Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 11, Wednesday 15 April 2026

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (John 3: 16) … a sculpture at ‘Bloom’ in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, in 2018 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Our Easter celebrations continue in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Second Sunday of Easter (Easter II) or, in the calendar of the Greek Orthodox Church, with Easter Day.

The choir in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church in Stony Stratford is still taking a break after the busy demands of Holy Week and Easter, so there are no rehearsals this evening. Meanwhile, I have anothermedical consultation later this morning. 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.

‘Those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God’ (John 3: 21) … darkness and light looking out into the world at the Church of the Transfiguration in Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 3: 16-21 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21 But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’

The statue of Pythagoras by Nikolaos Ikaris (1989) on the harbour front in Pythagóreio on the Greek island of Samos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

In the readings for three days this week, from Monday to today, we are meeting Nicodemus, a prominent Pharisee, a rabbi, a teacher and a member of the Sanhedrin. He has a Greek name – Νικοδημος (Nikodemos) means ‘victory of the people’ – and this Greek name probably indicates he is an urbane and sophisticated man.

Nicodemus appears three times in Saint John’s Gospel:

1, He visits Christ at night to discuss Christ’s teachings (John 3: 1-21)
2, He reminds his colleagues in the Sanhedrin that the law requires that a person should be heard before being judged (John 7: 50-51)
3, At the Crucifixion, he provides the embalming spices and helps Joseph of Arimathea to prepare the body of Christ for burial (John 19: 39-42)

In this first encounter, Nicodemus comes to Christ by night. Perhaps he did not want to be seen consulting Jesus, who is newly-arrived in Jerusalem and is already causing a stir. But we should remember too that Saint John’s Gospel uses poetic and dramatic contrasts: heaven and earth, water and wine, seeing and believing, faith and doubt, truth and falseness. Here too we have the contrast between darkness and light, the world that is in darkness is being brought into the light of Christ.

Nicodemus is a good and pious Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish religious court. But, despite his positive attitudes to the Mosaic Law, what is the foundation of his faith?

Nicodemus acknowledges Christ is a teacher sent by God. But is this enough – is it simply an understanding of Christ without faith? At this point, Nicodemus sees but does not believe; he has insight but does not have faith.

Christ’s reply puts the emphasis back on faith rather than on law, on believing more than seeing. But does Nicodemus understand this?

Nicodemus seems to misunderstand what he hears. He thinks Christ is speaking about a second physical, natural birth from a mother’s womb.

The dialogue that follows includes two of the most quoted passages in Saint John’s Gospel:

• ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above’ or ‘born again’ (verse 5)

• ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (verse 16)

For many, this saying in verse 6 is a summary of the whole Gospel. Martin Luther called this much-quoted verse ‘the Gospel in miniature’.

This passage is a favourite inscription to place on the outside walls of churches in China. But it is often translated in Chinese as ‘God so loved man (humanity) …’ It is not that God so loved the saved, or even all of humanity, or even the world, but that God so loved the cosmos (κόσμος), the whole created order, that he gave, or rather sent (ἔδωκεν, from δίδωμι) his only-begotten Son.

In Pythagorean thinking – and it is relevant that Saint John was in exile on Patmos, the neighbouring island of Samos, where Pythagoras was born – the cosmos (κόσμος) includes the arrangement of the stars, ‘the heavenly hosts’, as the ornament of the heavens (see I Peter 3: 3); it is not just the whole world, but the whole universe, the whole created order; it is earth and all that encircles the earth like its skin.

And this love is the beginning of Missio Dei, God’s mission – he sent (ἔδωκεν, from δίδωμι) his only-begotten Son.

To perish and to have eternal life are absolute alternatives.

By now, in today’s reading, the dialogue between Nicodemus and Christ turns to a monologue.

In verse 17, the same Greek verb (κρίνω) can mean to separate, to select or to condemn, and to approve and to judge. God’s purpose is not to condemn but to save. In verses 18-19, individuals judge themselves by hiding their evil deeds from the light of Christ’s holiness.

So what happened to Nicodemus who came to meet Christ in the darkness?

This is his first of three appearances in Saint John’s Gospel. He would have left Jesus that night challenged to ask whether he needed to move beyond the Law to an encounter with the living God, an encounter that brings death and rebirth. But we meet him again a second time when he states the law concerning the arrest of Christ during the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7: 45-51).

The third time we encounter Nicodemus follows the Crucifixion, when he helps Joseph of Arimathea in taking the body of Christ down from the cross before dark, and preparing the body for burial (John 19: 39-42).

So in the story of Nicodemus, we find birth is linked with death, new birth is linked with new life, and before darkness falls Nicodemus really comes to possess the Body of Christ, to hold the Body of Christ in his hands.

Nicodemus comes to Christ in the darkness, and is brought into the light. In this reading we come across, once again, the Johannine theme of the seeing and believing.

What would you miss if you could not see? What would you miss if you were blind?

So often, we take for granted not just our health and well-being but our physical senses too – our sight, speech, hearing, sense of smell and touch.

Many grieving and suffering people often wonder how or whether their suffering and the suffering of their children fit into God’s plans for the fullness of creation. Indeed, so often, too many of us turn aside from the needs of other people in their plight, and how many of us still believe that those in poverty and deprivation simply need to ‘pull themselves up’ or ‘to see the light’?

Christ’s compassion, caring and non-judgmental stance are in stark contrast with some who would like to claim the ground for conservative evangelicalism today, but who ignore the example of Christ.

Some years ago, in what looked like an interview with himself – the ultimate verbal equivalent of a ‘selfie’ – Professor Don Carson of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School arrogantly argued: ‘Christians who by their failure to proclaim the Christ of the gospel of the kingdom while they treat AIDS victims in their suffering here and now show themselves not really to believe all that the Bible says about fleeing the wrath to come. In the end, it is a practical atheism and a failure in love.’

Practical Christianity is reduced to practical atheism in this sharp judgment without any reference to the example of Christ in the Gospel.

On the dark side of evangelicalism, voices on the Christian right in the US, increasingly, are preaching that empathy has become a vice that manipulates caring people into accepting views such as abortion access, LGBTQ+ rights, illegal immigration and issues such as social and racial justice and the #MeToo movement.

