A reminder in Bloomsbury of the ‘Russell Paradox’ and a reminder to visit the barber for a haircut

Russell Chambers on Bury Street in Bloomsbury … Bertrand Russell lived in flat No 34 from 1911 to 1916 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I think I need a haircut, and there is no shortage of barbers in Stony Stratford to pick and choose from. But when I was thinking about the Hotel Russell and Russell Square in a blog posting yesterday (18 August 2026), I was reminded of the ‘Barber’s Paradox’.

I ask you to imagine a village that has only one barber who shaves all men, and only those men, who do not shave themselves.

At first glance, this seems like a perfectly reasonable way to run a business in a small town. The men who want to save money shave themselves at home, and the rest go to the barber. But the scenario begins to fall apart when you ask: ‘Who shaves the barber?’

If the barber shaves himself, he violates the communal understanding that he only shaves people who do not shave themselves. Therefore, he cannot shave himself. But if he does not shave himself, he falls into the category of the men in the village who do not shave themselves.

According to the principle, the barber must shave everyone in this category. Therefore, he must shave himself. He needs to shave himself if – and only if – he does not shave himself. This creates a conundrum and an infinite, unbreakable loop of contradiction.

The reason a village with these rules cannot exist in real life has nothing to do with physics, geography, or human behaviour. It cannot exist because the rule itself is a logical contradiction.

Asking me to find such a village is like asking me to draw a four-sided triangle, to square the circle, to find a married bachelor, or to calculate the square root of -1. The words in the definition cancel each other out. The barber who is defined by such an exact, unbending parameter is a mathematical impossibility masquerading as a physical person. As soon as I define the parameters of the village, I have defined a place that cannot logically exist in the universe.

Epimenidou Street in Rethymnon … a reminder of the ‘Epimenides Paradox’ and a philosopher from Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The ‘barber’s paradox’ reminds me of Epimenides (Ἐπιμενίδης) of Knossos, the semi-mythical philosopher and poet from Crete who is said to have lived in the 7th or 6th century BCE, who gives his name to the ‘Epimenides Paradox’, a variation of the ‘Liar Paradox’.

It is said that while Epimenides was tending his father’s sheep, he fell asleep for 57 years in a cave in Crete that was sacred to Zeus. When he awoke after 57 years, Epimenides is said to have found he was endowed the gift of prophecy.

Epimenides is quoted twice in the New Testament. While speaking to a group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers in front of the Areopagus in Athens (see Acts 17: 22-34), Saint Paul quotes from Epimenides’ Cretica: ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ (verse 28). Saint Paul is citing the fourth line in the Hymn to Zeus of Callimachus, with its reference to one of ‘your own poets’ (Acts 17: 28). In the same address, Saint Paul also quotes from Aratus’ Phaenomena: ‘For we too are his offspring’ (verse 28).

When Saint Paul spoke to Saint Titus about his mission in Crete, he committed a logical fallacy by quoting Epimenides: ‘It was one of them, their very own prophet, who said, ‘Cretans are always liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons.’ That testimony is true’ (Titus 1: 12-13a).

The ‘lie’ of the Cretans is that Zeus was mortal, for Epimenides believed that Zeus is dead. The logical inconsistency of a Cretan asserting all Cretans are always liars may not have occurred to Epimenides, nor to Callimachus, who both used the phrase to emphasise their point, without irony.

However, Saint Paul must have thought long about the idea of a dead god and whether the god’s tomb was dead as he sought to preach the Resurrection in Crete.

Epimenides is first identified as the ‘prophet’ in Titus 1: 12 by Clement of Alexandria (Stromata 1, 14). Clement mentions that ‘some say’ Epimenides should be counted among the seven wisest philosophers.

However, it is not clear when Epimenides became associated with the Epimenides paradox, a variation of the liar paradox. Saint Augustine restates the closely related liar paradox in Against the Academicians (III.13.29), but he does so without mentioning Epimenides. In the Middle Ages, many forms of the liar paradox were studied under the heading of insolubilia, but they were not associated with Epimenides.

Epimenides Street is a street I know well in the old town of Rethymnon in Crete. Is it paradoxical that I I have found the restaurateurs and tavern owners of Epimenidou Street, like all their fellow Cretans, to be truthful and honest? Many years ago, back in the 1980s, as I entrusted someone in Rethymnon with my wallet and valuables as I went for a swim, I was advised that it was tourists and foreigners I needed to watch out for.

The British Museum on Great Russell Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The ‘barber’s paradox’, which retells the ‘liar’s paradox’ or the Epimenides paradox, is also a retelling of ‘Russell’s Paradox’, which was formulated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) in 1901. Russell articulated a massive flaw he had just discovered in logic, now known as ‘Russell’s Paradox’ and, at the time, it must have seemed to many that he had broken the foundations of mathematics.

Mathematicians in those days believed that a ‘set’ could be defined by any condition you could describe. Russell used the paradox to prove that naive set theory was fundamentally broken. If you can define a set as ‘the set of all sets that do not contain themselves’, you create the exact same mathematical paradox as the barber.

Russell’s thought experiment forced the entire field of mathematics to rewrite its foundational axioms to prevent self-contradicting sets from being formed.

At times I am reminded of ‘Russell’s Paradox’ when I walk along Bury Place, close to the British Museum on Great Russell Street, and see a Blue Plaque that reads: ‘Bertrand Russell 1872-1970 Philosopher and Campaigner for Peace lived here in flat No 34 1911-1916’. The building was originally ‘No 3 Russell Chambers’ and is now labelled ‘Russell Chambers, Flats 25-36’.

Russell moved into an unfurnished flat No 34 at Russell Chambers in November 1911 to be close to Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938), the literary society hostess who lived nearby at 44 Bedford Square in Bloomsbury. Ottoline met Russell for the first time since childhood at his home in Bagley Wood in September 1908, but their affair did not begin until 1911.

Much of the Bloomsbury area of London has been owned by Russell’s cousins, the Dukes of Bedford, for centuries. Russell’s grandfather, Lord John Russell, was a younger son of the sixth duke. The Bedford Estates still own large sections of Bloomsbury, and many of the names of the streets, squares, hotels, apartment buildings and a tube station reflect the family’s names and titles, including Russell, Bedford, Tavistock and Woburn.

Bertrand Russell had lived mainly at Trinity College Cambridge, where he was a fellow. But he took lodgings in Ipsden to be near Ottoline in the Chilterns in July 1911. She helped him to furnish the flat he rented in Bury Street, near the British Museum.

Russell chose the flat himself after looking at flats on Wells Street, off Oxford Street. The fourth floor flat in the red brick building measured 754 sq feet, and had a reception room, a main bedroom, a bathroom, kitchen, and a small room off the kitchen that was used as a study, a sitting room and a bedroom.

