Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 53, Monday 29 June 2026, Saint Peter and Saint Paul

The Apostle Peter and the Apostle Paul holding the church in unity … an early 18th century icon in the Museum of Christian Art in Iraklion, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary time in the Church Calendar. The week began with Fourth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity IV, 28 June 2026) and today is the Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul (29 June). This time of the year is known sometimes as Petertide, because of the ordinations at this time of the year.

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

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the paired niches above the south porch in Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, Buckingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 16: 13-19 (NRSVA):

13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ 14 And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ 15 He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ 16 Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ 17 And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’

The statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in the porch of the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul on Queen Street, Singapore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

Last week I was marking the 25th anniversary of my ordination as priest (24 June 2001) and the 26th anniversary of my ordination as deacon, on both occasions by Archbishop Walton Empey in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin In recent days, many of ordained colleagues have been posting photographs on social media celebrating the anniversaries of their ordinations too.

Today is the Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Apostles (29 June), and this time of the year is known in Anglican tradition as Petertide, one of the two traditional periods for the ordination of new priests and deacons – the other being Michaelmas, in the days close to 29 September.

The Cambridge poet-priest Malcolm Guite has said on his blog that Saint Peter’s Day and this season are appropriate for ordinations because Saint Peter is ‘the disciple who, for all his many mistakes, knew how to recover and hold on, who, for all his waverings was called by Jesus “the rock,” who learned the threefold lesson that every betrayal can ultimately be restored by love.’

Saint Peter argues with Saint Paul at Antioch, and Paul rebukes Peter for seemingly trying to insist that Gentiles must become Jews if they are to convert to Christianity (see Galatians 2: 11-13). But if Saint Peter gets it wrong in Antioch, he goes on to get it right at the first Council of the Church in Jerusalem (see Acts 15: 7-20). He later refers to Saint Paul as ‘our beloved brother’ and his letters as ‘scripture,’ even when they may be difficult to understand (see II Peter 3: 16-17).

A later Church tradition says Saint Peter and Saint Paul taught together in Rome, founded Christianity in the city, and suffered martyrdom at the same time, so that an icon of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, standing side-by-side, is a popular icon of Church unity and ecumenism in the Orthodox Church.

In the Orthodox Church, Saint Peter and Saint Paul are seen as figures of Church Unity, sharing a common faith and mission despite their differences. They are often seen as paired, flanking images at entrances to churches, and the icon of Christian Unity in the Orthodox tradition shows the Apostles Peter and Paul embracing each other – signs of the early Church overcoming its differences and affirming its diversity.

As they embrace each other in these icons, Peter and Paul are almost wrestling, arms around each other, beards so close they are almost intertwining. This icon reminds me of Psalm 133:

How very good and pleasant it is
when [brothers] live together in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down upon the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down over the collar of his robes.
It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion.
For there the Lord ordained his blessing,
life for evermore.

So, despite many readings of the New Testament, especially the Acts of the Apostles, that see Peter and Paul in conflict with each other rather than complementing each other, they can be models for Church Unity.

We may rejoice in the Church that our differences may complement each other. Pope Francis marked the feast of Saint Peter and Paul in 2020 by stressing the importance of unity in the Church and allowing ourselves to be challenged by God, urging people to spend less time complaining about what they see going wrong, and more time in prayer.

He noted that Saint Peter and Saint Paul were two very different men who ‘could argue heatedly’ but who ‘saw one another as brothers, as happens in close-knit families where there may be frequent arguments but unfailing love.’

God, he said, ‘did not command us to like one another, but to love one another. He is the one who unites us, without making us all alike.’

Saint Peter and Saint Paul depicted in the window commemorating William Cowper in Saint Peter and Saint Paul Churh, Olney (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 29 June 2026, Saint Peter and Saint Paul)

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 28 June to 4 July 2026 (pp 14-15), is ‘Living Stones’. This theme was introduced yesterday with a reflection by the Very Revd Lydia Kelsey Bucklin, President and Dean of Episcopal Divinity School.

The USPG prayer diary today (Monday 29 June 2026, Saint Peter and Saint Paul) invites us to pray:

Gracious God, you called apostles to proclaim a love that disrupted power and turned the world upside down. Help us, as living stones, to support one another in courageous truth-telling and bearing witness against empire.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty God,
whose blessed apostles Peter and Paul
glorified you in their death as in their life:
grant that your Church,
inspired by their teaching and example,
and made one by your Spirit,
may ever stand firm upon the one foundation,
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:

Almighty God,
who on the day of Pentecost
sent your Holy Spirit to the apostles
with the wind from heaven and in tongues of flame,
filling them with joy and boldness to preach the gospel:
by the power of the same Spirit
strengthen us to witness to your truth
and to draw everyone to the fire of your love;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Saint Peter and Saint Paul depicted in statues on the west front of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 40, Thursday 14 May 2026, Ascension Day

The Ascension depicted in a window in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (5 April 2026) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost or Whit Sunday in ten days’ time (24 May 2026). This week began with the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Easter VI, 10 May 2026), and today is Ascension Day (14 May 2026).

There is an Ascension Day Eucharist in All Saints’ Church, Calverton, later this morning, but many parishes and churches are probably going to celebrate the Ascension next Sunday (17 May 2026).

Later today (5 pm), I hope to take part in ‘Threads, Echoes, and Ink: Uncovering Minority Voices in Medieval Spain, Sefarad and al-Andalus’, a seminar organised by the Woolf Institute in Cambridge, with three talks, each looking at Spain and Medieval Mediterranean culture from a different perspective, and a panel discussion between the speakers and questions from the audience.

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

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

The Ascension depicted in a fresco in the ceiling in the parish church in Piskopianó in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 24: 44-53 (NRSVA):

44 Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah[a] is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’

50 Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. 52 And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; 53 and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

The Ascension depicted in the East Window by Alexander Gibbs in the chapel of Keble College, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

Our view of the universe, our understanding of the cosmos, shapes how we image and think of God’s place in it, within it, above it, or alongside it. And sometimes, the way past and outdated understandings of the universe were used to describe or explain the Ascension now make it difficult to talk about its significance and meaning to today’s scientific mind.