Allie Beth Stuckey, the evangelical Baptist host of the podcast Relatable and a regular guest on Fox News, is the author of Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion (2024), arguing against many accepted Christian expressions of empathy. Joe Rigney of New Saint Andrews College, a fundamentalist college in Idaho, has published The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and its Counterfeits. He is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), whose members include the US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, who prayed publicly for ‘overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy’ and for God to ‘break the teeth of the ungodly.’

Stuckey and Rigney appeal to audiences that are firmly among Trump’s supposedly Christian base. As early as 2018, Rigney shared a platform with Hegseth’s far-right pastor, Doug Wilson, discussing ‘the sin of empathy’ and since 2023 Rigney has worked at Wilson’s Idaho church and seminary. After Bishop Mariann Budde’s sermon pleading with Trump to ‘have mercy’ on immigrants and LGBTQ+ people, Rigney accused her of ‘feminism is a cancer that enables the politics of empathetic manipulation’.

Canon Dana Colley Corsello, in a sermon in Washington National Cathedral, warned that ‘the arguments about toxic empathy are finding open ears because far-right-wing, white evangelicals are looking for a moral framework around which they can justify President Trump’s executive orders and policies.’

In today’s Gospel reading, Christ reminds Nicodemus that he has come into the world not to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved. He puts this into practice in the ways he heals the sick, feeds the hungry, brings sight to the blind, comforts those who mourn, putting into action what he proclaims in the synagogue in Nazareth immediately after his temptations in the wilderness, as being the heart of the Gospel:

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ (Luke 4: 18-19)

He sees their plight, and responds by showing what the Gospel truly means, what the Kingdom of God is truly like, with true empathy and compassion. As Saint Matthew’s Gospel records, ‘Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them’ (Matthew 9: 35-36).

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!
Christ is Risen!

’God so loved man (humanity)’ … Guizhou Theological Training Centre in Guiyang Province in central China (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 15 April 2026):

‘Stocked with Hope’ provides 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), pp 46-47. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by Mayank Thomas, Programme Manager, the Synodical Board of Social Services, Church of North India.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 15 April 2026) invites us to pray:

Heavenly Father, guide the formation of grassroots women’s agencies in villages across CNI’s reach. May these groups act courageously to address domestic violence, access government schemes, and protect women’s rights.

The Collect:

Almighty Father,
you have given your only Son to die for our sins
and to rise again for our justification:
grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness
that we may always serve you
in pureness of living and truth;
through the merits of 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.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord God our Father,
through our Saviour Jesus Christ
you have assured your children of eternal life
and in baptism have made us one with him:
deliver us from the death of sin
and raise us to new life in your love, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
for whom no door is locked, no entrance barred:
open the doors of our hearts,
that we may seek the good of others
and walk the joyful road of sacrifice and peace,
to the praise of God the Father.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘Those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’ (John 3: 21) … darkness and light at the Harbour in Rethymnon in 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 Easter 2025: 35, Saturday 24 May 2025

‘Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world’ (John 15: 19) … ‘Hands across the Globe’, a sculpture beneath the Fortezza in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (20 April 2025) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (8 June 2025), or Whit Sunday. Tomorrow is the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Easter VI, 25 May 2025), and is known in the Orthodox Church as the Sunday of the Blind Man.

Today, the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers John Wesley (1791) and Charles Wesley (1788), Evangelists and Hymn Writers. 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.

‘If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own’ (John 15: 19) … the emigrants’ globe on the quays in New Ross, Co Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 15: 18-21 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 18 ‘If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. 19 If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you. 20 Remember the word that I said to you, “Servants are not greater than their master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. 21 But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.’

‘Remember the word that I said to you, “Servants are not greater than their master” …’ (John 15: 20) … a signboard waiter at the Taverna Garden in Platanias near Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

The Gospel reading provided in the Lectionary today at the Eucharist (John 15: 18-21) continues our readings from the ‘Farewell Discourse’ at the Last Supper in Saint John’s Gospel.

Jesus has been urging the disciples to love all those around them as a sign of their love of him. In today’s Gospel reading, he warns them that there is no guarantee that they will be loved in return. If people hated such a loving person as Jesus so bitterly, his disciples cannot expect to be treated differently.

He explains the reason they will be hated is because they will refuse to identify themselves with the values and priorities of the secular world. They will reject materialistic greed and competitiveness, the scramble for status and power, the hatred, anger, violence and revenge that mark so many people’s lives.

The most terrible thing to happen to Christians is for them to be loved by that world; it is a sign they have become part of it: ‘I have chosen you out of the world – therefore the world hates you’ (verse 19).

Once again he reminds them that the servant is not greater than the master: ‘If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also’ (verse 20).

At times, it may be difficult to understand and accept this. Often I am upset when I hear back of how I have been spoken of pejoratively behind my back and out of earshot to friends I have long valued and cherished but who have become distant. But that is personal. It ought to be more upsetting to hear about people suffering, in jail, tortured, deported or murdered simply because of their political, social or political views or because of their ethnic or cultural background.

Yet, when we look back in time, we can take pride in the religious martyrs of the past or the courageous heroes who sacrificed so much to win the democratic liberties and social freedoms we have today – rights and freedoms that we often take for granted but that are being eroded and whittled away in so many places these days.

I sometimes wonder whether those people who speak out find it worse to be ignored that to be silenced. And it is tragic when those who are demanding and campaigning for a better society and a better world find themselves under pressure, turn against one another and become divided and then ineffective, sometimes even descending into or even wallowing in a sense of righteousness and moral superiority.

In a similar way, it is more than disturbing to see the name of Christianity being hijacked in the world by leaders whose policies and decisions work against the love of God and the values of God’s kingdom: Trump setting up the so-called White House Faith Office headed by the televangelist and prosperity theology proponent Paula White, while the Trump regime in its actions panders to the violence and the hatred of the far-right; the way Patriarch Kirill of Moscow seeks to make the Russian Orthodox Church beholden to the Putin regime; the way Russian Orthodox soldiers are being told it is their Christian duty to wage ‘a holy war’ that slays Ukrainian Orthodox soldiers and civilians, all in the name of Russkiy Mir …

All this compromises our witness to the love of God for God’s people everywhere. When any of these things happen, people see the Church and Church figures as having failed the Gospel … and having failed the world.

