Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 10, Tuesday 14 April 2026

Nicodemus visits Christ at night … a window in Saint John-at-Hampstead Church, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Our Easter celebrations continue in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Second Sunday of Easter (Easter II) or, in the calendar of the Greek Orthodox Church, with Easter Day.

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.

‘Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up’ (John 3: 14) … a window in Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, in memory of Joseph Gray of Maids Moreton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 3: 7-15 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 7 Do not be astonished that I said to you, “You must be born from above.” 8 The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’ 9 Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can these things be?’ 10 Jesus answered him, ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

11 ‘Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.’

‘The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes’ (John 3: 8) … travelling from Dalkey to Bray on the Dart at Killiney (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

In the readings for three days this week, from Monday to Wednesday, we meet Nicodemus, a prominent Pharisee, a rabbi, a teacher and a member of the Sanhedrin. He has a Greek name – Νικοδημος (Nikodemos) means ‘victory of the people’ – and this Greek name probably indicates he is an urbane and sophisticated man.

Nicodemus appears three times in Saint John’s Gospel:

1, He visits Christ at night to discuss Christ’s teachings (John 3: 1-21)
2, He reminds his colleagues in the Sanhedrin that the law requires that a person should be heard before being judged (John 7: 50-51)
3, At the Crucifixion, he provides the embalming spices and helps Joseph of Arimathea to prepare the body of Christ for burial (John 19: 39-42)

In this first encounter, Nicodemus comes to Christ by night. Perhaps he did not want to be seen consulting Jesus, who is newly-arrived in Jerusalem and is already causing a stir. But we should remember too that Saint John’s Gospel uses poetic and dramatic contrasts: heaven and earth, water and wine, seeing and believing, faith and doubt, truth and falseness. Here too we have the contrast between darkness and light, the world that is in darkness is being brought into the light of Christ.

Nicodemus is a good and pious Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish religious court. But, despite his positive attitudes to the Mosaic Law, what is the foundation of his faith?

Nicodemus acknowledges Christ is a teacher sent by God. But is this enough – is it simply an understanding of Christ without faith? At this point, Nicodemus sees but does not believe; he has insight but does not have faith.

Christ’s reply puts the emphasis back on faith rather than on law, on believing more than seeing. But does Nicodemus understand this?

Nicodemus seems to misunderstand what he hears. He thinks Christ is speaking about a second physical, natural birth from a mother’s womb.

The dialogue that follows includes two of the most quoted passages in Saint John’s Gospel:

• ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above’ or ‘born again’ (verse 5)

• ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (verse 16)

Today’s reading is placed between these two well-known sayings. Christ tells Nicodemus: ‘The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit’ (verse 8).

Nicodemus is confused or perplexed and asks: ‘How can these things be?’ (verse 9). Christ responds, asking him: ‘Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?’ (verse 10).

The conversation moves from the general to the particular, from the faith of many to the faith of one individual. When Jesus recalls in verse 7, ‘Do not be astonished that I said to you’, the Greek pronoun used (ὑμᾶς) is in the accusative plural form of the second-person pronoun. It signifies ‘you’ as the direct object when the speaker or writer addresses a group; so Jesus has been teaching a number of people, a group, or many people.

But when Jesus goes on to say, ‘Very truly, I tell you … yet you do not receive our testimony’ (verse 11), the first use of the word ‘you’ is singular, meaning you yourself, but the second use is plural.

It is difficult to notice these shifts in the English translations, to notice how Jesus moves from the second person singular to the first personal plural, from ‘you’ to we, then ‘you’ (plural) and ‘our’.

Who is the ‘we’ here, who owns what is ‘our’?

Too often, in the evangelical traditions, there is an emphasis on personal faith and personal salvation that makes no connection with collective faith, the faith of the Church, and makes no connection with the message of salvation not just for individuals, for humanity, or even the world, but the whole created cosmos.

When Christ speaks of the wind in verse 8, the Greek word used (πνεῦμα, pneuma) means both spirit and wind, while the word ‘sound’ (φωνή, phōnē) can also be translated as ‘voice’. I am reminded of Ezekiel 36: 25-27, where it says: ‘I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanliness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.’

Nicodemus has floundered around; he really fails to grasp what Jesus is saying and its implications. His question is phrased: ‘How can this be?’ (RSV), or: ‘How can these things be?’ (NRSV). Others suggest that his question should be translated as: ‘How can these things happen?’ or even more literally: ‘How is it possible for these things to happen?’

A teacher ought to be aware of the truth. But Nicodemus seems to be behaving like a weak pupil.

In verse 12, we find a contrast between earthly things, such as the parable of the wind (see verse 8), and heavenly things, as in supreme spiritual realities. And Nicodemus is offered a choice. Which choice does he make?

Christ descended from heaven to bring eternal life, participation in God’s life. In verse 13, we read the first of Saint John’s three sayings about the Son of Man being lifted up, and it is comparable to three passages in Saint Mark’s Gospel on the Son of Man’s passion (see Mark 8: 31; Mark 9: 31; Mark 10: 33).

The word ‘lift up’ (verse 14) refers to both Christ being lifted up on the Cross and Christ being lifted up into heaven – the cross is the first step on the ladder of the ascension. For the imagery being drawn on here see also Numbers 21: 4-9. The writer of the Book of Wisdom calls the serpent a symbol of salvation (Wisdom 16: 6). But this verse also recalls the earlier remark to Nathanael that he would see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man (see John 1: 51).

Nicodemus would have left Jesus that night challenged to ask whether he needed to move beyond the Law to an encounter with the living God, an encounter that brings death and rebirth. But the dialogue continues in tomorrow’s Gospel reading (John 3: 16-21).

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!
Christ is Risen!

Nicodemus depicted in a wall-painting in Saint Guthlac’s Church in Passenham, Northamptonshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 14 April 2026):

‘Stocked with Hope’ 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), pp 46-47. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by Mayank Thomas, Programme Manager, the Synodical Board of Social Services, Church of North India.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 14 April 2026) invites us to pray:

God, bless all who join CNI’s sessions on dignity and equal rights in various parts of North India. Strengthen their voices to guide others toward respect, fairness, and equality.

