Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 144, Tuesday 29 September 2026, Saint Michael and All Angels

‘Archangel Michael The Protector’ by Emily Young at Saint Pancras Church, London … today is the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. This week began with the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVII, 27 September 2026) and today is the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels (29 September 2026). Many churches are holding special events to mark this day. In Pusey House, Oxford, the preacher at Evensong and High Mass this evening is my friend, the Revd Dr Jonathan Lewis-Jong, Vicar of Saint Mary Magdalene Church, Oxford. Later this evening, I plan to write about my visit to the Church of Saint Michael and All Angels in New Marston, Oxford.

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

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

Angel I by Emily Young (2003), Paternoster Square, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 4: 47-51 (NRSVA):

47 When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ 48 Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you come to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ 49 Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ 50 Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.’ 51 And he said to him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’

Angel II by Emily Young (2003), Paternoster Square, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

Like many people, I never cease to be fascinated by the Caryatids that make Saint Pancras Church facing Euston Station in London a unique and captivating church. But I wonder how many pass by in the daily commute and miss the opportunity to appreciate Emily Young’s ‘Archangel Michael The Protector’ in the church gardens.

I stopped to look again at ‘Archangel Michael The Protector’ yesterday between train journeys to and from Euston when I was meeting a long-standing friend for coffee. This sculpture in onyx and can be viewed in the church grounds from Upper Woburn Place, around the corner from Euston Road. An inscription on a plaque between the sculpture and the railings reads: ‘In memory of the victims of the 7th July 2005 bombings and all victims of violence. ‘I will lift up my eyes unto the hills’ Psalm 121.’

Nothing moves in this image, a silent reminder of what is being commemorated in the sculpture. Because Saint Michael’s face has only one eye, and this is closed, some critics have wondered whether the quotation is ill-chosen. But the full context is provided in Psalm 121: 1-2:

1 I lift up my eyes to the hills –
from where will my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.

The London bombings over 20 years ago on 7 July 2005, often referred to as 7/7, were a series of four co-ordinated suicide attacks that targeted commuters on the public transport system in the morning rush hour.

Three homemade bombs packed into backpacks were detonated in quick succession on Underground trains on the Circle line near Aldgate and at Edgware Road, and on the Piccadilly line near Russell Square; later, a fourth bomb went off on a bus in Tavistock Square, near Upper Woburn Place and Saint Pancras Church.

Apart from the four bombers, 52 people of 18 different nationalities were killed and more than 700 people were injured in the attacks. It was Britain’s deadliest terrorist incident since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 near Lockerbie, and the first Islamist suicide attack in the UK.

Emily Young has been described as ‘Britain’s foremost female stone sculptor’ and ‘Britain’s greatest living stone sculptor.’ On different occasions, as I have strolled through London, I stopped and taken time at an open-air exhibition at ENO Southbank of works by Emily Young.

A number of her works have formed a sculpture trail or garden at the NEO Bankside development on South Bank in ‘Emily Young: Sculptor Trail.’ The exhibition was both a continuation and a broadening of her presence on the South Bank, echoing three large-scale works on long-loan facing the Tate Modern from NEO Bankside.

Emily Young’s sculptures of five angel heads in stone stand on five columns in Saint Paul’s Churchyard, London. The sequence of heads are mounted on columns under the arcade of a new classical-inspired building to the north west side of Saint Paul's, redeveloped as part of the redesign of Paternoster Square at the top of Ludgate Hill.

Her five angels’ heads are placed dramatically on columns in the arcade of Juxon House and almost face the west front of Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

Emily Young’s works are instantly recognisable and accessible. She deals in spectacular lumps of stone – quartzite, onyx, marble, alabaster – to which she gives an identity by carving a face but leaving the remainder of the rock displayed in its raw, craggy intensity, as if the face had grown or evolved organically. The Financial Times says: ‘Her sculptures meditate on time, nature, memory, man’s relationship to the Earth.’

Emily Young was born in London in 1951 into a family of writers, artists and politicians. Her grandmother, the sculptor Kathleen Scott (1878-1947), was a colleague of Auguste Rodin, and the widow of the Polar explorer, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, ‘Scott of the Antarctic’. Her works include a statue of Edward Smith, the captain of the Titanic, now in Beacon Park, Lichfield. She later married Emily Young’s paternal grandfather, the politician and writer Edward Hilton Young, 1st Lord Kennet.

Emily Young’s father, Wayland Hilton Young, 2nd Lord Kennet, was also a politician, conservationist and writer. Her mother was the writer and commentator Elizabeth Young; her uncle was the ornithologist, conservationist and painter, Sir Peter Scott.

She was still a student when she achieved fame (or notoriety) in 1971 as the inspiration for the Pink Floyd song See Emily Play written by Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. But the song had earlier origins in the 1960s. She was 15 when she met Syd Barrett at the London Free School in 1965. ‘I used to go there because there were a lot of Beat philosophers and poets around,’ she said many years later. ‘There were fundraising concerts with The Pink Floyd Sound, as they were then called. I was more keen on poets than rockers. I was educating myself. I was a seeker. I wanted to meet everyone and take every drug.’

As a young woman, Emily Young worked primarily as a painter while she was studying at Chelsea School of Art in 1968 and later at Central Saint Martins. She travelled around the world in the late 1960s and 1970s, spending time in the US, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, France, Italy, Africa, South America, the Middle East and China, encountering a variety of cultures and developing her experiences of art.

In the early 1980s, she abandoned painting and turned to carving, sourcing stone from all over the world. Travelling from a London childhood, to a European education, to a life lived as an artist round the world, she began to interact with the timeless quality of stone to produce breath-taking sculptures of luminous intensity and great beauty.

As well as marble, she carves in semi-precious stone – agate, alabaster, lapis lazuli. These not only reflect and refract the light – but glow with a passionate intensity (as Winged Golden Onyx Head), revealing the hidden crystalline structure of the material and the subtle layers the time has laid down, showing the liquid qualities of hard rock.

The primary objective of her sculpture is to bring the natural beauty and energy of stone to the fore. Her sculptures have unique characters because each stone has an individual geological history and geographical source. Her approach allows the viewer to comprehend a deep grounding across time, land and cultures. She combines traditional carving skills with technology to produce work that is both contemporary and ancient, with a unique, serious and poetic presence.

Emily Young now divides her time between her studios in London and Italy. Her permanent installations and public collections can be seen in many places, including Saint Paul’s Churchyard, Saint Pancras Church, NEO Bankside, and the Imperial War Museum in London; La Defense, Paris; Salisbury Cathedral, Wiltshire; the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; and the Cloister of Madonna Dell’Orto, Venice.

After years of being feted as ‘Britain’s foremost female stone sculptor,’ the art critic of the Financial Times called her ‘Britain’s greatest living stone sculptor.’ The Daily Telegraph has written: ‘Emily Young has inherited the mantle as Britain’s greatest female stone sculptor from Dame Barbara Hepworth.’