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

‘If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you’ (John 15: 18) … a sculpture at ‘Bloom’ in the Phoenix Park, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Saturday 24 May 2025):

‘That We May Live Together: A Reflection from the Emerging Leaders Academy’ has been 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). This theme was introduced last Sunday with a programme update from Annsli Kabekabe of the Anglican Church of Papua New Guinea.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 24 May 2025) invites us to pray:

Lord, help us to see beyond first impressions and be slow to judge others. Remind us that everyone carries their own stories, shaped by struggles we may never know. Teach us to listen with empathy so that our communities may be grounded in compassion.

The Collect:

God of mercy,
who inspired John and Charles Wesley with zeal for your gospel:
grant to all people boldness to proclaim your word
and a heart ever to rejoice in singing your praises;
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:

God, shepherd of your people,
whose servants John and Charles Wesley revealed the loving service of Christ
in their ministry as pastors of your people:
by this eucharist in which we share
awaken within us the love of Christ
and keep us faithful to our Christian calling;
through him who laid down his life for us,
but is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.

Collect on the Eve of Easter VI:

God our redeemer,
you have delivered us from the power of darkness
and brought us into the kingdom of your Son:
grant, that as by his death he has recalled us to life,
so by his continual presence in us he may raise us
to eternal joy;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

The ‘Wesley Elm’ in Market Square, Stony Stratford, was replaced by an oak tree, ‘Wesley’s Tree’, in 2008 … John and Charles Wesley are recalled in the calendar in ‘Common Worship’ on 24 May (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 2025: 11, Wednesday 30 April 2025

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (John 3: 16) … Hands across the Globe, a sculpture beneath the Fortezza in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Our Easter celebrations continue in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Second Sunday of Easter (Easter II). Easter is a 50-day season that continues until the Day of Pentecost. The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers the life and witness of Pandita Mary Ramabai (1922), Translator of the Scriptures.

I have a hospital appointment with a cardiac consultant in Milton Keynes this afternoon. Later this evening, I hope to be at the choir rehearsals in Saint Mary and Saint Giles as they resume in Stony Stratford after a short recess following a busy Easter programme. Meanwhile, 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.

‘Nicodemus … came to Jesus by night’ (John 3: 1-2) … an image in a window in Saint Mary de Castro Church, Leicester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

John 3: 16-21 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said to Nicodemus:] 16 ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

17 ‘Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. 20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. 21 But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (John 3: 16) … the emigrants’ globe on the quays in New Ross, Co Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

In today’s Gospel reading (John 3: 16-21), we meet Nicodemus, a prominent Pharisee, a rabbi, a teacher and a member of the Sanhedrin. He has a Greek name – Νικοδημος (Nikodemos) means ‘victory of the people’ – and this Greek name probably indicates he is an urbane and sophisticated man.

Nicodemus appears three times in Saint John’s Gospel:

1, He visits Christ at night to discuss Christ’s teachings (John 3: 1-21)

2, He reminds his colleagues in the Sanhedrin that the law requires that a person should be heard before being judged (John 7: 50-51)

3, At the Crucifixion, he provides the embalming spices and helps Joseph of Arimathea to prepare the body of Christ for burial (John 19: 39-42)

In this first encounter, Nicodemus comes to Christ by night. Perhaps he did not want to be seen consulting Jesus, who is newly-arrived in Jerusalem and is already causing a stir. But we should remember too that Saint John’s Gospel uses poetic and dramatic contrasts: heaven and earth, water and wine, seeing and believing, faith and doubt, truth and falseness. Here too we have the contrast between darkness and light, the world that is in darkness is being brought into the light of Christ.

Nicodemus is a good and pious Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish religious court. But, despite his positive attitudes to the Mosaic Law, what is the foundation of his faith?

Nicodemus acknowledges Christ is a teacher sent by God. But is this enough – is it simply an understanding of Christ without faith? At this point, Nicodemus sees but does not believe; he has insight but does not have faith.

Christ’s reply puts the emphasis back on faith rather than on law, on believing more than seeing. But does Nicodemus understand this?

Nicodemus seems to misunderstand what he hears. He thinks Christ is speaking about a second physical, natural birth from a mother’s womb.

The dialogue that follows includes two of the most quoted passages in Saint John’s Gospel:

• ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above’ or ‘born again’ (verse 5)

• ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (verse 16)

For many people, this second phrase is a summary of the whole Gospel: ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’ Martin Luther said this verse is ‘the Gospel in miniature.’ But the original version does not say that God so loved the world, but that God so loved the cosmos (κόσμος), the whole created order, that he gave, or rather sent (ἔδωκεν, from δίδωμι) his only-begotten Son.

God so loved the cosmos (κόσμος) that he actively sent his only-begotten Son on a mission. And this love is the beginning of missio Dei, God’s mission.

In Pythagorean thinking – and remember that John was in exile on Patmos, the neighbouring island of Samos, where Pythagoras was born – the cosmos (κόσμος) includes the arrangement of the stars, ‘the heavenly hosts,’ as the ornament of the heavens (see I Peter 3: 3). It is not just the whole world, but the whole universe, the whole created order. It is earth and all that encircles the earth like its skin.

The original tells us that God so loved the κόσμος – the whole pulsating, created order as imagined by Pythagoras and the philosophers – God so loved the cosmos that he sent his only son … [Οὕτως γὰρ ἠγάπησεν ὁ Θεὸς τὸν κόσμον, ὥστε τὸν Υἱὸν τὸν μονογενῆ ἔδωκεν …] Not that he gave insipidly, but that he sent actively, sent him on a mission. And this love is the beginning of missio Dei, God’s mission – he sent (ἔδωκεν, from δίδωμι) his only-begotten Son.

Nicodemus finds it difficult to understand what Christ is saying. But what about the first saying, the phrase, ‘being born from above’ or ‘being born again’?

