A journey back to Narnia, visiting the grave and home of CS Lewis in Headington and his links with Oxford

The grave of CS Lewis and his brother Warnie Lewis in the churchyard at Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

During two recent visits to Headington in Oxford, I visited some of the churches in the area, including Saint Andrew’s Church, Headington, Headington Baptist Church, Corpus Christi Catholic Church, and Saint Michael and All Angels, New Marston.

In a posting on Sunday afternoon,I also described visiting Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, which is known particularly for its associations with the Belfast-born writer CS Lewis (1898-1963), who lived and worked for most of his life in Oxford, and who was a regular parishioner in Holy Trinity Church for more than 30 years.

As I walked around Headington I found more associations with CS Lewis, including The Kilns, the house where he lived on a street off Kiln Lane now known as Lewis Court, the CS Lewis Nature Reserve, and the house in Headington where his wife Joy Davidman once lived.

CS Lewis was a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, for almost 30 years (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In the past, I have introduced a tutorial group to CS Lewis and his spirituality, written about him for American magazines to mark the 50th anniversary of his death, listened to lectures in Cambridge by Metropolitan Kallistos on the meaning of love in the writings of CS Lewis, visited churches and houses in Belfast that were part of his childhood, and visited places in Oxford associated with academic life and his work as a writer.

The Belfast-born writer, Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) is known for his literary criticism, children’s literature, fantasy literature and, essays, as well as his works in theology and as a Christian apologist. His great works include Mere Christianity, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, The Four Loves and Surprised by Joy.

CS Lewis was an undergraduate at at University College, Oxford, then taught as a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, for almost 30 years, from 1925 to 1954. He met JRR Tolkien for the first time 100 years ago, on 11 May 1926. They remained lifelong friends and key figures in the Inklings, the literary group that meet each week in the Eagle and Child on St Giles in Oxford, and Tolkien was influential in his decision to return to Christianity and the Anglicanism of his birth.

In 1954, he moved from Oxford to Cambridge as the first Professor of Mediaeval and Renaissance English and a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. But he never had the same impact on Cambridge as he had on Oxford.

Joy Davidman Gresham was living at 10 Old High Street, Headington, when she married CS Lewis 70 years ago in 1956 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Lewis married the American writer Joy Davidman Gresham, then living at 10 Old High Street, Headington. She was 17 years his junior and they were married 70 years ago at the register office, 42 St Giles, Oxford, on 23 April 1956. Their friend, the Revd Peter Bide, provided a church blessing at her bed in the Churchill Hospital on 21 March 1957, despite a decree by Harry Carpenter, Bishop of Oxford, that the Church’s prohibition of remarriage for divorcees should be upheld in his diocese. Joy she moved into his home, The Kilns, in Headington in April 1957.

The couple had a brief holiday in Greece and the Aegean shortly before she died of cancer at the age of 45 on 13 July 1960. In A Grief Observed, Lewis describes his experience of bereavement in a raw and deeply personal way.

While Lewis attended the chapel in Magdalen College during the week, he never attended Choral Evensong there and went to the early Sunday morning service in his local parish church, Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, probably from some time in 1930. The Kilns, his home from 1930, is a ten-minute walk from the church. He took communion for the first since he was a boy at Holy Trinity Church on Christmas Day 1931.

Lewis Close leads to The Kilns, where CS Lewis lived from 1930 and to the CS Lewis Nature Reserve (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

He had a lifelong dislike of organ music and preferred to attend the 8 am said Communion service. Sunday after Sunday, for more than 30 years, he sat in the same pew, close to a pillar where he could observe the service but was shielded from the view of other people in the congregation.

On 15 July 1940, having been unwell, he decided to have a lie-in and attend the 11 am service instead. He did not get on particularly well with the vicar of that time and found his sermons tedious. On that Sunday his mind started to wander, but his wandering was productive: during the sermon and as he walked back to The Kilns, the concept and outline for The Screwtape Letters was almost completely formed in his mind.

Lewis died three years after Joy, on 22 November 1963, a week before his 65th birthday, and is buried in the churchyard in the churchyard in Headington.

The Narnia window in the north aisle of Holy Trinity Chuurch, Headington, was dedicated in 1991 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

CS Lewis was a regular parishioner in Holy Trinity for more than four decades and is commemorated in the Narnia window in the north aisle and also has a simple grave is in the churchyard. CS Lewis and his brother Warren Lewis began attending the church in 1930 and remained active in the church until their deaths, CS Lewis in 1963 and WH Lewis in 1973.

The Narnia window in the north aisle by Sally Scott in the north includes images from CS Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and was installed in 1991.

The window depicts the Garden of Eden as CS Lewis described it: a landscape of talking animals, speaking trees, courage and kindness, shot through with the light from outside and physically very accessible. Above, the lantern in the trefoil, the holy dove seems to shed peace on all that happens below.

The Narnia window was created as a memorial at once to the writer who sat in the pew by the window, and a bequest in remembrance of two local children who are buried in the churchyard. The Howe Bequest was made by George and Kathleen Howe, lived at Grovelands Road in Risinghurst, close to the Lewis brothers, as a memorial to their children, William George Howe (1938-1954) and Gillian Margaret Howe (1945-1947).

The artist and sculptural glass engraver Sally Scott was commissioned to create the window. After receiving the Narnia brief, she reread the books and drew inspiration too from the clear-glass engraved doors of Coventry Cathedral, and. Because the window is at eye level, she could fill her pictures with activity at a scale that is right for children.

The images include: Aslan, the great lion and creator, from whose mane streams light; two boys on a flying horse; a small girl flying on a talking owl; a and the castle Cair Paravel, which became the seat of good government on earth. Below are the heads of a unicorn, a bearded dwarf, an antlered stag, a mouse and a small bird. Along the bottom are the magic gifts made to the children by Aslan: a bottle of healing elixir, a sword and shield, bow and arrow, and the horn that summons divine help.

The top corners display the coat of arms of John Williams, Lord Williams of Thame, who founded Lord Williams’s School, where Willie was at school when he died. Three local children modelled the Narnia children and the window was dedicated on 2 July 1991.

CS Lewis died at his home, The Kilns, on 22 November 1963 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

CS Lewis died at his home, The Kilns, on 22 November 1963, the same day as the assassination of John F Kennedy. He was buried a few days later in the churchyard at Holy Trinity, the parish church he had attended for many years. Many of his friends and colleagues were unaware of his death and his funeral. JRR Tolkien was one of only 30 or so people at his funeral.