She recently explained: ‘So my work is a kind of temple activity now, devotional; when I work a piece of stone, the mineral occlusions of the past are revealed, the layers of sediment unpeeled; I may open in one knock something that took millions of years to form: dusts settling, water dripping, forces pushing, minerals growing – material and geological revelations: the story of time on Earth shows here, sometimes startling, always beautiful.’

She told an interviewer: ‘I carve in stone the fierce need in millions of us to retrieve some semblance of dignity for the human race in its place on Earth. We can show ourselves to posterity as a primitive and brutal life form – that what we are best at is rapacity, greed, and wilful ignorance, and we can also show that we are creatures of great love for our whole planet, that everyone of us is a worshipper in her temple of life.’

The American composer Fran Schultz, who lives in Howell, New Jersey, said some years ago that my writing about Emily Young’s angels have inspired her composition and recording, ‘How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin.’

Fran describes the composition as in the genre of rock, instrumental and digital electronic music. The musical instruments include a Steinway Grand Piano, Oak Piano Dream Synthesiser, Stutter Stack and Classic D6.

She is generous on her website when she extends ‘special thanks to Patrick Comerford for his writing and his allowing me use of his photos.’ She said she wrote ‘How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin’ because of my ‘inspirational writing.’

She added: ‘I also enjoyed reading all the links he provided about the artist, Emily Young, his thoughts and quotes by her. I thank him very much for letting me make use of his photographs for this piece of music and to the artist Emily Young for making them.’

She continued: ‘The connection point for me in his writing was immediate in his succinct and direct insightful recognition of such questions and in my seeing how in social media distracts us into questions that are essentially “A metaphor for wasting time discussing trivial topics that have no practical value, or asking questions whose answers hold no practical value, or asking questions whose answers hold no consequence, at times when we have more urgent concerns to debate”.’

She was unexpectedly generous when she said my ‘writing has many layers of depth to it that I particularly am drawn to in the subjects of architecture, sculptures, history, theology, questions, the deeper meaning of things and the beauty of things we might not have noticed or fully appreciated before. I love his thoughtful responses to the questions and what brought those very questions up upon reflecting the sculptures made by Emily Young as he was taking a walk in London … and taking photos. Hope you enjoy his writing and enjoy my music too!’

She then offered a link to my website and my article of 25 February 2023, ‘Emily Young’s Five Angels on Columns,’ HERE.

You can listen to Fran Schultz’s composition, ‘How Many Angels Can Dance on the Head of a Pin’, HERE.

Angel III by Emily Young (2003), Paternoster Square, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 29 September 2026, Saint Michael and All Angels):

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week, from 27 September to 3 October 2026 (pp 42-43), is ‘Power of Language’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a reflection by Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 29 September 2026, Saint Michael and All Angels) invites us to pray:

Lord God, through the example of Saint Michael, defend and guide those who work for reconciliation. Give them courage so every voice may be heard and every community united in peace.

Angel IV by Emily Young (2003), Paternoster Square, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect:

Everlasting God,
you have ordained and constituted
the ministries of angels and mortals in a wonderful order:
grant that as your holy angels always serve you in heaven,
so, at your command,
they may help and defend us on earth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Lord of heaven,
in this eucharist you have brought us near
to an innumerable company of angels
and to the spirits of the saints made perfect:
as in this food of our earthly pilgrimage
we have shared their fellowship,
so may we come to share their joy in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Angel V by Emily Young (2003), Paternoster Square, London (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

‘Archangel Michael The Protector’ by Emily Young in the gardens of Saint Pancras Church near Euston Station (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

From Aristotle and Alexander the Great to admirals and academics, introducing some modern sculptures in Thessaloniki

Looking across Thessaloniki and the Thermaic Gulf from Vatopedi Monastery (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I have missed visiting Greece this year, especially my visits to Rethymnon, Panormos Iraklion, Piskopiano and Koutououfari in Crete and my friends there. The summer has passed, but I still hope to get back to Greece next year.

I was searching through old photographs recently to illustrate a blog posting when I realised I had taken many photographs over the years of sculptures in Thessaloniki – on the streets, in the parks and squares and along the seafront – but that I have never blogged about most of them.

I have been in Thessaloniki perhaps a dozen times, and there is an affinity with the city that I have excused with stories about my grandfather. I have been there for cultural events and exhibitions, for academic seminars, to write magazine and newspaper features, to meet friends, politicians and the Patriarch, to walk in my grandfather’s footsteps, on my way to and from Mount Athos, to visit museums, cathedrals, churches, monasteries and synagogues, to explore the streets and squares laid out by Ernest Hébrard after the great fire, to experience Good Friday and Easter, to look out at Mount Olympus, and to enjoy the evening sunset on the bay.

Aristotelous Square in the heart of Thessaloniki, with the statue of Aristotle by Giorgos Georgiadis to the right (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The well-known sights in Thessaloniki include the White Tower, the Arch of Galerius, the Rotunda, the Palace of Galerius and the fortified walls. My blog postings during the Covid-19 lockdown included ‘virtual tours’ of a dozen churches (18 April 2020), a dozen historic sites (21 April 2020), and a dozen Jewish sites (22 April 2020). I have written about history, architecture, politics, poetry, song and music, protests, trade unions, theatre, films, church life and Jewish life, monasteries and icons in Thessaloniki, about football and colourful local language, and about the minorities in Thessaloniki, including Catholics, Jews, Dönmeh and Muslims.

In addition, I am the co-author of a book published in Thessaloniki in 2023, and I have written the foreword to another published in Thessaloniki in 2024.

I came across my collection of photographs of sculptures in Thessaloniki after reading an interview in To Vima last month with one of the great modern Greek sculptors, Giorgos Georgiadis, who is now in his 90s, and whose statue of Aristotle on Aristotelous Square is one of the landmarks of the city.

These sculptures brought me on an odyssey of mind and memory, returning to the streets and squares, parks and buildings and the waterfront of Thessaloniki. Their topics and themes range across the full range and breadth of Greek history from Aristotle and Alexander the Great, through the Greek War of Independence in the 19th century and the incorporation of Thessaloniki into modern Greece in 1912, the Great Fire of 1917, and the Asia Minor catastrophe of the 1920s, through the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, the depressing post-war years of the civil war and the colonels’ regime, and through more recent economic crises in Greece and tensions in the Aegean between Greece and Turkey.

Walking along the waterfront in Thessaloniki with the White Tower and the monument to Alexander the Great in the distance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Rather than leave these photographs and memories in forgotten files on my laptop or in the cloud, I decided to start an occasional series of blog postings on some of those modern sculptures I have rediscovered in Thessaloniki.