The key word (ἄνωθεν) here has the double meaning of ‘from above’ and ‘again.’ A new birth, a second birth, getting a whole new take on life, a new beginning, a fresh, refreshing start … what does it mean here?

The way we hear the phrase ‘born-again’ being used today may be derived from this event in Saint John’s Gospel. But that understanding is not available to Nicodemus, because it can only be traced to American evangelicalism in the second half of the 20th century.

Until the 20th century, most discussions about this phrase focussed on questions about baptismal regeneration. The key references are in Article 15 and Article 27 in the 39 Articles. Article 15 seems to imply that all who are baptised are ‘born again in Christ’ – which is not the phrase used in this reading. Article 27 says, ‘Baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference … but it is also a sign of Regeneration or new Birth …’

Despite its present-day use, the term ‘born again’ has been widely associated with evangelical Christians only since the late 1960s, beginning in the US. The phrase ‘born again’ now refers to a particular type of individual conversion experience – although the plural is used grammatically in verse 7 in this Gospel story.

The phrase gained popularity after 1976, when the Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson published his book Born Again. The term was so prevalent within a few years that in an interview during his presidential campaign Jimmy Carter described himself as ‘born again.’

But Nicodemus could not have anticipated late 20th century, evangelical, American uses of this phrase, let alone decide to answer the words of Jesus in an individual way that is promoted by the modern ‘born again’ movement.

So, what could a pious Jew and rabbi like Nicodemus have understood Jesus to mean in his own time?

According to the Mishnah, the duty of loving God ‘with all your soul’ (see Deuteronomy 6: 5) means ‘even if he takes your soul.’ Love of God is a total commitment – unto death. In commenting on this insight in the Mishnah, the rabbis quoted the psalms, ‘Because of you we are being killed all day long, and accounted as sheep for the slaughter’ (Psalm 44: 22, NRSVA).

One rabbi (Rabbi Simeon ben Menasya) asked what it could possibly mean for a righteous person to die many times throughout the day. He answered: ‘It is not possible for one to be killed every day; but God reckons the life of the pious as though they died a martyr’s death daily’ (Sifre Deuteronomy, 32).

Tradition said that when the people in the wilderness heard the words of the Ten Commandments revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai, the revelation struck death into their hearts. But, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said, they were brought back to new life ‘by God’s power’ [Rabbi Joshua ben Levi here quotes Songs 5: 6 and Psalm 68: 10].

In this way, the Ten Commandments were given to the people through a succession of deaths and rebirths. In other versions, death and rebirth come with direct encounters with God’s glory, with the miraculous rebirth of each of the 600,000 people present as they continuously encounter God face-to-face.

In this way, an encounter with the living God brings death and rebirth, a rabbinic tradition that a pious rabbi like Nicodemus would be familiar with.

It was believed that longing for spiritual transcendence is expressed through overcoming material desire. In this way, a life imprisoned by desire is a living death, but dying into God by total self-giving brings true life.

This tradition of interpretation continued into the Middle Ages. Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (1075/1086-1141), in his poems, says he would gladly die, for life without God ‘is death.

In other words, in the rabbinic tradition, life without God is like death, but life committed to loving God with the whole heart is lived as though I had died and had been given back my life as a new life by God.

What happened to Nicodemus after this reading?

In line with this rabbinic tradition, Nicodemus would have left Jesus that night challenged to ask whether he needed to move beyond the Law to an encounter with the living God, an encounter that brings death and rebirth.

This is his first of his three appearances in this Gospel. We meet him again when he states the law concerning the arrest of Jesus during the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7: 45-51).

The third time follows the Crucifixion, when he helps Joseph of Arimathea in taking the body of Christ down from the cross before dark, and preparing the body for burial (John 19: 39-42).

Compare the unfolding faith of Nicodemus in these three encounters with the way Saint Peter denies Christ three times.

So, in this Gospel reading, in the story of Nicodemus, birth is linked with death, new birth is linked with new life, and before darkness falls Nicodemus really comes to possess the Body of Christ, to hold the Body of Christ in his hands.

It is an appropriate Gospel reading after Easter, as we think of how Nicodemus is prepared for the Crucifixion and Resurrection and in time to hold the Body of Christ, to become a full communicant member of the Church in the joy of Easter.

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!
Christ is Risen!

The statue of Pythagoras (1989) by Nikolaos Ikaris (1920-1994) on the harbour front in Pythagóreio on the Greek island of Samos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 30 April 2025):

‘Become Like Children’ provides 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). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 30 April 2025) invites us to pray:

God of justice, instil in us a deep-rooted sense of solidarity with people who feel powerless, especially children. May we advocate for their rights and ensure they feel valued and heard in our communities.

The Collect:

Almighty Father,
you have given your only Son to die for our sins
and to rise again for our justification:
grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness
that we may always serve you
in pureness of living and truth;
through the merits of 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.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Lord God our Father,
through our Saviour Jesus Christ
you have assured your children of eternal life
and in baptism have made us one with him:
deliver us from the death of sin
and raise us to new life in your love,
in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
for whom no door is locked, no entrance barred:
open the doors of our hearts,
that we may seek the good of others
and walk the joyful road of sacrifice and peace,
to the praise of God the Father.

Collect on the Eve of Saint Philip and Saint James:

Almighty Father,
whom truly to know is eternal life:
teach us to know your Son Jesus Christ
as the way, the truth, and the life;
that we may follow the steps
of your holy apostles Philip and James,
and walk steadfastly in the way that leads to your glory;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’ (John 3: 16) … a sculpture at ‘Bloom’ in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, in 2018 (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 Iveagh Gardens, one of the best-kept secrets in Dublin, and the challenge to defend human rights

The Iveagh Gardens in Dublin were designed by Ninian Niven in a mixture of the ‘French Formal’ and the ‘English Landscape’ styles (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

Tucked away behind the south side of Saint Stephen’s Green and National Concert Hall on Earlsfort Terrace, the Iveagh Gardens are among the finest, but least known, of Dublin’s parks and gardens. I only got to know the gardens in recent years, and so it was a pleasure to have time to explore them with Charlotte when we were back in Dublin for a quick overnight visit at the end of last week.

