebrating the witness of the Holy Innocents
to the purity of your sacrifice
made once for all upon the cross;
for you are alive and reign, now and for ever.

Collect on the Eve of Christmas I:

Almighty God,
who wonderfully created us in your own image
and yet more wonderfully restored us
through your Son Jesus Christ:
grant that, as he came to share in our humanity,
so we may share the life of his divinity;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

‘Rest on the Flight into Egypt’ (1879) by Luc-Olivier Merson (1846-1920) … a reminder of the stark reality of the hardship and deprivation suffered by a family on the run (Museum of Fine Arts Boston)

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

Ernst Scheyer: the life of a Holocaust refugee and German scholar in Kenilworth Square, Dublin

Ernst Scheyer (1890-1958), a Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, lived at 67 Kenilworth Square from 1939 to 1956 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

Christmas and Chanukah coincide this year, and this evening is the Sabbath evening in Chanukah. The Sabbath in Chanukah is known as Shabbat Mikets. Chanukah is the Jewish festival that celebrates liberation from brutal oppression, the defeat of violent religious discrimination and putting an end to antisemitic and despotic rule.

When I visited Kenilworth Square, one of my favourite corners of Dublin, last week and met Martin and Colette Joyce in their home at No 67, I was reminded that the house was once the home of Dr Ernst Scheyer (1890-1958), a Jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in the late 1930s.

Scheyer had been a successful lawyer in Germany and he had survived both Kristallnacht and time in Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp near Berlin. He arrived in Dublin on 14 January 1939 at the age of 48, and his family made their home at 67 Kenilworth Square. He later taught German at Saint Andrew’s College, Clyde Road, Saint Columba’s College, Rathfarnham, and Trinity College Dublin. He was a key figure in founding the Progressive Jewish Community in Dublin in 1946, and when he died in Birmingham 1958 he was buried in Woodtown, near Rathfarnham.

Ernst Scheyer lived in Ireland for almost 20 years. During those two decades, he was a pioneering figure in teaching German in Dublin, an influential figure in Jewish life in Ireland, a founding member of the Jewish progrssive Synagogue in Rathgar, and a friend of Albert Einstein.

His story has been recounted by Gisela Holfter of the University of Limerick in her paper ‘Ernst Scheyer’ in German Monitor, vol 63 (2016), ‘German-speaking Exiles in Ireland 1933-1945’ (pp 149-169), a volume she also edited. Scheyer’s grandson, Stephen Weil, supported her research and provided access to family archival material and photographs.

Ernst Scheyer ca 1915 … he was decorated in the German army during World War I (Archival photograph: Stephen Weil / Gisela Holfter)

Ernst Scheyer was born in Oppeln in Upper Silesia on 23 November 1890. His parents owned a wholesale and retail grain business and were the first generation of Liberal Jews in the family, while he was the first in his family to go to university.

During World War I, he volunteered in the German army in 1915. He was wounded and was decorated for bravery with medals that he later brought with him to Ireland. He received his PhD in law in Breslau (Wroclaw), and became a practising lawyer and a respected member of the Jewish community in Liegnitz, Silesia, now in south-west Poland.

Scheyer married Marie Margareta (Mieze) Epstein, who was born in Breslau and who was five years younger. They were the parents of two children, Heinz (born December 1919) and Renate (born September 1925).

Scheyer has been described as a tall, broad and impressive looking man. He built a successful practice as a lawyer and notary in Liegnitz, where both Ernst and Marie were active in the liberal Jewish community, and for a time he was President of the B’nai Brith Lodge.

After the Nazis took power, Scheyer lost his status as a notary in 1935, the family lost most of their staff and had to move out of their large house, and on 1 December 1938 his accreditation in the district and the superior courts was withdrawn.

After Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938, Scheyer was rounded up and spent almost a month in Sachsenhausen, a concentration camp near Berlin, where he was prisoner number 012798 in block 14.