Many of these creations introduce some of the great modern sculptors of today in Greece. But there are reminders too of poets and politicians, architects and admirals, theatre and opera, musicians and the classical and philosophical legacy of Thessaloniki. There are links with other parts of Greece, from Athens to Crete, from Epirus to the Greek populations forcibly deported from western Anatolia a century ago.

Over the next few weeks, I invite you to join me in this minor odyssey of recovery and discovery. After reading that interview with Giorgos Georgiadis in To Vima last month, it seems appropriate that first of these sculptures should be his statue of Aristotle on Aristotelous Square.

Meanwhile, I have been listening once again to Θεσσαλονίκη μου (Thessaloniki Mou), a legendary Greek laïko/rebetiko anthem composed by the Manolis Chiotis, with lyrics by Christos Kolokotronis. The song, first recorded 70 years ago in 1956 by Stelios Kazantzidis and Manolis Chiotis, is an emotional homage to Greece’s second city, embracing it as the ‘great mother to the needy’:

Θεσσαλονίκη μου μεγάλη φτωχομάνα,
εσύ που βγάζεις τα καλύτερα παιδιά.
Θεσσαλονίκη μου μεγάλη φτωχομάνα,
όπου κι άν πάω σ' έχω πάντα στη καρδιά.

Θεσσαλονίκη μου ποτέ δεν σ' απαρνιέμαι,
είσαι η πατρίδα μου το λέω και καυχέμαι,
είσαι η πατρίδα μου το λέω και καυχέμαι,
Θεσσαλονίκη μου ποτέ δεν σ' απαρνιέμαι.

Thessaloniki, you great mother to the needy!
You are the one who gives the finest kids their start.
Thessaloniki, you great mother to the needy!
No matter where I go you’re always in my heart.

Thessaloniki, I will never be without you,
You are my home, I say it and I brag about you!
You are my home, I say it and I brag about you,
Thessaloniki, I will never be without you!

Next: Aristotle by Giorgos Georgiadis, Aristotelous Square

The Greeks have a word for it: 68, Ρωμιοσύνη (Romiosini)

In the side streets of Platanias in Rethymnon … the meanings and understandings of ‘Romiosini’ are tied up with identity and soul (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The English words ‘Greek’ and ‘Greece’ do not exist in the Greek language. Greeks call themselves Hellene (Έλληνας, Hellinas), know the country as Hellas or Helláda (Ελλάδα), and know the Greek language as Ελληνικά (Elliniká). Why, even a Greek coffee is ένας ελληνικός (enas hellenikós).

The term ‘Greek’ comes not from Greek but from the ancient Latin word Graecus, derived from a small tribe (Graikoi) that the Romans may have encountered first in Epirus. In Greek mythology, Graecus (Γραικός, Graikos) was the son of Pandora II and Zeus. His mother was the daughter of Deucalion and Pyrrha, and sister of Helen. The label stuck in Western languages, including English. But it was never adopted by Greeks or in Greece.

Instead, Greeks refer to Greek people as Έλληνας (Hellinas, masculine singular) or Ελληνίδα (Ellinida, feminine singular).

Another word, but one only used among Greeks for themselves and seldom used in conversation with people who do not speak Greek is Ρωμιός (Romios), from Rome, meaning Byzantium. It is not used that often, but it has the vibe of the core of Greek identity, and it is sometimes used to refer to traditions and the traditional understanding of what it is to be Greek, Greek-born, with in-born Greek values and understandings.

The word romiosini comes from the Byzantine idea that Greeks are descendants of the Roman empire, as in the Eastern Roman or Byzantine empire. It means more than just being Greek; it describes resilience, freedom, and survival through hard times and foreign rule. The words Ρωμιός (Romios) and Ρωμιοσύνη (Romiosini) are probably more appropriate to use when describing the emotions Greeks share and how they feel in the face of adversity or even foreign interference.

No two Greeks have the same definition of these terms. The meanings and understandings of Romiosini are tied up with identity and soul, it is both but it is neither. It is about Greek-ness, yet not about identity with the Greek State, which is less than 200 years old. It is Hellenic and it is Byzantine. If foreigners find it difficult to understand, then Greeks find it difficult to describe.

The word has its roots in being part of the Roman Empire. But not the Empire of Rome. It is eastern Rome or the Empire of Byzantium, it is the New Rome that is Constantinople, Κωνσταντινόπουλος (Konstantinopoulos), or simply ‘the City’.

The history of modern Greece, from the end of Ottoman rule to the 21st century fiscal crises, is one great unfolding drama and catastrophe, punctuated by coups, revolutions, invasions, civil wars, the tyranny of the colonels, and the tension of being both Western and Eastern, of being both Balkan and Anatolian.

Greeks of my generation learned to speak two languages, formal Καθαρεύουσας (Katharevoussa) and popular or domestic Δημοτική (Dhimotikí) – all at one and the same time … and at different times. At school and in churches, in songs and in placenames, Greeks learn how two words can mean the one thing: water is both ύδωρ (idor) and νερό (nero), bread is both άρτος (artos) and ψωμί (psomí).

Ireland is Ireland, England is England, but Greece is not defined by the cartographer’s limitations or lines drawn on the maps of Europe. Greece is Ἑλλάς (Hellas), but Romiosini is defined in hearts and in souls. Politics, parties and geographical boundaries can change, but Romiosini endures.

When Constantine founded Byzantium as the new capital of his empire, the word Hellene became associated with a pagan past, although Greek became the official language. From then on, the Roman and Greek cultures were virtually fused in the East.

After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Greeks were defined by the Turkish terms Rumlar and Rum millet. In time, Greek identity was largely defined by Orthodoxy. A unique intertwining and blending of language and religion shaped that identity, that fused a Hellenistic identity that claimed Classical Athens and a Greek Orthodoxy focussed on Byzantium and Constantinople.

Greeks today remember that Byzantium flourished while Western Europe was living in poverty, ignorance and violence.

Byzantine and Greek flags flying at the Church of the Four Martyrs in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The 20th century poet Kostis Palamas defended the use of the words Roman instead of Hellene and Romanism instead of Hellenism, of the use of the terms Romios and Romiosini.

For Crete’s greatest writer, Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba exhibits all the characteristics of a character with all the marks of Romiosini.

Yiannis Ritsos (1909-1990), the poet of the Greek Left and of the resistance, saw the memory and emotion, the identity and the energy in these concepts that evade translation alive in Greek memory, and expressed it in his great long poem Romiosini.

For Ritsos, Greeks fall into one of two groups: the educated middle class, who want to forget the memory of the 400 years of Turkish oppression and identify with the ancient Greeks; and the peasant and working class, whose memory goes back through the Turkish occupation to Byzantium. Greeks in the first group think of themselves as Hellenes, those in the second group are Romoii, and Ritsos sees himself as a Romios, embracing the living language that expresses this.