Among the guests there was the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who stayed there on 3 October 1913. Russell wrote to Ottoline: ‘Wittgenstein stayed last night and read me bits of work he has done.’

Russell let TS Eliot and his wife Vivien use the room off the kitchen in 1915 because they were ‘desperately poor’. Vivien’s brother Maurice Haigh-Wood (1896-1980) described it as ‘a tiny cupboard room behind the kitchen’ and since Vivien had brought ‘a single cot-bed’ to furnish it, Eliot ‘slept in the hallway in a deck-chair’.

Russell was dismissed from Trinity College Cambridge in 1916 because of his opposition to World War I and so he lost his main source of income. His affair with Ottoline was also ending, and his affair with Constance (Colette) Malleson was beginning. He moved from Russell Chambers in April to rooms in 46 Gordon Square and then in August to 57 Gordon Square. He sub-let his Russell Chambers flat, and eventually went to prison that year as a pacifist.

After World War I, Russell considered keeping on the flat for his own use but concluded he could not afford it. Frank Swinnerton, an author and editor at Chatto and Windus, was a tenant at Russell Chambers until 1923, paying Russell 3 guineas a week for the furnished flat until Russell’s involvement with the first and the last home that was his alone formally came to an end.

Meanwhile, Russell was reinstated by Trinity College Cambridge in 1919, resigned in 1920, was Tarner Lecturer in 1926 and became a Fellow again in 1944-1949. He had succeeded as 3rd Earl Russell in 1931 and many of my age and generation rememember him not only as a philosopher but as active pacifist and a leading figure in CND, the Committee of 100 and the Aldermaston marches. He died on 2 February 1970.

Russell Chambers was selected by English Heritage for a blue plaque commemorating Bertrand Russell. The plaque was unveiled by his son Conrad Russell (1937-2004), 5th Earl Russell, on 6 June 2002.

As for the Barber’s Paradox, the popular retelling of Russell’s Paradox, it collapses with all its presupposition if the only barber in the village is a woman. She can shave as many men – and women – she wants to without any concerns about philosophical parameters.

I never had that haircut today. I must choose one of the barber shops in Stony Stratford to visit tomorrow.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), 3rd Earl Russell, philosopher, mathematician and peace campaigner, remembered in the chapel in Trinity College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Hotel Russell has had a name change, but it is still an impressive Victorian presence on Russell Square

The former Hotel Russell on Russell Square in Bloomsbury was designed by the architect Charles Fitzroy Doll (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I have been in London six or seven times already this year, and when I find myself in the Bloomsbury area I often stop in Russell Square to admire the former Hotel Russell, even though it has lost the name it was known by for more than a century and is now called the Kimpton Fitzroy London.

The hotel at 1-8 Russell Square is a Grade II* listed building and was designed by the architect Charles Fitzroy Doll (1850-1929), who was the surveyor of the Bedford Estate. It was built in 1892-1898 and opened in 1900.

It is built of red brick with terracotta dressings, distinctively clad in decorative thé-au-lait (‘tea with milk’) terracotta, and was modelled on the Château de Madrid near the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. Its roofs and turrets have striking green fish-scale tiles, and the tall Victorian chimney-stacks have horizontal brick and terracotta bands. The hotel originally had a central copper dome and lantern instead of its present tiled mansard roof, and once must have been a more impressive site.

The architect Charles Fitzroy Doll specialised in designing hotels. He also designed the dining room on the Titanic, basing it on his design for the dining room in the Hotel Russell, known until recently known as Fitzroy Doll’s.

Doll was educated in Germany, then trained as an architect under Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt, and he was involved with Wyatt in designing the India Office in London in 1866-1868.

The sculptor Henry Charles Fehr modelled the life-size statues on the façade of four queens who look down on Russell Square from above the main entrance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Doll was appointed surveyor to the Bedford Estates in Bloomsbury and Covent Garden in 1885. When he designed the Hotel Russell with its distinctive cladding, Doll engaged the sculptor Henry Charles Fehr to model the four life-size statues of British queens who look down on Russell Square from above the main entrance.

Doll was a member of Holborn Borough Council, and was Mayor of Holborn in 1904-1905 and 1912-1913. He died in 1929 aged 79. His children included Christian Charles Tyler Doll (1880-1955), who was involved in the reconstruction of the grand staircase of the Palace of King Minos at Knossos in Crete, working alongside Arthur Evans. He also designed the Villa Ariadne, a residence for Evans at Knossos that now houses the Knossos Research Centre.

The style of the Hotel Russell is described in its listing as ‘flamboyant French Renaissance … derived from engravings of the Château de Madrid, with elaborate decorations.’ The architectural historians Bridget Cherry and Sir Nikolaus Pevsner call it ‘monumental’.

The hotel is known for its palatial design, and its fixtures and fittings included an ornate Pyrenean marble staircase and an interior sunken garden. Each room was fitted with an en-suite bathroom, quite an innovation at the time.

Doll’s façade also displays the coats of arms of the world’s nations as they were in 1898, incorporated in the spandrels of the first floor. At the centre of the principal façade facing Russell Square, above the main entrance, are life-size terracotta statues of four reigning queens – Elizabeth I, Mary II, Anne and Victoria – and columns decorated with putti, both surmounted with knights flanking floral decoration above the decorative foundation date ‘1898’.

The larger than life terracotta statues represent idealised versions of the four queens. Elizabeth I is readily identifiable because of her ruff,while Victoria is depicted as a very young woman. But there is some confusion over who is who when it comes to Mary II and Anne, while a fifth reigning English queen, Mary I, is noticeably absent.

The statues of the four queens are the work of the sculptor Henry Charles Fehr (1867-1940), also created the busts of four Prime Ministers – Lord Derby, Lord Salisbury, William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli – on the Guilford Street façade of the hotel.

Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary II among the four queens above the hotel entrance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Fehr produced several notable public sculptures, war memorials and works for civic buildings, including sculptures for Middlesex Guildhall, Wakefield County Hall and Cardiff City Hall. His war memorials can be seen in for towns and cities throughout Britain and often feature detailed bronze statuary.

Doll also designed the Imperial Hotel (1905-1907) in Russell Square, described by the architectural historian Sir Niklaus Pevsner as a ‘vicious mixture of Art Nouveau Gothic and Art Nouveau Tudor’. The Imperial Hotel was demolished in 1967, and replaced by a contemporary, brutalist building designed by George Anthony Wilson Brandeth and where I stayed once when I was working with The Irish Times. Today it is known as the President Hotel.

Doll also designed the Flemish French-Gothic terrace of shops and apartments on the corner of Torrington Place and Gower Street. It was designed in 1907 and now includes the London University branch of Waterstones. The bookshop is in the heart of literary Bloomsbury and I, like many of my generation, still think of it as Dillon’s. Today, this branch of Waterstones claims it is the largest new and second-hand bookshop in Europe.