In his occasional series, ‘Theology Matters’, Professor Andrew Davison of Oxford wrote in the Church Times last weekend (8 May 2026) of ‘the many rather embarrassed sermons that I have heard on Ascension Day over the years.’

When we believed in a flat earth, it was easy to understand how Christ ascended into heaven, and how he then sat in the heavens, on a throne, on the right hand of the Father. But once we lost the notion of a flat earth as a way of explaining the world and the universe, we failed to adjust our images or approaches to the Ascension narrative. Ever since, intelligent people have been left asking silly questions:

When Christ went up through the clouds, how long did he keep going?

When did he stop?

And where?

Standing there gaping at the sky could make us some kind of navel-gazers, looking for explanations within the universe and for life, but not as we know it. In our day and age, the idea of Christ flying up into the sky and vanishing through the great blue yonder strikes us as fanciful.

Does Jesus peek over the edge of the cloud as he is whisked away like Aladdin on a magic carpet?

Is he beamed up as if by Scotty?

Does he clench his right fist and take off like Superman?

Like the disciples, would we have been left on the mountain top looking up at his bare feet as they became smaller and smaller and smaller?

But the concept of an ascension was not one that posed difficulties in Christ’s earthly days. It is part of the tradition that God’s most important prophets were lifted up from the Earth rather than perish in the earth with death and burial.

Elijah and Enoch ascended into heaven. Elijah was taken away on a fiery chariot. Philo of Alexandria wrote that Moses also ascended. The cloud that Christ is taken up in reminds us of the shechinah – the presence of God in the cloud, for example, in the story of Moses receiving the law (Exodus 24: 15-17), or with the presence of God in the Tabernacle on the way to the Promised Land (see Exodus 40: 34-38).

Saint Luke makes a clear connection between the ascension of Moses and Elijah and the Ascension of Christ, when he makes clear links between the Transfiguration and the Ascension. At the Transfiguration, he records, a cloud descends and covers the mountain, and Moses and Elijah – who have both ascended – are heard speaking with Jesus about ‘his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem’ (Luke 9: 30-31).

So, Saint Luke links all these elements as symbols as he tells this story. There is a direct connection between the Transfiguration, the Ascension and the Second Coming … the shechinah is the parousia. However, like the disciples in this reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we often fail to make these connections. We are still left looking up at the feet … an enigma posed by Salvador Dali almost 70 years ago in his painting, The Ascension (1958).

Let us just think of those feet for a moment.

In the Epistle reading that is provided in the Lectionary today (Ephesians 1: 15-23), the Apostle Paul tells says that with the Ascension the Father ‘has put all things under [Christ’s] feet and has made him the head over all things’ (Ephesians 1: 22).

‘Under his feet’ … Salvador Dali’s painting of the Ascension, with its depiction of the Ascension from the disciples’ perspective, places the whole of creation under Christ’s feet. Of course, Isaiah 52: 7 tells us: ‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns”.’

Feet are important to God … there are 229 references to feet in the Bible and another 100 for the word foot. When Moses stands before God on Mount Sinai, God tells him to take his sandals off his feet, for he is standing on ‘holy ground’ (Exodus 3: 5) – God calls for bare feet on the bare ground, God’s creation touching God’s creation.

Later, when the priests cross the Jordan into the Promised Land, carrying the ark of the Lord, the water stops when they put their feet down, and the people cross on dry land (Joshua 3: 12-17): walking in the footsteps of God, putting our feet where God wants us to, is taking the first steps in discipleship and towards the kingdom.

The disciples object when a woman washes and anoints Jesus’ feet and dries them with her hair, but he praises her faith (Luke 7: 36-50). On the night of his betrayal, the last and most important Christ Jesus does for his disciples is wash their feet (John 13: 3-12).

Footprints … many of us have learned off by heart or have a mug or a wall plaque with the words of the poem Footprints in the Sand. We long for a footprint of Jesus, an imprint that shows where he has been … and where we should be going. The place where the Ascension is said to have taken place is marked by a rock with what is claimed to be the footprint of Christ. And, as they continue gazing up, after his feet, the disciples are left wondering whether it is the time for the kingdom to come, are they too going to be raised up.

Yet it seems that the two men who stand in white robes beside them are reminding them Christ wants them not to stay there standing on their feet doing nothing, that he wants us to pay more attention to the footprints he left all over the Gospels. Christ’s feet took him to some surprising places – and he asks us to follow.

Can I see Christ’s footprints in the wilderness?

Can I see Christ walking on the wrong side of the street with the wrong sort of people?

Can I see Christ walking up to the tree, looking up at Zacchaeus in the branches (Luke 19: 1-10), and inviting him to eat with him?

Can I see his feet stumbling towards Calvary with a cross on his back, loving us to the very end?

Am I prepared to walk with him?

Since that first Ascension Day, the body of Christ is within us and among us and through us as the Church and as we go forth in his name, bearing that Good News as his ‘witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1: 8).

Meanwhile, we are reminded by the two men in white: ‘This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven’ (Acts 1: 11). Between now and then we are to keep in mind that the same Jesus is ‘with [us] always, to the end of the age’ (Matthew 28: 20).

The disciples who are left below are left not to ponder on what they have seen, but to prepare for Pentecost and to go out into the world as the lived Pentecost, as Christ’s hands and feet in the world, leaving behind us the footprints of Christ.

Saint Paul paraphrases Isaiah when he says: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’ (Romans 10: 15). Our feet can look like Christ’s feet. Our feet can become his feet until he returns in glory once again (Acts 1: 11), when he returns exactly as he ascended. And we need to keep the tracks fresh so that others may follow us in word, deed, and sacrament, and follow him.

