Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 39, Monday 15 June 2026

Barry Blitt’s ‘Out Cold’ cartoon on the cover of today's edition of ‘The New Yorker’ on Trump’s birthday cage fight … in the face of increasing evil in the world, how do we interpret the words in today’s Gospel, ‘Do not resist an evildoer’ (Matthew 5: 39)?

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time and the week began yesterday with the Second Sunday after Trinity (14 June 2025). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Spiritual Writer.

But, 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.

‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you …’ (Matthew 5: 38-39) … street art in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 5: 38-42 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 38 ‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” 39 But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; 40 and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; 41 and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. 42 Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.’

‘But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also’ (Matthew 5: 39) … street art in Plaza de la Judería in Malaga (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

The Gospel reading for the Eucharist this morning (Matthew 5: 38-42) continues our series of readings from the Sermon on the Mount, and this is a Gospel reading that has often been misused and misinterpreted.

The suggestion, ‘Do not resist an evildoer,’ is in danger of being used to turn someone into a doormat, to tolerate domestic violence or to forgive constant physical or psychological abuse, to keep people from walking away from abuse, resisting oppression or even turning to revolution.

The translation, ‘Do not resist an evildoer’ (verse 39) fails to convey the full meaning of the underlying Greek. The word ἀνθίστημι (antheestimee) speaks of setting oneself against something, withstanding, resisting or opposing it. But it might better be translated as, ‘Do not violently resist an evildoer.’ The teaching here is primarily about nonviolence, but it is not about acquiescence to evil, still less about being complicit in evil.

Christ then goes on immediately to offer three clear examples (verses 39-41) of how to nonviolently resist an evildoer – in fact, how to publicly shame and mock an evildoer.

These passages are tragically misinterpreted because we have forgotten the original society in which Jesus gave these teachings. When Christ says, ‘If anyone …,’ he and his listeners knew instantly who that ‘anyone’ was. He describes three types of insulting and humiliating behaviour: slapping someone on the right cheek (verse 39), suing them in court for their personal goods (verse 40), and forcing them to go a mile (verse 41). These are not the kind of things anyone, just anyone, could do. They are the kind of things only a privileged few could do – and did – to the sort of people who were in the crowd listening to Christ that day.

So, let’s look at each of these in turn

Verse 39

Slapping the right cheek: This was done by masters to their servants and slaves, and it was always done by hitting with the back of the right hand across the right cheek. The blow was about asserting status and power over the other person. This is not about random violence or fighting among friends or enemies. It is about asserting rank, privilege and power.

In order to preserve one’s honour – to preserve one’s public standing – it is crucial everything must be done according to the socially accepted protocols. The slave must obediently stand facing the master without external coercion. The master must strike only the right cheek; and only with the back of the right hand. Any variation on this would show that he was not in control; it would be a public loss of face.

Now imagine your boss has just slapped you on your right cheek; without saying a word, you then silently turn your head to expose your left cheek. It appears that you are becoming doubly subservient; doubly accepting his authority over you. But in this one movement you have made him powerless.

Turning your head hides your right cheek and presents your left cheek. But the angle of your head is such that the master can see, but cannot strike your left cheek with the back of his right hand. Try to mimic this with someone you know later today, and see what happens.

A move like this would publicly expose the master to shame and ridicule. You would appear to be meek and servile, obediently waiting for a second blow. But he would be totally helpless. He has three options: to hit you with the palm of his right hand; to use his left hand; or to walk away. To choose any one of these three options means he would lose face.

Verse 40

to sue you: Peasants did not sue one another. Again, this example of public humiliation is one about the abuse of the poor by those with power and privilege. Most peasants only owned the clothes on their backs.

What is being sued for here is not a coat, but a χιτών (chitón), which is an undergarment, usually worn next to the skin. To be sued for my coat would be humiliating enough; to be sued for my underwear would be truly humiliating. I would have nothing left to stand in. Going naked would be a radical way of exposing, laying bare, the shame which allows someone with wealth and privilege to take away the only thing a poor person owns.

Verse 41

forces you to go one mile: In those days, soldiers were allowed to conscript civilians to carry their packs, but only for a mile. However, this was no minor inconvenience for someone who depended on their work to feed and clothe his family. Walking a mile with a heavy pack and then having to walk back again would mean missing that day’s work, that day’s pay, and the food that pay would have paid for.

Offering to go a second mile would relieve another person of this unjust burden, but at the same time it would publicly expose the unjust hardship of being forced to go even one mile. Yet it does so in a way that seems to co-operate while at the same time bringing shame and ridicule on the person who is forcing you to bear unfair burdens.

Verse 42

Begging and borrowing: Begging and borrowing are complex social interactions that involve negotiating honour and shame, social respect and status, and money. But Christ’s teaching here is directed to those who have, and not to the have-nots. He is talking not to beggars and borrowers, but to those who are asked for loans and alms.

Christ tells us to treat all who entreat us as if they were our closest family. This surely breaks down the customary social barriers between the haves and the have-nots, it changes the social relationship to one of kinship. But when we come to God, begging and pleading, do we not come as children come to their father?

There are similarly difficult questions as we continue to read from this passage tomorrow.