The Hotel Russell was one of the few hotels in this part of London not taken over by the War Office during World War II. It survived the war largely intact, but the magnificent dome was badly damaged in an air raid during the Blitz in 1941 and was never replaced.

The Hotel Russell continued to be known by that name for more than a century until 2018. After extensive renovations, the hotel reopened in 2018 as the Principal London. Three months later, it was bought by Covivio Hotels, which then transferred its management to InterContinental Hotels Group, and the hotel was renamed the Kimpton Fitzroy London later that year. The restaurant Doll designed was originally named after him but is now called Fitz’s.

Queen Anne and Queen Victoria among the four queens above the hotel entrance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Russell Group of universities, which was formed in 1994, is named after Hotel Russell, where the first informal meetings took place, and thankfully it has not changed its name.

The Russell Group now brings together 24 British universities that are often seen as Britain’s best. Together, they receive over three-quarters of all university research grant and contract income in the UK, they award 60% of all doctorates gained in the UK, they account for 65% of all world-leading research conducted in the UK, and their research is judged overwhelmingly to be world-leading or internationally excellent. Their graduates hold 61% of all UK jobs that require a university degree, despite being only 17% of all higher education graduates.

The Russell Group first included 17 universities: Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Imperial College London, Leeds, Liverpool, London School of Economics, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Oxford, Sheffield, Southampton, University College London and Warwick.

With the exception of Warwick, which was established in the 1960s, the founder members of the Russell Group were all universities or university colleges prior to World War I, and they included most of Britain’s ancient universities and ‘redbrick universities’. Cardiff University and King’s College London joined the Russell Group in 1998.

Queen’s University Belfast became the 20th member in 2006, and four more universities – Durham, Exeter, Queen Mary University of London, and York – joined the Russell Group in 2012.

The hotel may have changed its name in recent years, but the Russell and Bedford names continue in the streets and squares of Bloomsbury, and in some places there are memories too of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. But, perhaps, more about that in the days to come.

The Russell Group of universities is named after Hotel Russell, where the first informal meetings of the group took place in 1994 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Greeks have a word for it: 66, Cosmopolitan, Κοσμοπολίτης

‘The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal’ by Martha Nussbaum was published in 2009

Patrick Comerford

I was discussing the thinking of the American philosopher, Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago, in a blog posting last night (1 August 2026), and her interest in the Greek classical world and the world of Greek philosophy as well as her commitment to principles of Reformed Judaism.

She has described cosmopolitanism – rooted in the Stoic tradition of radical equality of dignity for all – as a ‘noble but flawed ideal’, which became the subtitle of her book The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal (2009).

The word cosmopolitan, an important concept in modern philosophy and political discourse, is, of course, derived from the κοσμοπολίτης (kosmopoliítes) found in classical and koine Greek, formed from the words κόσμος (kosmos), world, universe, cosmos or created order, and πολίτης (politês), citizen, one of a city.

Contemporary usage defines the term as ‘citizen of the world’. But the word cosmopolitan was coined by the Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic or Diogenes of Sinope in the fourth century BCE. When Diogenes was asked from what city he hailed, he replied that he was a citizen of the world, κόσμος πολίτης (kósmos polítēs), or κοσμοπολίτης (kosmopolites), a citizen of the world, rejecting narrow local loyalties.

The plural, κόσμου πολῖται (kosmou politai), means ‘citizens of the world’ or even ‘citizens of the universe’, of the whole created order. The phrase originates from Cynic and Stoic philosophy, describing the idea that human beings belong to a single, universal community rather than being defined solely by their local city-state or nation. At the time, the broadest basis of social identity among Greeks was either the individual city-state or the culturally and linguistically homogeneous Hellenic group.

Diogenes lived from ca 413/403 to ca 324/321 BCE, and he was one of the founders of Cynicism. He was renowned for his ascetic lifestyle and radical critiques of social conventions, and he became a legendary figure whose life and teachings have been recounted, often through anecdote, in both antiquity and modernity.

Diogenes advocated a return to nature, the renunciation of wealth, and introduced early ideas of cosmopolitanism by proclaiming himself a citizen of the world. Rather than declaring his lineage, city, social class, or gender, he defined himself as a human being, implicitly asserting the equal worth of all human beings.

He spent the mild winters in Athens, surviving by begging and taking shelter in a large ceramic jar or πίθος (pithos), originally meant for food storage, and he spent the summers outdoors in Corinth, cooled by breezes from the isthmus.

Some sources say Diogenes died on the same night as Alexander the Great, 10-11 June 323 BCE, but this is likely legend.

Later thinkers like Seneca and Marcus Aurelius expanded this idea of cosmopolitanism from Diogenes, teaching that all people share a spark of universal reason and mutual brotherhood.

Stoicism, another Greek school of thought that was founded roughly a century later, built on Diogenes’ ideas, with many of its thinkers and adherents stressing that each human being ‘dwells ... in two communities – the local community of our birth, and the community of human argument and aspiration’.

In his circle model of identity, the Stoic Hierocles states that individuals should regard themselves as concentric circles: the first one around the self, followed by immediate family, extended family, local group, citizens, countrymen, humanity. Within these circles human beings feel a sense of affinity or endearment towards others, which the Stoics termed οἰκείωσις (oikeiôsis).

The task of world citizens becomes then to draw the circles somehow towards the centre, making all human beings more like our fellow city dwellers, and so forth.

The concept evolved into modern political and ethical cosmopolitanism, which argues that all human beings share equal moral worth and obligations, regardless of nationality. Today, people use the term to describe feeling connected to global culture, issues, and humanity as a whole rather than just one country.

Pithoi on Dimakopoulou street in Rethymnon … Diogene is said to have lived in Athens in a large ceramic jar or πίθος, pithos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all human beings are members of a single community. Its adherents are known as cosmopolitan or cosmopolite. Cosmopolitanism is both prescriptive and aspirational, believing humans can and should be world citizens in a universal community. The idea encompasses different dimensions and avenues of community, such as promoting universal moral standards, establishing global political structures, or developing a platform for mutual cultural expression and tolerance.

In his essay ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’ (1795), Immanuel Kant stages a ius cosmopoliticum (cosmopolitan law or right) as a guiding principle to help global society achieve permanent, enduring peace. Kant’s cosmopolitan right (Weltbürgerrecht, ‘world-citizen right’) stems from an understanding of all human beings as equal members of a universal community. Cosmopolitan rights thus work in tandem with international political rights, and the shared, universal right of humanity.

After World War II, as a reaction to the Holocaust and other atrocities, the concept of crimes against humanity became a generally accepted category in international law. This clearly shows the appearance and acceptance of a notion of individual responsibility that is considered to exist toward all of humanity. We know that many problems can only be addressed at the global level, such as global warming.