Their son Heinz who had received a scholarship to Trinity College Dublin and started studying medicine at TCD in September 1937, giving the family a much-needed link to Ireland. But entry to Ireland was not easy to gain, particularly for Jews, for whom access had been restricted from the beginning of the Irish Free State.

With the help of Dr Harris Tomkin, a Jewish eye doctor, Heinz obtained a one-month visa for England and Ireland for Ernst and Marie Scheyer. Tomkin was an ophthalmologist at the Royal Victoria Eye and Ear Hospital on Adelaide Road for 60 years, and was vice-chair of the Jewish Refugee Aid Committee, formed in 1938.

Ernst Scheyer was released from Sachsenhausen on 5 December 1938 and Ernst and Marie arrived in Dublin on 14 January 1939; he was 48. The Scheyer family soon made their home at 67 Kenilworth Square.

Marie Epstein and Ernst Scheyer were engaged in Breslau 3 October 1917 (Archival photograph: Stephen Weil / Gisela Holfter)

According to Heinz Scheyer, his father began working in Dublin as a travelling salesman. He also spent about four months in Northern Ireland, where he left a strong impression. Edith Jacobowitz, who escaped Berlin with her younger brother on one of the last Kindertransporte, mentions him in her memoir.

However, when a local policeman tipped off Heinz that his parents were about to be interned within 24 hours, Ernst and Marie Scheyer fled Northern Ireland. Back in Dublin, he taught German at Saint Andrew’s College, Clyde Road, Saint Columba’s College, Rathfarnham, and in TCD.

A few months after arriving in Ireland, he was stripped of his German citizenship. The doctor at the German Embassy Robert Stumpf, who was a member of the Nazi party, reported that the Scheyers lived with a Jewish eye doctor and the nothing negative was known about them. Scheyer seems to have been observed also by Irish Military Intelligence, the G2.

Renate Scheyer joined her parents and her brother in Dublin in June 1940, having stayed in the same boarding school as her brother in England. She was just 16, and started studying Modern Languages at TCD the following autumn. She later married another refugee, Robert Weil.

The Progressive Jewish Synagogue on Leicester Avenue, between Kenilworth Square and Rathgar Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

After the war, Ernst and Marie Scheyer became Irish citizens. He was also active in Jewish community life in Dublin and was and involved in founding the Progressive Jewish Synagogue, which would be built on Leicester Avenue, around the corner from his home on Kenilworth Square.

Over 500 people attended he meeting in Dublin on 30 January 1946 to form a Progressive Synagogue. Bethel Solomons, the first president, was a doctor and former rugby player for Ireland. The Dublin Liberal Congregation was formed with Rabbi Brasch as the minister. Scheyer was one of the council members, and with his legal background may have written the constitution.

The wedding of Ernst and Marie Scheyer’s daughter Renate and Robert Weil on 14 July 1948 was the first wedding in the Progressive Jewish community in Dublin. Scheyer may have arrange Leo Baeck’s visit to the Progressive Jewish Community in 1949 in Dublin as Scheyer was bar mitzvah under him in Oppeln.
The first meetings of this congregation were held in a Quaker meeting house until 1952, when the foundation stone of the new synagogue on Leicester Avenue, Rathgar, was consecrated.

Marie and Ernst Scheyer, Renate Scheyer and Robert Weil, Ruth and Heinz Shire at the wedding of Renate and Robert Weil Dublin on 14 July 1948 … the first wedding in the Progressive Jewish Community in Dublin (Archival photograph: Stephen Weil / Gisela Holfter)

Scheyer is listed in the Calendar of TCD from 1947 to 1958 as an Assistant in German. He took over this position from Hans Reiss (1922-2020), another refugee who later became professor of German in Bristol. His students included Bill Watts, a former Provost of TCD, and his wife Geraldine.