The Collect:

Almighty Father,
you have given your only Son to die for our sins
and to rise again for our justification:
grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness
that we may always serve you
in pureness of living and truth;
through the merits of your Son Jesus Christ 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 our Father,
through our Saviour Jesus Christ
you have assured your children of eternal life
and in baptism have made us one with him:
deliver us from the death of sin
and raise us to new life in your love, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
for whom no door is locked, no entrance barred:
open the doors of our hearts,
that we may seek the good of others
and walk the joyful road of sacrifice and peace,
to the praise of God the Father.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up’ (John 3: 14) … an icon of the Elevation of the Holy Cross in Arkadi Monastery, near Rethymnon in Crete (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

Chesed-El Synagogue, built by Sir Manasseh Meyer, once the richest man in Singapore

Chesed-El Synagogue on Oxley Rise, one of twwo synagogues in Singapore, was built by Sir Manasseh Meyer in 1905 (Photograph © Chesed-El Synagogue)

Patrick Comerford

During my recent 36-hour visit to Singapore, I took time to search for the synagogues of Singapore – and the cathedrals, churches, mosques, shrines, pagodas and temples.

Today there are two synagogues in Singapore: the Maghain Aboth Synagogue on Waterloo Street and Chesed-El Synagogue on Oxley Road. The Maghain Aboth Synagogue (‘Shield of our Fathers’), built in 1878, is the oldest synagogue in Singapore and in South-East Asia. But when I was in the Orchard Road and Emerald Hill area I also saw the the Chesed-El Synagogue (חסד-אל‎, ‘Grace of God’), built on Oxley Rise in 1905.

The first Jewish immigrants to Singapore were Jewish merchants of Baghdadi origin, who were trading between the then-British ports of Calcutta and Singapore. The migration of Baghdadi Jews began in the 18th and 19th centuries. The first Baghdadi Jews in Singapore were Mizrahi or Sephardic merchants and traders.

The early Jewish settlers in Singapore first lived at Boat Quay, and moved later to North Bridge Road, Dhoby Ghaut, Mount Sophia and the Rochor vicinity. These early Jews also laid out a cemetery, the Old Cemetery behind the Fort Canning.

The British colonial government gave three Jews – Joseph Dwek Cohen, Nassim Joseph Ezra and Ezra Ezekiel – a lease in 1841 to build a synagogue in a small, two-storey shophouse near Boat Quay. The synagogue gave its name to Synagogue Street, which I wrote about two weeks ago (29 November 2024).

Synagogue Street was in the first Jewish quarter in Singapore, and the first synagogue was in a shophouse on Synagogue Street with a congregation of 40. The Maghain Aboth synagogue (מגן אבות‎, ‘Guardian of Patriarchs’ or 'Shield of our Fathers’), which I wrote about last Friday evening (6 December 2024), was built in the neo-classical style and completed in 1878.

Inside Chesed-El Synagogue, designed by the architect RAJ Bidwell (1869-1918) of Swan and Maclaren (Photograph © Chesed-El Synagogue)

The Chesed-El Synagogue (חסד-אל‎, ‘Grace of God’) is on Oxley Rise in the River Valley area in Singapore. It was built in 1905, mainly through the efforts of Sir Manasseh Meyer (1846-1930), then the most prominent Jewish leader in Singapore. He was born in Baghdad, educated in Calcutta, came to Singapore at the of 15 in 1861 and continued his education in Saint Joseph’s Institution.

Meyer developed a successful import-export business that was founded on the opium trade. He became one of the largest real estate owners in Singapore and was once said to have owned three-quarters of Singapore and to be the ‘richest Jew in the Far East’ – richer than even the Sassoons, who have been described as the ‘Rothschilds of the East’.

The Meyer family was truly cosmopolitan, travelling together to China, India, Japan, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel (then Palestine) and throughout Europe. As Meyer’s wealth increased so did his philanthropic interests, and he was fully immersed both in community affairs in Singapore and in the religious affairs of the Jewish community.

Meyer secured the sale of the original synagogue on Synagogue Street so that a new synagogue, the Maghain Aboth Synagogue, could be built on Waterloo Street for the growing number of Jewish families in Singapore. It officially opened in 1878.

Meanwhile, in 1890, Meyer bought Killiney House, once the home of the Dublin-born surgeon and plantation owner Thomas Oxley (1805-1886). He renamed the house Belle Vue and it became the Meyer family home.

Singapore’s Jewish population had grown to 500 by 1902 and the synagogue on Waterloo Street was becoming overcrowded. In addition, there was growing friction between the Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities over how the services should be conducted.

RAJ Bidwell designed the synagogue in the Late Renaissance style (Photograph © Chesed-El Synagogue)

Meyer decided to build a new synagogue, at his own expense, on his Belle Vue estate on Oxley Rise. The new synagogue was completed in 1905, and was dedicated on 14 April 1905. It was named Chesed El (חסד-אל‎), which means ‘Bountiful Mercy and Goodness of God’ in Hebrew.

Chesed-El Synagogue was designed by the architect Regent Alfred John (‘RAJ’) Bidwell (1869-1918) of Swan and Maclaren, the dominant architectural practice in colonial Singapore. Bidwell also designed including Raffles Hotel (1899), the Teutonia Club (1900), now Goodwood Park Hotel, the Victoria Memorial Hall (1905), now the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall, and the Singapore Cricket Club (1907).

Bidwell designed the synagogue in the Late Renaissance style. Its façade is ornate with floral plasterwork, continuous cornices, and heavy ornamentations. A spacious three-arched porte-cochere or carriage porch creating a grand entrance to the synagogue. The classical features throughout the building include arches and Corinthian columns, as well as large arched windows.

Inside the synagogue, two rows of columns lead to the ark where the Torah scrolls are kept. The Hebrew inscription above the ark reads, ‘Lo, in thine abundant love I enter thy house, in reverence to thee I bow towards thy holy temple’ (Psalm 5: 7).

The wooden bimah at the centre of the synagogue has replaced the original marble bimah that was damaged during World War II.

With its high ceiling and many windows, the synagogue was well suited to Singapore’s climate before the installation of air-conditioning. Even the benches have woven cane seat backings that provide maximum comfort for worshippers in the tropical heat. Meyer’s personal chair with his name (‘Manashe Meir’ in Hebrew) is placed at the front, near the ark.

Among the patterns and decorations adorning the synagogue, capital M monograms are decoratively incorporated into the design in memory of its founder. These letters can be seen around the synagogue, including the front façade and on the intricate metalwork surrounding the women’s gallery.

The new synagogue was one of the first buildings in Singapore to install gaslight. These lights were later replaced with electric ones and crystal chandeliers, but the original gas pipes still remain concealed in the ceiling.