‘If anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well’ (Matthew 5: 40) … street art seen at the University of Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 15 June 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 14 to 20 June 2026 (pp 10-11), is ‘Rooted in Compassion’. This theme was introduced yesterday by the Ven Titus Oluwalusi, the Anglican Chaplain at Saint John’s Church in Casablanca, Morocco.

The USPG prayer diary today (Monday 15 June 2026) invites us to pray:

Heavenly Father, thank you for showing us perfect love. Inspired by your Son, Jesus Christ, cultivate in us this fruit of the Spirit, that through our lives your holy name may be glorified.

The Collect of the Day:

Lord, you have taught us
that all our doings without love are nothing worth:
send your Holy Spirit
and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love,
the true bond of peace and of all virtues,
without which whoever lives is counted dead before you.
Grant this for your only Son Jesus Christ’s sake,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever. Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Loving Father,
we thank you for feeding us at the supper of your Son:
sustain us with your Spirit,
that we may serve you here on earth
until our joy is complete in heaven,
and we share in the eternal banquet
with Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Faithful Creator,
whose mercy never fails:
deepen our faithfulness to you
and to your living Word,
Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you’ (Matthew 5: 42) … ‘Christ the Beggar’ … a sculpture by Timothy Schmalz on the steps of Santo Spirito Hospital near the Vatican (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: 22, Friday 29 May 2026

‘He overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves’ (Mark 11: 15) … abandoned tables and furniture at an abandoned house in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The 50-day season of Easter, which began on Easter Day (5 April 2026), came to an end on Sunday with the Day of Pentecost or Whit Sunday (24 May 2026), and in the Church Calendar we have been back in Ordinary Time since Monday.

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.

The Cleansing of the Temple, Giotto, the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 11: 11-25 (NRSVA):

11 Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

12 On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. 13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. 14 He said to it, ‘May no one ever eat fruit from you again.’ And his disciples heard it.

15 Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves; 16 and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17 He was teaching and saying, ‘Is it not written,

“My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations”?
But you have made it a den of robbers.’

18 And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. 19 And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

20 In the morning as they passed by, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots. 21 Then Peter remembered and said to him, ‘Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.’ 22 Jesus answered them, ‘Have faith in God. 23 Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, “Be taken up and thrown into the sea”, and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. 24 So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

25 ‘Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.’

‘Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it’ (Mark 11: 13) … a fig tree in Platanias near Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

If I had the space and the soil, the patience and the time, the two trees I would like to try to grow are an olive tree and a fig tree.

They are signs of life and God’s blessings in creation, of life and of continuity in life. There is a very large fig tree off the High Street in Stony Stratford and small potted olive trees outside some of the restaurants in Milton Keynes. Fig trees and olive trees at any time of the year also bring back warm memories of Greece.

But during a visit to Saint Mary’s Church, Watford, last year I heard the story of one of the most unusual fig trees in an English churchyard.

The churchyard has 13 prominent tombs, including the Fig Tree Tomb, once a popular tourist attraction in Victorian Watford. Local lore says the person buried there was an atheist who had asked that something be buried in the tomb that could germinate if there was life after death. If there was a God, this would grow and burst the tomb to prove to his family that his soul was alive. If not, then nothing would happen and he would be proved correct.

The existence of God was said to have been proven when a fig tree sprouted up from the tomb and dislodged the lid. The strange sight drew visitors to the graveyard in large numbers, who came to hear the story and left taking a twig from the tree as a souvenir.

Whoever was buried in the tomb must have come from a wealthy family as the tomb is of Portland stone with an elaborate design, and the slate panel once had crisp carving with the name and details of the dead person. It is unlikely though that an atheist would have been given such an impressive tomb so close to the church. But, the slate panel is eroded, the inscription is no longer legible, and the details of the legend are impossible to verify.

Yet details in the story were embellished as the story of the Fig Tree grew, attracting visitors in ever-increasing numbers. Henry Williams, in his History of Watford (1884), described the fig tree growing through the tomb and how each year it ‘exhibits considerable luxuriance and sometimes produces figs.’ He said the fig tree had ‘probably grown there for close upon 100 years’, dating it to the 1790s or even the 1780s.

Williams described hundreds of people visiting the churchyard, many making long excursions to see the fig tree and taking home a leaf or small branch. However, he said that when the tomb was opened it was found that the root of the tree was four or five feet above where the dead man’s head must have been. Some tendrils had become attached to the bottom of the vault and this was said to explain the luxuriant growth of the fig tree.

Yet another theory suggests the seed of the fig tree could have been accidentally thrown into the tomb by the Revd the Hon William Robert Capel (1775-1854), Vicar of Saint Mary’s (1799-1855) and a son of William Anne Capell (1743-1799), 4th Earl of Essex. The vicar grew fig trees and had a taste for eating figs as he walked to church, spitting out the pips along his way from the vicarage.

Sadly, the Fig Tree itself died in 1963 after a long and cold winter, though some writers suggest it was helped on its way by local officials who thought it was in the way. The fig tree may be long gone, but the legend and the tomb remain with several versions of the story.

In this morning’s Gospel reading, Saint Mark uses an intentional ‘sandwich’ technique, wrapping the story of the cleansing of the Temple within the narrative of the withering fig tree (Mark 11: 12-14, 20-21).