The disciples are sent back to Jerusalem not to be passive but to pray to God the Father and to wait for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In time, the Holy Spirit will empower them, and they will be Christ’s witnesses not just in Judea and Samaria, but to the ends of the earth fulfilling that commission in Saint Matthew’s Gospel.

The disciples who are left below are left not to ponder on what they have seen, but to prepare for Pentecost and to go out into the world as the lived Pentecost, as Christ’s hands and Christ’s feet in the world.

As Andrew Davison wrote last weekend: ‘The ascension belongs to the gospel, and bears witness to the gospel, because it is so much about Christ, and about God’s unshakeable commitment to being with us and for us. It is good news because it shows that our humanity has been taken into God’s presence: Christ going ahead of us rather than abandoning us, and interceding for us there … The gospel is proclaimed in the ascension as “God is with us.” We can add that “We are with God”.’

Andrew Davison is Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford and a canon of Christ Church. In that column in the Church Times, he wrote: ‘Paradoxically, then, the ascension of Christ proclaims the good news of Christ’s presence, not his absence. Christ takes our humanity into the presence of the Father for all eternity, and in that he goes from being, to some, locally present to being universally present to all.’

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

The Ascension depicted in a tile frieze designed by William Butterfield in All Saints’ Church, Margaret Street, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 14 May 2026, Ascension Day):

The theme this week (10-16 May 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) is ‘Parenting with Purpose’ (pp 54-55). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update from Ella Sibley, former Regional Manager for Europe and Oceania.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 16 May 2026, Ascension Day) invites us to pray:

Heavenly Father, on this Feast of Saint Matthias and Ascension Day, we give thanks for apostles and leaders called to witness your love. Inspire us, by your power, to do the same.

The Collect:

Grant, we pray, almighty God
that as we believe your only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ
to have ascended into the heavens,
so we in heart and mind may also ascend
and with him continually dwell;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

God our Father,
you have raised our humanity in Christ
and have fed us with the bread of heaven:
mercifully grant that, nourished with such spiritual blessings,
we may set our hearts in the heavenly places;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
you have raised our human nature to the throne of heaven:
help us to seek and serve you,
that we may join you at the Father’s side,
where you reign with the Spirit in glory,
now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

The Ascension depicted in a window in Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, Olney, Buckinghamshire (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

The Ascension Window in the North Transept (Jebb Chapel), Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 15, Tuesday 17 February 2026

The staff of life … 12 loaves of bread depicted in a fresco in the 17th century Kupa Synagogue in the old Jewish quarter of Kazimierz in Kraków (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This period of Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar has been very short this year, lasting for little more than two weeks, today is Shrove Tuesday, or in most of our childhood memories, Pancake Tueday, with pncake races in Lichield, Olney and many other places. Lent begins tomorrow with Ash Wednesday (18 February 2026).

The calendar of the Church of England today remembers the life and witness of Janani Luwum (1977), Archbishop of Uganda and Martyr. Before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ They said to him, ‘Twelve’ (Mark 8: 19) … 12 loaves of bread in the Bretzel Bakery in Portobello, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 8: 14-21 (NRSVA):

14 Now the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread; and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. 15 And he cautioned them, saying, ‘Watch out – beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.’ 16 They said to one another, ‘It is because we have no bread.’ 17 And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, ‘Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ They said to him, ‘Twelve.’ 20 ‘And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ And they said to him, ‘Seven.’ 21 Then he said to them, ‘Do you not yet understand?’

‘Bread is still the staff of life’ … the façade of Frank O’Connor’s former bakery on North Main Street, Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

I can truly identify with the forgetfulness of the disciples in this morning’s Gospel reading (Mark 8: 14-21). I have forgotten to pack enough clothes for a weekend away and for holidays. I have left clothes behind in hotels, keys on a shop counter, lost a phone on a train between Tamworth and Lichfield and another in a taxi from Luton. I got a train in the wrong direction when I was to speak at a book launch in London. I have even left my passport behind in Stony Stratford, so that I missed a flight and the launch in Dublin of a book to which I had contributed two chapters.

I know it happens to others too. I hope this forgetfulness does not mark the way we set out on a long journey tomorrow. But with those memories and that in the background, I understandably feel sympathetic with any of the disciples in today’s reading who might be dismissed by readers as being ‘a sandwich short of a picnic.’

I have memories from my more youthful days in Wexford, when I worked with the Wexford People and Frank O’Connor’s bakery was on North Main Street. The bakery dated back to 1860, and closed in 1979. But I remember the initials FOC on the façade, and the slogan: ‘Bread is still the staff of life.’

The constant and witty response from one friend as he passed that shop in North Main Street was: ‘Man does not live by bread alone.’

One is a popular proverb that many assume is a Biblical quotation; the other is a Biblical quotation, that appears once in Deuteronomy and twice in the Gospels.

The Gospel reading for the Eucharist today reflects the importance of breads in daily life in the time of Jesus and the Disciples – it was truly the staff of life.

The Kupa Synagogue in the Old Jewish in Kraków has a wall painting or fresco of 12 loaves of bread that are described as ‘sacramental.’

To what degree is this morning’s Gospel reading for the Eucharist a sacramental reading?

When the disciples are rebuked for forgetting to bring any bread with them, it is not just a matter of everyone in the group going hungry for a little while. The Greek verb used here for ‘to forget’ (ἐπιλανθάνομαι, epilanthanomai) conveys the sense of negligence or disregarding rather than memory loss. I am inclined to read it as describing a wilful decision not to remember to bring bread rather than some forgetful lapse of memory.

And the Greek word used here to describe to bring or to take (λαμβάνω, lambanō) describes not the process of buying bread, or putting it in your shopping basket or a picnic hamper. It describes laying hands on it.

Taking, blessing, breaking and giving … essential acts of giving and receiving, Eucharistic acts.

Bread is still the staff of life, and encountering Christ in the breaking of the bread, in sacramental living, still brings and gives life.

The church is the boat, and not merely forgetting but neglecting the opportunity to share the staff of life in the Church, for me, is one of the weaknesses I find in a church that professes to be a church of word and sacrament.