His brother Warren Hamilton Lewis, who died on 9 April 1973, is was buried in the same grave. The grave is marked by a modest headstone, their names, dates of birth and death, and a brief inscription. The epitaph, chosen by his Warren Hamilton Lewis, is from Shakespeare’s King Lear: ‘Men must endure their going hence.’ This quotation was the quotation on the family calendar the day their mother died, 23 August 1908.

Other graves in the churchyard include those of Mrs Janie Moore, the ‘adopted mother’, of CS Lewis, who died on 12 January 1951; William Kimber, the ‘father of English Morris’ as his gravestone describes him; and six war graves of soldiers from World War I.

The former register office at 42 St Giles, where CS Lewis and Joy Davidman married 70 years ago, is now a private dental practice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Kilns on Lewis Close is a short walk from Holy Trinity Church, and I retraced the route CS Lewis may have walked back home that Sunday morning in 1940 as he developed the concept and outline for The Screwtape Letters in his mind.

The bus from Headington back into Oxford brought me past Magdalen College where he had been a fellow for much of his life.

On St Giles, the former register office at No 42, where CS Lewis and Joy Davidman were married 70 years ago, is now a private dental practice.

The Eagle and Child at 49 St Giles, where Lewis, Tolkien and the Inklings met regularly, has long been covered in cladding and scaffolding, with promises from the developers that it will reopen some time in 2027.

The Eagle and Child, where the Inklings once met regularly, is covered in cladding and scaffolding (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

For my guide to churches, chapels and religious buildings and sites in Oxford, visit here

A return to Headington, where I find the story of an anti-war protest behind the ‘Headington Shark’

The Headington Shark is a sculpture of a large shark embedded head-first in the roof of a terraced house at 2 New High Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

Headington is a suburb in east Oxford, at the top of Headington Hill overlooking the city in the Thames valley below, with Marston to the north-west, Cowley to the south, and Barton and Risinghurst to the east. When I first visited Oxford in my teens, around 1969 or 1970, I stayed in Headington at the youth hostel in Cowley House on Jack Straw’s Lane, which closed in 2001.

I have been through Headington many times in recent years, on my way to and from the hospitals. But an appointment earlier this week at John Radcliffe Hospital and a follow-up visitlater in the week, offered opportunities and time to walk around Headington, and to see the ‘Headington Shark’, the area’s most celebrated landmark and an anti-war protest. There was time too to see Saint Andrew’s Church, Holy Trinity Church and some other churches in the area; to see the ‘Black Booy’ – a pub with a controversial name; and to look into some of Headington’s literary, academic and cultural connections, including links with CS Lewis and Isaiah Berlin.

The commercial and shopping life of Headington and traffic through the area focuses on London Road, the main road between London and Oxford. But Headington also has not one but two High Streets, New High Street and Old High Street. And it was on one of those streets that I found the ‘Headington Shark’ and other noticeable sites.

The Headington Clock in the centre of commercial and shopping life and traffic on London Road in Headington (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Headington Shark – properly named ‘Untitled 1986’ – is a sculpture of a large shark embedded head-first in the roof of a terraced house at 2 New High Street. It began as protest art, installed 40 years ago by Bill Heine and John Buckley, without planning permission and as an anti-war protest, symbolising bombs crashing into homes and buildings.

The shark was installed on 9 August 1986 on the roof of the home of Bill Heine, an American-born radio presenter. Heine and Buckley came up with the idea of the shark while they were drinking wine on the street, and imagined the shark as a metaphor for bombs falling from the US warplanes that flew overhead on their way to bomb Libya.

The shark is in deliberate contrast with its ordinary suburban location. It was designed, created and installed by the Leeds-born sculptor John Buckley with his friend Anton Castiau, a local carpenter. ‘The shark was to express someone feeling totally impotent and ripping a hole in their roof out of a sense of impotence and anger and desperation’, Heine said. ‘It is saying something about CND, nuclear power, Chernobyl and Nagasaki’.

The painted fibreglass sculpture weighs 200 kg (450 lb), is 7.6 metre (25 ft) long, and the title ‘Untitled 1986’ is written on the gate. It took three months to build the installation, and it was put in place on the 41st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on 9 August 1945.

The Headington Shark began as anti-war and nuclear statement by John Buckley and Bill Hein (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Over time, there were complaints about the conditions of the sculpture and the house, so to mark the shark’s 21st anniversary it was renovated by Buckley in 2007. Magnus Hanson-Heine, bought the house in 2016 to preserve the shark, before his father Bill Heine died on 2 April 2019. The house has been an Airbnb guesthouse since 2018.

The shark was controversial and was the subject of a six-year battle between Oxford City Council and Bill Heine. The council tried to remove the shark on the grounds of safety and because it did not have proper planning permission. However, the shark had much local support. The Department of the Environment ruled on planning grounds in 1992 that the shark could remain in place because it did not harm a visual amenity.

Oxford City Council had the shark listed with Historic England in 2016 and designated the sculpture a heritage site in 2022, despite objection from Magnus Hanson-Heine, who said, ‘Using the planning apparatus to preserve a historical symbol of planning law defiance is absurd.’

Saint Andrew’s Lane in Old Headington … people have lived in Headington ever since the Stone Age (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

People have lived in Headington ever since the Stone Age, and excavations in Barton Lane suggest a date in the 11th century BCE, while pottery found on the Manor Ground is evidence of an Iron Age settlement in the 7th century BCE. The site of a Roman villa and Roman kilns from about 300 CE have been found, and Anglo-Saxon burial remains from about 500 CE have been discovered.

The name Headington comes from the Old English Hedena’s dun, meaning ‘Hedena’s hill’, and it was the site of a palace or hunting lodge of the Kings of Mercia. Æthelred the Unready, in a charter in 1004, gave land in Headington to Saint Frideswide’s Priory, including the quarry and the area around it.

Henry I granted a chapel at Headington to the Augustinians of Saint Frideswide’s Priory when the priory was founded in 1122. Saint Andrew’s Church, the oldest surviving building in Headington, was built in the mid-12th century, enlarged in the 13th century, the bell tower dates from the 13th or 14th century and the Gothic Revival architect JC Buckler restored the church and lengthened the nave in 1862-1864.