The Iveagh Gardens claim to be Dublin’s best-kept secret. They were designed by Ninian Niven in 1865 as the grounds for the Dublin Exhibition Palace – a space ‘where the citizens might meet for the purposes of rational amusement blended with instruction’. But for too long, this open area close to Harcourt Street and Hatch Street was a private garden, owned at different times by the Guinness family, when they also owned Iveagh House, and then by University College Dublin, with its main building on Earlsfort Terrace, now the National Concert Hall.

The Iveagh Gardens are an oasis of tranquillity and beauty near the city centre, close to Saint Stephen’s Green and Grafton Street. They include cascades, rustic grottos, sunken lawns, fountains, woodlands, a maze, a rose garden, rockeries and archery grounds.

The Maze in the Iveagh Gardens is a miniature copy of the maze at Hampton Court in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Iveagh Gardens is a national property, rather a municipal park, almost completely surrounded by buildings making the place a little difficult to find. I was staying on Harcourt Street on Friday night, opposite the former site of the High School, and entered the Iveagh Gardens from Upper Hatch Street and left at Clonmel Street.

The site was known as Leeson’s Fields in 1756, when it was owned by Joseph Leeson (1701-1783), 1st Earl of Milltown. He gives his name to Leeson Street and built Russborough House, near Blessington, Co Wicklow. Some years later, Lord Milltown leased the land to John Hatch (1720-1797), MP for Swords and the principal developer of Harcourt Street and Hatch Street in 1777-1784.

Hatch, who was an ancestor of the playwright John Millington Synge, sold the site to John Scott (1739-1798), 1st Earl of Clonmell, as his private gardens, and it became known as Clonmell Lawns. Scott was the Attorney General and then Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, and due to his heavy drinking he was known as ‘Copper-Faced Jack’ – remembered in the name of a night club in the area, Copper Face Jack’s.

He gave Clonmel Street its name and his subsidiary title of Lord Earlsfort gives Earlsfort Terrace its name. An underground passage brought Lord Clonmell Earl from his house on Harcourt Street to the gardens without him having to walk on Harcourt Street or Clonmel Street.

There was a plan to continue Clonmel Street through the site of the gardens, linking Harcourt Street to the newly-built Earlsfort Terrace. But this plan never materialised; nor was Lord Clonmell’s tunnel found during archaeological explorations when the Luas line was being built.

Lord Clonmell’s house on Harcourt Street later became the National Children’s Hospital, and is now modern offices. Meanwhile, when he died in 1798, his title and his properties, including Clonmell Gardens, were inherited by his 14-year-old son, Thomas Scott (1783-1838), as the 2nd Earl of Clonmell. The estate was sold in 1810 and when the gardens were opened for public use in 1817 they were named Coburg Gardens after the royal family of Saxe-Coburg.

The entrance to the Coburg Gardens was then from the south side of Saint Stephen’s Green, known as the Royal Horse Bazaar. Several Orangemen were badly injured during a major riot in the park in August 1835. The gardens had fallen into disrepair by 1860, when they were used for grazing sheep and dumping waste.

The Iveagh Gardens were acquired by the Guinness family in 1862 and opened to the public in 1992 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness (1798-1868) acquired the 17-acre site when he co-founded the Dublin Exhibition Palace and Winter Garden Company in 1862 to provide a permanent exhibition of Irish arts and manufactures as well as public reading rooms, flower gardens, and a gas-lit winter garden, modelled on the Crystal Palace in London. He transferred the site to the company, and it was the venue for the Dublin Exhibition Palace and Winter Garden, officially opened by Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1865.

The Iveagh Gardens were designed by Ninian Niven in 1865, as an intermediate design between the ‘French Formal’ and the ‘English Landscape’ styles. A large sunken lawn near the Earlsfort Terrace entrance is one of only two purpose-built archery fields in Ireland. At its east end was a pond and boating tower, now inside the walls of Iveagh House. The cascade, or waterfall flows over an immense rockery, with rocks from each of the 32 counties. The maze is a miniature copy of the maze at Hampton Court in London.

The horticulturist and landscape gardener Ninian Niven (1799-1879) worked for most of his life in Ireland, but was born in Kelvingrove, Glasgow. He came to Ireland in 1827 as the head gardener of the grounds of the official residence of the Chief Secretary for Ireland in the Phoenix Park. Over the course of eight years, he developed his landscaping skills and remodelled the garden.

He became the curator of the Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin in 1834. Four years later, visitor numbers had risen from 7,000 a year to over 20,000, and he established the first horticultural training courses. In 1838, he established the Garden Farm nursery in Clonturk Lodge, Drumcondra.

Niven designed the gardens of many Irish country houses, influenced by his visit to France in the 1830s. In the Phoenix Park, he designed the gardens of the Viceregal Lodge, now Áras and Uachtaráin, the Chief Secretary’s Lodge, and the Under-Secretary’s Lodge, as well as the People’s Garden.

A large sunken lawn near the Earlsfort Terrace entrance is one of only two purpose-built archery fields in Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Sir Benjamin’s sons, Edward Cecil Guinness (1847-1927), later Lord Iveagh (1891), and Arthur Edward Guinness (1840-1915), later Lord Ardilaun (1880), bought back the Iveagh Gardens and the buildings in 1870. The site hosted an exhibition of Irish arts and manufactures in 1872. However, this was not a success, the Winter Gardens were sold and removed to England in 1882, and the gardens returned to private ownership and the Guinness family.

Lord Iveagh sold the buildings in 1883 to house the new Royal University of Ireland, but the Guinness family continued to own the gardens. The buildings were adapted after University College Dublin (UCD) was set up in 1908, and the present façade on Earlsfort Terrace was designed by the architect Rudolph Maximilian Butler and built in 1918.

When Éamon de Valera was both Taoiseach and chancellor of UCD, he began talks with Rupert Guinness, 2nd Earl of Iveagh, about the state acquiring Iveagh House at 80 Saint Stephen’s Green and the Iveagh Gardens. The request was turned down in 1937, but Lord Iveagh offered the house and gardens as a gift to the nation in 1939, insisting the Iveagh Gardens must not be built on and must remain a ‘lung’ for Dublin. His gift was accepted and Iveagh House became the Department of Foreign Affairs, while the Iveagh Gardens were re-united with UCD’s buildings on Earlsfort Terrace.