The wooden bimah at the centre of the synagogue has replaced the original marble bimah damaged during World War II (Photograph © Chesed-El Synagogue)

Meyer disbursed ‘rickshaw allowances’ to ensure a complete congregation at every Sabbath service at the Chesed El Synagogue.

His philanthropy was not limited to the Jewish community. He was a leading donor to Raffles College, one of the first colleges established in Singapore. The original science building of the National University of Singapore was named after him due to his support of the school. Today the Manasseh Meyer Building is an integral part of the Bukit Timah campus of NUS.

Albert Einstein was asked to visit Meyer to seek his support for building the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. When Einstein arrived in Singapore in 1922, Meyer opened his Belle Vue estate on Oxley Rise to entertain community’s leaders, including the Anglican Bishop of Singapore, Charles James Ferguson-Davie (1872-1963), and the future Nobel Prize winner and his wife. Meyer responded to Einstein’s request for support for the Hebrew University with a donation of £500, the equivalent of about £304,000 in 2024.

During his visit, Einstein noted that Chesed-El Synagogue was ‘a magnificent synagogue, which was actually built for the purpose of communication between [Meyer] and [God]’.

Meyer was knighted by George V in 1929 ‘in recognition of his public services and benevolence.’ The Straits Times reported he was ‘a man of great wealth who contributed lavishly to various local and imperial causes, in addition to having done a vast amount of good in Malaya.’

When Meyer died at the age of 84 at his home on Oxley Rise on 1 July 1930, a Rabbi Solomon from Palestine officiated at his funeral at Chesed-El.

Meyer’s commitment to education was continued by the leaders of the Jewish community in Singapore. The Ganenu Learning Centre (Our Garden) was expanded in recent years to become the Sir Manasseh Meyer International School.

Some of the Torah scrolls in Chesed-El Synagogue (Photograph © Chesed-El Synagogue)

The Jewish community in Singapore shrank dramatically in the immediate aftermath of World War II, and the Maghain Aboth Synagogue on Waterloo Street became the main synagogue. Still, it was decided that Maghain Aboth would close on Mondays, when morning prayers would be held at Chesed-El.

This arrangement ensures both synagogues continue to serve the community. The Chesed-El Synagogue was designated a national monument in 1998. It had an extensive renovation in 2016 with the support of the National Heritage Board of Singapore, and a Jewish community centre was built in the grounds.

Chesed El Synagogue is used on major festivals such as Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover and Tishah B’Av, and is also the venue for circumcisions, Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah ceremonies, weddings and funerals. It is run by the Chesed El Synagogue Settlement and Trust and is open every Monday for the morning service as well as on major holidays.

The synagogue welcomes all visitors of different faiths and denominations, except during the regular scheduled religious services.

As for Meyer’s former family home on Oxley Rise, Belle Vue was demolished in the 1980s and replaced by a condominium development with the same name.

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎

Chesed El Synagogue is used on Monday morning, on major festivals and for family events (Photograph © Chesed-El Synagogue)

The Christian Science church in Chelsea that was rescued and became a concert hall

The Cadogan Hall in Chelsea is a former Christian Science Church designed by Robert Fellowes Chisholm in the Byzantine Revival style with some eastern elements (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Patrick Comerford

The Cadogan Hall is a 950-seat concert hall in the heart of Chelsea, off Sloane Square and Sloane Street, between Sloane Terrace and Wilbraham Place. This impressive building is the home of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. It is only steps away from Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Square, and with its domed campanile it too looks a church or, perhaps even, a mosque – because the building was designed as a Christian Science Church over a century ago.

The church was designed by Robert Fellowes Chisholm (1840-1915), and when it opened in 1907 it could hold a congregation of up to 1,400 people.

The Christian Science movement was founded by Mary Baker Eddy in Boston in 1879. The first Christian Scientists on these islands were Graves Colles and Marjorie Colles of Killiney, Co Dublin, some time around 1888-1893, and Christian Science came to Britain in 1890.

Mary Baker Eddy sent students to London, where fashionable West End women began to be attracted to it. The first Christian Science services in London were in one of the Portman Rooms, Baker Street and Dorset Street, in February 1896.

Three years after the original ‘Mother Church’ was completed in Boston, the London congregation moved into the old Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in Bryanston Street, near Marble Arch, in 1897.

The former Sephardic synagogue in Marylebone was built in 1861, but closed in 1896 when the congregation moved to Lauderdale Road. The building was remodelled and when it opened in late 1897 it was the first Christian Science church in Europe.

The former Christian Science church was built on the site of a disused Wesleyan chapel in Chelsea in 1904-1909 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Less than two decades later, the members bought a disused Wesleyan chapel on a freehold site in Chelsea for almost £40,000 in April 1903 and hired Chisholm as the architect for a new church. When building their own churches, Christian Scientists looked to their churches in Boston as examples. But Chisholm had worked in eastern architectural idioms in India, and provided a completely original design for the new Christian Science church in London.

However, a more traditional plan was asked for, and Chisholm provided a more traditional design in the Byzantine Revival style, with some eastern elements and seven coupled windows across the façade.

Chisholm was a pioneer the Indo-Saracenic style of architecture in Madras. The Indo-Saracenic style was also known as Indo-Gothic, Mughal-Gothic, Neo-Mughal, or Hindoo style. This revivalist architectural style was used by many British architects in India in the late 19th century, especially in public and government buildings for the British Raj and palaces for princely rulers. It drew stylistic and decorative elements from native Indo-Islamic architecture, especially Mughal architecture, and, less often, from Hindu temple architecture.

Chisholm was born in London and even in his youth he was recognised as a talented landscape painter. He moved to Madras in 1865, where he became head of the school of industrial art.

Chisholm began to design the older building of Presidency College, Madras (1865-1870). His first buildings were in the Renaissance and Gothic styles, and he designed or rebuilt the Presidency College, Madras (1865-1870), the Nilgiri Library (1869) and the Lawrence Memorial School in in Ootacamund (1865-1869). The revenue board building in the Chepauk Palace complex (1871) was his first building in the ‘Indo-Saracenic’ style.

Chisholm became Consulting Architect to the Government of Madras in 1872, and designed the Napier Museum, Trivandrum, the Senate buildings of the University of Madras (1874-1879), the offices of P Orr & Sons and the Post and Telegraph Office in Ootacamund (1875-1883), and he enlarged and built a pavilion at the MA Chidambaram Stadium. He also designed the Bombay Municipal Offices and the immense Laxmi Vilas Palace in Baroda (Vadodara) in 1880-1890.