Stone from Headington Quarry was used to build Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1474, and was later used to build Cardinal College, later Christ Church.

Headington Football Club, later Headington United, was formed in 1893 and eventually became Oxford United.

Headington developed rapidly in the early 20th century, with new housing around the mediaeval village, now known as Old Headington, around Saint Andrew’s Church. New Headington, south side of London Road, dates from the late 19th century, and other neighbourhoods include Highfield, Quarry and Headington Hill.

Today the main employment sectors are medicine, education and research. The area includes the main campus of Oxford Brookes University, Ruskin College, which moved to Headington in 2012, and Oxford’s main hospitals, including the John Radcliffe, Nuffield and Churchill.

A plaque at the gate of the Headington House commemorates Sir Isaiah Berlin, who lived there from 1956 until he died in 1997 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Headington’s notable residents have included the poet Elizabeth Jennings; CS Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia, who lived in the area until he died in 1963 and who is buried at Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry; JRR Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, who lived in Headington from 1953 to 1968; the author Elizabeth Bowen; the newspaper publisher Robert Maxwell; and Lord Nuffield (William Morris).

Oxford academics who have lived in Headington include Sir Anthony Kenny, who died earlier last month (3 August 2026), and Sir Isaiah Berlin, who married Mrs Aline Halban of Headington House in 1956, and lived there until he died in 1997. The comedian David Mitchell, star of the BBC series Ludwig, grew up in Headington.

Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo (1886-1978), a Spanish writer, diplomat, writer, historian and pacifist and Professor of Spanish at Oxford University, lived in Headington before and after the Spanish Civil War, in 1929-1931 and 1940-1973. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Nobel Peace Prize, received the Charlemagne Prize in 1973.

The house in Headington where Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo lived before and after the Spanish Civil War (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The original, 17th century Black Boy stood from 1667 or earlier at the corner of Barton Lane and Old High Street. The board above the door showed a black boy-servant, a sign commonly hung outside coffee houses in the 17th century. The pub was rebuilt on the site as the present Black Boy on Old High Street in 1937.

The rebuilt pub used to have a sculpted figure of a black servant in the niche above the entrance, but this was smashed in 1990 and was replaced by the painting of a chimney-sweep’s boy, which was supposedly more politically correct. Even so, in 1997 there was an unsuccessful attempt by Oxford students to get the pub’s name changed on the grounds that it was offensive.

The niche remained empty from about 2008, but now a black horse decorates the façade as a new story is told about the pub taking its name from a racehorse. Watching school children walk by in the afternoon September sunshine, I wondered what any black child in Headington would think of the name of the pub, no matter what explanation or excuse is offered.

The Black Boy at the corner of Barton Lane and Old High Street was rebuilt on the site in 1937 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

I have yet to be convinced by those explanations or excuses. Instead, I visited the White Hart at 12 St Andrew’s Road, across the street from Saint Andrew’s Church. The White Hart dates from the late 17th century, and is believed to have been the inn once known as ‘Joan of Headington’s’. It is a listed building, and retains some of its original panelling and doors.

In the 17th century, Headington was a favourite destination of Oxford academics taking a walk into the country. As the present main road through the centre did not exist at the time, after reaching the top of Headington Hill they would continue along Cuckoo Lane to the alehouse where the Joan of Headington apparently offered more than ale. By 1750, the inn had become more respectable and it was given a new name as the White Hart.

The White Hart was the annual meet for the South Oxfordshire Hounds, and was also a centre for the mummers. A 26 ft-deep well was discovered in the courtyard in 1976, but was covered for safety reasons.

As for the former youth hostel, which I stayed in when I was 17 or 18, it was renamed Dorothea Beale House after one of the founders of St Hilda’s College, its address is now 32B Jack Straw’s Lane, and it is a children’s nursery.

But more about Saint Andrew’s Church and some other churches in Headington, Jack Straw’s Lane and the connections with CS Lewis in the days to come, hopefully.

The White Hart at 12 St Andrew’s Road, across the street from Saint Andrew’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ in Stony Stratford rekindles memories of summers in rural Ireland

A poster for this month’s production of ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ by the Ballaghaderreen Players at the Hawk’s Well Theatre

Patrick Comerford

I have been a member of the Stony Stratford Playreaders’ group for almost two years now, and during that time we have met twice a month in the library on Church Street, alternating between well-known, established works and plays by group members. We were part of the Stony Words festival last year, and I’m looking forward to taking part in the programme being prepared for next January.

Last month, I was asked to read the part of Trygaeus in Peace by Aristophanes, a very appropriate choice in the present global climate.

This week, we were reading Dancing at Lughnasa, a play by the Irish writer Brian Friel (1929-2015), first produced in 1990 and set in in the fictional town of Ballybeg, based on Glenties in Co Donegal, in August 1936. The play is set at a time when the Spanish Civil War was breaking out and Italy was invading Ethiopia (then Abyssinia), while in domestic politics Eamon de Valera had been office since 1932, and was about to introduce a new constitution and become Taoiseach in 1937, all referred to by the characters in the play.

This is a memory play told from the point of view of the adult Michael Evans, the narrator, as he recalls the summer in 1936, when he was a seven-year-old living with his mother Christina and four aunts, the five Mundy sisters – Maggie, Chris, Agnes, Rose, and Kate – and their brother Father Jack, who has returned from a life as a missionary in Uganda.

Lughnasa is the month of August. But, as the summer draws to a close, the family realises sadly that it is facing economic privation and their hopes fade as the realise the dismal futures they face.

Kate is a school teacher, the only sister with a well-paid job. Agnes and Rose help Maggie to keep house and knit gloves, but know this small income is about to dry up when a new knitwear factory opens nearby. Maggie and Chris have no income at all.

Their brother Father Jack is in his late 50s and a former British army chaplain in East Africa during World War I. He has come back home after 25 years as a missionary priest in Ryanga, a leper colony in a remote part of Uganda. He has malaria, and has trouble remembering many things, including his sisters’ names and everyday, common conversational words.

He no longer says Mass, and perhaps the real reasons he has been sent home are that he has ‘gone native’, abandoned much of his Catholic practice – there are hints that perhaps he has either lost his faith or that he was too close to his former ‘house boy’ Okawa.