A sandwich bar in Zurich Airport … were some of the disciples close to being ‘a sandwich short of a picnic’? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 17 February 2026):

The theme this week (15-21 February 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is: ‘Look to the Amazon!’ (pp 28-29). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by the Most Revd Marinez Bassotto, Bishop of Amazonia and Archbishop of the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 17 February 2026) invites us to pray:

Lord, bless the Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil as it stands alongside Indigenous communities in the Amazon to protect forests and defend the rights of land and culture.

The Collect:

God of truth,
whose servant Janani Luwum walked in the light,
and in his death defied the powers of darkness:
free us from fear of those who kill the body,
that we too may walk as children of light,
through him who overcame darkness by the power of the cross,
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 Janani Luwum:
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.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

A town sign in Olney depicts the town’s traditional pancake race on Shrove Tuesday (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 2025: 51, Sunday 29 June 2025, Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Trinity II

Saint Peter and Saint Paul depicted in statues on the west front of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary time and today is both the Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, which gives a popular name to Peter-tide ordinations, and the Second Sunday after Trinity (Trinity II, 29 June 2025).

I hope to be at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford this morning. Later today, the annual Greek Festival, Ελληνικο Γλεντι, takes place from 12 noon to 5 in the Swinfen Harris Church Hall and the grounds of the Greek Orthodox Church on London Road, Stony Stratford, with live Greek music, traditional songs and dance by the Greek Brothers and Delta Dancers, Greek food and coffee, and a bar.

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

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

Saint Peter and Saint Paul in a pair of statues in the portico of the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Singapore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Matthew 16: 13-19 (NRSVA):

13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ 14 And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ 15 He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ 16 Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ 17 And Jesus answered him, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’

Saint Peter and Saint Paul depicted with Christ the King in a window in the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Olney, Buckinghamshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Reflection:

This morning’s reading at the Eucharist (Matthew 16: 13-19) follows yesterday’s reading about Jesus healing Simon Peter’s mother-in-law in her home in Capernaum (Matthew 8: 5-17), and we read today of Peter’s dramatic confession of faith and the promises of his future ministry.

During the past week, I marked the 25th anniversary of my ordination as deacon in 2000 and the 24th anniversary of my ordination as priest in 2001, attending the Patronal Festival Eucharist in the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield, and Choral Evensong in Lichfield Cathedral. In recent days, many of my ordained colleagues have been posting photographs on social media celebrating the anniversaries of their ordinations too.

In the Calendar of the Church of England, today (29 June 2025) may be observed as the Festival of Peter and Paul; or as the Festival of Peter, alone; or as the Second Sunday after Trinity (Trinity II). In Anglican tradition, Petertide is one of the two traditional periods for the ordination of new priests and deacons – the other being Michaelmas, around 29 September.

The Cambridge poet-priest Malcolm Guite has said on his blog that Saint Peter’s Day and this season are appropriate for ordinations because Saint Peter is ‘the disciple who, for all his many mistakes, knew how to recover and hold on, who, for all his waverings was called by Jesus “the rock,” who learned the threefold lesson that every betrayal can ultimately be restored by love.’

Saint Peter argues with Saint Paul at Antioch, and Paul rebukes Peter for seemingly trying to insist that Gentiles must become Jews if they are to convert to Christianity (see Galatians 2: 11-13). But if Saint Peter gets it wrong in Antioch, he goes on to get it right at the first Council of the Church in Jerusalem (see Acts 15: 7-20). He later refers to Saint Paul as ‘our beloved brother’ and his letters as ‘scripture,’ even when they may be difficult to understand (see II Peter 3: 16-17).

A later Church tradition says Saint Peter and Saint Paul taught together in Rome, founded Christianity in the city, and suffered martyrdom at the same time, so that an icon of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, standing side-by-side, is a popular icon of Church unity and ecumenism in the Orthodox Church.

In the Orthodox Church, Saint Peter and Saint Paul are seen as figures of Church Unity, sharing a common faith and mission despite their differences. They are often seen as paired, flanking images at entrances to churches, and the icon of Christian Unity in the Orthodox tradition shows the Apostles Peter and Paul embracing each other – signs of the early Church overcoming its differences and affirming its diversity.

As they embrace each other in these icons, Peter and Paul are almost wrestling, arms around each other, beards so close they are almost intertwining. This icon reminds me of Psalm 133:

How very good and pleasant it is
when [brothers] live together in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down upon the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down over the collar of his robes.
It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion.
For there the Lord ordained his blessing,
life for evermore.

So, despite many readings of the New Testament, especially the Acts of the Apostles, that see Peter and Paul in conflict with each other rather than complementing each other, they can be models for Church Unity.

We may rejoice in the Church that our differences may complement each other. Pope Francis marked the feast of Saint Peter and Paul in 2020 by stressing the importance of unity in the Church and allowing ourselves to be challenged by God, urging people to spend less time complaining about what they see going wrong, and more time in prayer.

He noted that Saint Peter and Saint Paul were two very different men who ‘could argue heatedly’ but who ‘saw one another as brothers, as happens in close-knit families where there may be frequent arguments but unfailing love.’

God, he said, ‘did not command us to like one another, but to love one another. He is the one who unites us, without making us all alike.’

Saint Peter and Saint Paul depicted in a fresco in the Church of the Four Martyrs in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 29 June 2025, Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Trinity II):

‘We Believe, We Belong?’ is the theme this week (29 June to 5 July) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). This theme is introduced today with reflections by Rachael Anderson, former Senior Communications and Engagement Manager, USPG:

‘The USPG Annual Conference is a highlight for both staff and supporters in our calendar of events. As you pray this week, many (maybe including you!) will be joining together for three days at the Hayes Conference Centre in Swanwick to listen to inspiring talks, take part in interactive workshops, worship together and of course get the chance to reconnect with USPG friends, new and old.