Romiosini expresses and is the suffering and the experience German occupation, the Civil War, and the betrayal of the Resistance. But it goes back from the ballads the klephts sang in the War of Independence to the Byzantine poems and the Homeric songs.

In the 1960s, Mikis Theodorakis provided a choral setting that made this the classic anthem of Greek identity and of resistance to the colonels. It is one of his earliest works with nine songs drawing on the lyrics of Ritsos. In one of the earliest recordings, these songs and poems were interpreted by the legendary singer Grigoris Bithikotsis (Γρηγόρης Μπιθικώτσης).

This poem and this choral setting shatter the barriers of space and time and they recover the memories of past sufferings that shape identity from the debris of Greek history.

There are nine songs in all:

1, These trees (Αυτά τα δέντρα)
2, All are thirsty (Όλοι διψάνε)
3, When they shake the hand (Όταν σφίγγουν το χέρι)
4, So many years (Τόσα χρόνια)
5, They got enslaved (Μπήκαν στα σίδερα)
6, Tree after tree (Δέντρο το δέντρο)
7, Who would say it (Ποιος να το πει)
8, Soon the bells will ring (Θα σημάνουν οι καμπάνες)
9, They travelled to heaven (Τραβήξανε ψηλά)

When Greeks use the word Romiosini, it means more than being Greek, yet it is impossible to describe in English the emotional dimensions of this word. It conveys culture, resistance, place, tradition, dance, character, wilfulness, language, history, tradition, identity, dance and song.

It is the spirit stands up in the face of adversity, catastrophe, trauma and the tide and tempest of the world.

It is freedom and resistance, it is democracy and revolution, it is a way of being Greek but more than Greek.

And in recent days I have returned again to listening this interpretation by Mikis Theodorakis of the poem by Ritsos. The original references are to resistance to the Ottoman Turks. But this became one of the songs that symbolised the resistance to the colonels’ junta, and today it sings of resistance to everyone who would try to deny the Greekness of Greeks.

Γιάννη Ρίτσου, «Τη Ρωμιοσύνη μην την κλαις»

Τη ρωμιοσύνη μην την κλαις
εκεί που πάει να σκύψει
με το σουγιά στο κόκκαλο
με το λουρί στο σβέρκο

Νά τη πετιέται απο ξαρχής
κι αντριεύει και θεριεύει
και καμακώνει το θεριό
με το καμάκι του ήλιου

This is a poor effort to translate this deeply moving and emotional poem and song:

Don’t dare cry for Greece
There where she is forced to stoop,
Stabbed by a knife in her back
Bent by a yoke on her neck.

Yet see her rise from the blow,
Grow with strength and with fury,
And see her strike back at the beast
With the harpoon of the sun.



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

68, Ρωμιοσύνη (Romiosini)

Series to be continued

In the streets of Panormos near Rethymnon … the meanings and understandings of ‘Romiosini’ are tied up with identity and soul (Photograph: Patrick Comerford

Making music with Handel and Hendrix with blue plaques in harmony on two houses in Mayfair

The Handel Hendrix House on Brook Street in Mayfair (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

Who are the inseparable pairs in your mind? Morecambe and Wise? Laurel and Hardy? The Two Ronnies? French and Saunders? Simon and Garfunkel? Lennon and McCartney? Flanders and Swann?

Without prompting, would you have suggested Handel and Hendrix?

Handel Hendrix House (previously Handel & Hendrix in London and the Handel House Museum) is a London museum dedicated to the lives and works of the German-born baroque composer George Frideric Handel and the American rock singer-guitarist Jimi Hendrix. They lived lived next door to each other at 25 and 23 Brook Street, Mayfair, separated only by walls and a mere 2½ centuries or so.

I was writing the week before last about blue plaques (5 September 2026), and this unlikely pairing of composers are commemorated with blue plaques on the façades of the neighbouring houses that now form Handel Hendrix House, previously known as Handel & Hendrix in London and the Handel House Museum.

Handel made his home in London in 1712 and eventually became a British citizen in 1727. He lived at 25 Brook Street from 1723 until he died there in 1759. Almost all his works after 1723, including many of his operas, oratorios and ceremonial music, were composed and partially rehearsed in the house, where he had a variety of keyboard instruments, including harpsichords, a clavichord and a small chamber organ.

Handel moved into 25 Brook Street in 1723, shortly after he had been appointed by George II as composer to the Chapel Royal. The house had been newly built with Nos 23, 27/29 and 31 by George Barnes as part of the planned extension of Brook Street, linking Hanover Square with Grosvenor Square, between 1717 and 1726.

Handel’s immediate neighbours on either side were from the upper middle classes and initially included the MP John Monckton, who later became the first Viscount Galway in 1727.

From the 1730s on, there are references to rehearsals of operas and oratorios at Brook Street by Handel’s friends and fellow musicians. Handel used the house for entertainment, composition and rehearsal, and for business.

After Handel died in 1759, his musical instruments passed to John Christopher Smith and his son of the same name, while the tenancy of the house and Handel’s clothing passed to his servant John Du Burk. The house remained largely unchanged until 1905, when CJ Charles converted the house into a shop, removing the original façade and the internal dividing walls. It was bought by the Co-operative Insurance Society in 1971.

Although the house is a Grade I listed building, its survival was threatened when planning permission was sought in 1982 to demolish five Grade II listed buildings, including Handel’s house.

The Handel Museum Trust Fund was formed in the early 1990s with the object of creating a Handel museum at 25 Brook Street, and after a long period of negotiations and extensive renovation work, 25 Brook Street opened as the Handel House Museum 25 years ago on 8 November 2001.

The house has been restored to look as it did when Handel lived there for 36 years from 1723 to 1759. It is a typical early 18th-century London terrace house, with a basement, three main storeys and an attic, and Handel was the first resident. The interiors have been restored to the somewhat spartan style of the Georgian era, using mostly architectural elements from elsewhere, since, apart from the staircase, few of the original interior features survived.

The museum has restored period rooms on the first and second floors of 25 Brook Street and exhibition rooms in No 23, the adjacent house on the terrace. In 2016, the museum expanded to incorporate the upper floors of 23 Brook Street, home of Jimi Hendrix in the late 1960s.

The Handel House Collection Trust has a collection of Handel memorabilia, including the Byrne Collection of several hundred items that were acquired in 1998.

The museum incorporates the upper floors of its neighbour at 23 Brook Street, the home of the American rock singer-guitarist Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970) in 1968-1969. These rooms were used for temporary exhibitions and events, but after fundraising, these and the rest of the rooms from the Hendrix apartment were opened to the public in February 2016 as ‘Handel and Hendrix in London’. One exhibit is a collection of Hendrix’s old records.