The fig tree represents the religious leadership of the day: it has the appearance of bearing fruit, but upon closer inspection, it is barren. The cleansing of the Temple serves as an acted-out parable. The Temple has become a place of exclusion, extortion, and superficiality rather than a house of prayer for all nations.

The fate of the fig tree in this morning’s reading is in sharp contrast to the fate of the fig tree in a parable in Saint Luke’s Gospel (Luke 13: 6-9). In that parable, it seems to make logical, economic and financial sense for the owner to want to chop down the fig tree that is bearing no fruit – after all, not only is it taking up space, but it also costs in terms of time, tending, feeding, caring and nurturing. The owner knows what it is to make a quick profit, and if the quick profit is not coming soon enough he wants to cut his losses.

It takes much tender care and many years – at least three years – for a fig tree to bear fruit. Fig trees are planted in vineyards to shelter the weaker vines. An old and elegant fig tree is a common site in many Mediterranean vineyards and has its own intrinsic value. It may even have vines wrapped around it, bearing their own fruit, which are a generous bonus, beyond the purpose of planting the tree.

Even if a fig tree bears early fruit, the Mosaic Law said it could not be harvested for three years, and the fruit gathered in the fourth year was going to offered as the first fruits. Only in the fifth year, then, could the fruit be eaten. So, if Saint Luke’s fig tree was chopped down, and another put its place, it would take longer still to get fruit that could be eaten or sold. In his quest for a ‘quick buck’, the owner of the vineyard shows little knowledge about the reality of economics.

The gardener, who has nothing at stake, turns out to be the one who not only has compassion, but has deep-seated wisdom too. The gardener, who is never going to benefit from the owner’s profits, can see the tree’s potential, is willing to let be and wait, knowing what the fig tree is today and what it can do in the future.

It takes much tender care and many years – at least three years – for a fig tree to bear fruit. And even then, in a vineyard, the figs are not a profit – they are a sweet bonus.

When a tree bears fruit, the Mosaic Law said it could not be harvested for three years, and the fruit gathered in the fourth year was to be offered as the first fruits. Only in the fifth year, then, could the fruit be eaten.

In Saint Luke’s parable of the fig tree, we are called on to wait, we are urged not to be too hasty to pass judgment on those who seem in our eyes to do nothing to improve their lot.

But I can decide where I place my trust – in the values that I think serve me but serve the rich, the powerful and the oppressor, or in the God who sees our plight, who hears our cry, and who comes in Christ to deliver us.

The destruction of the Temple’s corrupt system offers hope of the birth of a new way of accessing God. Christ connects the effectiveness of prayer directly to our capacity to forgive others. Right worship of God and right relationships with our neighbours are intrinsically intertwined. This passage is a challenge to us to ensure our own spiritual lives are bearing real fruit and that our churches and communities are places of grace and mercy rather than exclusion.

In the latter part of today’s reading (Mark 11: 22-26), our focus shifts to the nature of faith, prayer, and forgiveness. We are called on to wait, to not be too hasty in our judgment on others, and to be forgiving: ‘Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses’ (verse 25).

The ‘Fig Tree Tomb’ at Saint Mary’s Church, Watford … the fig tree – and the inscription – have long disappeared (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 29 May 2026):

This week in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), from 24 to 30 May 2026 (pp 58-59), the theme is ‘Carriers of the Flame’ and was introduced on Sunday with reflections by Carol Miller, Church Engagement Manager, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 29 May 2026) invites us to pray:

Bring justice and dignity to the oppressed and the forgotten, and guide USPG and its partners in our mission to uphold the worth of every person.

The Collect:

O Lord, from whom all good things come:
grant to us your humble servants,
that by your holy inspiration
we may think those things that are good,
and by your merciful guiding may perform the same;
through our Lord 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:

Gracious God, lover of all,
in this sacrament
we are one family in Christ your Son,
one in the sharing of his body and blood
and one in the communion of his Spirit:
help us to grow in love for one another
and come to the full maturity of the Body of Christ.
We make our prayer through your Son our Saviour.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

A fig tree in full bloom close to the ruins of Saint Mary Magdalene Church in Stony Stratford (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: 2, Monday 6 April 2026, Easter Monday

The Resurrection … an icon in the 18th century Church of Saint Minas in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This is Easter Monday (6 April 2026) and after all the busyness of Holy Week and Easter, I have awoken this morning to the chimes and bells of Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, which is almost next door to me in Stony Stratford.

Before this bank holiday Monday begins, though, 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.

So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy (Matthhew 28: 8) … an icon of the Resurrection in the Church of Saint Matthew of the Sinaites in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 28: 8-15 (NRSVA):

8 So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them and said, ‘Greetings!’ And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshipped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.’

11 While they were going, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened. 12 After the priests had assembled with the elders, they devised a plan to give a large sum of money to the soldiers, 13 telling them, ‘You must say, “His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.” 14 If this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.’ 15 So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story is still told among the Jews to this day.