‘The theme of the conference is “We Believe, We Belong?” and centres around the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed (AD 325) – a key summary of our common faith. Delegates from across the Anglican Communion will be reflecting on how we deepen this fellowship and commitment to each other across the wonderful diversity of cultures, contexts and languages within the Communion. We are delighted that members of USPG’s Communion-Wide Advisory Group will be in attendance and speaking to these subjects within their own contexts.

‘We will be exploring how the core truths of the Bible unite us, but also critically examine whether all people feel like they belong within the Church, especially concerning USPG’s key areas of championing justice - gender, economic, environmental and race.

‘We look forward to the learning and growth we will achieve during this time together.

‘For updates of the conference as it happens, follow us on social media @USPGglobal.’

The USPG prayer diary today (Sunday 29 June 2025, Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Trinity II) invites us to pray by reading and meditating on Matthew 16: 13-19.

Saint Peter and Saint Paul depicted in a two-light window by Clayton and Bell in the Fitzrovia Chapel, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Collect:

Almighty God,
whose blessed apostles Peter and Paul
glorified you in their death as in their life:
grant that your Church,
inspired by their teaching and example,
and made one by your Spirit,
may ever stand firm upon the one foundation,
Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who i and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Almighty God,
who on the day of Pentecost
sent your Holy Spirit to the apostles
with the wind from heaven and in tongues of flame,
filling them with joy and boldness to preach the gospel:
by the power of the same Spirit
strengthen us to witness to your truth
and to draw everyone to the fire of your love;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

Saint Peter and Saint Paul depicted in a window in All Saints’ Church in Calverton near Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Edition copyright © 2021, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Daily prayer in Easter 2025: 40, Thursday 29 May 2025, Ascension Day

The Ascension depicted in a window in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (20 April 2025) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost or Whit Sunday in ten days’ time (8 June 2025). This week began with the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Easter VI, 25 May 2025), and today is Ascension Day (29 May 2025).

I had thought of being at the Ascension Day Eucharist in All Saints’ Church, Calverton, later this morning, and at the ‘Last Thursday History Club’ in Stony Stratford this afternoon. Instead, I may be going into London later this morning. However, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time at home this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

The Ascension depicted in a fresco in the ceiling in the parish church in Piskopianó in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Luke 24: 44-53 (NRSVA):

44 Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah[a] is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things. 49 And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’

50 Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. 51 While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. 52 And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; 53 and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

The Ascension depicted in the East Window by Alexander Gibbs in the chapel of Keble College, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Reflection:

Our view of the universe, our understanding of the cosmos, shapes how we image and think of God’s place in it, within it, above it, or alongside it. And sometimes, the way past and outdated understandings of the universe were used to describe or explain the Ascension now make it difficult to talk about its significance and meaning to today’s scientific mind.

When we believed in a flat earth, it was easy to understand how Christ ascended into heaven, and how he then sat in the heavens, on a throne, on the right hand of the Father. But once we lost the notion of a flat earth as a way of explaining the world and the universe, we failed to adjust our images or approaches to the Ascension narrative. Ever since, intelligent people have been left asking silly questions:

When Christ went up through the clouds, how long did he keep going?

When did he stop?

And where?

Standing there gaping at the sky could make us some kind of navel-gazers, looking for explanations within the universe and for life, but not as we know it. In our day and age, the idea of Christ flying up into the sky and vanishing through the great blue yonder strikes us as fanciful.

Does Jesus peek over the edge of the cloud as he is whisked away like Aladdin on a magic carpet?

Is he beamed up as if by Scotty?

Does he clench his right fist and take off like Superman?

Like the disciples, would we have been left on the mountain top looking up at his bare feet as they became smaller and smaller and smaller?

But the concept of an ascension was not one that posed difficulties in Christ’s earthly days. It is part of the tradition that God’s most important prophets were lifted up from the Earth rather than perish in the earth with death and burial.

Elijah and Enoch ascended into heaven. Elijah was taken away on a fiery chariot. Philo of Alexandria wrote that Moses also ascended. The cloud that Christ is taken up in reminds us of the shechinah – the presence of God in the cloud, for example, in the story of Moses receiving the law (Exodus 24: 15-17), or with the presence of God in the Tabernacle on the way to the Promised Land (see Exodus 40: 34-38).

Saint Luke makes a clear connection between the ascension of Moses and Elijah and the Ascension of Christ, when he makes clear links between the Transfiguration and the Ascension. At the Transfiguration, he records, a cloud descends and covers the mountain, and Moses and Elijah – who have both ascended – are heard speaking with Jesus about ‘his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem’ (Luke 9: 30-31).

So, Saint Luke links all these elements as symbols as he tells this story. There is a direct connection between the Transfiguration, the Ascension and the Second Coming … the shechinah is the parousia. However, like the disciples in this reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we often fail to make these connections. We are still left looking up at the feet … an enigma posed by Salvador Dali almost 70 years ago in his painting, The Ascension (1958).

Let us just think of those feet for a moment.

In the Epistle reading that is provided in the Lectionary today (Ephesians 1: 15-23), the Apostle Paul tells says that with the Ascension the Father ‘has put all things under [Christ’s] feet and has made him the head over all things’ (Ephesians 1: 22).

‘Under his feet’ … Salvador Dali’s painting of the Ascension, with its depiction of the Ascension from the disciples’ perspective, places the whole of creation under Christ’s feet. Of course, Isaiah 52: 7 tells us: ‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns”.’

Feet are important to God. There are 229 references to feet in the Bible and another 100 for the word foot. When Moses stands before God on Mount Sinai, God tells him to take his sandals off his feet, for he is standing on ‘holy ground’ (Exodus 3: 5) – God calls for bare feet on the bare ground, God’s creation touching God’s creation.

Later, when the priests cross the Jordan into the Promised Land, carrying the ark of the Lord, the water stops when they put their feet down, and the people cross on dry land (Joshua 3: 12-17): walking in the footsteps of God, putting our feet where God wants us to, is taking the first steps in discipleship and towards the kingdom.