Both houses have blue plaques for their respective occupants. The blue plaque to George Frideric Handel at 25 Brook Street reads: ‘George Frideric Handel 1685-1759 Composer lived in this house from 1723 and died here’. The blue plaque to Jimi Hendrix at 23 Brook Street reads: ‘Jimi Hendrix 1942-1970 Guitarist and Songwriter lived here 1968-1969’.

The house is open to the public five days a week, Wednesday to Sunday. The museum has a lively events programme including live music, changing exhibitions, lectures and children’s educational events. Several performances of Baroque music are staged each month.

Romeo and Juliet? Burton and Taylor? Plato and Socrates? Mutt and Jeff? Tom and Jerry? Holmes and Watson? Watson and Crick? Mapp and Lucia?

But Handel and Hendrix? Well, that was a first for me in Mayfair this summer.

There are blue plaques to George Frideric Handel on the façade of 25 Brook Street and to Jimi Hendrix at 23 Brook Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 131, Wednesday 16 September 2026

‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’ (Luke 7: 31-32) … traditional Greek folk music celebrated at a restaurant in the old town in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XV, 13 September 2026).

The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (16 September) remembers Saint Ninian (ca 432), Bishop of Galloway and Apostle of the Picts, and Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), Priest and Tractarian.

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

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’ (Luke 7: 32) … ‘Τα κάλαντα’ (‘Carols’), Νικηφόρος Λύτρας (Nikiphoros Lytras)

Luke 7: 31-35 (NRSVA)

[Jesus said:] 31 ‘To what then will I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like? 32 They are like children sitting in the market-place and calling to one another,

“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not weep.”

33 ‘For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, “He has a demon”; 34 the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!” 35 Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children.’

Imagine going to a wedding but not getting onto the floor and dancing (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

When we were looking at the Gospel reading yesterday, which told the story of the widow of Nain grieving her son at his funeral, I said how funeral stories and the stories of children being raised to life are not always the most cheerful Bible readings, and I recalled how that reading was particularly difficult when I was preaching one Sunday morning when I was baptising a little baby boy.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus compares ‘the people of this generation’ with children sitting in the market-place calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep’ (Luke 7: 31-32).

I have often stayed up late at weddings, at the receptions after funerals, and enjoying late night sporting events, especially rugby and football. Each time, in ways that were appropriate to each occasion, I have entered into the spirit of the event, and where possible, moved from being a mere spectator to being a full participant.

When we go to weddings and funerals … and as a priest I got my fair share of both … when we go to weddings and funerals, the attitude we go with makes a world of difference: do I go as a spectator or do I go as a participant?

Imagine going to a funeral and failing to offer sympathy to those who are grieving and mourning.

Shortly after my ordination, I was asked to officiate at my first wedding. Initially, I declined the invitation to go to the reception afterwards, until someone chided me gently and asked me: are you at this wedding as a spectator or as a participant?

Perhaps, as a new curate, I was too worried about sending out the wrong signals. If I stood back, would I be reproached for not eating and drinking with the people I was there to serve (see Luke 7: 33)? If I went, would I be seen as being there only for eating and drinking (verse 34)?

But it was never about me, surely; it was only ever about the couple getting married.

A student in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute was telling me once about her parish placement as an ordinand. Initially, she was uncomfortable with the style of worship and the theological emphasis of the parish she was placed in. But the parish reacted to her warmly and gently. And as the weeks rolled by she realised she had moved from being an observer on Sunday mornings, to being an engaged visitor, to being a participant.

When we join in waves and chants at a football match, join in the dance at weddings, sing the hymns and enter into the prayers at another church, cry and hug those who are grieving and mourning at a funeral, we move from being observers and spectators to being participants. And the great opportunity for this transformation is provided Sunday after Sunday, not at the Liturgy but in the Liturgy.

If you have been to the Middle East, or have just seen Fiddler on the Roof, you know that dancing at Jewish weddings was traditionally a male celebration. I have seen at funerals in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean that the open mourning and weeping is usually expressed on behalf of the community by women in particular.

Indeed, we know since classical times how a man’s worth in life was once counted by the number of women crying at his funeral.

These traditions were passed on through the generations by children watching learning from adults and by children in turn teaching one other.

In today’s Gospel reading (Luke 7: 31-35), we see how Christ has noticed this in the streets and the back alleys as he moves through the towns and cities, probably in Galilee and along the Mediterranean shore.

He sees the children playing, the boys playing wedding dances, and the girls playing funeral wailing and mourning.

He notices the ways in which children can reproach each other for not joining in their playfulness:

We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn. (verse 32)

Even as he speaks there is playfulness in the way Jesus phrases his observation poetically. There is humour in the way he uses Greek words that rhyme for dance and mourn at the end of each line of the children’s taunts:

Ηὐλήσαμεν ὑμῖν
καὶ οὐκ ὠρχήσασθε·
ἐθρηνήσαμεν
καὶ οὐκ ἐκλαύσατε.

Perhaps he was repeating an everyday rebuke in Greek at the time for people who stand back from what others are doing. We might put poetic rhyme on his lips here:

A wedding song we played for you,
The dance you did but scorn.
A woeful dirge we chanted too,
But then you would not mourn.

The boys playing tin whistles and beating tin drums are learning to become adult men. The girls wailing and beating their breasts in mock weeping are learning to become adult women. Each group is growing into the roles and rituals that will be expected of them when they mature.

Like all good children’s games, the point is the game, not who wins.

The games we played as children may now seem silly and pointless. But when we were children they mattered as a communal and community experience. The fun was not because there was anything to win. The fun was in taking part. And in taking part we were helped in the process of growing and maturing and making the transition from childhood to adolescence, and from adolescence to adulthood.

To and fro, back and forth, these boys and girls in the market place play the games of weddings and funerals.

The music they play shifts and changes its tones and tunes. This endless, pointless, repetition is their inherited way of learning and socialising. Their playfulness ensures their tradition and culture is reinforced and is handed on to the next generation.

But if the boys make music and the girls do not dance, if the girls wail, and the boys do not weep, how can they have a shared story, a shared adulthood, a shared culture, a shared future, a shared humanity?

When we refuse to take part in the game, in the ritual, we refuse to take part in the shaping of society, we are denying our shared culture. When I try exclude others from the taking part in the game, in the ritual, I am refusing them their role rightful in shaping society.

When reciprocity collapses, we are denying our shared humanity.

We can become paralysed by our inability to enter into the game of others. And then the game turns from song and dance to what we might call ‘the blame game.’

It is so easy when I withdraw from the social activities of others to blame them.

Yes, there is a time for dancing and a time for mourning: each has its proper place, and they flow into each other, like the children’s game when it is working. But when vanity gets in the way, there is a breakdown in our understanding of time and of humanity.