He admires or respects the beliefs and practices of the native people of Africa. His apparent loss of faith greatly worries or Kate, who is concerned about the family's reputation. Jack refers to Michael as a love child rather than an illegitimate child and says they are common and accepted among the people of Uganda.

In a scene near the close of the play, Jack ceremonially swaps his British colonial feathered tricorn hat, a departing gift from a British governor, for a cap worn by Chris’s lover Gerry Evans, Michael’s Welsh father who is charming but unreliable. Gerry becomes the new, secular missionary, heading off to Barcelona to join the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.

The play takes its name from the occasions when Chris and Gerry go walking and dance and the sisters’ random, spontaneous dancing prompted by intermittent céilí music from a temperamental radio nicknamed Marconi. Their lives are marked by poverty and financial insecurity, lives that are unfulfilled and lead to disaster off-stage.

We learn from Michael’s narrative that Agnes and Rose later die in abject poverty in Southwark in the 1950s, while Michael’s father has a parallel family in Wales, including a half-brother with the same name. For all of this, Michael was surrounded by love in his childhood, and this love is underlined by the way Jack refers to him as a love child rather than an illegitimate child, even though the play is peppered with word ‘bastard’.

Father Jack seems to recover from his malaria or his forgetfulness, but Michael as narrator tells us that he died later of a heart attack soon after the events in the play and he tells us that Kate was inconsolable when Jack died.

The play was originally staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1990. It moved to the National Theatre in London in 1991, and later to the Phoenix Theatre and the Garrick, before moving on to Broadway. It was revived in Dublin in 1999-2000, again at the Abbey Theatre, and Joe Dowling directed a new production of the play at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in 2004. The Old Vic Theatre in London presented a well-received production in 2009 starring Sorcha Cusack, Niamh Cusack, Sinéad Cusack and Andrea Corr.

In various productions, Father Jack has been played by Barry McGovern, Alec McCowen, Donal Donnelly, Des Cave, Michael Countryman, Michael Fitzpatrick, Ardal O’Hanlon and by Michael Gambon in the 1998 film adaptation starring Meryl Streep as Kate Mundy.

Being asked to read the part of Father Jack came as a pleasant surprise. He reminded me of many missionary priests I knew who had worked in Africa, Asia and Latin America and had become incarnational and enculturated in their approach to mission. Perhaps I also identified a little, too, with his problems in finding acceptance of his ministry in retirement. But I also thought of grandfather who had fought in World War I and who had been sent home from Thessaloniki with malaria.

I have only stayed in Co Donegal a half dozen or so times in all my life. But there are few differences from and many parallels between the rural life of the 1930s and the life I remember on my grandmother’s farm near Cappoquin, Co Waterford, in the 1950s and 1960s: the food, the temperamental radio, the difficulties families had in eking out a level, a similar distance into the nearest village, the suspicions of people living in even more remote areas, the lakes and the mountains, families forced to find work in larger towns or cities or to leave and find a living in London, whispered conversations about politics, prejudice and bigotry, and families were sisters were strong and determined women whose hopes and aspirations were always going to be disappointed.

De Valera was still dominating the political landscape, there were memories of Republicans and Blueshirts who went away to join different side in the Spanish Civil War, there was a missionary uncle who never returned, an aunt who was a teacher and a nun, and the Keane family had tried to provide a local industry until the bacon factory closed in 1980.

The ‘Stage’ opposite the Cats provided the same céilí music the sisters listened to, there was a temperamental ‘Marconi’ that ran off a battery and that only picked up the BBC and not Radio Eireann. Prejudice and judgmentalism were still alive in the south-east of Ireland in the 1950s, and I remember overhearing whispered conversations about the Fethard-on-Sea Boycott in neighbouring Co Wexford.

Lughnasa has passed, we are a long way into September, and summer has turned to autumn. But summers and Augusts in rural Donegal in the 1930s and rural Waterford in the 1950s came alive for me in the library Stony Stratford on Thursday afternoon.

The Greeks have a word (or two) for it: 65, Odyssey (η Οδύσσεια) and Odysseus (Ὀδυσσεύς)

How many would-be critics of ‘The Odyssey’ know the meaning of ‘Odyssey’ or the name of Odysseus? … a sailing ship at sunset in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey is continuing to be a box-office success, and is continuing to inspire criticism and evoke responses not only from film critics but from classicists too and also from people interested in Greek culture and language.

In my reflections in prayer diary this morning, I referred to the small island of Gavdos off the south coast of Crete which is said to be the Ogygia of Calypso where Odysseus stayed for seven years. I have often looked out across to this Ogygia or Gavdos from Preveli Monastery, and so the fires that have devastated the forests and landscape in the Preveli area in the past week are particularly poignant and heart-breaking for me.

But as I was reading some of the more absurd nit-picking about Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey, I wondered too how many of those would-be classicists, including Elon Musk, with his very weird observations, have ever read The Odyssey in its original Homeric Greek, how many understand that it is epic poetry and not historical narrative, and how many actually try to understand the meaning of the name Odyssey or the name of the hero Odysseus?

The Odyssey (η Ὀδύσσεια, Odýsseia) is one of two major epics in ancient Greek literature attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest surviving works of literature and remains popular with modern audiences.

Like the Iliad, the Odyssey is divided into 24 books. It follows Odysseus, also known in Latin as Ulysses, the heroic king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the ten-year Trojan War. His journey from Troy to Ithaca lasts an additional ten years, during which he encounters many perils and all of his crew members are killed.

During Odysseus’s long absence, he is presumed dead, leaving his wife Penelope and their son Telemachus to contend with a group of unruly suitors vying for Penelope’s hand in marriage.

The Odyssey was first composed around the eighth or seventh century BCE, and by the mid-sixth century BCE, it was part of the Greek literary canon. In antiquity, Homer’s authorship was accepted, but contemporary scholarship assumes that the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed independently, as part of long oral traditions.

In a time when illiteracy was widespread, the poem was performed for an audience by an aoidos (ἀοιδός) or skilled singer.

The key themes in the epic include those of νόστος (nostos, return or homecoming), which gives us the concept of nostalgia, wandering, ξενία (xenia, guest-friendship), testing and omens. while the Iliad centres on the exploits of soldiers and kings during the Trojan War, some groups in the Odyssey, such as women and slaves, have larger roles than in other works of ancient literature, making the poem relevant to today’s agendas.