The disciples object when a woman washes and anoints Jesus’ feet and dries them with her hair, but he praises her faith (Luke 7: 36-50). On the night of his betrayal, the last and most important Christ Jesus does for his disciples is wash their feet (John 13: 3-12).

Footprints … many of us have learned off by heart or have a mug or a wall plaque with the words of the poem Footprints in the Sand. We long for a footprint of Jesus, an imprint that shows where he has been … and where we should be going. The place where the Ascension is said to have taken place is marked by a rock with what is claimed to be the footprint of Christ. And, as they continue gazing up, after his feet, the disciples are left wondering whether it is the time for the kingdom to come, are they too going to be raised up.

Yet it seems that the two men who stand in white robes beside them are reminding them Christ wants them not to stay there standing on their feet doing nothing, that he wants us to pay more attention to the footprints he left all over the Gospels. Christ’s feet took him to some surprising places – and he asks us to follow.

Can I see Christ’s footprints in the wilderness?

Can I see Christ walking on the wrong side of the street with the wrong sort of people?

Can I see Christ walking up to the tree, looking up at Zacchaeus in the branches (Luke 19: 1-10), and inviting him to eat with him?

Can I see his feet stumbling towards Calvary with a cross on his back, loving us to the very end?

Am I prepared to walk with him?

Since that first Ascension Day, the body of Christ is within us and among us and through us as the Church and as we go forth in his name, bearing that Good News as his ‘witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1: 8).

Meanwhile, we are reminded by the two men in white: ‘This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven’ (Acts 1: 11). Between now and then we are to keep in mind that the same Jesus is ‘with [us] always, to the end of the age’ (Matthew 28: 20).

The disciples who are left below are left not to ponder on what they have seen, but to prepare for Pentecost and to go out into the world as the lived Pentecost, as Christ’s hands and feet in the world, leaving behind us the footprints of Christ.

Saint Paul paraphrases Isaiah when he says: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’ (Romans 10: 15). Our feet can look like Christ’s feet. Our feet can become his feet until he returns in glory once again (Acts 1: 11), when he returns exactly as he ascended. And we need to keep the tracks fresh so that others may follow us in word, deed, and sacrament, and follow him.

The disciples are sent back to Jerusalem not to be passive but to pray to God the Father and to wait for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In time, the Holy Spirit will empower them, and they will be Christ’s witnesses not just in Judea and Samaria, but to the ends of the earth fulfilling that commission in Saint Matthew’s Gospel.

The disciples who are left below are left not to ponder on what they have seen, but to prepare for Pentecost and to go out into the world as the lived Pentecost, as Christ’s hands and Christ’s feet in the world.

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

The Ascension depicted in a tile frieze designed by William Butterfield in All Saints’ Church, Margaret Street, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 29 May 2025, Ascension Day):

Today is the Feast of the Ascension is today (29 May 2025) and provides the theme for this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections from Dr Paulo Ueti, Theological Advisor and Regional Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 29 May 2025, Ascension Day) invites us to pray:

Grant, we pray, Almighty God, that as we believe your only-begotten Son to have ascended into heaven, so we may also in heart and mind there ascend, and with him continually dwell; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

The Collect:

Grant, we pray, almighty God
that as we believe your only-begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ
to have ascended into the heavens,
so we in heart and mind may also ascend
and with him continually dwell;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

God our Father,
you have raised our humanity in Christ
and have fed us with the bread of heaven:
mercifully grant that, nourished with such spiritual blessings,
we may set our hearts in the heavenly places;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
you have raised our human nature to the throne of heaven:
help us to seek and serve you,
that we may join you at the Father’s side,
where you reign with the Spirit in glory,
now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

The Ascension depicted in a window in Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, Olney, Buckinghamshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

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

The Ascension Window in the North Transept (Jebb Chapel), Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, John Newton’s church in Olney, is celebrating 700 years

Inside Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, Olney, which is celebrating its 700th anniversary this year (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

The Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the parish church of Olney in Buckinghamshire, is celebrating its 700th anniversary this year [2025]. The 14th century church, with its tall spire and its unusual setting at the end of the town, is the first thing most visitors notice as they approach Olney from Newport Pagnell and the south.

The church stands on the bank of the River Great Ouse and, with its fine spire, dominates the southern approach to the town, making the steeple a distinctive landmark in its setting beside the bridge over the river.

The church is an integral part of the world famous Olney Pancake Race, run every Shrove Tuesday, and followed by the Shriving Service. The town sign depicts the church and the pancake race, which dates back to 1445.

The church also has strong connections with John Newton, the slave trader and clergyman, who became an abolitionist and who was a curate there, and with William Cowper, the poet and abolitionist.

Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, Olney … the tall spire is the first thing most visitors notice in Olney (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Peter and Saint Paul is a Grade I listed church. Local traditions say an earlier church was located at a different site in Olney, and this is supported by the apparent lack of earlier architecture in the current building.

It is thought an earlier parish church stood at the north end of Olney. There is a suggestion that the earlier church was founded in 1018, and it is likely to have been on a modest scale.

The greater part of the present church was built in the 14th century between ca 1330 and 1400 in the Decorated Gothic style. The rest of the church is of the same period, with tall windows and 14th century tracery, though these windows have been restored and the glass is Victorian or modern.

The north aisle was partly rebuilt in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Inside Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, Olney, facing west … the roof of the nave is lower than the roof of the chancel (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The church has a slightly unusual appearance because the roof of the nave is lower than the roof of the chancel, and of slate rather than tile. This is because the nave was altered in 1807, when the clerestory was demolished, internal roof carvings were removed, and the old roof timbers and lead were sold. It was said in 1825 that several carved figures and heads from the church where found throughout the buildings and gardens of the town. The south aisle was largely rebuilt in 1831.