Robert Fellowes Chisolm incorporated both classical and Byzantine elements in his design of the church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Chisholm returned to London in 1902, and his best-known building there was the First Church of Christ Scientist or Cadogan Hall near Sloane Square. He died on 28 May 1915 at Southsea at the age of 75.

The cornerstone of the Christian Science church was made of granite from Concord, New Hampshire, and was laid on 19 November 1904. As the church was being built, Christian Scientists in London had so grown in influence that over 9,000 people were invited to a Christian Science lecture by an American Bicknell Young in the Albert Hall in 1907.

The new church was built at a cost of £40,000 and was dedicated on 13 June 1909.

The church was built in the Byzantine style in Portland stone ashlar. It has a five-bay granite arcade on the ground storey, seven round-headed two-light windows above with carved capitals, a central entrance, and a dome-capped campanile at the south-east corner.

An architectural critic called the church an ‘Indian Reminiscence in Chelsea’ and suggested that ‘one would not be surprised to see a muezzin call the faithful to prayer’ from the tower’s ‘lofty outlook.’

He told the readers of the Evening Standard that the ‘decorative details … are of an Anglo-Norman type well suited to the monumental character of the design.’ But, because it Christian Science was a religion from America, ‘its projectors were under the influence of [Henry Hobson] Richardson, that architect who has invested American architecture with proportions almost Cyclopean.’

The Architect and Contract Reporter thought differently: ‘The particular style of architecture for a Christian Science church should present no difficulties. The very early churches were mostly pagan temples converted into churches; when constructed as churches they exhibited many Eastern features.’ The writer was implying that Christian Science was returning to the time of primitive Christianity, where both classical and Byzantine designs were historically located.

The church had a three-manual pipe organ built by JW Walker & Sons in 1907 and installed in 1911. It was on a raised position on the platform.

The stained-glass windows were designed by the Danish artist and aristocrat Baron Arild Rosenkrantz (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

The stained-glass windows were designed by the Danish painter, sculptor and artist, Baron Arild Rosenkrantz (1870-1964). He studied art in Rome under Modesto Faustini, who instilled an appreciation of the Italian masters. Rosenkrantz later studied under Jean-Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant in Paris and was also influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, JMW Turner, William Blake and Claude Monet.

When he was studying in the US in 1894-1895, Rosenkrantz made glasswork for Tiffany. While he lived in London in 1898-1914, he developed his reputation as an artist and made stained-glass windows for a wide range of English churches and mansions, including the Christian Science church in Chelsea.

Under the influence of Rudolf Steiner, Rosenkranktz and his wife moved to Dornach in Switzerland, but they returned to London after Steiner died in 1925. Back in London, he designed costumes, created stage decorations and decorated the interior of two theatres.

Rosenkrantz returned to Denmark in 1939 to organise an exhibition in Copenhagen for his 70th birthday in 1940. However, Nazi Germany invaded Denmark and he found it impossible to return to London was impossible. His moved to Rosenholm Castle in Jutland and died in 1964.

The Christian Science church in Chelsea was listed a Grade II building in 1969.

The congregation had fallen dramatically by 1996 and the building fell into disuse as a smaller congregation moved to Kensington (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

The congregation had fakken dramatically by 1996. When a smaller congregation moved to an updated church building in Wright’s Lane in Kensington, the hall was sold and fell into disuse for several years.

Mohamed Fayed, then owner of Harrods, had bought the property, but because of its listed status he was unable to secure permission to convert it into a palatial luxury house.

Cadogan Estates bought the building in 2000 to safeguard its future. The property company is owned by Lord Cadogan, whose ancestors have been the main landowners in Chelsea since the 18th century, and the family gives its names to many nearby addresses, including Cadogan Square, Cadogan Place, Sloane Square, Sloane Street and Sloane Terrace.

Through its connections with Opera Holland Park, the Cadogan Estate found that the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was looking for a permanent base in London. Cadogan Hall was an excellent opportunity for the orchestra to benefit from the Cadogan Estate’s aim to bring the former church back to life in a way that befitted its character and civic presence.

The building was refurbished by Paul Davis and Partners Architects at a cost of £7.5 million. The changes included new lighting and sound systems and bespoke acoustic ceiling modules in the performance space. The hall reopened as a concert hall in 2004.

The 1911 Walker organ was carefully dismantled and put into store. The original intention was to install the organ in a church in the Midlands. Instead, however, it was installed in Christ the King Catholic Church in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2009-2010. Walker’s organ case, an integral part of the character of the auditorium, remains in place in the concert hall.

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO), now the resident music ensemble at Cadogan Hall, is the first London orchestra to have a permanent home. It gave its first concert as the resident ensemble of Cadogan Hall in November 2004.

Cadogan Hall has become one of London’s leading venues. Its surroundings makes it a choice for some leading orchestras and the chosen venue for the BBC Proms Chamber Music Series. It also offers a vibrant selection of contemporary, jazz, folk and world music events as well as talks, debates and conferences.

Cadogan Hall is the home of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and one of London’s leading venues (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Saint Matthias’ Church in Ballybrack was the first of new churches in the area

Saint Matthias’ Church was built in Killiney in 1834 as the suburbs of south Dublin expended (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

Saint Matthias’ Church on Church Road in Killiney Ballybrack dates from 1835, and was built at a time when the southern suburbs of the city were spreading beyond the capacity of the Church of Ireland to cope with traditional parish boundaries.

The opening of the Dublin and Kingstown railway a year earlier in 1834 gave greater access from Dublin to the burgeoning suburbs of south Dublin.

One-by-one, new churches opened in the area around Monkstown and Kingstown (later Dun Laoghaire), including: Saint Matthias’ Church, Killiney Ballybrack (1835), the Bethel Episcopal Free Chapel, Kingstown, later Christ Church, Dun Laoghaire (1836), the Mariners’ Church (1843), Saint Patrick’s Church, Dalkey (1843), Holy Trinity Church, Killiney (1858), Saint John’s Church, Monkstown (1860), Kill o’ the Grange (1864) and Saint Paul’s Church, Glenageary (1867).

As each church opened, parish boundaries were adjusted, and at first, Saint Matthias’ Church catered for all of Killiney and Dalkey and as far as Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire).

Killiney Parish belonged to the Priory of Holy Trinity (Christ Church Cathedral) from the Middle Ages, and at the Reformation it was granted to the Dean of Christ Church. Later, it was served by the curates of Dalkey, and from the 17th century Killiney was united with Monkstown.