In a letter to Albert Einstein, Scheyer described how he set students tasks of preparing presentations on literature, philosophy, psychology and ethics. He wrote an eight-page letter to Einstein in April 1950 after Einstein had warned about the great dangers of annihilation of life on earth with the development of the hydrogen bomb.

Scheyer presented 19 radio broadcasts for the ‘Europäische Stunde’ of the RIAS Berlin, between 23 October 1955 and 16 February 1958. He reported on politics, elections, cultural festivals such as ‘An Tostal’, the death of Jack B Yeats and the problems with the ownership of the Hugh Lane collection. Robert Briscoe, Dublin’s first Jewish lord mayor, features in at least four of his broadcasts, and Scheyer describes Briscoe’s visit to the US.

He loved and inspired love among his students for German literature and German culture, and organised a Goethe celebration on his bicentenary. With his son-in-law Robert Weil he published A Book of German Idioms in 1955. He visited Germany at least once after World War II, when he went to a spa. But, while he holidayed in German-speaking Switzerland, he never spent a holiday in Germany.

Ernst Scheyer died on 9 March 1958 while visiting his son Heinz, who had become a GP in Birmingham. His heart attack seems to have been connected with the damage to his health during his time in the concentration camp. He was buried in the Progressive Jewish cemetery in Woodtown, Rathfarnham.

Two years after his death, the Ernst Scheyer Prize was founded in his memory in 1960. Two prizes are awarded annually to students in German at TCD.

His widow moved to live with their daughter and son-in-law, Renate and Robert Weil, in Belfast in 1963. She later moved to live with her son, Dr Heinz Shire, in Birmingham, and died there in 1987. She too is buried in Woodtown in Rathfarnham, Dublin.

Although Ernst Scheyer’s name does not appear in the register in Dermot Keogh’s Jews in Twentieth Century Ireland (1998), Nick Harris’s Dublin’s Little Jerusalem (2002) nor in Ray Rivlin’s Shalom Ireland (2003), he is remembered today for his teaching and enthusiasm for German language and literature.

Martin and Colette Joyce of the Protect Kenilworth Square Committee at their home at No 67 Kenilworth Square (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Another German Jewish refugee who was Scheyer’s near neighbour briefly on Kenilworth Square was Professor Ludwig Hopf (1884-1939). He lived briefly at No 65. He was appointed a lecturer in TCD but had died at the end of 1939, soon after Ernst Scheyer arrived in Dublin.

Hopf was a theoretical physicist and a friend of Albert Einstein, Erwin Schrödinger and Carl Jung – he had been the first assistant to Albert Einstein and introduced Einstein to the psychoanalyst Carl Jung.

Hopf regarded Dublin as expensive to live in and estimated that everything cost 50% more than in Cambridge. Writing to friends in Germany, he describes living in ‘a very beautiful, very famous and very expensive corner of Europe.’

However, shortly after taking up his post at TCD, Hopf became seriously ill with a previously undiagnosed thyroid failure. He died at 65 Kenilworth Square on the evening of 21 December 1939.

Chag Chanukah Sameach, חַג חֲנוּכָּה שַׂמֵחַ‎

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎

No 65 Kenilworth Square … Ludwig Hopf’s home in ‘a very beautiful, very famous and very expensive corner of Europe’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘Creator of All and Rock of Ages, Too many lights have been extinguished. The world has grown too dark’

This year, for the first time in 19 years, the first day of Hanukkah and Christmas Day fall on the same day

Patrick Comerford

For the first time in 19 years, Christmas Day and the first day of Hanukkah are falling on the same day. Hanukkah, or Chanukah, is sometimes referred to as the Festival of Dedication or the Festival of Lights.

The word ‘Hanukkah’ means dedication. The festival commemorates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem by Judas Maccabaeus in 165 BCE, after it was desecrated by Antiochus Epiphanes.

Saint John’s Gospel focuses on major biblical festivals, such as Passover and Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles, and Jesus is seen to connect his mission with each of the these major festivals.