The architect Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878), who was brought up in Olney, was a son of the Revd Thomas Scott (1780-1835) and a grandson of Newton’s friend, the biblical commentator, the Revd Thomas Scott (1747-1821) of Olney. Sir George Gilbert Scott rebuilt and restored the church in 1870-1885, including the restoration of the chancel (1874), the nave (1876-1877) and the south aisle and a new east window was installed a cost of nearly £2,000.

The chancel, high altar and east window in Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, Olney (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The windows in the south and north aisles display the flowing tracery characteristic of 14th century church architecture, although they were much restored, and in some cases replaced, in the 19th century. The fine, stained glass windows in the church date from the late 19th and 20th centuries.

The five-light East Window (1870) by W Holland & Sons is in memory of Ann Ravis and depicts the Crucifixion, the Ascension, the Resurrection, the Annunciation, the Last Supper and the Nativity.

A window at the west end of the chancel commemorates the abolitionist, hymnwriter and former curate John Newton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A three-light window on the south side at the west end of the chancel commemorates the abolitionist, hymnwriter and former curate John Newton (1725-1807) and was erected in 1973 by Archibald & Emily Maud Allen in memory of their daughter Evelyn Garrard Allen. It was made by James A Crombie (1913-2000) the stained glass designer and watercolourist during a brief spell when he was working for Wippell of Exeter.

The upper images show Christ and figurative representations of the abolition of slavery; the lower images show Newton in the pulpit in Olney, with depictions on either side of the life-changing storm in Lough Swilly off the coast of Co Donegal that brought about his conversion.

The window commemorating the poet William Cowper is half-hidden by the pulpit (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Half-hidden by the pulpit, a three-light window (1946) at the east end of the north nave by George Bryan Cooper-Abbs (1901-1966), chief designer of J Wippell and Co in Exeter, shows Christ in Majesty, with Saint Peter and Saint Paul, patrons of the church, on either side. Below his feet are the church, with the William Cowper and the hymnwriter John Newton on either side. Quotations from some of Cowper’s hymns also appear in the window.

The church spire, which is unusual for Buckinghamshire, is set on a tall tower and reaches a height of 56.5 metres (185 ft). The tower originally housed a peal of six bells, the oldest of which is dated 1599. The church bells were refurbished and added to a few years ago, making it one of the finest peals of ten bells in the country.

The window commemorating John Newton depicts him in the pulpit in Olney and scenes from the life-chamging storm in Lough Swilly (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

John Newton wrote the hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ while he was at Olney for a New Year’s Day service on 1 January 1773. Newton had once been the captain of several slave ships and an investor in the slave trade. Newton experienced a conversion during a severe storm in Lough Swill off the coast of Co Donegal in 1748. Many years later, he renounced the slave trade and became a prominent abolitionist.

Newtown was ordained deacon and priest in Church of England in 1764 and served in Olney until 1779, when he became the Rector of Saint Mary Woolnoth, London.

The churchyard in Olney has been closed for some years and is under the care of Milton Keynes Council. Among the graves in the south-east corner is the grave of John Newton and his wife Mary, re-interred from Saint Mary Woolnoth, London, in 1893 when the burial ground was being cleared.

A plaque in the north porch outlines many of the church’s connections (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Newton was a contemporary in Olney of the poet and hymn writer William Cowper (1731-1800), and together they co-wrote the Olney Hymns (1779), which included ‘Amazing Grace’.

Cowper’s poems and hymns have given the English language phrases such as ‘God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform’; ‘Variety’s the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavour’; ‘I am monarch of all I survey’; ‘Oh! for a closer walk with God’; ‘God made the country, and man made the town’; and ‘There is a pleasure in poetic pains which only poets know.’

Other figures associated with the church include the organist and composer Henry Gauntlett and the biblical commentator Thomas Scott. A plaque in the north porch in memory of Kate Hollingshead (1886-1969) outlines many of these connections.

The pulpit in Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, Olney (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The church marks the 700th anniversary of its founding this year, which coincides with the tercentenary of John Newton’s birth. A week of celebration is planned between Saturday 28 June and Sunday 6 July 2025, with other special services and events through the year.

A History Day on Saturday 5 July includes speakers and exhibitions. Olney Archaeological Society is presenting a talk by Professor Stephen Upex of Madingley Hall, Cambridge, on the church in the Olney landscape.

The church has a Priest-in-Charge rather than a rector because the Newport Deanery in the Diocese of Oxford is being reorganised and the parish is to become part of a new Benefice of Ouse Valley North. At the moment there is a vacancy for the Priest-in-Charge; the Revd Hugh Reid is the curate.

The baptismal font at the west end of Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, Olney (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

• The Sunday morning services at 10 am in Saint Peter and Saint Paul are: Holy Communion, Common Worship (first, third and fifth Sunday), Informal Worship (second Sunday), and Informal Communion (fourth Sunday). There is a variety of evening services at 6 pm on Sundays, including a Said Communion on the second Sunday and there is a midweek celebration of Holy Communion at 10 am on Wednesdays.

The east end of Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, Olney (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Olney, with its 700-year-old church and Pancake Race, was the home of celebrated poets and hymnwriters

A town sign in Olney depicts the traditional pancake race on Shrove Tuesday (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Three of us spent an afternoon last weekend in Olney, a small pretty market town in Buckinghamshire that has been part of the Milton Keynes district since 1974, with a population of 6,000 to 7,000.

Olney – which has been pronounced with the ‘L’ for centuries – is known both for the annual Pancake Race along the High Street on Shrove Tuesday each year and for two famous residents, the poet William Cowper and the hymnwriter John Newton, author of ‘Amazing Grace’.

After we visited a friend’s grave, I visited Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church, we had lunch in the Swan Inn, which dates back 400 years, and had an afternoon stroll through the town, which has one Grade I listed building, the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, four Grade II* buildings, and a further 114 listed at Grade II.

The Market Place and wide High Street in the centre of Olney (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Olney is on the banks of the River Great Ouse, about 13 km (8 miles) from Central Milton Keynes and 16 km (10 miles) from Bedford, Northampton and Wellingborough. It is the northern-most town within Milton Keynes, two miles from the point where Buckinghamshire meets Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire.