An Act of Parliament in 1824 called for building a new chapel of ease in Killiney. The site was donated by Sir Compton Domville (1775-1857) of Templeogue House and Santry House and Governor of Dublin (1822-1831). Domville, who was a son-in-law of Bishop Charles Lindsay of Kildare, also gave a portion of glebe. The first chaplain, the Revd Charles Sleator (1800-1868), was appointed in 1828, and remained in Killiney for 40 years until he died at Killiney on 23 October 1868.

Saint Matthias’ Church was designed by the Dublin architect Frederick Darley Junior (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

The church was designed by the Dublin architect Frederick Darley Junior (1798-1872), architect to the Diocese of Dublin. Darley’s plans were submitted to vestry by Christmas 1834, and the church was consecrated in April 1835.

The architect Frederick Darley was born in Dublin in 1798, the second surviving son of Frederick Darley, and he was known as Frederick Darley junior until his father died in 1841.

He was a pupil of Francis Johnston, and he was the Ecclesiastical Commissioners’ architect for the Diocese of Dublin in 1833-1843. In the 1830s, he was also architect to Trinity College Dublin, and he was architect to the Royal Dublin Society and the Board of National Education. He was a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (FRIAI), a council member (1839-1851), and honorary secretary (1842-1849).

Darley’s other works include a new square in Trinity College Dublin (1836), Trinity Church, Lower Gardiner Street (1838-1839), the restoration of Saint George’s Church, Balbriggan (1838), the Bethesda Chapel, Dorset Street (1839), Saint Michael’s Church, Athy (1840-1841), Saint Laurence’s Church, Chapelizod (1840), Saint Canice’s Church, Finglas (1841-1843), Saint Mary’s Church, Dunleckney, Bagenalstown (1841-1844), Saint Mary’s Church, Kells, Co Kilkenny (1844), Saint John’s Church, Sandymount (1849-1850), an extension to Saint Stephen’s Church, Mount Street (1851), and the Great Southern Hotel, Killarney (1853-1854).

Darley also designed many model schools and model agricultural schools throughout Ireland. He was one of four architects appointed in 1860 to inspect and report on the restoration of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, and later became an Ecclesiastical Commissioner.

Darley married Penelope Andrews (1790-1886), daughter of Alderman Thomas Andrews of Dublin. He was living at 14 Clarinda Park North, Kingstown, when he died in 1872.

Saint Matthias’ Church was built in 1835 ‘in the later English style’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Saint Matthias’ Church was described at the time by Samuel Lewis as looking like ‘a chapel of ease … in the later English style, and it is built of the white granite that is found in great abundance on the spot; at the west end is an embattled tower with pinnacles.’

The church has a cruciform plan form, aligned along an inverted liturgically-correct axis. The slender profile of the openings emphasise the mediaeval Gothic style, with the chancel defined by a cusped ‘Trinity Window,’ and the polygonal pinnacles embellishing the tower as an eye-catching picturesque feature in the landscape.

Saint Matthias’ Church is a five-bay double-height church on a cruciform plan. Originally, it was a four-bay double-height single-cell church, on a rectangular plan with a four-bay double-height nave. There are single-bay, double-height lower transepts centred on the single-bay double-height chancel at the crossing, and a single-bay three-stage tower at the entrance.

The church has been well maintained, and the form and massing survive intact together with substantial quantities of the original fabric, both outside and inside, including the contemporary joinery, with the exposed timber roof, the Gothic-style timber panelled pulpit on an octagonal plan, and the Gothic-style timber clerk’s desk.

There are stained glass windows by Heaton, Butler and Bayne of London and Catherine O’Brien (1881-1963) of Dublin, and the Stark Symes Memorial ‘Trinity Window’ is signed by Franz Mayer and Company of Munich and London (1880). Other interior details include the ‘Last Supper’ depicted on the reredos, and the encaustic tiles.

A parochial district was assigned to Killiney Ballybrack from Monkstown Parish on 7 November 1866, and it became an independent parish in 1876, with the Revd Maurice Day (1816-1904) as the first rector (1876-1894). Day later became Dean of Limerick (1869-1872) and Bishop of Cashel (1872-1899).

Saint Matthias’ Church was extended in 1879-1880 by William John Welland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

While Maurice Day was the rector, Darley’s style was continued in 1879-1880 when the church was developed or ‘improved’ to designs by William John Welland (1832-1896). These included the addition of the chancel and a transept. Welland was ‘presented with a gold watch for having given his services gratuitously as architect’ in 1880.

The Revd Dr William Olhausen has been the Rector of Killiney Ballybrack since 2011, and the honorary curate is the Revd Dr Paddy McGlinchey, a lecturer in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute.

Saint Matthias’ Church is typical of many built with great enthusiasm by the Church of Ireland in the early 19th century and has become an important component of the early 19th century architectural heritage of south Co Dublin.

Despite the busy dual-carriageway that brings speeding traffic past the church from the M50 to Killiney, Monkstown and Dalkey, the church is part on a pleasing ecclesiastical ensemble and visual statement on Church Road.

Saint Matthias’ Church remains part of the architectural heritage of south Co Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

‘Beyond the sea, beyond the sea, Are kindly hearts and social glee’

Sunset on the beach at Platanes in Rethymnon … one of the photographs selected by Sheba Sultan to illustrate her selections from writers and poets (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

It is always a delight for a writer to realise another writer appreciates your work. It may be a footnote or a reference, or acknowledging an insight or original idea, sometimes it may even be a kind reference in the acknowledgements, either at the end or the beginning of a book.

I hope I never became complacent or assumed it was mere good manners when students acknowledged me when their dissertations were published as books.

But sometimes I have come across a reference or a footnote to my work long after a book has been published, without realising the author was going to do this.

Sheba Sultan, who is a lecturer in the Institute of Business Management, lives in Karachi and is one of the great modern writers in Pakistan today. We met some years ago at High Leigh in Hertfordshire when she was one of the speakers at the annual conference of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), and we have kept in contact ever since. Earlier this summer, I chaired a session at this year’s USPG conference in High Leigh that was addressed by her father, the Revd Dr Pervaiz Sultan.

In recent weeks, I have been reading Sheba’s collection of short stories The Room in the Mausoleum, first published in Karachi in 2015 and which she sent to me earlier this year. She dedicates this book to her parents, and it also includes one short story by Rabiya Faridi.