The Odyssey is one of the most significant works of the western canon. Its first complete English translation was published in 1616 and it remains one of the most enduring narratives in literature.

Posters for ‘The Odyssey’ at Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Odysseus (Ὀδυσσεύς or Ὀδυσεύς, Odysseús or Odyseús) of Greek mythology was known in Roman mythology by the Latin variant Ulysses (Ulysses or Ulixes).

Odysseus was the son of Laërtes and Anticlea, the husband of Penelope, and the father of Telemachus, Acusilaus, and Telegonus. He is cunning with an edge of pride, a liar and a storyteller, too smart by far so that he can wriggle his way out of any tight corner. He has a determination to get his homecoming at almost any cost.

He is renowned for his intellectual brilliance, guile, and versatility. The term πολῠ́τροπος (polytropos) literally means ‘man of many turns’, while some translations ‘man of twists and turns’ and ‘a complicated man’. This, in turn, gives him the epithet Ὀδυσσεύς ὁ πολύμητις (Odysseus ho polymetis), Odysseus the Cunning, μῆτις (mêtis) meaning ‘cunning intelligence’.

Ὀδυσ(σ)εύς (Odys(s)eus) is used as the form of his name starting in the epic period and through the classical period. But other forms and variations are found. In vase inscriptions, the variants include Oliseus (Ὀλισεύς), Olyseus (Ὀλυσεύς), Olysseus (Ὀλυσσεύς), Olyteus (Ὀλυτεύς), Olytteus (Ὀλυττεύς) and Ōlysseus (Ὠλυσσεύς). Other forms of his name include Oulixēs (Οὐλίξης) and Oulixeus (Οὐλιξεύς).

But the etymology of his name remains unknown. Ancient authors link his name to the Greek verbs ὀδύσσομαι (odussomai) ‘to be wroth against, to hate’; ὀδύρομαι (oduromai), ‘to lament, bewail’; or even to ὄλλυμι (ollumi) ‘to perish’, ‘to be lost’.

Homer relates the name to various forms of this verb in references and puns. In Book 19 of the Odyssey, where Odysseus’s early childhood is recounted, Euryclea asks the boy’s grandfather Autolycus to name him. Euryclea seems to suggest a name like Πολυάρητος (Polyaretos), ‘for he has much been prayed for’.

But Autolycus, ‘apparently in a sardonic mood’, decided to give the child another name recalling ‘his own experience in life’: ‘Since I have been angered (ὀδυσσάμενος odyssamenos) with many, both men and women, let the name of the child be Odysseus’.

Odysseus also receives the patronymic epithet Laertiades (Λαερτιάδης), ‘son of Laërtes’.

In Latin, he was known as Ulixēs or Ulyssēs, but the origins of the Latin form have different explanations. However, I sometimes wonder whether James Joyce’s great work Ulysses would have the same impact if he had named it Odysseus or even The Odyssey.

For my reflections on Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey, see this posting on 21 July 2027.

For the word Ὀδύσσεια (Odyssey) alone, see an earlier posting in this series: The Greeks have a word for it: 39, Odyssey, Ὀδύσσεια (7 May 2024).

A poster at the bus station in Rethymnon reminded me I was setting out on an Odyssey (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)

Series to be continued

Penelope waiting for Odysseus … Μαριάννα Βαλλιάνου, Η επιστροφή, Mariánna Valliánou, ‘The Return’

Why ‘The Odyssey’ is about more than heroes and monsters and looks at the temptations in our own journeys through life

The Odyssey is about more than war, ships and heroics … it is about the temptations along the journey of life … posters at Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge, yesterday (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

The Odyssey is one of the greatest stories ever told. It is a core part of the history, mythology and cultural heritage of Greece. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is already becoming one of the greatest films of the 21st century, and is already introducing many people to one of the greatest works of classical literature.

The ancient Greek epic poem by Homer, who also wrote The Iliad, tells the story Odysseus, king of Ithaca, as he spends 20 years trying to return home: 10 years are spent fighting the Trojan War, and 10 years are spent travelling back home through the Mediterranean Sea.

Many Greeks are disappointed by the new film, expressing concerns that Greek actors were largely absent from major roles, that Athens was not included in the global promotional tour despite being the birthplace of the story, and that it uses very little Greek language and presents little that is authentic Greek culture. They say that a story so deeply rooted in Greece deserves meaningful Greek involvement.

In response, other Greeks are pointing out that this is Hollywood, not a history class. Indeed, the Odyssey itself is epic poetry and never was intended to be narrative, chronological history. Epic poetry and history have different functions, nor does any cinemagoer expect a Hollywood film to be textbook history.

The film opened in Greece last weekend, and is boasting the highest box office sales of any opening weekend this year. The calls for a boycott just may not be having any effect at all.

Far-right Greek extremists staged a protest outside the cinema hosting the premiere, handing out leaflets claiming the film ‘insults Greek history and civilisation’, condemning the casting choices, and using the slogan ‘Greece Belongs to the Greeks, the Odyssey Belongs to Homer.’ They claimed the film fails to honour Homer’s epic and called on audiences not to watch the film.

The extreme right Ethniko Metopo (Εθνικό Mέτωπο, National Front) used racist and fascist images and slogans in its protests outside cinemas at the weekend. They claimed the film ‘insults our history and culture’ and said: ‘Our lives, our history, and our civilisation will not become black.’
.
But, historically, whoever said Helen of Troy was not a black woman, or did not have dark Minoan features? Indeed, who even believes Helen of Troy was a real, historical figure?

Who ever said Helen of Troy did not have dark Minoan hair and features? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I have yet to see the film, but hope to see it soon. Christopher Nolan looks like introducing a new generation to Homer, the Odyssey and the Iliad, as he dramatizes and retells the story of Odysseus and his encounters with different types of monsters and temptations as he tries to make his way back home to Ithaca from Troy.

I have encountered my own Cyclops and my own sea monsters in my journey in life too, I am sure, I too have come close to my own Scylla and Charybdis, and I too have been tempted to spend too much time among the lotus eaters.

It is a theme that I imagine is found in every culture. Jonah tries to delay heading off to Nineveh, and endures his own terrifying sea ordeals. When he arrives at Nineveh, the temptations and obstacles continue to divert his attention, and it takes him three full days to cross the city.