With growing student numbers, UCD had plans in 1961 to build on the Iveagh Gardens. Instead, however, UCD moved to Belfield, the gardens were saved, and eventually they were placed under the management of the Office of Public Works (OPW) in 1991. The OPW aimed to conserve and restore the park, maintaining Ninian Niven’s layout. The Iveagh Gradens opened to the public in 1992, the waterfall or cascade was restored in 1996, and a new entrance from Upper Hatch Street opened in 2003.

Elizabeth O’Kane’s sculpture of Count John McCormack, close to the National Concert Hall on Earlsfort Terrace (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

In the north-east corner and – appropriately – beside the National Concert Hall, is Elizabeth O’Kane’s 2008 sculpture of Count John McCormack (1884-1945). His voice and charisma made him the most successful concert performer of the early 20th century. He was the first artist to record the World War I song ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’. Later, the French Government awarded him the Légion d’Honneur and he was made a papal count by Pope Pius XI in 1928.

Nearby, close to Iveagh House and the Department of Foreign Affairs, a memorial commemorates the lives of human rights defenders who have been killed because of their work.

The memorial was inaugurated on International Human Rights Defenders Day, 9 December 2020, by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Mary Lawlor, and the Front Line Defenders Executive Director, Andrew Anderson.

The memorial, designed by Grafton Architects, is an Ogham garden with five standing stones, etched with ancient Irish Ogham script, each representing a native Irish tree. The space is enclosed by a crafted metal screen with plaques, bearing the words of people who gave their lives for their causes. They include Bety Cariño, who spoke at a gathering of human rights defenders I attended in Dublin Castle in 2010, and who was shot dead two months later during a peaceful protest in Mexico.

On this side of the Iveagh Gardens, a gate leads into the Readers’ Garden and the Museum of Literature Ireland in Newman House. But more about these tomorrow, hopefully (see HERE.

The memorial commemorating international human rights defenders was inaugurated in 2020 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Praying through poems and with USPG: 13 January 2023

‘The Kings still come to Bethlehem / With broken hearts and souls sore-vexed’ … the kings in a Ukrainian children’s nativity presentation in Budapest last week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

Christmas is not a season of 12 days, despite the popular Christmas song. Christmas is a 40-day season that lasts from Christmas Day (25 December) to Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation (2 February).

Throughout the 40 days of this Christmas Season, I am reflecting in these ways:

1, Reflecting on a seasonal or appropriate poem;

2, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’

We are back in Stony Stratford following a busy a week visiting Hungary and Finland with the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) and the Diocese in Europe, looking at how the church and church agencies there are working with refugees from Ukraine.

These Epiphany-tide journeys across Europe are over, but there is a lot of work to do on preparing reports and writing about these visits.

My choice of a seasonal poem this morning is ‘Epiphany,’ a poem written in 1916 by Winifred Mary Letts (1882-1972), an English-born writer who spent most of her life in Ireland. She was known for her novels, plays and poetry.

Winifred Mary Letts was born in Broughton, Salford, now part of Greater Manchester. She was her parents’ third child. Her father, the Revd Ernest Letts (1854-1904) was an artist and a Church of England priest. He married Isabel Mary Ferrier in Belfast in 1874. He was a minor canon and precentor of Manchester Cathedral, and the Rector of All Saints’, Newtown Heath, Manchester (1885-1904), until his untimely death.

Winifred many spent many childhood holidays at her mother’s home in Knockmaroon, near the Phoenix Park in Dublin. After the Revd Ernest Letts died in 1904, his widow returned to Ireland with their children and lived at Dal Riada in Blackrock, Co Dublin.

Winifred Mary Letts was educated in Bromley, Kent, and then at Alexandra College, Dublin. She began her career as a playwright, writing two one-act plays for the Abbey Theatre: The Eyes of the Blind (1906) and The Challenge (1909). She then started writing novels and children’s books.

Letts’s story ‘The Company of Saints and of Angels’ was published by The Irish Review in 1912, when the editor was Thomas MacDonagh, later one of the leaders of the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916. Her first poetry collection, Songs from Leinster, was published in 1913.

Six of her poems were set to music by Charles Villiers Stanford in A Sheaf of Songs from Leinster (1914); of these, the most famous is ‘A Soft Day’.

During World War I, while she was working as a nurse at army camps in Manchester in 1916, she published Hallowe’en and Other Poems of the War. Her poem ‘The Deserter’ (1916), describes the feelings and fate of a man terrified by the war, is often used in collections of World War I poetry.

Her collection was republished the following year as The Spires of Oxford, and other Poems (1917). A ‘Publisher’s Note’ in the 1917 edition explained: ‘The verdict of the public, as shown by continual requests to republish, is that The Spires of Oxford is the most important poem in the volume.’

She married the widowed William Henry Foster Verschoyle, of Kilberry, Co Kildare, in 1926, and they lived in Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin, and in Co Kildare. She continued to write novels and children’s fiction. Knockmaroon, a reminiscence of her childhood in her grandparents’ house in Dublin, was published in 1933 and is considered her finest book.

After William Verschoyle died in 1943, Winifred lived for a time with her sisters in Faversham, Kent. She returned to Ireland in 1950 and bought Beech Cottage in Killiney, Co Dublin. She lived there until moving to Tivoli Nursing Home in Dún Laoghaire in the late 1960s. She died in 1972 and is buried in Rathcoole, Co Dublin.

Epiphany (1916), by Winifred Mary Letts:

The Kings still come to Bethlehem
Though nineteen centuries have fled;
The Kings still come to Bethlehem
To worship at a Baby’s bed.
And still a star shines in the East,
For sage and soldier, king and priest.

They come not as they came of old
On lordly camels richly dight;
They come not bearing myrrh and gold
And jewels for a king’s delight.
All battle-stained and grim are they
Who seek the Prince of Peace to-day.