In her book The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal (2019), Martha Nussbaum engages critically with important examples of the cosmopolitan ideal from ancient Greece and Rome to the present. She pursues this ‘noble but flawed‘ vision of world citizenship as it finds expression in figures of Greco-Roman antiquity, Hugo Grotius in the 17th century, Adam Smith during the 18th century, and various contemporary thinkers.

In an interview, she linked cosmopolitanism with the pursuit of political justice. ‘Cosmopolitanism is certainly highly compatible with a personal attachment to a group that pursues justice. The difficulty comes with whether it is compatible with attachment to a particular nation, or state, or city, since those are political units and cosmopolitanism holds that one’s first loyalty should be to the entire world. I think it is flawed for several reasons.’

She summarised cosmopolitanism as a comprehensive doctrine of how to arrange one’s values, ‘and as such it is not a view that can become the object of what John Rawls calls an “overlapping consensus” among all the reasonable comprehensive doctrines of value, both secular and religious.’

She pointed to the 17th century Dutch humanist Hugo Grotius who said the nation has a moral importance. ‘It is the largest unit we know that is accountable to people’s voices and that can be a vehicle for their autonomy, their wish to give themselves laws of their own choosing. We should have special attachments to our own nation and channel global duties through those, I argue.’

She added that cosmopolitanism ‘is a form of humanism, and has nothing to say about duties to non-human animals and nature.’

Despite those nuances and reservations, the Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri had already stirred up controversy in a speech at the National Conservatism Conference in 2019, claiming the American middle class had been betrayed by an out-of-touch ‘cosmopolitan elite’ that catered to the needs of multinational companies while forgetting ‘the heartland’.

Given Brexit, Donald Trump’s election, and a global turn to nationalism, Hawley’s comments were anything but exceptional. What made them unique was that he directed his ire at particular academics for promulgating the beliefs of what he called the ‘cosmopolitan consensus’.

Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago was the best-known among the philosophers he attacked. Hawley misrepresented her when he accused her of teaching her students that ‘world citizenship’ trumps being the citizen of a nation-state.

Those wondering how Nussbaum might respond to Hawley’s criticism did not have long to wait. By coincidence, a little over a month later, Harvard University Press published The Cosmopolitan Tradition: A Noble but Flawed Ideal, in which she spends most of her time discussing the limits of cosmopolitanism while developing her own positive account of the nation-state and its responsibilities.

Cosmopolitanism – the idea that we are, first and foremost, citizens of the world rather than of a particular nation or region – is predicated on a universal respect for human dignity and a demand for justice regardless of race, sex, or creed. Nussbaum argues, however, that to arrive at this conception of human dignity, the cosmopolitans of earlier ages came to exclude worldly success or material wealth from their notions of the dignified life.

‘In order to treat people as having a dignity that life’s accidents cannot erode,’ she says, the founders of cosmopolitanism scoffed ‘at money, rank, and power, saying that they are unnecessary for human flourishing. The dignity of moral capacity is complete in itself.’

But cosmopolitanism continues to be misused as a term by figures on the political far right and used as a catch-all phrase to put down and dismissed those who question the politics of Trump and his MAGA circles. Recently, Stephen Miller, a Trump administration senior policy adviser and far-right thinker, publicly accused Jim Acosta of CNN of exhibiting ‘cosmopolitan bias’ during a discussion of a new Trump regime immigration plan.

Pithoi in Knossos … Diogene is said to have lived in Athens in a large ceramic jar or πίθος, pithos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Previous words in this series:

1, Neologism, Νεολογισμός.

2, Welcoming the stranger, Φιλοξενία.

3, Bread, Ψωμί.

4, Wine, Οίνος and Κρασί.

5, Yogurt, Γιαούρτι.

6, Orthodoxy, Ορθοδοξία.

7, Sea, Θᾰ́λᾰσσᾰ.

8,Theology, Θεολογία.

9, Icon, Εἰκών.

10, Philosophy, Φιλοσοφία.

11, Chaos, Χάος.

12, Liturgy, Λειτουργία.

13, Greeks, Ἕλληνες or Ρωμαίοι.

14, Mañana, Αύριο.

15, Europe, Εὐρώπη.

16, Architecture, Αρχιτεκτονική.

17, The missing words.

18, Theatre, θέατρον, and Drama, Δρᾶμα.

19, Pharmacy, Φᾰρμᾰκείᾱ.

20, Rhapsody, Ραψῳδός.

21, Holocaust, Ολοκαύτωμα.

22, Hygiene, Υγιεινή.

23, Laconic, Λακωνικός.

24, Telephone, Τηλέφωνο.

25, Asthma, Ασθμα.

26, Synagogue, Συναγωγή.

27, Diaspora, Διασπορά.

28, School, Σχολείο.

29, Muse, Μούσα.

30, Monastery, Μοναστήρι.

31, Olympian, Ολύμπιος.

32, Hypocrite, Υποκριτής.

33, Genocide, Γενοκτονία.

34, Cinema, Κινημα.

35, autopsy and biopsy

36, Exodus, ἔξοδος

37, Bishop, ἐπίσκοπος

38, Socratic, Σωκρατικὸς

39, Odyssey, Ὀδύσσεια

40, Practice, πρᾶξις

41, Idiotic, Ιδιωτικός

42, Pentecost, Πεντηκοστή

43, Apostrophe, ἀποστροφή

44, catastrophe, καταστροφή

45, democracy, δημοκρατία

46, ‘Αρχή, beginning, Τέλος, end

47, ‘Αποκάλυψις, Apocalypse

48, ‘Απόκρυφα, Apocrypha

49, Ἠλεκτρον (Elektron), electric

50, Metamorphosis, Μεταμόρφωσις

51, Bimah, βῆμα

52, ἰχθύς (ichthýs) and ψάρι (psari), fish.

53, Τὰ Βιβλία (Ta Biblia), The Bible

54, Φῐλοξενῐ́ᾱ (Philoxenia), true hospitality

55, εκκλησία (ekklesia), the Church

56, ναός (naos) and ἱερός (ieros), a church

57, Χριστούγεννα (Christougenna), Christmas

58, ἐπιφάνεια (epipháneia), θεοφάνεια, (theopháneia), Epiphany and Theophany

59, Ζέφυρος (Zéphuros), the West Wind

60, Αύριο (Avrio), Tomorrow

61, καλημέρα (κaliméra), ‘Good Morning’, and καλαμάρι, κalamári, ‘squid’

62, Ελευθερία ή θάνατος, ‘Freedom or Death’

63, Ποδόσφαιρο, ‘Football’

64, καφές (coffee), Φραπές (frappé)

65, Odyssey (η Οδύσσεια) and Odysseus (Ὀδυσσεύς)

66, Cosmopolitan, Κοσμοπολίτης

67, Εἰρήνη (Eirene), Peace

Series to be continued

Loumidis Papagalos Ekastos Kosmopolitis (Cosmopolitan) … a well-known brand of finely ground traditional Greek coffee

My 40-year nostalgic search for the Greek islands of the Odyssey, from Crete to Corfu and Ithaca

The ‘Lily Prince’ in the Minoan Palace in Knossos … Odysseus repeatedly claims he is a Cretan prince from Knossos to hide his true identity on his return to Ithaka (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Ἀλλὰ καὶ ὧς ἐθέλω καὶ ἐέλδομαι ἤματα πάντα
οἴκαδέ τ' ἐλθέμεναι καὶ νόστιμον ἦμαρ ἰδέσθαι.
εἰ δ' αὖ τις ῥαίῃσι θεὸς ἐν οἴνοπι πόντῳ,
τλήσομαι ἐν στήθεσσιν ἔχων ἀτληθὲς θυμόν.