Some of these are heart-breaking stories, but they describe the reality of life in Pakistan today. ‘These stories are based on my observations of life: on the way cruelty is so often inflicted, and the naïve are manipulated,’ she writes. ‘They are my offering in empathy for the times we live in, when life can go terribly wrong. But I hope these stories also show that it is possible to glimpse beauty and joy even in the harshest of circumstances – because there is always hope.’

But her acknowledgement of my creativity is not as a writer, but in a selection of my photographs that she has chosen to illustrate a series of quotations and reflections on her Facebook page for more than a year now, often drawing inspiration from the words of other writers.

These photographs, mainly by the sea, have been taken in Ireland, in Co Limerick, Co Kerry, Co Clare, Co Wexford, and Killiney, Co Dublin, near Lichfield in Staffordshire, in Athens, and in Crete, by the sea in Platanes in Rathymnon, and in Georgioupoli.

She has used one of my photographs of the English countryside in south Staffordshire, taken near Lichfield last year, to quote the Australian-born American writer Peter Drucker (1909-2005), ‘the founder of modern management,’ who wrote:

‘Even in the flattest landscape there are passes where the road first climbs to a peak and then descends into a new valley.’ She observes: ‘These lines by Drucker make me realize that we can find beautiful possibilities even in the flattest landscapes! So stay inspired by life and keep moving ahead.’

A photograph I took last year at sunset in Athens is overlaid with words by the American poet and essayist EE Cummings (1894-1962), who signed himself e e cummings superimposed: ‘You are my sun, moon and all of stars.’

She writes: ‘Nothing like soothing coffee and a nice book of poems. “You are my sun, moon and all of stars.” How sweetly, deeply romantic. Dedicate these timeless lines by e.e. cummings to someone special.’

And she adds, ‘Thanks Patrick for this lovely sunset shot!’

A glass of wine on a table in Limerick in fading sunshine is captioned ‘Unforgettable’ in a tribute to the Pakistani singer, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (1948-1997), celebrated as a singer of Qawwali, the devotional music of the Sufis. Jeff Buckley cited Khan as a major influence, saying, ‘He’s my Elvis,’ and performing the first few minutes of Khan’s Yeh Jo Halka Halka Suroor Hai, words Sheba has superimposed on this photograph.

A photograph of Killiney Bay, taken through the window of the Dart on the way to Bray one afternoon last year, is used to illustrate the concept of ‘Poetic Pleasure’ as she quotes the poem ‘Beyond the Sea’ by the English poet Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866):

Beyond the sea, beyond the sea,
My heart is gone, far, far from me;
And ever on its track will flee
My thoughts, my dreams, beyond the sea.

Beyond the sea, beyond the sea,
The swallow wanders fast and free:
Oh, happy bird! were I like thee,
I, too, would fly beyond the sea.

Beyond the sea, beyond the sea,
Are kindly hearts and social glee:
But here for me they may not be;
My heart is gone beyond the sea.

A photograph of sunset on the beach at Platanes, near Rethymnon is linked with a quotation from the American writer Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), ‘The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.’

This is a popularised version of a well-known quotation from Hemingway. But in a Farewell to Arms, he writes: ‘If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.’

‘Be Strong & Sieze the Day!’ she says in a caption to a photograph I took in Georgioupoli in Crete as I was walking out a narrow, rocky causeway to a small chapel on a tiny islet.

She wrote, ‘It’s Monday morning & time to start a new week with high energy like the waves unrelenting and the rocks notwithstanding.’

A photograph of the winter sky and bare trees at the Rectory in Askeaton, Co Limerick, accompanies part of the poem Christabel written in 1797 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1722-1834):

Is the night chilly and dark?
The night is chilly, but not dark.
The thin gray cloud is spread on high,
It covers but not hides the sky.
The moon is behind, and at the full;
And yet she looks both small and dull.
The night is chill, the cloud is gray:
Tis a month before the month of May,
And the Spring comes slowly up this way.

A posting for Father’s Day is illustrated with a photograph of the cliffs and the waves I took during a walk on the beach one Sunday afternoon in Ballybunion, Co Kerry. Her words superimposed on the photograph say: ‘For a Father’s Love is as Deep as it is Strong.’

She describes Father’s Day as ‘a day for our pillars of strength, our fathers. Happy Father’s Day!’

Another photograph of cliffs and waves, taken at Kilkee, Co Clare, carries her words ‘These waves crashing against the shores of your soul, They do not know how strong you are.’

And Sheba adds ‘Be strong because you are strong!’

Finally, on a photograph taken at dusk one evening at the mouth of the River Slaney at Ferrycarrig, outside Wexford, she quotes ‘A Dream,’ a poem by Edgar Allen Poe:

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed–
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

The full poem reads:

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed –
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream – that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro’ storm and night,
So trembled from afar –
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth’s day-star?

Do my photograph illustrate Sheba’s thoughts, or do her thoughts bring new meaning to my photographs?

Certainly, her choice of photographs and poetic quotations indicate the sensitivity found in her short stories in The Room in the Mausoleum and her understanding of the beauty and the heartbreak in the world today.

A unique Pugin-style Gothic Revival house comes on the market

Saint George’s is an important Gothic-Revival Victorian house in Killiney designed by Pugin’s son-in-law and came on the market in recent weeks (Photograph: Knight Frank)

Patrick Comerford

Saint George’s is, perhaps, the most impressive Gothic-Revival Victorian houses in Dublin and an important part of the story of Pugin’s architectural legacy in Ireland, and the house has come on the market in recent weeks.

Saint George’s, which gives its name to Saint George’s Avenue, Killiney, is close to both Killiney and Dalkey. This towered and gabled red-brick house, built in the late 1870s, was designed by AWN Pugin’s son-in-law, George Coppinger Ashlin (1837-1921), one of the leading Irish architects of the 19th century.

Ashlin built the house for his new wife, Mary Pugin, and in tribute to the legacy of her father, the Gothic Revival architect Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin. It is said he modelled Saint George’s on Mary’s childhood home, the Grange in Ramsgate, which was designed by her father. It took Ashlin several years to complete Saint George’s in the imposing styles of both the Gothic Revival and the Arts and Crafts movement.

The house is entered through solid double doors underneath the tower. The floor in the entrance lobby has encaustic ceramic tiles with rich patterns that are typical of the style favoured by the Gothic Revival. The hallway opens to the inner hall with the main stairway and doorways on each side leading to the drawing room and dining room. The ground floor also includes the kitchen/breakfast room, a utility room and the service wing.