‘Christ before Caiaphas’ by Giotto in Scrovegni Chapel, Padua … the High Priest is shown tearing his robe in grief at Christ’s perceived blasphemy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

When I was in Crete last year for the Orthodox celebrations of Holy Week and Easter, I was reminded of a legend that is linked to this morning’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Matthew 28: 8-15) and with traditions in Crete.

We read this morning how ‘some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests everything that had happened’ (verse 11). We read in the Gospel reading on Good Friday (3 April 2026) that Caiaphas was ‘the high priest that year’ and that he gave the opinion ‘that it was better to have one person die for the people’ (see John 18: 13-14).

Annas questioned Jesus and then sent him bound to Caiaphas the high priest (John 18: 24), and from the house of Caiaphas they took Jesus to Pilate’s headquarters (John 18: 28). Caiaphas was probably a Sadducee, who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. The Mishnah condemns him for opposing the Pharisees (Parah 3: 5). Later in the Biblical narratives, Peter and John are brought before Annas and Caiaphas after healing a beggar (see Acts 4).

Joseph ben Caiaphas was the High Priest from the year 18 to 36 CE. But there is a local tradition or legend that says he was buried in Crete, and people there argue that this idea is not beyond belief considering Saint Paul visited the island twice on his missionary journeys.

According to this old tradition in Crete, Caiaphas was summoned to Rome along with Pontius Pilate to account for their wrongdoings. Caiaphas fell fatally ill while his ship was off the coast of Crete. A storm blew up and the ship was wrecked. Nevertheless, the crew managed to get ashore, and they buried him near Iraklion.

The tradition says he was buried seven times, but each time the Cretan soil refused to accept him and his body was thrown up seven times. Finally local people got together and buried him south of Iraklion under a pile of stones, and this became the tomb of Caiaphas.

Until the year 1882, this supposed tomb remained at the entrance to Knossos. An old settlement near Knossos was known as ‘Kaiafa’. It is referred to in the Byzantine period as one of the fiefs of the Archbishop of Crete, in a Venetian text from 1208 and in contracts and Turkish documents.

Richard Pococke the intrepid traveller who visited Greece extensively between 1737 and 1741, reported seeing a ‘square building’ at the site of the supposed tomb of Caiaphas at Knossos. Pococke was the Church of Ireland Bishop of Ossory (1756-1765) and Bishop of Meath (1765). He spent much of his time in Crete in 1739 in Chania and Kissamou, but he also visited Rethymnon and Iraklion. In 1739, he described a square building on the site where Caiaphas was supposedly buried.

The area where the ship with Caiaphas is said to have first arrived is known as Aforesmenos (meaning expelled from the Church or damned). The lighthouse of the Cape of Agios Ioannis or Aforesmenos is 27 km from of Agios Nikolaos, close to the village of Vrouchas and the church of Agios Ioannis. The lighthouse was built in 1864 by the French Lighthouse Company and joined the Greek lighthouse network in 1912.

The landscape in the area is typical of Crete, with bare mountains, rugged coastlines, and too much wind. It is said that the sea is never calm there and several 19th-century nautical guides suggested that it was preferable for ships to navigate a mile off the cape.

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!
Christ is Risen!

The Morosini Fountain or Lions Fountain in Lions Square in the heart of Iraklion … local tradition says Caiaphas was buried near Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 6 April 2026, Easter Monday):

‘In the Garden’ provides the theme this week (5-11 April 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 44-45. This theme was introduced yesterday with Reflections by Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 6 April 2026, Easter Monday) invites us to pray:

Loving God, inspire all who serve in the Diocese of Zululand to act with compassion and perseverance. May every effort to support communities be sustainable and reflect your love.

The Collect:

Lord of all life and power,
who through the mighty resurrection of your Son
overcame the old order of sin and death
to make all things new in him:
grant that we, being dead to sin
and alive to you in Jesus Christ,
may reign with him in glory;
to whom with you and the Holy Spirit
be praise and honour, glory and might,
now and in all eternity.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

God of Life,
who for our redemption gave your only-begotten Son
to the death of the cross,
and by his glorious resurrection
have delivered us from the power of our enemy:
grant us so to die daily to sin,
that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his risen life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God of glory,
by the raising of your Son
you have broken the chains of death and hell:
fill your Church with faith and hope;
for a new day has dawned
and the way to life stands open
in our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

An old graveyard near the Archaeological Museum in Iraklion (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 ship carrying Caiaphas to Rome is said to have been wrecked off Aforesmenos in Crete

Daily prayer in Lent 2026: 46, Saturday 4 April 2026, Easter Eve

The Deposition of Christ from the Cross by Giotto in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We have reached the end of Holy Week and the end of Lent. Today is Easter Eve (4 April 2026), known in the Greek Orthodox Church as Great Holy Saturday. However, Easter comes a week later in the Orthodox calendar this year. Later this morning, I hope to drop in to Το Στεκι Μας, Our Place, the pop-up Greek café which opens every first Saturday of the month at the Swinfen Harris Church Hall beside the Greek Orthodox Church on London Road, Stony Stratford, between 10:30 am and 3 pm. Today there is an Easter Special ‘Steki’, with a taste of Greek Easter delicacies, with Easter crafts for children, including decorating Easter candle, as well as Greek olive oil and honey and, of course, authentic Greek coffee, pastries and cakes.