They bring not pearls nor frankincense
To offer Him for His content.
Weary and worn with long suspense
With kingdoms ravished, fortunes spent,
They have no gifts to bring but these—
Men’s blood and women’s agonies.

What toys have they to please a child?
Cannon and gun and bayonet.
What gold? Their honour undefiled.
What myrrh? Sad hearts and long regret.
For they have found through bitter loss
That Kings are throned upon the cross.

The Kings still come to Bethlehem
With broken hearts and souls sore-vexed.
And still the star is guiding them
Through weary nights and days perplexed.
God greet you, Kings, that you may be
New-crowned at His Epiphany.

‘Sad hearts and long regret’ (Winfred M Letts) … a cushion in ‘Ukrainian Space’ in Budapest last week (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

USPG Prayer Diary:

The theme in the USPG Prayer Diary this week is an ‘Epiphany Reflection,’ introduced on Sunday morning by the Revd Michael Sei from the Episcopal Church of Liberia.

The USPG Prayer Diary invites us to pray today in these words:

Let us pray for victims of violence and drug abuse. May they be offered help and support, and may they find healing and peace.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Ukrainian icons at the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church in Budapest last Sunday (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Small books, large empires, campaigning newspapers: anniversaries for thinking

Ludwig Wittgenstein and his Limerick-born interpreter Elizabeth Anscombe

Patrick Comerford

The ‘Decade of Centenaries’ has moved to a new phase this year, with commemorations – among others – of the centenaries of the opening of the Stormont Parliament, the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, the formation of the Irish Free State in 1921, and partition.

This year also marks the centenary of the publication of a short book. The name of the book – Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus – is not punchy, and the centenary edition is unlikely to appear on best-selling lists this year or to find its way into the decorations of shop windows. But this book has changed philosophy for ever.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was a Viennese-born Cambridge philosopher who had been influenced at an early stage by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. He worked primarily in the fields of logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language.

In his lifetime, Wittgenstein published just this one small, 75-page book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), one article, one book review and a children’s dictionary. His major work, Philosophical Investigations, was not published until two years after his death.

After World War I, and following the publication and translation of his Tractatus, he returned to Cambridge in 1929. There he met Dr Maurice O’Connor ‘Con’ Drury (1907-1976), then an ordinand in Westcott House, the Anglican theological college in Cambridge.

Con Drury was instrumental in arranging the philosopher’s many visits to Ireland in the 1930s and 1940s. During those visits, he stayed at Ross’s Hotel, now the Ashling Hotel in Parkgate Street, Dublin, in Kilpatrick House in Red Cross, Co Wicklow, as a guest of the Kingston family, and at the Drury family cottage in Kinvara, Co Galway.

Wittgenstein enjoyed strolling in the Phoenix Park and the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin, where a plaque on steps in the Great Palm House recall that he liked to sit and write there in the late 1940s. He returned to Cambridge and died in 1951.

Westcott House, Cambridge … an encounter with Con Drury brought Wittgenstein to Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

* * *

One of his best-known students was Professor Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (1919-2001). She was born in Limerick and baptised in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, and became one of the greatest English philosophers of the 20th century.

She was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s student and one of his literary executors. She became an authority on his work, editing and translating many of his writings, including his Philosophical Investigations.

Elizabeth Anscombe was Professor of Philosophy in the University of Cambridge from 1970 to 1986. When she died 20 years ago, she was buried in a grave in Cambridge beside the plot where Wittgenstein was buried half a century earlier.

Bertrand Russell said Wittgenstein was ‘the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived.’ Iris Murdoch’s debut novel centred on a line from the Tractatus. His influence reaches almost every discipline in the humanities and social sciences, and he has influenced many current Anglican theologians, including Andrew Davison and Alison Milbank.

Events to mark the centenary of the Tractatus include an international symposium of philosophers, an exhibition in Vienna and new editions in German and English.

Wittgenstein was a guest of the Kingston family in Kilpatrick House in Red Cross, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

German identity after
150 years of unification

As Angela Merkel steps down in September after 16 years as Chancellor of Germany, there are concerns about the rise of the far-right in Germany and questions about whether Germany can remain the powerhouse of the European Union.

Angela Merkel’s enduring presence on the European stage makes it difficult to remember that Germany is a new state, by European standards, and modern Germany only exists since German unification 150 years ago.

The Unification of Germany formally took place on 18 January 1871 at the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, following Bismarck’s humiliation of France in the Franco-Prussian War. William of Prussia was proclaimed the Emperor of the German Empire, and Berlin became the capital of the new Germany.

German national identity only developed in the 19th century, and German Unification postdates, for example, the proclamation of the modern Italian state (1861), the formation of the modern Greek state (1827), the Act of Union (1801), and the French Revolution (1789).

German colonies were spread across Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Between 50% and 70% of the Herero population in in German South-West Africa (Namibia) was exterminated in 1904. It became known as the Herero and Namaqua Genocide, and was an act of racist savagery that seemed unique at the time. But it became the forerunner of the Turkish genocide of Armenians and Pontic Greeks, and then, in the 1930s and 1940s, the Holocaust and the attempted genocide of Jews.

The Brandenburg Gate … a symbol of both German unification and German imperialism (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

* * *

Writing recently in the New Statesman, Richard J Evans, former Regius Professor of History at Cambridge University, observed: ‘It is a curious fact that if you say Germany was not exclusively or even primarily responsible for the outbreak of war in 1914, you are regarded as left wing in Britain and right wing in Germany.’

Wilhelm II, the last Kaiser, was forced off the throne in the November revolution after Germany’s defeat in World War I. He went into exile in the Netherlands where he spent the rest of his life, and the German colonial empire came to an end in 1919.

Members of the Hohenzollern family, the Prussian royal family, openly identified with the Nazis in the 1930s. The public backing of ‘Crown Prince’ Wilhelm for the Nazis in 1932 and 1933 was a significant influence in persuading large numbers of monarchist Germans to vote for Hitler and to support the Third Reich. The ex-Kaiser’s fourth son, August Wilhelm, became a Nazi stormtrooper.