Nevertheless I long – I pine, all my days –
to travel home and see the dawn of my return.
And if a god will wreck me yet again on the wine-dark sea,
I can bear that too, with a spirit tempered to endure.
The Odyssey (Book 5, lines 219-222)

Two of the deepest currents of thought running through The Odyssey are ξενία (xenia), the sacred code of hospitality and reciprocal courtesy shown to travellers, strangers and outsiders and the mutual duties of hosts and guests; and νόστος (nostos), homecoming and the longing for home.

In English, the word ‘xenophobia’ is a concept that runs contrary to all the core values found in ξενία (xenia) and in φιλοξενία (philoxenia), a concept that extends far beyond mere hospitality and that remains a shared value among Greeks today.

The word nostalgia is a 17th century compound derived from Greek. It consists of νόστος (nostos), a Homeric word meaning ‘homecoming’, and ἄλγος (álgos), ‘pain’. The word was coined by a medical student to describe the anxieties shown by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home.

Both concepts in Greek explain how welcome I have felt in Greece for almost 40 years, year after year, and how wistful I feel, longing to return, when I am not there, as though Greece, and particularly Crete, was my second home.

I imagine a spin-off from Christopher Nolan’s box-office success, The Odyssey, is going to be a boost to tourism in Greece, as people seek out locations and settings that associated with the ten-year homeward journey of Odysseus.

Odysseus took 10 years to reach his home in Ithaka after the Trojan wars … a sailing boat in the harbour in Rethymnon after sunset

The three main islands associated with Odysseus are Ithaka, where he was king and which is the home he takes ten years to find his way back to, Kephallonia and Zakynthos.

Ithaki or Ithaca is his home in the Ionian Islands and the emotional core of the entire story. Zakynthos is one of the Ionian islands named in The Odyssey as part of the island world around Odysseus’s kingdom, and neighbouring Kefalonia is often linked with Homer’s Same.

I visited these three islands over the space of two years: Ithaka in 2003, Kephallonia (‘Captain Corelli’s island’) in 2002 and 2003, and Zakynthos in 2002. But that was almost 25 years ago, long before I had a digital camera or a phone with a camera on it, and all my photographs from those trips are inaccessible or lost.

Odysseus travels from Troy to Thrace, and then through the lands of the Lotus-Eaters, Cyclopes, Aeolus and Circe on his way home to Ithaka. Although they are named in The Odyssey, he never visits some of the Dodecanese islands I know, such as Rhodes, Symi and Kos, or Cycladic islands such as Santorini (Thera), although Syros in the Cyclades is identified with Syrie, the home of Eumaeus, Odysseus’ loyal swineherd.

The ancient theatre in Epidavros is one of the most perfect ancient Greek theatres (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

But there are other places in Greece – islands and on the mainland – that are parts of the Odyssey and that may get a boost in tourism figures because of the new film. Some places in the Odyssey are legendary, the subject of conjecture or a topic for debate.

Athena guides Odysseus on his return journey to Ithaka. She is basically the story’s behind-the-scenes operator, and Athens is where her presence is felt most today. Many places in the Peloponnese are part of the narrative, including places I have visited.

Sparti (Sparta), where I stayed in the Menaleon Hotel in 1996, when I was visiting Mystras, is where the Odyssey connects back to the Iliad and the fallout from the Trojan War through Menelaus and Helen. Telemachus visits Menelaus to hear what happened to the Greek heroes after Troy, and why the fate of Odysseus remained uncertain for so long, and he arrives in Pylos to find the local people making offerings to Poseidon by the sea.

The ancient theatre in Epidavros is one of the most perfect ancient Greek theatres in terms of its design and its acoustics. Epidaurus is described in the Iliad as ‘vine-clad Epidaurus’ and contributed along with Argos, Tiryns, Troezen and Ermioni to the Argolid fleet heading to Troy.

Looking out from Preveli Monastery in Crete towards the island of Gavdos, said to be the Ogygia of Calypso where Odysseus stayed for seven years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Crete is connected to the Odyssey primarily as a place mentioned in the epic – specifically as a fictional origin story told by Odysseus, and in historical navigation theories that link real landmarks in Crete to the journey. In Homer’s text, Odysseus repeatedly invents elaborate backstories claiming he is a Cretan prince from Knossos to hide his true identity on his return to Ithaka.

People in Crete say the small of Gavdos is the Ogygia of Calypso, where Odysseus stayed for seven years with the nymph. I have often gazed out at Gavdos from the Monastery of Preveli above the palm forest that was severely damaged by the fires that swept across the Rethymnon region last week. Eventually, Odysseus spurned the offer of eternal life from Calypso and left Ogygia for his journey home

Paleochora, to the west of Preveli and on south-west coast of Crete, has been proposed as a landing point where winds pushed Odysseus off-course toward a small distinct coastal peninsula near Libya before heading back north.

The bay at Gramvousa … the small island off north-west Crete is identified the floating island of Aeolus (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

After his adventure with Polyphemus, Odysseus continues his journey north. The historian Tim Severin and other historians convincingly identify the small island of Gramvousa off the north-west tip of Crete with the floating island of Aeolus. There, Odysseus waits for the right moment to continue his journey home.

Gramvousa is an island encircled by striking sheer cliffs that reflect a reddish-bronze hue at sunset, creating the illusion of towering bronze walls.

The ancient name for the island was ‘Korykos’, meaning ‘leather bag’. Notably, it was on the Isle of Aeolus where Odysseus used a magical leather bag.

In the ‘Blue Caves’ on the west coast of Paxos, identified with some scholars with the island of Circe (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Paxos in the Ionian islands is identified with some scholars with the island of Circe, a nature goddess. On leaving the island of Circe, he passes the small island of Antipaxos, southeast of Paxos.

After passing Antipaxos, Odysseus arrives at a spot where he has two choices: one route would take him past the dangerous Wandering Rocks, while the other would take him down a narrow channel with dangers on both sides – on one side, there was Scylla, the serpentine monster, while on the other was Charybdis, the sea monster that swallowed things like a whirlpool.