Later, I hope to find somewhere appropriate to watch the Cambridge v Oxford boat races, although this is the first time in many years that they are not being broadcast by the BBC; the 80th Women’s Boat Race starts at 2:21 pm, the 171st Men’s Boat Race starts at 3:21 pm.

Easter begins in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, this evening with the Lighting of the New Fire, the Easter Vigil and the Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church at 8 pm, and I hope to sing with the choir and to read one of the lessons.

But, 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, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects of the day.

The Harrowing of Hell, depicted in a fresco on a chancel arch in the Church of the Four Martyrs in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 27: 57-66 (NRSVA):

57 When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who was also a disciple of Jesus. 58 He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. 59 So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth 60 and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away. 61 Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.

62 The next day, that is, after the day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate 63 and said, ‘Sir, we remember what that impostor said while he was still alive, “After three days I will rise again.” 64 Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day; otherwise his disciples may go and steal him away, and tell the people, “He has been raised from the dead”, and the last deception would be worse than the first.’ 65 Pilate said to them, ‘You have a guard of soldiers; go, make it as secure as you can.’ 66 So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone.

‘So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb’ (Matthew 27: 59-60) … inside the Sarcophagus at the end of the Stations of the Cross in the Garden in Walsingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Today’s Reflections:

George Koros (1923-2014) was one of the finest Greek solo violinists of our time. He was born on the island of Evia in 1923, and he started playing the violin at the age of eight, when his father – who was a church cantor and a teacher of Byzantine music – decided to replace the mandolin with a violin and a bow without strings. His professional career began a year later, when he began playing at weddings and feasts with his father.

His mother spurned an opportunity for him to have a classical musical education. But Koros later revolutionised Greek folk music through the introduction of the fiddle as an accepted instrument. He became an acclaimed, self-made musician, who composed about 2,000 songs. But despite his reputation in Greek folk music, for me he stands out for his Byzantine hymns, particularly during this Easter weekend in Crete. In these hymns, Koros returned to his roots in Byzantine music and with his violin he recreates the tradition of the early hymns he learned from his father in church as a boy.

George Koros died in 2014, and was buried in Kiffisia in Athens.

On this Saturday – between Good Friday and Easter Day – many years ago (2008), during a series of Holy Saturday reflections in Whitechurch Parish in Dublin, I invited people to listen to George Koros using his violin to plaintively recall the sorrow of the tomb in two pieces: I see thy resting place (Τον Νυμφωνα Σου Βλεπω) and Life in the Holy Sepulchre (Η Ζωη εν Ταφω).

In the Western tradition of the Church, we seem to have contemplated the cross, and then moved to the empty tomb. At times, the deep joys of the Resurrection have often been overshadowed in the Western Church by the way of the Cross, as though the Cross leads only to death. But we have also neglected Christ’s resting place, his tomb, and given little thought to what was happening in the Holy Sepulchre on this day.

In Greece, Holy and Great Saturday, which falls next Saturday (11 April 2026) is observed solemnly by the Orthodox Church, with hymns and readings that truly explore the theme of the Harrowing of Hell in depth. For this is the day on which Christ’s body lay in the tomb, this is the day on which he visited those who were dead.

The icon of the Harrowing of Hell reminds us that God reaches into the deepest depths to pull forth souls into the kingdom of light. It reminds us how much we are unable to comprehend – let alone take to heart as our own – the creedal statement about Christ’s descent into Hell – ‘He descended into Hell.’

Christ’s descent into Hell is captured in Saint Peter’s Pentecost sermon in Acts 2. In the Petrine letters, we are told that when Christ died he went and preached to the spirits in prison ‘who in former times did not obey … For this is the reason the Gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that … they might live in the spirit as God does’ (see I Peter 3: 15b to 4: 8).

In the NRSV, I Peter 4: 6 reads the gospel was ‘proclaimed even to the dead …’, reflecting the original Greek: ‘εἰς τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ νεκροῖς εὐηγγελίσθη …’ The New International Version, however, says the Gospel ‘was preached even to those who are now dead …’ But the word ‘now’ is not in the Greek text. It was inserted to rule out the idea that Christ preached to those who were dead at the time when Christ descended into Hell and preached to them there. Instead, the NIV interpolates and rewrites the text so that it says that Christ brought his good news to people who were dead at the time I Peter was written. If you remove the word ‘now,’ the English becomes ambiguous on that point, just like the Greek is ambiguous there.

The Early Church taught that after his death Christ descended into hell and rescued all the souls, starting with Adam and Eve, who had died under the Fall.

The Harrowing of Hell is intimately bound up with the Resurrection, the Raising from the Dead, for as Christ is raised from the dead he also plummets the depths to bring up, to raise up, those who are dead. The Harrowing of Hell carries us into the gap in time between Christ’s death and resurrection.

In Orthodox icons of the Harrowing of Hell, Christ stands on the shattered doors of Hell. Sometimes, two angels are shown in the pit binding Satan. And we see Christ pulling out of Hell Adam and Eve, imprisoned there since their deaths, imprisoned along with all humanity because of sin. Christ breaks down the doors of Hell and leads the souls of the lost into Heaven.