The private chapel in Saint George’s was added in thanksgiving for the birth of Miriam Francis Xavier Ashlin (Photograph: Knight Frank)

The timber staircase rising to the first floor has an oratory on the first return. This small chapel was added in thanksgiving when Mary Ashlin gave birth to their daughter, Miriam Francis Xavier, after 10 years of marriage.

There are five principal bedrooms on the first floor. From a central position on the landing, a secondary staircase leads up to the intimate, square tower room. A spiral stone staircase leads from the turret out onto the roof, with its breath-taking views across Dublin Bay.

Saint George’s is bedecked with monograms and heraldic symbols representing the Ashlin and Pugin families

The house is bedecked with monograms and heraldic symbols representing the Ashlin and Pugin families. Almost every room in the house bears the initials of the occupants – on the fireplaces, in the delicate stained-glass windows, on the monogrammed brass handles on every door.

The original details in the house include the pine fireplace in the inner hall, the pitched pine staircase with Saint Brigid’s cross motif, Tudor archways, the twin ornate chimney pieces in the double-bayed drawing room and brass portiere rods holding back heavy drapes.

The house has landscaped gardens and is set on about 0.46 ha (1.2 acres).

George Ashlin designed many prominent Irish religious buildings in Ireland, including Churches, schools, monasteries, convents. His works include Blackrock College, Mount Anville Convent, Clongowes Wood College, and the cathedrals in Cobh and Armagh.

Other works that I have written about in the past include John’s Lane Church, Dublin, the Church of the Annunciation, Rathfarnham, Saint Kevin’s Church, Harrington Street, the Psychiatric Hospital in Portrane, Saint Maur’s Church, Rush, the former Presbyterian Church on Mallow Street, Limerick, the tower and spire of Saint John’s Cathedral, Limerick, and the Church of the Holy Cross or Daniel O’Connell Memorial Church, Cahersiveen, and Saint Joseph’s Church, Ballybunion, both in Co Kerry.

George Coppinger Ashlin was born at Carrigrenane House, Co Cork, on 28 May 1837, the third son of John Musson Ashlin, JP, of Rush Hill, Wandsworth, Surrey, and his wife Dorinda Coppinger, whose family was from Co Cork.

He was educated at the College of St Servais, Liège, and from 1851 to 1855 at Oscott College, near Birmingham, where he began preparing for a career in architecture.

Saint George’s is said to be modelled on Mary Pugin’s childhood home, the Grange in Ramsgate, designed by AWN Pugin (Photograph: Kinght Frank)

Ashlin became a pupil of AWN Pugin’s son, Edward Welby Pugin (1834-1875), in 1856, first in Birmingham and then in London, where he was also a student at the Royal Academy (1858-1860).

When Pugin took him into partnership, he gave him responsibility for setting up a Dublin branch of the practice and taking charge of the Irish commissions, which by then included the large new church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Cork.

By 1861, Ashlin had opened the Dublin office of Pugin and Ashlin at 90 St Stephen’s Green. Many of the commissions that followed quickly were for Roman Catholic churches, convents and monasteries throughout Ireland, including Saint Colman’s, the new cathedral in Queenstown (Cobh), Co Cork.

Ashlin married Edward Pugin’s younger sister, Mary Pugin (1844-1933) in 1867. Although the partnership of Pugin and Ashlin was dissolved in 1868, the family ties remained close, and Ashlin is said to have been in partnership with his brothers-in-law, Peter Paul Pugin and Cuthbert Pugin from 1875 to ca 1880. However, Ashlin now worked under his own name in Ireland, and continued his highly successful practice.

In 1903, Ashlin invited his former pupil and office manager, Thomas Aloysius Coleman (1865-1960), to join him in the new partnership of Ashlin and Coleman. He was a cousin of my great-uncle, Francis Coleman, who married my grandfather’s eldest sister, Mary Comerford, in 1889.

Other former pupils and assistants included Thomas Joseph Cullen (1879-1947), who lived in his later years at Sally Park, Firhouse, and Alfred Ignatius McGloughlin (1863-1939), a brother-in-law of Patrick Pearse, who supervised the Portrane Asylum project from 1895 before emigrating to the US.

Ashlin’s offices were at 90 St Stephen’s Green (1861-1879), 41 Westmoreland Street (1879), 1 College Street (1880-1886), 10-12 Trinity Street (1888-1893), 3 Merrion Street Lower (1894-1895) and 7 Dawson Street (1896-1921).

The stairs in Saint George’s … Ashlin took the train from Killiney to Westland Row each morning (Photograph: Knight Frank)

Ashlin has been described as having ‘a quiet and retiring disposition … with a certain inherent shyness.’ Alfred Edwin Jones, who became a pupil in Ashlin & Coleman’s office around 1911, described Ashlin as a tall, commanding figure with ‘an appearance of distinction.’ Each morning, he caught the train from Killiney to Westland Row and then walked to his office at 7 Dawson Street, where he would mount a waiting horse, canter up Dawson Street to Saint Stephen’s Green and ride several times round the park before starting the day’s work.

He was active role in the affairs of the architectural profession throughout his career and was President of the RIAI from 1902 to 1904.

Ashlin died at Saint George’s at the age of 84 on 10 December 1921. He was buried in the family plot in Glasnevin Cemetery. His only child, Miriam Francis Xavier, married his nephew and partner, Stephen Martin Ashlin (1879-1942), in 1904. Miriam died in 1937 and Stephen died in 1942.

George Coppinger Ashlin died at Saint George’s on 10 December 1921

The current owners of Saint George’s, Dr Robert McQuillan and Dr Jane McQuillan, are only the fourth owners in the history of this house. They moved into St George’s almost 30 years ago, and they have embraced its significance as an exemplary Arts and Crafts home, painstakingly preserving and restoring every element of the original design.

Saint George’s is for sale through Knight Frank, with an asking price of €9.25 million.

Saint George’s has an asking price of €9.25 million (Photograph: Knight Frank)

Reading ‘Advent Calendar,’ a poem by Rowan Williams, at a carol service

‘One night when the November wind / has flayed the trees to the bone’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

This evening at the Advent Carol Service organised by the students and staff of the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, the students have asked me to read the poem ‘Advent Calendar’ by Archbishop Rowan Williams.