If I stand back detached, and remain a mere observer of the joys and sorrows in the lives of others, I am not sharing in their humanity.

And in not sharing in your humanity, I am failing to acknowledge that you too are made in the image and likeness of God.

But when we rejoice with people in their joys, and when we mourn with people in their sorrows, we are putting into practice what the doctrine of the Trinity teaches us about us being not only made in the image and likeness of God individually but communally and collectively too as humanity.


The ‘Bottle Dance’ at the wedding in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 16 September 2026):

The theme this week (13 -19 September 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Witness as With-ness’ (pp 38-39). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a reflection by the Revd Canon Dr Peniel Rajkumar, Director of Global Mission and Theologian, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 16 September 2026) invites us to pray:

Merciful God, when I am tempted to complain, remind me of the suffering you bore. Form in me a heart that listens before it speaks.

The Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
who called your servant Ninian to preach the gospel
to the people of northern Britain:
raise up in this and every land
heralds and evangelists of your kingdom,
that your Church may make known the immeasurable riches
of your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Almighty and everlasting God,
who called your servant Ninian to preach the gospel
to the people of northern Britain:
raise up in this and every land
heralds and evangelists of your kingdom,
that your Church may make known the immeasurable riches
of your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ,
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


‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn’ (Luke 7: 31-32) … music at the Hiroshima Day commemorations at the Peace Pagoda in Milton Keynes (Patrick Comerford, 2026)

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

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 127, Saturday 12 September 2026

‘No good tree bears bad fruit … Figs are not gathered from thorns’ (Luke 6: 43-44) … a fig tree near Pavlos Beach in Platanias, east of Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and tomorrow is the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XV).

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

Later today, I may take part in some of the ‘Come and Sing Choral Classics’ day in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, from 12 noon to 7 pm. Singers are welcome to learn to sing some choral classics at this event. It is part of Heritage Open Days and the September Organ Festival, and includes an exhibition in the church on the Willis pipe organ. The day ends with an informal concert at 6:15 pm.

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

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘The one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation’ (Luke 6: 49) … a sandcastle on a beach in Barcelona in the shape of Gaudí’s Sacrada Familia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 6: 43-49 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 43 ‘No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 45 The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.

46 ‘Why do you call me “Lord, Lord”, and do not do what I tell you? 47 I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, hears my words, and acts on them. 48 That one is like a man building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when a flood arose, the river burst against that house but could not shake it, because it had been well built. 49 But the one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, immediately it fell, and great was the ruin of that house.’

‘Nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush’ (Luke 6: 44) … grapes on a vine at the Hedgehog Vintage Inn in Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

Today’s Gospel reading (Luke 6: 43-49) is a reminder that our faith must always be reflected in your lifestyles, that there must be a connection between what we believe and what we do, that our faith must bear fruit, that if our faith does not have firm foundations it will disappear with the next challenges we face.

This reading brings to a close concludes Christ’s ‘Sermon on the Plain’, in which he speaks of the qualities of what it means to be a true disciple and challenges us to examine both our inner character and the foundational structural integrity of our spiritual lives.

In the first part of this reading (Luke 6: 43-45), Jesus refers to the tree and the fig, and he notes that ‘people do not gather figs from thorns’. A tree is recognised by its fruit, and so a good heart naturally yields good actions, words and thoughts.

The goodness of every disciple comes from within and is not to be measured merely by one’s external behaviour: ‘No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit’ (verses 43-44).

At the same time, consistently good behaviour is a sign of a healthy interior: ‘The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks’ (verse 45).

In the second part of today’s reading (verses 46-49), he contrasts the wise builder, who builds with deep foundations and rock with the foolish builder, who builds a house on soil or sand, without secure foundations.

The person who hears Christ’s words and acts on them is like a builder who digs deeply and lays a foundation on solid rock. When the flash floods and torrents hit, the house stands firm.

Those who hear Christ’s words but fail to respond or to act on them have superficial faith and are like a builder who builds a house on soft soil or sand without a firm foundation. The moment the river bursts against it, the structure suffers complete collapse.

A measure of the good disciple is how one both listens and acts on Christ’s words. To ‘listen’ includes hearing, understanding, accepting and assimilating his teaching and vision. Discipleship follows naturally, almost effortlessly.

On the other hand, those who listen but do not take in and do not act on what has been heard are like the man who built his house on a poor foundation: when the floods came, the sands shift, and the whole edifice collapses.

We are living in a time when the foundations of Christian discipleship are shifting like sand, and in the torrent that is gushing in with far-right populism the foundations of Christian discipleship are being undermined.

Trying to live a life that follows God’s directives seems to grow harder as the world and its leaders change their value systems so frequently, and as the name of Christianity is hijacked, whether it is by the merchants of hate who carry crosses at far-right events on the streets in Britain or the so-called Christian fundamentalist leaders and Christian Nationalists who sell out on Christianity in return for access to Trump and the Oval Office.

Last weekend, Andrea Williams, chief executive of an organisation that calls itself Christian Concern, spoke at a fringe event at the Reform UK party conference organised by the self-styled Christian Fellowship for Reform. In her speech, she came close to blasphemy as she tried to interweave that party’s name with Christ’s name at least six times in three sentences: ‘I believe that Jesus Christ is the ultimate reformer. He reforms my heart, and when he reforms my heart, he reforms my family. He reforms my community, and it reforms our nation.’

She claimed atheistic secular ideology ‘has gripped our institutions’ and she spoke glibly of finding the ‘true answer’ not in ‘mere values’ but Jesus Christ himself.

When values are reduced to or even dismissed as ‘mere values’, when faith is separated from discipleship that is lived out on a daily basis, when listening fails to draw a response, when faith is devoid of hope and love, we have what Dietrich Bonhoeffer described as ‘cheap grace’, we have become unwilling to pay the Cost of Discipleship.

Christan Concern claims on its website, ‘We want to see Jesus Christ at the heart of society – we seek justice, speak truth and bring hope’. But this does not include, it seems, justice for asylum seekers and refugees, truth about the dangers of the rise of racism, Islamophobia and hatred on the streets of our town and cities, or hope for the poor, the marginalised, the outcast, the children in need, the very priorities in Christ’s ministry yet those who would the first victims of Reform UK’s state economic policies.

The sneering and laughing of Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick in response to the violent treatment of women who stood up and protested at that Reform UK conference, as they were beaten and assaulted, is in sharp contrast to the treatment by Jesus of women who pushed their way through the men in the synagogue or the men in the crowds to seek healing, to seek to be restored to their place in society.

Christan Concern’s website includes regular postings by Tim Dieppe, head of public policy at Christian Concern, who pursued Dr Jason Arday throughout his short time at Cambridge University, right through to the sad and bitter end. Yet he is silent about Dr James Orr who teaches ethics as an associate professor at Cambridge while appearing on a recent Channel 4 documentary to condone and be complicit in unethical donations to Reform UK.