Olney is thought to have been an important Romano-British township that stood north-east of the town. In 2023, archaeologists uncovered a villa mosaic considered ‘remains of high significance’.

Later developments in the area were at what is now the northern end of Olney near Christian Wells. The original church was probably located beside Hopper’s Hill, and some local historians believe there was a monastery or castle nearby.

Two of the earliest references to Olney are in Saxon times, when it was referred to as Ollanege in 932 CE and in 979 CE. The ending -ege or -ey means Island, so Ollanege probably means ‘Olla’s Island’.

Olney has many alleys and courts leading off the High Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Before the conquest, Olney belonged to Borgret or Burgered, a descendant of the King of Mercia. Later, the Vikings came down from the north of England as far as the River Ouse, and Olney became part of Danelaw.

After the Conquest, Olney or Olnei is mentioned in the Domesday Book and was held in 1086 by Geoffrey de Montbray, Bishop of Coutances, a supporter of William the Conqueror, who was granted lands including Olney. When William died, Geoffrey supported William’s son Robert and lost his lands when William’s other son, William Rufus, was crowned. These lands were later given to the Earl of Chester.

By the 13th century, Olney had grown from a large village to a planned borough, first mentioned in 1237. The borough is distinctive, delineated by the High Street, with long burgage plots laid out at right angles and enveloped by the parallel back streets of East and West Street. By then, the town had a weekly market and an annual fair.

The 14th century Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul dates from 1325, with later additions, and is preparing to celebrate its 700th anniversary this year.

The pancake race has been run along the High Street and Church Street since 1445 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Since 1445, a pancake race has been run in the town on Shrove Tuesday each year before Lent begins. Local tradition says that on Shrove Tuesday 1445, the ‘Shriving Bell’ rang out to signal the start of the church service. On hearing the bell a local housewife, who was busy cooking pancakes before Lent began, ran to the church, her frying pan still in hand, tossing the pancake to prevent it from burning, and still in her kitchen apron and headscarf.

The race was revived in 1948 and the women of Olney recreate this race every Shrove Tuesday, running from the Market Place to the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, a distance of 415 yards. The rules say competitors must wear headscarves and aprons, and must assemble on the Market Place before 11:55 am, complete with frying pan and pancake.

The original route started at the old Town Pump on the Market Place and finished close to the main door of the church. The current route begins outside the Bull Hotel and finishes near to the small side gate of the church in Church Street.

The Swan Inn is one of about 120 listed buildings in Olney (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

During the English Civil War in the mid-17th century, Olney was the scene of the Battle of Olney Bridge in 1643. The Parliamentarians held Newport Pagnell, and Olney was one of their outposts. Prince Rupert held Northampton for the King and marched on Olney intending to continue on to Newport. Prince Rupert and his troops took the forces in Olney by surprise and the Parliamentarians retreated to the bridge where they made a defiant stand.

The Royalists could have won decisively, but a rumour spread that Cromwellian reinforcements were seen coming from Newport. The Royalists retreated and the battle was over.

Later in the 17th century, John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim’s Progress, was jailed for many years partly because of his preaching at Olney.

The Bull Hotel, once an important coaching inn, was a stopping place for the ‘Beehive Coach’ between Wellingborough and London in the mid-19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Olney was on an early drove road, and as travel increased across England in the 18th century, Olney became a busy coaching town and by 1754 there were said to be 27 inns in the town.

In the late 18th century, Olney had two famous residents, the poet William Cowper who lived in Olney from 1767 to 1786, and the abolitionist John Newton, the town’s curate from 1764 to 1780. Newton wrote ‘Amazing Grace’, arguably the most popular hymn ever, and Newton and Cooper collaborated to write the Olney Hymns.

The Cowper and Newton Museum is housed Cowper’s former residence, and the 250th anniversary of ‘Amazing Grace’ was celebrated in 2022.

Olney Baptist Church has associations with John Bunyan and William Carey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A prominent Baptist John Sutcliff settled in Olney in 1775, and was the pastor of Olney Baptist Church for 39 years. He set up an academy or seminary in two adjacent houses near the church, and his students included William Carey, who was instrumental in the formation of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792 and its first missionary, and William Robinson, who became a missionary in Serampore in 1806.

Into the 19th century, Olney was known as a centre of the lace-making industry in Buckinghamshire and for the cottage shoe industry in many houses in the town. But Olney was a relatively poor community in the 19th century, without prosperous enterprises, and outbreaks of cholera and smallpox did nothing to improve the image.

The industrialisation of the shoe industry in the second half of the 19th century brought factories to the town that brought about the decline of the cottage shoe industry. The opening of the Northampton to Bedford railway line in 1872 and arrival of improved bus services provided transport for residents seeking employment in neighbouring towns.

The shoe factories in Olney declined during the first half of the 20th century, particularly after World War I, but some smaller concerns survived into the 1960s.

Olney once had its own railway station on the Stratford-upon-Avon and Midland Junction Railway and the Bedford-Northampton line. But passenger services were withdrawn in 1962, and the nearest rail services are at Wolverton (13 km away), and Milton Keynes Central and Bedford (each about 18 km away).

The former Saracen’s Head on a street corner in Olney (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Olney expanded in the second half of the 20th century as a dormitory development for Milton Keynes.

The Market Place has a general market on Thursdays and a farmers’ market on the first Sunday each month. The vast majority of Olney shops are independent, with galleries, antique, rug and furniture sellers, and boutique shops for interior design, food, fashion, clothes and perfumes, as well as restaurants, pubs and cafés.

Olney, with its wide High Street, courts and alleys, still has the character and atmosphere and the active local life of a small English country town, and the High Street and Market Place remain a focus for residents and visitors alike.

As for Olney’s parish church, Saint Peter and Saint Paul, which is celebrating its 700th anniversary this year, I hope to have more to say about it another day.

A town sign recalls the lace and shoe-making cottage industries in Olney Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)