We all encounter distractions and temptations along our journeys in life, and Christopher Nolan’s film is one more telling of one of the greatest stories in literature.

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey tell the story of a 20-year search for home (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In a letter to Christopher Nolan, Herod Priovolos says that like generations of Greeks he grew up with Homer’s story. He says ‘Homer did not sing of Odysseus simply to entertain us with ships, storms, gods and monsters. He told the story because he understood what war, time, distance and loss can do to the human soul.’

And perhaps he is right to point out that the film catches the drama of the Odyssey but does not get to examine the real significance and meaning within the poetry.

Herod Priovolos points out how Odysseus leaves Ithaca as a king, a husband and a father. He returns 20 years later alone, exhausted and disguised as a beggar, carrying the memory of every companion who never made it home.

The monsters are not merely creatures created for spectacle. The Cyclops is power without justice, the Sirens are the beautiful voices that tempt us to abandon our purpose, Circe represents the danger of losing our humanity. Calypso offers Odysseus immortality, but even eternal life becomes a prison when the price is forgetting his wife, his son, his homeland and his own identity.

And, Priovolos continues, Ithaca is not merely an island. ‘Ithaca is the place that remembers you when the world no longer recognises your face. It is the home that remains alive inside you after everything else has been taken away. It is Penelope growing older while she waits. It is Telemachus becoming a man without his father. It is Argos surviving long enough to recognize his master one final time.’

Odysseus is not great simply because he defeats monsters, Priovolos writes. ‘He is great because he is proud, frightened, wounded, clever, imperfect and deeply human. He loses his companions, his youth, his name and 20 years of his life, yet he refuses to forget who he is. When he finally returns, Penelope does not recognize him through strength, glory or appearance. She tests him. Odysseus proves his identity by remembering the bed they built together around the roots of a living olive tree.’

For Priovolos, that is the heart of The Odyssey. Not the battles. Not the ships. Not the monsters. Two people standing before each other after 20 years, asking whether love, memory and identity can survive everything time has done to them.

‘That is why this poem has survived for almost 3,000 years. Every human being is trying to return to something: a home, a person, a lost part of themselves, or the life they had before the world changed them,’ he says.

‘So use Homer’s seas, gods, heroes and monsters. But please understand what you are touching,’ he tells Christopher Nolan and, of course, filmgoers. ‘The Odyssey was never truly about how far a man could travel. It was about how much the world could take from him before he stopped being himself, and whether, after losing almost everything, he could still find his way home.’

Penelope waiting for Odysseus … Μαριάννα Βαλλιάνου, Η επιστροφή, Mariánna Valliánou, ‘The Return’

I am reminded of the poem ‘Ithaka’ in which CP Cavafy transforms Homer’s account of the return of Odysseus to Ithaka. This transformation is a variation on how Dante and Tennyson handle the same theme. They offer an Odysseus who arrives home after a long absence only to find Ithaka less than fully satisfying and who soon makes plans to travel forth a second time.

However, Cavafy answers them by telling Odysseus that arriving in Ithaka is what he is destined for, and that he must keep that always in mind: one’s destiny, the inevitable end of the journey, is a thing to be faced for what it is, without illusions.

The meaning of Ithaka is in the voyage home that it inspired. It is not reaching home or again escaping its limitations once there that should occupy Odysseus so much as those elevated thoughts and rare excitement that are a product of the return voyage.

As Edmund Keeley says, this new perspective is what frees the voyager’s soul of the monsters, obstacles and angry gods, so that when the voyager reaches his Ithaka he will be rich not with what Ithaka has to offer him on his return, but with all that he has gained along the way, including his coming to know that this perspective on things, this unhurried devotion to pleasure and knowledge, is Ithaka’s ultimate value.

Ιθάκη, Κωνσταντίνος Π Καβάφης

Σα βγεις στον πηγαιμό για την Ιθάκη,
να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος,
γεμάτος περιπέτειες, γεμάτος γνώσεις.
Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας,
τον θυμωμένο Ποσειδώνα μη φοβάσαι,
τέτοια στον δρόμο σου ποτέ σου δεν θα βρεις,
αν μέν’ η σκέψις σου υψηλή, αν εκλεκτή
συγκίνησις το πνεύμα και το σώμα σου αγγίζει.
Τους Λαιστρυγόνας και τους Κύκλωπας,
τον άγριο Ποσειδώνα δεν θα συναντήσεις,
αν δεν τους κουβανείς μες στην ψυχή σου,
αν η ψυχή σου δεν τους στήνει εμπρός σου.

Να εύχεσαι νάναι μακρύς ο δρόμος.
Πολλά τα καλοκαιρινά πρωιά να είναι
που με τι ευχαρίστησι, με τι χαρά
θα μπαίνεις σε λιμένας πρωτοειδωμένους
να σταματήσεις σ’ εμπορεία Φοινικικά,
και τες καλές πραγμάτειες ν’ αποκτήσεις,
σεντέφια και κοράλλια, κεχριμπάρια κ’ έβενους,
και ηδονικά μυρωδικά κάθε λογής,
όσο μπορείς πιο άφθονα ηδονικά μυρωδικά
σε πόλεις Aιγυπτιακές πολλές να πας,
να μάθεις και να μάθεις απ’ τους σπουδασμένους.

Πάντα στον νου σου νάχεις την Ιθάκη.
Το φθάσιμον εκεί είν’ ο προορισμός σου.
Aλλά μη βιάζεις το ταξείδι διόλου.
Καλλίτερα χρόνια πολλά να διαρκέσει
και γέρος πια ν’ αράξεις στο νησί,
πλούσιος με όσα κέρδισες στον δρόμο,
μη προσδοκώντας πλούτη να σε δώσει η Ιθάκη.

Η Ιθάκη σ’ έδωσε τ’ ωραίο ταξείδι.
Χωρίς αυτήν δεν θάβγαινες στον δρόμο.
Άλλα δεν έχει να σε δώσει πια.