Dieppe says ‘the Jason Arday scandal shows Cambridge University needs to return to the Christian foundations which made it great in the first place’. Yet he has stood by Dr Nathan Cofnas, who also pursued Jason Arday, who advocates ‘eugenics’ and far-right politics, who was eventually forced to leave Emmanuel College Cambridge.

‘The capture of Cambridge is a direct result of the abandonment of Christianity at Cambridge and across our culture,’ Dieppe claims. ‘Christian values cannot be expected to last in a non-Christian culture. We are witnessing the decline and fall of a once great institution, which is paralleled by the cultural collapse we see all around us across the nation. The only real and lasting solution will be for Cambridge University to be recaptured for Christ.’

Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has warned strongly against such a co-option of Christianity into politics. ‘I worry … that the Christian ‘brand’ becomes compromised if it’s seen, as so often in the US, as allied to political agendas and ambitions,’ he said recently. ‘It concerns me greatly that bits of the British right reach for this transatlantic rhetoric and repertoire of Christian nationalist ideas so as to ally themselves with some sort of global movement, even if they don’t fully sign up to the American version.’

Archbishop Williams, who was master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and has supervised theology students, has also expressed discomfort at politics infiltrating the academic environment. ‘I’m always concerned if vulnerable young scholars get the message that they need to line up with a specific ideological approach – of any kind – in order to secure their future.’

Fascism is on the rise in Britain, Bishop Arun Arora of Kirkstall in the Diocese of Leeds, warned last weekend. Speaking in Lambeth Palace, he condemned the ‘twisted theology’ of self-described ‘Christian patriots’ who demonstrated at ports on the south coast of England last weekend. The masked agitators were heard chanting ‘Christ is King.’

Bishop Arora identified ‘the tidal wave of nationalism’ as the ‘biggest threat to England’s fabric today’ and said the Church has to challenge the ‘sinful idolatry’ and ‘twisted theology’ of so-called Christian nationalists, saying they are using the Cross of Christ as a fashion accessory, with no understanding of Jesus’s message of love.

At the same event, Archbishop Sarah Mullalley said ‘there is an increasing responsibility on Christian leaders to speak up and not be silent, because silence itself encourages a society in which people think it’s all right to intimidate in this way.’ Bishop Rosemarie Mallett said: ‘The Church can tell the truth about history, protect the dignity of radicalised people, and offer a theological vision of belonging that lives out Jesus’s call to welcome the stranger.’

The challenge is immense today. We must pray for the encouragement to build on rock-like values rather than a sand-like foundation. Even the strongest building needs care and repair. The foundations of a building are often its least recognised feature, usually hidden and seemingly insignificant. My faith foundations may not be known to many but are cherished by God to whom I bring them now in prayer, that they may be blessed and strengthened, and may find expression in my response to those who are prioritised by Jesus in his teaching and his ministry.

‘A man building a house … dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock’ (Luke 6: 48) … the Monastery of Great Meteoron, the largest of the monasteries at Meteora in Greece (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 12 September 2026):

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

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 12 September 2026) invites us to pray:

Lord God, we pray for the Anglican Church in Hamburg, Germany today. For the growing witness of their community and disciples in the city, and for courage and humility for their church officers and council.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty God,
whose only Son has opened for us
a new and living way into your presence:
give us pure hearts and steadfast wills
to worship you in spirit and in truth;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord God, the source of truth and love,
keep us faithful to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship,
united in prayer and the breaking of bread,
and one in joy and simplicity of heart,
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Merciful God:
your Son came to save us
and bore our sins on the cross:
may we trust in your mercy
and know your love,
rejoicing in the righteousness
that is ours through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of Trinity XV:

God, who in generous mercy sent the Holy Spirit
upon your Church in the burning fire of your love:
grant that your people may be fervent
in the fellowship of the gospel
that, always abiding in you,
they may be found steadfast in faith and active in service;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

‘The one who hears and does not act is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation’ (Luke 6: 49) … sandcastles on the beach in Ballybunion, Co Kerry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 90, Wednesday 5 August 2026

Iokasti, a restaurant in Koutouloufari in Crete … are there comparisons between Iocasta and her daughter in ‘The Phoenician Women’ and the Greek-speaking Syro-Phoenician or Canaanite woman in the Gospels? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and the week began with the Ninth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity IX, 2 August 2026). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today recalls Saint Oswald (642), King of Northumbria and Martyr, and tomorrow is the Feast of the Transfiguration (6 August).

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

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

Mikis Theodorakis recorded ‘Symphony No 4, of the Choral Odes,’ in Athens in May 1987

Matthew 15: 21-28 (NRSVA):

21 Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. 22 Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ 23 But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ 24 He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ 25 But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ 26 He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ 27 She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ 28 Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.


Mikis Theodorakis, Symphony No 4, Movement 2, Euripides, ‘Phoenician Women’ (Φοίνισσαι)

Today’s Reflections

Today’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Matthew 15: 21-28) is set in the district of Tyre and Sidon and tells of the Canaanite or Syro-Phoenician woman and her encounter with Christ.

In Saint Matthew’s account, she is a Canaanite woman (verse 22); in Saint Mark’s account (Mark 7: 27-31), she is a Greek-speaking or Syro-Phoenician woman (verse 26).

In the classical world, Phoenician women were pushy women. About 400 years earlier, the great Greek playwright Euripides wrote his tragic play The Phoenician Women (Φοίνισσαι, Phoenissae), rewriting a similar story used by Aeschylus in his play, Seven Against Thebes, and dealing with tragic events following the fall of Oedipus.

The title of the play by Euripides, The Phoenician Women, refers to the Greek chorus, which is composed of Phoenician women on their way to Delphi and who are trapped in Thebes by the war.

The two key women in the play by Euripides are Jocasta (Ἰοκάστη) and her daughter Antigone (Ἀντιγόνη), who have survived against all odds. They challenge the accepted concepts in Classical times of fate and free-will.

In the face of death, they refuse to accept what other people regarded as their destiny, they refused to be pushed aside, marginalised and dismissed as the men around then compete for power.

So, in the time of Christ, educated, Greek-speaking people, including those around Tyre and Sidon, would expect a Greek-speaking Phoenician woman and her daughter to be pushy in the face of what appears to be a cruel fate, even if this involves confronting successful or ambitious men: they are prepared to stand up to kings and rulers, prepared to challenge them, and prepared to risk rejection and exile.

Faced with her daughter’s needs, this pushy woman ignores the disciples: she is direct and aggressive in demanding healing and justice. And in demanding justice and healing for her daughter, she is, of course, demanding these for herself too.

The dialogue between this woman and Christ must have sounded crude and aggressive to those who had gathered around to hear what was going on.