In Saint John’s Gospel, he celebrates Hanukkah or the Festival of Lights in Jerusalem: At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon (John 10: 22-23, NRSVA).

But Hanukkah is not one of the major Jewish festivals. It is not included in the Torah, nor is referred to it in the writings of the Prophets. It is a feast of dedication, remembering the Maccabees who recaptured the Temple from Antiochus Epiphanius after it had been captured and desecrated more than 150 years before Jesus was born (see I Maccabees 3-4; II Maccabees 8: 1 to 10: 18).

The Books of Maccabees describe the eight-days that Hanukkah commemorates. The requirements for the rededication of the Temple seemed impossible, with only one day’s supply of oil for the temple menorah or lampstand remaining. According to these accounts, God miraculously allowed the oil to last the full eight days so that the dedication would be complete.

The name of Antiochus Epiphanes means ‘god manifest’. He was one of the successors of Alexander the Great and sought to unify his empire by establishing a single religion. Judaism and its practices, including Sabbath observance, scripture reading and the circumcision of eight-day-old boys, were outlawed, and the Temple was desecrated when a pig was sacrificed to Zeus there.

Under the leadership of Judas Maccabeus, a nickname meaning ‘hammer’, the Jewish people fought a guerrilla-style war against the forces of Antiochus Epiphanes. Although greatly outnumbered, the Jewish rebels were victorious and retook the Temple. On the 25th day of the month Kislev 164 BCE, the defiled Temple was reconsecrated and sacrifices were offered to God.

The people joyfully celebrated the rededication of the Temple for eight days. At the conclusion of the festivities, it was decreed that a similar festival be held each year beginning on 25 Kislev (I Maccabees 4: 36–39).

Hanukkah was not one of the required pilgrimage festivals (see Exodus 23), but those who attended celebrated the days with great rejoicing.

According to Saint John’s Gospel, Jesus is in Jerusalem during Hanukkah or the Festival of Lights, a celebration of hope and justice against dark oppression and tyranny. The account in John 10: 22-42 concludes a festival cycle in John 5: 1 to 10: 42: Sabbath (John 5), Passover (John 6), Tabernacles (John 7: 1 to 10: 21), and Dedication (John 10: 22-42).

In other places, Jesus tells his followers that they are the light of the world and should not be hidden away but to be like a lamp stand (or menorah), to and ‘let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven’ (Matthew 5: 14-16).

Hanukkah continues to be celebrated in Jewish homes and communities. Hanukkah and Christmas are not the same, nor are they equivalent. But, during this season, we are called to be lights in the midst of darkness. With all the evil, division, oppression and injustice that take place in this world, it is important that all who celebrate the lights of this season become the lights of this world for all around us who desperately need light in their darkness.

I recently came ‘A Hanukkah Prayer for a Time of Darkness’, a poem by Marla Baker:

Creator of All,
In the beginning You made the night sky luminous with the light of the moon and the stars and
You made the daytime bright with the light of the sun and
Saw that it was good.

And You created human beings in Your own image, with capacity
To distinguish dark from light, with capacity
To create holy sparks, see into the shadows and
Shine light where it is dark.
And You saw that it was very good.

Creator of All and Rock of Ages,
In the time of the Maccabees once more You worked a miracle of light,
Permitting our ancestors to rededicate holy space.
And it lasted eight days and eight nights.

Creator of All and Rock of Ages,
In the dark of night, at the darkest time of year
We light candles in remembrance of the miracle,
One more each night until there are eight.

Creator of All and Rock of Ages,
Too many lights have been extinguished.
The world has grown too dark.

Creator of Light and Dark,
Teach us once more to see into the shadows,
To shed our light in all the dark corners and to
Create holy sparks for all humankind
So that once more we can say
It is very good.

Chag Chanukah Sameach, חַג חֲנוּכָּה שַׂמֵחַ‎

A Hanukkiah or Hanukkah menorah in Murano glass in Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)