The explorer Tim Severin suggests the Ionian island of Lefkada or Levkas is the location for the Sirens, the Wandering Rocks, Scylla and Charybdis and the island of Helios’s cattle.

The main beach at Palaiokastritsa … Odysseus is said to have made his last stop there on his way home to Ithaka (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Corfu (Kerkyra), the most northerly of the Ionian Islands, is usually identified with Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians and the last destination of Odysseus in his 10-year journey home from Troy to Ithaki.

Although Corfu is not named directly, it has the kind of coastline that makes shipwreck scenes feel believable. Odysseus is washed up exhausted on the shores of Scheria, where King Alcinous and Princess Nausicaa offer hospitality to the weary hero and the Phaeacians provide him with a safe route back home to Ithaka.

Two small islets off the coast of Corfu claim links with the stories of Odysseus and shipwreck.

The Rock of Kolovri in the bay of Palaiokastritsa is said to be the petrified ship of Odysseus (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Palaiokastritsa is on the north-west coast of Corfu, about 26 km from Corfu town and airport. The Rock of Kolovri in the bay is said to be the petrified ship of Odysseus, although similar legends are associated with Pontikonisi or ‘Mouse Island’ off Kanoni, near Corfu town.

The legend says that after the Phaeacians had safely helped Odysseus on the last leg of his journey home to Ithaka, they returned to Corfu. But the sea god Poseidon, angered that the Phaeacians had helped his rival, turned their vessel into stone, creating what is now Pontikonisi.

Although this story does not appear explicitly in Homer’s text, it is one of Corfu’s most enduring myths, and Pontikonisi or ‘Mouse Island’ is one of Corfu’s most recognisable landmarks. The tiny, cypress-covered islet sits at the entrance to the Halkiopoulos Lagoon, just south of Corfu Town and under the flight path of Corfu Airport.

Another, more practical explanation for the island’s name is that, when viewed from above, its shape resembles a small mouse – so giving us the Greek name Pontikonisi (Ποντικονήσι), meaning ‘Mouse Island.’

The islet of Pontikonisi, seen behind Vlachеrnа Covent … the Church of the Transfiguration is open to visitors only on 6 August (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Pontikonisi is one of the Corfu’s most photographed attractions, ALthough access is limited. Small boats take visitors to the islet during the tourist season, allowing them to explore the chapel and enjoy its tranquil setting among towering cypress trees.

Many visitors choose instead to admire Pontikonisi from the nearby islet of Panagia Vlacherna, home to the whitewashed 17th century convent with the elegant bell tower and waterfront setting that have made it the picture postcard emblem of Corfu.

At its centre of Pontikonisi, the Byzantine Church of Christ Pantokrator dates from the 11th or 12th century. The chapel is generally closed to the public throughout the year but it opens each year on this day, 6 August, the Feast of the Transfiguration, when many people make the short boat trip to attend the annual celebration.

How many of those pilgrims today thought they were following in the path of Odysseus on his ten-year journey home from Troy to Ithaka?

The Throne Room inside the Minoan palatial complex at Knossos … Odysseus repeatedly claims he is a Cretan prince from Knossos to hide his true identity on his return to Ithaka (Photograph: Patrick Comerford

Daily prayer in Christmas 2025-2026: 39, Sunday 1 February 2026, Fourth Sunday of Epiphany (Epiphany IV)

The Wedding at Cana … an icon in the Lady Chapel in Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The 40 days of the Season of Christmas and our celebrations of Epiphany-tide come to an end tomorrow, with Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation (2 February). Today is the Fourth Sunday of Epiphany (1 February 2026), but the Church Calendar allows churches and parishes to mark the Feast of Presentation either today or tomorrow.

This Sunday has also been known as Septuagesima, the ninth Sunday before Easter, the third before Ash Wednesday. The term is sometimes applied to the 70 days starting on Septuagesima Sunday and ending on the Saturday after Easter. Alternatively, the term may be applied also to the period sometimes called pre-Lent that begins on this day and ends on Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, when Lent begins.

In the calendar of the Orthodox Church, today is the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican, as we were reminded at vespers in the Greek Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford last night. Later this morning, I hope to sing with the choir at the Candlemas Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church in Stony Stratford, and I am hoping to see the full moon tonight, with the promise of fresh beginnings and the beginning of Spring. But, before today begins, I am taking some time for reflection, reading and prayer in these ways:

1, the Gospel reading of the day;

2, short reflections on the reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

The Wedding at Cana, depicted by Giotto in a fresco panel in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

In the Gospel reading today as the Fourth Sunday of Epiphany (Epiphany IV, John 2: 1-11) tells of the Wedding at Cana, one of the traditional Epiphany stories. Charlotte and I chose this as the Gospel reading at our wedding celebration in the Harvard Chapel in Southwark Cathedral in 2023.

The Wedding at Cana (John 2: 1-12) is one of the traditional Gospel readings during Epiphany-tide, and is the first of the signs in the Fourth Gospel. Along with the Visit of the Magi (Matthew 2: 1-12, 6 January 2026, The Epiphany), and the Baptism of Christ by Saint John the Baptist (Matthew 3: 13-17, 11 January 2026), these three themes at Epiphany tell us who Christ truly is: truly God and truly human.

This morning’s Gospel story is so familiar that we forget what its first impact may have been.

The saying about serving the good wine first is so well known that we forget that this is not what happens at all.

Sometimes, we convince ourselves that at this wedding in Cana they plan to first serve the good wine, and then when people are drunk they can put up with cheap plonk.

Not so.

Think of how many festive meals finish with the good wine.

I was surprised rummaging around after Christmas some years ago to find two bottles of fine port I had forgotten about: one from Portugal and one from the cellars of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Beside them was a good bottle of desert wine that I had received as a present in Greece. They were such appropriate ways that year to finish off some good meals and celebrations at Christmas and the New Year.

No good wedding would finish without opening the champagne to toast the happy couple.

In Greece and in other parts of the Mediterranean, where wedding celebrations can last for a few days, perhaps even three days, the good wine comes out at the end, to toast the couple and to send the guests away knowing they have been welcome.

And this wedding story is about one other, long, weekend wedding, like so many that Jesus and the Disciples must have enjoyed.

Because he enjoyed a good wedding, Jesus uses the wedding banquet as an image of the Kingdom in two other Gospels (see Matthew 22: 1-14; Luke 14: 15-24), and it helps to understand why he is referred to as the bridegroom at least 14 times in the New Testament (e.g., see Matthew 9: 14-15; Matthew 25: 1-13; Mark 2: 18-20; Luke 5: 33-35; John 3: 29; Revelation 18: 23; Revelation 19: 9; Revelation 21: 2).