Κι αν πτωχική την βρεις, η Ιθάκη δεν σε γέλασε.
Έτσι σοφός που έγινες, με τόση πείρα,
ήδη θα το κατάλαβες η Ιθάκες τι σημαίνουν

Ithaka, Constantine P Cavafy

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon – don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon – you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbours seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind –
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

– Constantine Cavafy (translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

Christopher Nolan’s film ‘The Odyssey’ introduces a new generation to the world of classical Greece (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

42 million blog readers and why 42 is the ‘Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything’

Title 42, from John Vernon Lord’s sketchbook

Patrick Comerford

I continue to be overwhelmed by the viewing and reading figures for this blog, although the figures have slowed down this month after record-breaking and overpowering statistics last month. These figures passed 42 million late yesterday afternoon (24 June 2026), having passed the 41 million mark two weeks earlier (9 June 2026), the 40 million mark at the end of last month (28 May 2026) and 39 million a week earlier (22 May 2026). These figures passed the million mark six times last month (May 2026) and four times the month before (April 2026).

These viewing and reading figures are overwhelming and this blog continues to reach a volume of readers that I never have expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 21 million hits or visitors in 2026 alone.

The total number of hits last month was the highest ever, with over 5.8 million hits in May 2026, compared with previous one-month highs in March 2026 (over 4.5 million) and April (almost 4.4 million). May’s figure of over 5.8 million was astonishing, considering it took almost 11 years, from July 2010 until 27 March 2021, to reach what I then thought was the staggering figure of 5 million hits.

I first began blogging back in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. Throughout this year and last, the daily figures continue to be overwhelming on many occasions. Of the ten days of busiest traffic on this blog, three were last month (1, 6 and 14 May 2026), three were the previous month (26, 29 and 30 April 2026), three were in March, and one was in February:

• 1,124,925 (1 May 2026)
• 525,719 (14 May 2026)
• 509,644 (29 April 2026)
• 344,003 (30 April 2026)
• 323,156 (27 March 2026)

• 322,038 (26 April 2026)
• 318,835 (6 May 2026)
• 318,307 (1 March 2026)
• 314,018 (28 February 2026)
• 301,449 (2 March 2026)

The daily average was over 187,000 throughout May, but that figure was distorted by the exceptionally high number of hits on three days. There were about 145,000 or more hits a day last month, but they are about 60,000-70,000 a day in June, with over 1.6 million hits in June so far. Yet, ten years ago, in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000.

The London Marathon in 2024 raised £42 million exclusively through the JustGiving platform

To put this latest figure of 42 million into perspective:

Jakarta is the world's most populous city, with an estimated population of almost 42 million residents. The Indonesian capital city has officially surpassed Tokyo to become the world's largest megacity, according to the UN World Urbanisation Prospects report.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has called on the international community to strengthen support for the nearly 42 million refugees worldwide who have fled their homes to escape conflict, violence or persecution.

An estimated 42 million people across six IGAD member states – Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, the Sudan and Uganda – face high levels of acute hunger.

In the US, 42 million people rely on Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) or food stamps to put food on the table. They include 16 million children, 8 million people over the age of 60, and million veterans.

The French data protection authority (CNIL) fined the telecoms provider Free Mobile €42 million for GDPR and data breach failings.

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) fined Barclays Bank £42 million due to historical lax management of financial crime risks.

A record-breaking £42 million was raised exclusively through the JustGiving platform during the London Marathon in 2024.

The World Health Organization (WHO) launched an appeal for $42 million to sustain essential health services and trauma care across Ukraine.

But, instead, let’s just humour ourselves with the figure 42 instead for a few moments.

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, the number 42 is the ‘Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything’, calculated by an enormous supercomputer named Deep Thought over a period of 7.5 million years. Unfortunately, no one knows what the question is. Thus, to calculate the Ultimate Question, a special computer the size of a small planet was built from organic components and named ‘Earth’.

The Ultimate Question, ‘What do you get when you multiply six by nine’, is found by Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect in the second book of the series, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. This appeared first in the radio play and later in the book versions of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It has been pointed out that 6 X 9 = 42 is in fact true … in base 13. That’s because 54=4*13+2 while ‘forty-two’ is 4*10+2. However, Adams claims not to have known that when he wrote it.

The fourth book in the series, the novel So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, has 42 chapters. According to the novel Mostly Harmless, 42 is the street address of Stavromula Beta.

In 1994, Adams created the 42 Puzzle, a game based on the number 42. There is some speculation that he chose the number 42 because it is also significant in Lewis Carrol’s Hunting of the Snark. But Adams says he picked the number simply as a joke, with no deeper meaning.

Lewis Carroll had famously recurring numbers in his works. He used Rule 42 in both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and the introduction to The Hunting of the Snark, and Snark had a reference to the Baker having 42 boxes of clothes packed. Lewis Carroll was 42 when he wrote Snark, there are 42 illustrations in Wonderland and in Wonderland the King of Hearts announces in court: ‘Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court’.

Carroll lived in room number six, accessible through the seventh stairs in Christ Church, Oxford.

The number 42 also appears in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake – as ‘fortytwo hairs off his uncrown’ and ‘as a taste for storik’s fortytooth’.

As for 42 million, 42 million minutes add up to approximately 79 years, 10 months and 7 days, using standard calendar averages. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take almost 80 years, from July or August 1946, to reach today’s figure of 42 million.

I retired from active parish ministry over four years ago, on 30 March 2022. These days, though, about 100-120 people on average continue to read my daily prayer diary on this blog each morning. I imagine many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 700 to 840 or more people each week.

This evening, I am truly grateful to the real readers among those 42 million hits on this blog to date, and in particular I am thankful for the faithful core group of 100-120 people who join me in prayer, reading and reflections each morning.

Daily prayer in the Kingdom Season: 29, Saturday 29 November 2025

‘The cross is the only path to resurrection. There is no other path’ (Nikos Kazantzakis) … the grave of Kazantzakis on the Martinengo Bastion in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

We come to the end of this year’s Kingdom Season in the Church Calendar today, and Advent begins tomorrow is the First Sunday of Advent (Sunday 30 November 2025). In the Church of England, today is set aside as a ‘Day of Intercession and Thanksgiving for the Missionary Work of the Church’.

Today promises to be a funday in Stony Stratford, with street music, dancing, craft sales and the Lantern Parade, all leading up to switching on the Christmas lights in the town at a traditional gathering at the Christmas Tree in the Market Square.