Rowan Williams included this poem in his first collection, After Silent Centuries (Oxford, 1994). It has since been included in The Poems of Rowan Williams (Oxford, 2002). ‘Advent Calendar’ was set to music by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies as one of the 44 Anthems in the Choirbook for the Queen, launched in Southwark Cathedral in November 2011. Last year, the Guardian published it as its ‘Saturday Poem’ on Christmas Eve, 24 December 2015.

Lord Williams of Oystermouth was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012, and since then has been the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. He is a patristic scholar, theologian and historian, and did his doctoral work on Vladimir Lossky, a prominent Russian Orthodox theologian of the early-mid 20th century.

Williams is also a poet and translator of poetry. Of course, many other Anglican priests have been poets too, from George Herbert and John Donne to RS Thomas.

Beside his own poems, which have a strong spiritual and landscape flavour, his work includes several fluent translations from Welsh poets. Three years ago [26 November 2013], at Clare College, Cambridge, he delivered the annual TS Eliot Lecture, ‘Eliot’s Christian Society and the current political crisis.’

The Advent Collect speaks of Christ coming ‘to visit us in great humility’ and coming ‘in his glorious majesty.’ This evening’s poem, ‘Advent Calendar,’ captures the mood of expectation that marks the season of Advent, with the constant refrain, ‘He will come’:

He will come like last leaf’s fall…

He will come like frost…

He will come like dark…

He will come like child.

In this poem, ‘He will come like last leaf’s fall’: He comes to his own who do not receive him; like the last of the autumn leaves, he lies with the prophets and messengers Jerusalem has killed.

‘He will come like frost’: Christ comes with the surprising beauty of a first frost, as on that one morning when the world found itself awash in the ‘alien, sword-set beauty’ of his resurrection.

‘He will come like dark’: Christ comes on ‘a day of darkness and gloom’ (Joel 2: 2), his judgment unsettling our own. He comes, and God’s justice shines forth like ‘the star-snowed fields of sky.’

‘He will come, will come, will come like child’: Christ comes as a babe in Bethlehem, and the whole creation groans in travail for the new life of the world to come (see Romans 8: 22).

Christ comes, and it is the end and the beginning.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

The poem is haunting: austere, deep, searching, suffused with the wintry aches and longings that are particular and unique to this season. The language is as spare as naked trees, tough as hardened earth.

The four stanzas each elaborate a different simile: ‘he will come like’ the fall of the leaf, like winter’s frost, like darkness following a late afternoon flash of sunlight, like the cry of night-time. It stands in a long tradition of northern Europe poetry in which the cold short days around the winter solstice echo our wintry spirits when our light burns low.

Because this poem is truly an Advent Calendar, the stanzas taking us through the four weeks of Advent, one by one, to the point where you open those double-doors and glimpse what it has all been leading up to.

He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
Has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
Wakes choking on the mould,
The soft shroud’s folding.

Week 1 of the calendar suggests a violent side to Advent. This kind of dying is not going gently into that good night, another Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, might have said. It is a sudden judgment at the turning of the year when beautiful autumn turns to bleak and death-like winter, stripped bare – like trees that are stripped bare … only to come to new life when winter turns to spring.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
Opens on mist, to find itself
Arrested in the net
Of alien, sword-set beauty.

Week 2 is quieter. The frost is stealing silently across a misty landscape that is going into hibernation. It is a tranquil winter day interrupted by suggestions that all is not as it seems. It is an arresting beauty that transfixes us, holds us in place, making it impossible for us not to pay attention, alert to God’s coming judgment.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
And penny-masks its eye to yield
The star-snowed fields of sky.

Week 3 takes us on towards the solstice and its ‘bursting red December sun.’ recalling John Donne’s weak winter sun whose strength is spent at the year’s midnight. When night falls, we find ourselves still outs in the cold, watching, waiting, wondering, longing, hoping against hope.

He will come, will come,
Will come like crying in the night,
Like blood, like breaking,
As the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

The last stanza brings a dramatic conclusion with the fourth and final week ending in marvellous surprise. The threefold ‘will come, will come, will come’ echoes those three comings like knocks on the door. The repetition delays the revelation of what we are waiting for. It is something new – a voice, alive and breathing in a writhing and tossing world. We have been outside in the bleak midwinter, lost and helpless. But we are neither.

Christmas approaches. Like the morning Eucharist, broken and poured out, Christ comes among us as the Child. This Child who comes in love, is revealed at the final doors of the Advent Calendar.

Mid-winter snow in Cloister Court, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Advent Calendar

He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud's folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

Advent Calendar © Rowan Williams

‘… earth / Wakes choking on the mould, / The soft shroud’s folding’ … snow covering the graves in the churchyard at Saint John’s Church, Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The CITI Advent Carol Service takes place this evening, 7 December 2016, in Saint Matthias Church, Ballybrack, Co Dublin, at 7 p.m.

Praying in Advent with USPG, (11): 7 December 2016

USPG is marking the beginning of Advent, from 25 November to 10 December, as ‘16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence’

Patrick Comerford

We are now in the second week of Advent. Later this evening [7 December 2016], I am taking part in the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols organised by the students of the Church of Ireland Theological Institute in Saint Matthias's Church, Ballybrack [7 p.m.].

At this service I have been invited to read an Advent reflection by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Rowan Williams.

The CITI Advent Carol Service takes place this evening

Throughout this time of preparation for Christ’s coming at Christmas, I am praying each morning and using for my reflections the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency, USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel).


On Sunday, I wrote about an article in the USPG Prayer Diary that tells the distressing story of the abuse of 12-year-old Kavita, and how Delhi Brotherhood Society (DBS), which runs a helpline and community action programme to support women who face violence, came to her rescue.

USPG is also marking the time around the beginning of Advent, from 25 November to 10 December, as ‘16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.’

The USPG Prayer Diary:

Wednesday 7 December 2016:

Pray for the protection of women everywhere. Pray that they may find the courage to stand up for justice, and may they find support as they do so.

Readings (Revised Common Lectionary, the Church of Ireland, Holy Communion):

Isaiah 40: 25-31; Psalm 103: 8-13; Matthew 11: 28-30.

The Collect of the Day:

Father in heaven,
who sent your Son to redeem the world
and will send him again to be our judge:
Give us grace so to imitate him
in the humility and purity of his first coming
that when he comes again,
we may be ready to greet him with joyful love and firm faith;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Advent Collect:

Almighty God,
Give us grace to cast away the works of darkness
and to put on the armour of light
now in the time of this mortal life
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
that on the last day
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Continued tomorrow