As with all good wedding stories, we might expect today’s Gospel story to be one about love, and one in which they all live happily ever after.

Imagine the happy couple who turn up for this wedding. This should be their great day. People have come from far and wide to celebrate with them. And, in good Mediterranean fashion, after two or three days, when everyone is about to go, there is a last dance, and a last toast: to the Bride and Groom. Or, so it was planned.

But before they get to that stage, the wine gives out (verse 3).

Is this because everyone has had too much to drink? Is it because the groom, despite expectations, did not buy enough wine? Or, is it because the groom has bought enough wine, but someone is siphoning it off, hoping everyone is going to be too drunk to notice?

It is an embarrassing occasion. But for whom?

Certainly for Mary, she takes action immediately. You can just picture her as the concerned aunt, like so many aunts at a wedding, not wanting her nephew or his new wife to be embarrassed.

But it is not embarrassing for Jesus. Nor is it embarrassing for the servants either. They seem to have done just what they were told to do.

Wine fraud is one of the oldest frauds in the world. Perhaps the finger of suspicion points at the chief steward, the master of the feast, the ἀρχιτρίκλινος (architríklinos) in verses 8-10. He has not been paying attention to what has been going on. At best, he has been negligent, at worst he was complicit, perhaps even the organiser.

Have the newly-wed couple and their guests, and their servants too, been the victims of a smart con trick by the chief steward? Is he inefficient? Does he not realise what is going on? Did he not buy all the wine that he charged for? Or, perhaps, has he been siphoning off the wine?

He is certainly not a model of probity as a wedding planner, avoiding some potentially tough questions when he claims dismissively: ‘Everyone serves the good wine first’ (verse 10).

That is patently not so. And he never even asks where the wine comes from. He just accepts that it is there. Perhaps he suspects he has been caught out.
I can see him throwing his arms up in the air, denying responsibility and trying to shift the blame onto someone, anyone, else. He seems to behave in a way like senior management in the Post Office shifted the blame for system failures onto sub-postmasters.

In his column in the Church Times two years ago (19 January 2024), Paul Vallely writes about ‘the Patronising Disposition of Unaccountable Power.’ He says ‘barely a month goes by’ without seeing examples ‘of the disregard of those in power for ordinary people.’

The Conservative government was still in office, and he continued: ‘This week it was the victims of child sexual exploitation in Rochdale. Last week, it was the sub-postmasters … Before that, it was teachers bullied by Ofsted inspectors, one so severely that she took her own life … Then there were the survivors of the Grenfell Tower inferno, the Windrush scandal, and the contaminated blood scandal.

‘The common factor in all these cases is an arrogant disdain for those whom they are supposed to serve. There is an all-too-familiar pattern of denial, cover-up, and deceit – and a default response, above all else, to protect the reputations of powerful individuals and institutions … It is only the prospect of a General Election later this year that has temporarily brought those in power to public account.’

So often in life, ordinary people are cheated out of what is theirs, deprived of what they are entitled to, left without hope.

The ‘Queen of Mean,’ the late Leona Helmsley (1920-2007), once said when she was on trial for tax evasion: ‘Only the little people pay taxes’ (1989). So often in life, it is ‘the little people’ who pay their taxes, and pay the price when it comes to cuts in public services, the collapse of banks, inadequate finding for the NHS, schools and public transport, or bear the brunt when it comes to floods, natural disasters and the consequences of war and climate change. There are no heads of state or CEOs from large multinationals among the refugees seeking asylum in Europe today, risking deportation or living in fear of the braying and bullying mobs gathered outside cheap hotels, or being beaten and shot by ICE agents on the icy streets of Minneapolis.

Imagine the embarrassment of the couple who are among ‘the little people’ and who are cheated out of the toast to the bride and the groom at the very end of their wedding celebrations.

But Christ is with us at the moments when we feel cheated of our hopes for the future.

As for that wedding at Cana, as with all good stories, we might well ask: Did they live happily ever after?

Well, the lectionary compilers end this story at verse 11. But the next verse, verse 12, says: ‘After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples; and they remained there a few days.’

They go to the wedding together, and they go back together, but things have changed. After the wedding, someone is a new brother-in-law, a new sister-in-law, is going to be a new aunt or a new uncle. In time to come, a new family is structured.

It was a long walk back: 27 km (18 miles), and in the conditions of the time it would have taken a good day’s walk or longer.

What did they talk about on that long walk? Was that your cousin? Is she your new sister-in-law? Who did he dance with? Will they fall in love? Are they really in love?

When we publicly show our love for one another, when we form new families, when we allow the ripples of love to spread out in ways that we cannot control, in ways in which we lose control, then we are truly partners with God in creating the Kingdom of God.

Even if the couple at Cana broke up afterwards, grandparents would continue to share the same grandchildren.

We make family at weddings, but we cannot control family. When we go to family weddings, we have no choice about who is going to be a new brother-in-law, or who nieces or nephews decide to marry; we certainly have no say about who our grandparents were, the decisions they made or the way they behaved. And that is so for the generations to come too.

I imagine the Kingdom of God is like that. Those who are invited to the heavenly banquet are going to include people I at first may be uncomfortable to sit with at the same table. But I am not the host, I am the guest, and the invitations are sent out into the side-streets and the alleyways (Matthew 22: 9-10). ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb’ (Revelation 19: 9).

I cannot choose who is invited to the wedding, but I can accept the invitation to the meal, and the invitation to be part of the new family, the kingdom.

And if we accept the invitation, we have no right to pick and choose, to discriminate against my fellow guests, to cheat them out of their place at the table, to refuse to eat and drink with them.

It was a common in Jewish thinking and imagery at the time to speak of wedding banquets as a foretaste of God’s heavenly promises. The Mishnah says: ‘This world is like a lobby before the World-To-Come. Prepare yourself in the lobby so that you may enter the banquet hall.’

But then, so often throughout the Gospels, we find that great meals and wedding banquets provide a foretaste of the Heavenly Banquet.

We are invited; but are we ready, are we prepared, to be wedding guests? (see Matthew 22: 1-14; Luke 14: 15-24). Think of the Ten Bridesmaids, and how the foolish ones are not ready when the bridegroom arrives (Matthew 25: 1-13).

On the other hand, plush dining can also tell us a lot about what the Kingdom of God is not like. Consider the story of the rich man, who dined sumptuously and alone, and left the starving, sick and dying Lazarus to go hungry at his gate (Luke 16: 19-31). This is not what the Kingdom of God is like, as Dives finds out. But he finds out when it is too late for his own good.

The great Biblical meals celebrate not only what was, as with the Passover, but what is, in the present, and what is to come, as with the wedding banquets – new promises, new covenants, new families, new expectations, new hopes.