This pushy woman forces herself into the house, addresses Jesus in Messianic terms, and demands not that he should heal her daughter, but that he should show mercy. On whom? On her tormented daughter? On the distressed mother? The NRSV translation is clear, where the RSV is not: in the original Greek, she asks for mercy for herself (verse 22).

At times, when I have reading and re-reading this Gospel reading, I have found myself listening yet again to the second movement, ‘The Phoenician Woman,’ in Symphony No 4 (Of the Choral Odes), written in 1986-1987 by the great modern Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis (1925-2021) for soprano, alto, narrator, mixed choir and symphonic orchestra without strings.

Symphony No 4 by Theodorakis contains just two movements based on texts by Aeschylus (Eumenides) and Euripides (The Phoenician Women). The remastered version of this CD was recorded live at Athens at the world premiere of the composition. The booklet includes the completely translated libretto, extensive liner notes and some personal remarks of the composer himself.

In this symphony, Theodorakis provides a setting of Eumenides by Aeschylus and The Phoenician Women by Euripides, brought together in a massive work that conveys classical Greek tragedy through the form of a modern choral symphony.

In his fourth symphony, Theodorakis weaves together three traditions: the symphonic tradition and the integration of vocals into symphonic works; the tradition of great tragic women figures, which he takes up in his operas Medea, Electra and Antigone; and the particularly Greek perception of history.

In his notes written for this symphony, Theodorakis suggests that, because the word symphony is derived from Greek, it is best left to a Greek to define it. He is not concerned with the conventional western sonata form, and this long, two-part work derives its tension and power from its ancient Greek texts, following its own logic rather than abstract rules.

Theodorakis is forceful and direct in his music. There is power in its dark scoring, austere counterpoint, massed unisons, and immense orchestral sonorities.

Admirers of Theodorakis take this work seriously and appreciate his commitment to Greek national culture. But others find it difficult to listen to with its sombre subject matter. Yet this is the very drama, focussed in the desperate plight of one woman and her daughter, that is played out in today’s Gospel reading.

Each time I read today’s Gospel story of this woman and her daughter, they remind me of Jocasta and her daughter Antigone (Ἀντιγόνη). One year, while searching for illustrations and resources for this I came across photographs I had taken of Iokasti, a delightful restaurant in Koutouloufari, east of Iraklion in Crete.

During the Covid Pandemic lockdown earlier that year, in Holy Week, the week before Greek Easter, the people at Iokasti posted on their Facebook page a video clip of ‘Oh my sweet Springtime’ (Ω γλυκύ μου έαρ). This is a song of lamentation sung on Good Friday and imagines the Virgin Mary narrating the Crucifixion and pouring out her pain and grief as the Mother of Christ.

This lament is sung with reverence, emotion and devotion throughout Greece, and it has been performed and recorded by many Greece’s best-loved singers.

The version posted by Iokasti in Koutououfari that year was a recording in Athens by the late Irene Papas (1929-2022) – who played the title roles in Antigone (1961) and Electra (1962) – of the musical arrangement of this hymn by the Greek composer Vangelis:

Αι γενεαί πάσαι, ύμνον τη Ταφή Σου, προσφέρουσι Χριστέ μου.
Καθελών του ξύλου, ο Αριμαθείας, εν τάφω Σε κηδεύει.
Μυροφόροι ήλθον, μύρα σοι, Χριστέ μου, κομίζουσαι προφρόνως.
Δεύρο πάσα κτίσις, ύμνους εξοδίους, προσοίωμεν τω Κτίστη.
Ούς έθρεψε το μάννα, εκίνησαν την πτέρναν, κατά του ευεργέτου.
Ιωσήφ κηδεύει, συν τω Νικοδήμω, νεκροπρεπώς τον Κτίστην.

Ω γλυκύ μου έαρ, γλυκύτατόν μου Τέκνον, πού έδυ σου το κάλλος;

Υιέ Θεού παντάναξ, Θεέ μου πλαστουργέ μου, πώς πάθος κατεδέξω;
Έρραναν τον τάφον αι Μυροφόροι μύρα, λίαν πρωί ελθούσαι.
Ω Τριάς Θεέ μου, Πατήρ Υιός και Πνεύμα, ελέησον τον κόσμον.

Ιδείν την του Υιού σου, Ανάστασιν, Παρθένε, αξίωσον σους δούλους.

All generations offer a hymn at your burial my Christ.
The Arimathean took you down from the cross and buried you in a tomb.
Women came with spices to give you perfume and prepare your burial.
Hither creation was made, let us sing hymns to praise our Creator.
Nourished from above with manna, lifted heels of contempt against their benefactor.
You are being buried by Joseph and Nicodemus, in the grave of the Creator.

Oh, my sweet spring, my sweetest child, where does your beauty fade?
Son of God Almighty, my God and Creator, how can I bear your passion?
Women with spices came very early in the morning to sprinkle the grave with perfume.
O my Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Spirit, have mercy on the world.

Allow us to serve you, O Virgin, to see you son’s resurrection, to be your worthy servants.

In weeping for her daughter, the Syro-Phoenician woman share in the weeping of the Virgin Mary for her son. And in Christ, we find compassion for all our sorrows and all our weeping.


‘Oh my sweet Springtime’ (Ω γλυκύ μου έαρ), a song of lamentation sung on Good Friday, arranged by Vangelis and recorded in Athens by the Irene Papas

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 5 August 2026):

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week (2-8 August 2026, pp 24-25), is ‘Faith Under Pressure in Nicaragua’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Reflection by the Most Revd Juan David Alvarado, Bishop of El Salvador and Primate of the Province of the Anglican Church in Central America.

The USPG prayer diary today (Wednesday 5 August 2026) invites us to pray:

God of truth, we pray for those who cannot speak openly about injustice in Nicaragua. Give them courage in silence, and raise up voices beyond their borders to bear witness and seek justice.

The Collect of the Day:

Lord God almighty,
who so kindled the faith of King Oswald with your Spirit
that he set up the sign of the cross in his kingdom
and turned his people to the light of Christ:
grant that we, being fired by the same Spirit,
may always bear our cross before the world
and be found faithful servants of the gospel;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Eternal God,
who gave us this holy meal
in which we have celebrated the glory of the cross
and the victory of your martyr Oswald:
by our communion with Christ
in his saving death and resurrection,
give us with all your saints the courage to conquer evil
and so to share the fruit of the tree of life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of The Transfiguration:

Father in heaven,
whose Son Jesus Christ was wonderfully transfigured
before chosen witnesses upon the holy mountain,
and spoke of the exodus he would accomplish at Jerusalem:
give us strength so to hear his voice and bear our cross
that in the world to come we may see him as he is;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

A table for one at Iokasti, a restaurant in the mountain village of Koutouloufari in Crete recalls the play by Euripides (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