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

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘Praying that you may have the strength … to stand before the Son of Man’ (Luke 21: 34) … a damaged Byzantine fresco in the Museum of Christian Art in Iraklion, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 21: 34-36 (NRSVA):

34 [Jesus said:] ‘Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, 35 like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. 36 Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.’

‘Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness’ … flowers in a window at Peskesi restaurant in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

The scene for the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (Luke 21: 34-36) has been set in the verses that immediately precede this reading. Christ is sitting in the Temple precincts, where he speaks about the Temple, the Nation, and the looming future.

Today’s Gospel reading continues in this apocalyptic theme, urging us to be ‘alert at all times’, praying that we may have the strength to ‘to stand before the Son of Man’ – an appropriate admonition as we enter the season of Advent.

This morning, I find myself asking both ‘what is the divine mission of Christ?’ and, in our response, what does it mean to ‘stand before the Son of Man’?

In The Last Temptation of Christ (1955), the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) presents a tragic Christ wrestling all his life with the conflicting claims of his divine mission and duty and his human desire to live a normal life, to love and be loved, and to have a family. In this book, Christ summarises his purpose and mission: ‘I said only one word, brought only one message: “Love. Love – nothing else”.’

Writing about this book, Kazantzakis said: ‘I am certain that every free man who reads this book, so filled as it is with love, will more than ever before, love Christ.’

When the Church of Greece condemned Kazantzakis in 1955 and anathematised him, his response was prompt and clear: ‘You gave me a curse, Holy fathers, I give you a blessing: may your conscience be as clear as mine and may you be as moral and religious as I.’ («Μου δώσατε μια κατάρα, Άγιοι πατέρες, σας δίνω κι εγώ μια ευχή: Σας εύχομαι να ‘ναι η συνείδηση σας τόσο καθαρή, όσο είναι η δική μου και να ‘στε τόσο ηθικοί και θρήσκοι όσο είμαι εγώ.»).

I have had lunch in the past with friends in Peskesi, a restored historical mansion in Iraklion. It was once the home of Captain Polyxigkis, a Cretan freedom fighter from the 1860s who features in Freedom and Death (Ο Καπετάν Μιχάλης, Captain Michalis), the 1953 semi-historical novel by Kazantzakis.

The name of Peskesi (Πεσκέσι, ‘Gift’) is inspired by his semi-autobiographical Report to Greco (Αναφορά στον Γκρέκο), where Kazantzakis addresses his Cretan ‘grandfather,’ Domenikos Theotokopoulos, El Greco:

«Μὰ εἶχες γίνει φλόγα. Ποῦ νὰ σὲ βρῶ, πῶς νὰ σὲ δῶ, τί πεσκέσι νὰ σοῦ φέρω νὰ θυμηθεῖς τὴν Κρήτη καὶ ν’ ἀνέβεις ἀπὸ τὰ μνήματα; Μονάχα ἡ φλόγα μπορεῖ νὰ βρεῖ μπροστά σου ἔλεος· ἄχ, νὰ μποροῦσα νὰ γίνω φλόγα νὰ σμίξω μαζί σου». ‘But you had turned into a flame. Where shall I find you, how shall I see you, what gift shall I bring you to make you remember Crete, to make you raise from the dead? Only the flame can be at your mercy; oh, if only I could become a flame to meet you.’

In his introduction to Report to Greco, Kazantzakis says ‘My entire soul is a cry, and all my work the commentary on that cry.’

He goes on to say: ‘Every man worthy of being called a son of man bears his cross and mounts his Golgotha. Many, indeed most, reach the first or second step, collapse pantingly in the middle of the journey, and do not attain the summit of Golgotha, in other words the summit of their duty: to be crucified, resurrected, and to save their souls. Afraid of crucifixion, they grow fainthearted; they do not know that the cross is the only path to resurrection. There is no other path.’

Later in that book, he writes: ‘Whoever climbed the Lord’s mountain had to possess clean hands and an innocent heart; otherwise the Summit would kill him. Today the doorway is deserted. Soiled hands and sinful hearts are able to pass by without fear, for the Summit kills no longer.’

And he paraphrases the Prophet Elijah: ‘Tomorrow, go forth and stand before the Lord. A great and strong wind will blow over you and rend the mountains and break in pieces the rocks, but the Lord will not be in the wind. And after the wind and earthquake, but the Lord will not be in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord will not be in the fire. And after the fire a gentle, cooling breeze. That is where the Lord will be. This is how the spirit comes. After the gale, the earthquake, and fire: a gentle, cooling breeze. This is how it will come in our own day as well. We are passing through the period of earthquake, the fire is approaching, and eventually (when? after how many generations?) the gentle, cool breeze will blow.’ (see I Kings 19: 11-13).

Doménikos Theotokópoulos or ‘El Greco’ … a marble bust by Nikos Sofialakis in the centre of Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 29 November 2025):

Saint Andrew is celebrated in the Church Calendar on 30 November. However, because tomorrow is the First Sunday in Advent, Saint Andrew’s Day has been transferred to Monday in the Church of England.

The Thronal Feast of the Apostle Andrew is being celebrated in the Ecumenical Patriarchate this weekend, and in my prayers this morning I am keeping in mind Pope Leo XIV’s visit to the Phanar this weekend. Patriarch Bartholomew will welcome the Pope this afternoon, and Patriarch Theodoros II of Alexandria will also be present. These celebrations and this visit are part of the continuing events marking the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed and the Council of Nicaea in the year 325.

The theme this week (23 to 29 November) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), has been ‘Gender Justice’ (pp 58-59). This theme was introduced last Sunday with Reflections by Rachael Anderson, former Senior Communications and Engagement Manager, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today invites us to pray:

We look forward to the age of peace, when violence is banished, both women and men can love and be loved, and the work and wealth of our world is justly shared.

The Collect:

Eternal Father,
whose Son Jesus Christ ascended to the throne of heaven
that he might rule over all things as Lord and King:
keep the Church in the unity of the Spirit
and in the bond of peace,
and bring the whole created order to worship at his feet;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

Stir up, O Lord,
the wills of your faithful people;
that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works,
may by you be plenteously rewarded;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God the Father,
help us to hear the call of Christ the King
and to follow in his service,
whose kingdom has no end;
for he reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, one glory.

Collect on the Eve of Advent I:

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,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness …’ (Luke 21: 34) … a sign behind the bar in a pub in Foynes, Co Limerick (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