‘The Wedding at Cana’ (John 2: 1-11) … one of 20 white porcelain ceramic panels by Helena Brennan at the Oblate Church in Inchicore, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 2: 1-11 [12] (NRSVA):

1 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ 4 And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ 5 His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ 6 Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. 8 He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. 9 When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ 11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

[12 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples; and they remained there for a few days.]

‘Fill the jars with water … and they filled them up to the brim’ (John 2: 7) … two large jars or pithoi at the Minoan palace in Knossos, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 1 February 2026):

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: ‘Serving the Lord with Dignity’ (pp 24-25). This theme is introduced today with a Programme Update by the Revd Mauricio Mugunhe, Executive Director of Acção Social Anglicana, Igreja Anglicana de Moçambique e Angola:

‘Christian life is like a sailing journey on a turbulent sea. In Mark 4: 35–41, Jesus invites his disciples to cross to the other side of the sea. A fierce storm strikes and the disciples, terrified, wake Jesus: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Jesus calms the storm with a word and asks: “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” This story speaks powerfully to the situation we face today in the Igreja Anglicana de Moçambique e Angola (IAMA), particularly in the Diocese of Lebombo. As dioceses, we are sailing through windstorms: financial challenges, lack of quality theological education, difficulties in constructing church buildings and sustaining ministry. Yet, Jesus’ invitation still stands: “Let us go across to the other side.”

‘For us, the “other side” is the vision of IAMA, the newest province of the Anglican Communion, to become a sustainable church, with well-trained & adequately supported clergy, capable of leading people of God with dignity and hope.

‘One tangible step toward this vision is the launch of “Serving the Lord with Dignity” project. The idea is to make liturgical vestments and uniforms for church groups, such as Mothers’ Union and Bernard Mizeki Guild which will also help support our financial stability. Production of vestments is being led by church members who are training a wider team of tailors.

‘As we cross to the other side, let us trust in Jesus’ power to still the storms and lead us safely to where he is calling us.’

The USPG Prayer Diary today (1 February 2025) invites us to pray as we read and meditate on Matthew 5: 1-12.

The Collect:

God our creator,
who in the beginning
commanded the light to shine out of darkness:
we pray that the light of the glorious gospel of Christ
may dispel the darkness of ignorance and unbelief,
shine into the hearts of all your people,
and reveal the knowledge of your glory
in the face of 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:

Generous Lord,
in word and eucharist we have proclaimed the mystery of your love:
help us so to live out our days
that we may be signs of your wonders in the world;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Additional Collect:

God of heaven,
you send the gospel to the ends of the earth
and your messengers to every nation:
send your Holy Spirit to transform us
by the good news of everlasting life
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of The Presentation:

Almighty and ever–living God,
clothed in majesty,
whose beloved Son was this day presented in the Temple,
in substance of our flesh:
grant that we may be presented to you
with pure and clean hearts,
by 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.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

‘The Wedding Feast at Cana’ … a fresco in the Church of Analipsi in Georgioupoli, 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

18.5 million people in Beijing, €18.5 million at Crete’s sites, 18.5 million metres in Corfu, 18.5 million blog readers

The Minoan palace of Knoss near Iraklion … the museums and archaeological sites in Crete bring in more than €18.5 million a year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This blog continues to reach more and more readers, and has reached yet another staggering today, with 18.5 million hits by shortly after 12 noon today (27 November 2025) and more than half a million readers so far this month, with over 550,000 hits before lunchtime today.

I first began blogging back in 2010, and the 18 million was reached earlier this month (2 November 2025), having passed the 17.5 million mark last month (18 October) and the 17 million mark less than three weeks earlier (30 September 2025).

The latest figure of 18.5 million is all the more staggering because half of all those hits have been within the past 12 months, since November 2024. The rise in the number of readers has been phenomenal throughout this year, and the daily figures have been overwhelming at times. With this latest landmark figure of 18.5 million readers today, I once again find myself asking questions such as:

• What do 18.5 million people look like?
• Where do we find 18.5 million people?
• What does £18.5 million, €18.5 million or $18.5 million mean?
• What would it buy, how far would it stretch, how much of a difference would that much make to people’s lives?

Inside the Forbidden City in Beijing … Beijing has an estimated population of about 18.5 million people (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Senegal in west Africa and Chile in South America have 18.5 million inhabitants. Cities with a population of around 18.5 million – depending on who is doing the counting – include the urban area of Beijing and Bangkok, as well as the New York-Newark area and Cairo, each with about 18.5 million inhabitants.

By mid-2024, India was the leading country of origin for international migrants, with a diaspora of 18.5 million people living abroad.

The US is the third-most populated country in the world, with over 330 million people, and its population is expected to grow by another 18.5 million in the next 10 years.

Knossos, the Minoan palace near Iraklion, is the most lucrative archaeological site in Crete, contributing 60% of the overall income from all of Crete’s museums and archaeological sites. Statistics for 2023 show ticket sales there have reached all-time highs, and the island’s museums and archaeological sites brought in more than €18.5 million. Knossos is the most valuable cultural asset in Crete, bringing in €11 million from 1 million tourists, the second-highest annual visitor total behind the Acropolis in Athens.

A record-breaking 18.5 million pilgrims performed Hajj and Umrah in Saudi Arabia last year. Of these 18.5 million pilgrims, about 16.9 million performed Umrah and 1.6 million performed Hajj.

Wetherspoon’s project to convert a row of derelict houses in Camden Street, Dublin, into the Keavan’s Port hotel and pub was estimated to cost €18.5 million.

Aston Villa announced the signing of Bertrand Traore from Lyon in September. The deal is worth €18.5 million in transfer fees, plus a further €2 million in add-ons.

The Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa has an area of 18.5 million square metres or 18.5 sq km.

The Agios Georgios to Notos Beach trail in Corfu is an 18.5 km (18.5 million metres) out-and-back hiking route and takes about 3.5 hours to complete.

Issos Beach on the Agios Georgios to Notos Beach trail on Corfu … an 18.5 km (18.5 million metres) out-and-back hiking route (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

18.5 million minutes adds up to 35.174500 years, so if this blog had one hit a minute, it would take over 35 years to reach today’s landmark figure of 18.5 million hits.

Once again, this blog has reached another humbling statistic and a sobering figure, and once more I am left with a feeling of gratitude to all who read and support this blog and my writing.

A continuing and warming figure in the midst of all these statistics continues to be the one that shows my morning prayer diary continues to reach up to 80-90 people each day. It is over 3½ years now since I retired from active parish ministry, but I think many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches averaged or totalled 560 to 630 people a week.

Today, I am very grateful to all the 18.5 million readers of this blog to date, and in particular I am grateful for the small and faithful core group among you who join me in prayer, reading and reflection each morning.

Wetherspoons transformed eight derelict houses on Camden Street Dublin, into Keavan’s Port pub and hotel in a €18.5 million project (Photograph: Patrick Comerford,)