It is the most radical reversal we can imagine. Death does not have the last word, we need not live our lives entombed in fear. If Adam and Eve are forgiven, and the Sin of Adam is annulled and destroyed, who is beyond forgiveness?

In discussing the ‘Descent into Hell,’ the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) argues that if Christ’s mission did not result in the successful application of God’s love to every intended soul, how then can we think of it as a success. He emphasises Christ’s descent into the fullness of death, so as to be ‘Lord of both the dead and the living’ (Romans 5).

However, in her award-winning book Light in Darkness, Alyssa Lyra Pitstick says that Christ did not descend into the lowest depths of hell, and only stayed in the top levels. She finds untenable his view that Christ’s descent into hell entails experiencing the fullness of alienation, sin and death, which he then absorbs, transfigures, and defeats through the Resurrection. Instead, she claims, Christ descends only to the ‘limbo of the Fathers’ in which the righteous, justified dead of the Old Testament awaited the coming of the Messiah.

Her argument robs the Harrowing of Hell of its soteriological significance. For her, Christ does not descend into hell and experience the depths of alienation between God and humanity opened up by sin. She leaves Christ visiting an already-redeemed and justified collection of Old Testament saints to let them know that he has defeated death.

Archbishop Rowan Williams has written beautifully in The Indwelling of Light on the Harrowing of Hell. Christ is the new Adam who rescues humanity from its past, and who starts history anew. ‘The resurrection … is an introduction – to our buried selves, to our alienated neighbours, to our physical world.’ He says: ‘Adam and Eve stand for wherever it is in the human story that fear and refusal began … (This) icon declares that wherever that lost moment was or is – Christ (is) there to implant the possibility … of another future.’ (Rowan Williams, The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ, p 38.)

I ask myself once again this morning: what is the difference between the top levels and bottom levels of hell?

Is my hell in my heart of my own creation?

In my mind, in my home, where I live and work, in my society, in this world?

Is hell the nightmares from the past I cannot shake off, or the fears for the future when it looks gloomy and desolate for this planet?

But is anything too hard for Christ?

On this day, the icon of the Harrowing of Hell tells us that there are no limits to God’s ability to search us out and to know us. Where are the depths of your heart and your soul – where darkness prevails, and where you feel even Christ can find no welcome? Those crevices even I am afraid to think about, let alone contemplate, may be beyond my reach. I cannot produce or manufacture my own salvation from that deep, interior hell, hidden from others, and often hidden from myself.

Christ breaks down the gates of Hell, and as the icon powerfully shows, he rips all of sinful humanity from the clutches of death. He descends into the depths of our sin and alienation from God; and by plumbing the depths of hell he suffuses all that is lost and sinful with the radiance of divine goodness, joy and light. If hell is where God is not, and Jesus is God, then his decent into hell pushes back hell’s boundaries. In his descent into hell, Christ reclaims this zone for life, pushing back the gates of death, where God is not, to the farthest limits possible.

The music associated with this day in the Orthodox tradition, the icons and the readings, remind me that Christ plummets even those deepest depths, and that his love and mercy can raise us again to new life.

On this Saturday, as I prepare to take part in this evening’s Easter celebrations of the Resurrection, I have been thinking of Christ lying in the grave, and thinking of how we can ask him to take away all that denies life in us, whether it is a hell of our own making, a hell that has been forced on us, or a hell that surrounds us. Christ reaches down, and lifts us up with him in his Risen Glory.


George Koros used his violin to plaintively recall the sorrow of the tomb in two pieces: ‘I see thy resting place’ (Τον Νυμφωνα Σου Βλεπω) and ‘Life in the Holy Sepulchre’ (Η Ζωη εν Ταφω)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 4 April 2026, Easter Eve, Great Holy Saturday):

The theme this week (29 March-4 April 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is a ‘Holy Week’ reflection’ (pp 42-43). This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections by the Revd Kenson Li, Assistant Curate of Manchester Cathedral and a Trustee of USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 4 April 2026, Easter Eve, Great Holy Saturday) invites us to pray:

Loving Father, we pray for those to whom Easter brings no joy or hope. Make us a Resurrection People, sensitive to others’ suffering, so that we may spread Easter joy to the glory of your name, not our own.

The Collect:

Grant, Lord,
that we who are baptized into the death
of your Son our Saviour Jesus Christ
may continually put to death our evil desires
and be buried with him;
and that through the grave and gate of death
we may pass to our joyful resurrection;
through his merits,
who died and was buried and rose again for us,
your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

In the depths of our isolation
we cry to you, Lord God:
give light in our darkness
and bring us out of the prison of our despair;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

The Sarcophagus at the end of the Stations of the Cross in the Garden in Walsingham (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

The Epitaphios in the Church of the Four Martyrs, Rethymnon, decorated with flowers symbolising the tomb of Christ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

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

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

Patrick Comerford

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

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

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

1, the Gospel reading of the day;

2, short reflections on the reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

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

Today’s Reflections:

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

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

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

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

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

Not so.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is an embarrassing occasion. But for whom?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 1 February 2026):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is: ‘Serving the Lord with Dignity’ (pp 24-25). This theme is introduced today with a Programme Update by the Revd Mauricio Mugunhe, Executive Director of Acção Social Anglicana, Igreja Anglicana de Moçambique e Angola:

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

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

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

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

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

The Collect:

God our creator,
who in the beginning
commanded the light to shine out of darkness:
we pray that the light of the glorious gospel of Christ
may dispel the darkness of ignorance and unbelief,
shine into the hearts of all your people,
and reveal the knowledge of your glory
in the face of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

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

Additional Collect:

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

Collect on the Eve of The Presentation:

Almighty and ever–living God,
clothed in majesty,
whose beloved Son was this day presented in the Temple,
in substance of our flesh:
grant that we may be presented to you
with pure and clean hearts,
by your Son Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

‘The Wedding Feast at Cana’ … a fresco in the Church of Analipsi in Georgioupoli, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

Daily prayer in Christmas 2025-2026: 5, Monday 29 December 2025, The Holy Innocents

The Killing of the Holy Innocents, by Giotto (ca 1304-1306), in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua

Patrick Comerford

On the fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me … ‘five golden rings, four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree’.

This is the fifth day of Christmas and the calendar of the Church of England today remembers the Holy Innocents. The Festival of The Holy Innocents is usually observed on 28 December, and was observed in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, yesterday. But many churches and parishes marked yesterday as the first Sunday of Christmas, and for them the observance has been moved to today (Monday 29 December 2025).

If the Holy Innocents were commemorated yesterday, then the Church of England remembers Thomas Becket (1170), Archbishop of Canterbury and Martyr, today. The calendar of Eastern Orthodox Church also remembers the Holy Innocents on 29 December.

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, 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.

A detail from The Killing of the Holy Innocents, by Giotto (ca 1304-1306), in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 2: 13-18 (NRSVA):

13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’ 14 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son.’

16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

18 ‘A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’

A detail from the Killing of the Holy Innocents, by Giotto (ca 1304-1306), in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

The Christian interpretation of the song ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’ often sees the five gold or golden rings as figurative representations of the first five books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), the Pentateuch or the Torah.

It is theologically important to remind ourselves in the days after Christmas Day of the important link between the Incarnation and bearing witness to the Resurrection faith.

Saint Stephen’s Day on Friday (26 December), Holy Innocents’ Day (usually 28 December), and the commemoration of Thomas à Beckett (usually today, 29 December), are reminders that Christmas, far from being surrounded by sanitised images of the crib, angels and wise men, is followed by martyrdom and violence. When the Church Calendar recalls the massacre of the Holy Innocents, they are sometimes revered as the first Christian martyrs.

These dates have nothing to do with the chronological order of the event. Instead, the Holy Innocents are remembered within the octave of Christmas because they gave their life for the new-born Saviour. Saint Stephen the first martyr (martyr by will, love and blood, 26 December), Saint John the Evangelist (27 December, martyr by will and love), and these first flowers of the Church (martyrs by blood alone) accompany the Christ Child entering this world on Christmas Day.

This commemoration first appears as a feast of the western church at the end of the fifth century, and the earliest commemorations were connected with the Feast of the Epiphany (6 January), bringing together the murder of the Innocents and the visit of the Magi.

The story of the massacre of the Innocents is the biblical narrative of infanticide by King Herod the Great in today’s Gospel reading (Matthew 2: 13-18). According to Saint Matthew’s Gospel, Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem to save him from losing his throne to a new-born king whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi.

In Saint Matthew’s Gospel, the visiting magi from the east arrive in Judea in search of the new-born king of the Jews, having ‘observed his star at its rising’ (Matthew 2: 2). Herod directs them to Bethlehem, and asks them to let him know who this king is when they find him. They find the Christ Child and honour him, but an angel tells them not to alert Herod, and they return home by another way. Meanwhile, Joseph has taken Mary and the Christ Child and they have fled to Egypt.

Saint Matthew’s Gospel provides the only account of the Massacre. This incident is not mentioned in the other three gospels, nor is it mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus, who records Herod’s murder of his own sons. When the Emperor Augustus heard that Herod had ordered the murder of his own sons, he remarked: ‘It is better to be Herod’s pig, than his son.’

Saint Matthew’s story recalls passages in Hosea referring to the exodus, and in Jeremiah referring to the Babylonian exile, and the accounts in Exodus of the birth of Moses and the slaying of the first-born children by Pharaoh.

Estimates of the number of infants at the time in Bethlehem, a town with a total population of about 1,000, would be about 20. But Byzantine liturgy estimated 14,000 Holy Innocents were murdered, while an early Syrian list of saints put the number at 64,000. Coptic sources raise the number to 144,000 and also place the event on 29 December.

In previous years, Christian CND and the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship have come together to mark Holy Innocents’ Day and to pray for peace with prayers, readings, singing and reflections on all the innocent victims of war and violence, especially children. This morning, as I reflect on the day ahead, my heart is weighed down by the plight of the children who have been caught in war and violence in Gaza, Isreal and Palestine, in Syria and Lebanon, and in Ukraine and Russia, the forgotten child refugees on Greek islands, in Lampedusa and in Calais, in cheap hotels across this land and across Europe, and the child refugees and innocent children who have become the victims of the appalling decisions about to be made by the Trump regime in the past year.

It was distressing, to say the least, to read a report by my former colleague Helena Smith from Athens in the Guardian last Christmas of a refugee ‘children’s emergency’ facing Greece, where the number of unaccompanied minors reaching the country rising and concerns growing over a lack of ‘safe zones’ to host them.

Large numbers of children arrived last year (2025) along a new trafficking route from Libya to Crete, prompting NGOs to urge Greek authorities to take emergency measures that would allow children to be transferred to protected shelters or other EU member states.

‘What we are seeing amounts to a children’s emergency of the kind that we haven’t witnessed in years,’ said Sofia Kouvelaki, who heads the Home Project, an organisation that supports refugee and migrant children in Athens.

Ten years after Greece was at the centre of a refugee crisis, when nearly a million EU-bound asylum seekers crossed its borders, child arrivals had doubled last year, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR. More than 13,000 minors arrived in Greece by sea in the first 11 months of thats year. Landings by unaccompanied and separated children have also risen sharply, from 1,490 in 2023 to approximately 3,000 so far this year.

‘There are a huge number of kids turning up on boats every day and an urgent need for the creation of more safe spaces to house them,’ Sofia Kouvelaki said. Recent arrivals referred to the Home Project included exceptionally young children from Syria and Egypt.

Greece’s migration minister, Nikos Panagiotopoulos, predicted last Christmas that pressure on east Mediterranean migration routes to Greece was likely to continue this year (2025). By the end of last year, 60,000 people had entered Greece, and camps on the Aegean islands were at full capacity, he said.

Aid groups report hundreds of children on the frontline isles of Samos, Leros and Kos without clothes or shoes and little or no access to essential services. Spending cuts by the Greek government resulted in fewer protective shelters and about 1,500 unaccompanied children were forced to fend for themselves throughout Greece. Incidents of violence and abuse proliferated in overcrowded state-run reception facilities that frequently host children and adults together. There were shocking reports of a teenager from Egypt being gang-raped, beaten and burned at the Malakasa refugee camp outside Athens.

Save the Children and other aid organisations report critical failures in Greece’s reception system, overcrowding in camps and asylum seeker facilities, shortages in basic services, placing children at risk as their asylum requests are put on EU funding is blocked from reaching shelters.

The Greek Council for Refugees and Save the Children reported alarming living conditions that minors continue to face in the camps. ‘It is unacceptable that, even now, when so much money has been invested in Greece and we are no longer in crisis mode, that we should be discussing such basic issues,’ according to Lefteris Papagiannakis, the director of the Greek Council for Refugees.

The situation has continued to deteriorate in the past 12 months. Last month (November 2025), the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the European Council for Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) submitted comments to the European Committee of Social Rights (ECSR) on the follow-up to the collective complaint ICJ and ECRE v Greece. Their submission details several aspects of Greece’s continuing non-compliance with the European Social Charter (ESC) concerning the rights of migrant and refugee children.

Their concerns include continued resort to detention or detention-like restrictions of migrant and refugee children as a substitute for reception; prolonged confinement in what should be ‘safe zones’ with unrelated adults; persistent substandard reception conditions on the islands; the continued lack of appropriate shelter for unaccompanied children on the mainland; recurrent barriers to healthcare and schooling; a deficient current age-assessment framework; concerns about medical tests, lengthy appeal deadlines; and violations of children’s rights.

Malcolm Guite is a Cambridge poet and priest. At the request of King Charles, one of his poems was read by Dame Kristin Scott Thomas on the Sunday before Christmas (21 December) at the Chapel Royal Carol Service:

We think of him as safe beneath the steeple,
Or cosy in a crib beside the font,
But he is with a million displaced people
On the long road of weariness and want.
For even as we sing our final carol
His family is up and on that road,
Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel,
Glancing behind and shouldering their load.
Whilst Herod rages still from his dark tower
Christ clings to Mary, fingers tightly curled,
The lambs are slaughtered by the men of power,
And death squads spread their curse across the world.
But every Herod dies, and comes alone
To stand before the Lamb upon the throne.

‘Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt’ (Matthew 2: 14) … a window in Saint Peter’s Church, Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 29 December 2025, the Holy Innocents):

The theme this week (28 December 2025 to 3 January 2026) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Mother and Child’ (pp 14-15). This theme was introduced yesterday with a Programme Update by Imran Englefield, Individual Giving Manager, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 29 December 2025) invites us to pray:

God of compassion, we continue to ask that you bless the faith and dedication of those working at Mvumi.

The Collect:

Heavenly Father,
whose children suffered at the hands of Herod,
though they had done no wrong:
by the suffering of your Son
and by the innocence of our lives
frustrate all evil designs
and establish your reign of justice and peace;
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 Jesus Christ,
in your humility you have stooped to share our human life
with the most defenceless of your children:
may we who have received these gifts of your passion
rejoice in celebrating the witness of the Holy Innocents
to the purity of your sacrifice
made once for all upon the cross;
for you are alive and reign, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘Rest on the Flight into Egypt’ (1879) by Luc-Olivier Merson (1846-1920) … a reminder of the stark reality of the hardship and deprivation suffered by a family on the run (Museum of Fine Arts Boston)

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