The Hohenzollern family has recently emerged from decades of obscurity and has initiated a number of legal battles to recover what they claim is family property, including castles, estates and art works.

As Professor Evans wrote, ‘A decision in their favour would mean in effect ignoring their ancestors’ collaboration with the Nazis’ and ‘undermine the Federal Republic’s continuing and, so far, largely successful efforts to come to terms with the Nazi past.’

Continuity and identity remain problems for Germany, even 150 years after German unification.

The Hohenzollern crypt in Berlin Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

200 years of
‘Guardian’ journalism

For the past 50 years, I have been a daily reader of The Guardian, which is celebrating its bicentenary this year.

It is 200 years since a four-page weekly first appeared in Manchester in 1821. Since then, the Manchester Guardian has become The Guardian, and has published more than 54,000 editions, and several million pieces of journalism, including news reports, leaders, opinion articles, interviews, reviews, photographs and cartoons.

In its own words, The Guardian is ‘older than Germany, fish’n’chips, the FA Cup and Texas.’

At the beginning of the last century, the campaigning owner-editor, CP Scott, supported Irish Home Rule and opposed the Boer War. In 1914, the Guardian warned that a rush to war would be ‘a crime against Europe.’

Since then, the Guardian has embraced social justice, workers’ rights, redistributive economics, fairness, environmental concern, a measure of pacifism, an inclination for an underdog and a good sense of humour.

Sarah Tisdall leaked documents in 1983 revealing where cruise missiles would be deployed at Greenham Common. The Guardian was taken to court, and then editor Peter Preston, gave back the incriminating evidence – to the dismay of staff and readers. It was not the Guardian’s finest hour: Tisdall was jailed, and Preston later conceded he should have destroyed the documents at the outset.

The Guardian was first published in 1821 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

* * *

Some of its finest hours include taking on Jonathan Aitken in 1995. Aitken vowed to strike the Guardian down with the ‘trusty shield of British fair play’ and ‘the sword of truth.’ But determined journalists uncovered the supporting evidence they needed when they found key receipts in the basement of a bankrupt Swiss hotel.

Aitken had been receiving pay-offs from the Saudis, and when he was jailed for perjury for 18 months, the Guardian front-page headline proclaimed: ‘He lied and lied and lied.’ Niall Hamilton brought a £10 million libel case, but the evidence exposed him as liar and a cheat and brought an end to the ‘cash for questions’ case.

Chris McGreal witnessed genocide in Rwanda. Maggie O’Kane and Ed Vulliamy revealed the horrors of the siege of Sarajevo and the death camps in Bosnia.

Ewan McAskill told the story of Edward Snowden, the NSA files and in the biggest intelligence leak, uncovering the scale of western surveillance, and the Guardian played a pivotal role in the 2010 Wikileaks and in revealing the ‘Panama Papers.’

The newspaper that gave us memorable ‘typos’ such as a man named Brian who died of a ‘brian tumour’ also gave us the best-ever April Fools’ Day joke with a seven-page supplement on the attractions of San Serriffe on 1 April 1977.

Local newspapers are folding up and dying in England. The Lichfield Mercury, where I was a freelance contributor 50 years ago, began in 1815 but finally came to an end last year. The Guardian is constantly adapting to new circumstances and markets; hopefully, it has another 200 years of campaigning journalism ahead of it.

A special cartoon by Posy Symmonds celebrates 200 years of Guardian journalism

This feature was first published in the July 2021 edition of the ‘Church Review’ (Dublin and Glendalough.

The plans that betray the original ideals in early football clubs

A panorama of Villa Park from the Trinity Road Stand (Photograph: Harry Vale/Wikipedia)

Patrick Comerford

I live in a house divided. Since my teens, I have been an Aston Villa supporter, for no other reason than that Villa Park was the nearest ground to Lichfield; one of my sons is a lifelong fan of Newcastle United – for no other reason than as a young child he was attracted by the starkness of their black-and-white strip.

We have exchanged banter this season, as Aston Villa hovered around the middle of the table, never quite making into the top flight, while Newcastle eventually managed to avoid relegation.

On occasions, we have gone together to fixtures in England and Ireland home games in Dublin; we are ‘ABU’ supporters (‘Anyone But United’); and we have shared the same criticism of recent plans to create a ‘European Super League.’

Not that either Aston Villa or Newcastle were ever going to be considered for any new ‘super league.’ But the notions that football clubs are commodities to be traded and that ticketholders are customers and not fans or loyal supporters, eat away in insidious ways at many of the principles that undergird local support for local teams.

Fans saw the scheme as the ‘ultimate betrayal.’ Supporters of the ‘English Six’ – Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur – were vocal in their protests.

Chelsea supporters already resent the Russian owner Roman Abramovich, an oligarch close to Vladimir Putin. Manchester United fans feel scorned by the American Glazer family, who secured their loans to buy the club against its assets, including Old Trafford.

Aston, the home station for Villa Park … it had an early attraction as the first club on the line from Lichfield to Birmingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

***

Perhaps Manchester United fans went over the top when they invaded the pitch at Old Trafford; they certainly went beyond peaceful protest when police were injured and the teams’ hotel was besieged.

The cancellation of the ‘super league’ has been hailed as a victory for fans. But it may yet turn out to be nothing more than a Pyrrhic victory. The owners of the big clubs seem more interested in profit margins and the money earned through pay-to-view television, advertising, gambling and merchandising.

No-one failed to notice the irony of Boris Johnson pretending to take an interest in the plight of mainly working-class fans. That irony was compounded by the fact that the Prime Minister who made Brexit his trademark was opposed to taking the elite clubs out of the give-and-take of a league system that brings together the strong, the mediocre and the weak.

Some commentators also link Johnson with a Saudi bid to buy Newcastle United from Mike Ashley of Sports Direct. There are objections to a foreign state becoming a major stakeholder in a very integral part of English identity, and protesters accuse Saudi Arabia of abuses of human rights, including the murder of the US-based Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

The CIA links the murder to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and the Premier League is worried the bid could make the Crown Prince the effective owner of the club.

Saint James’ Park remains the name of Newcastle United’s home ground (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The church origins of
so many English clubs

This is not the first time for something like this in English football. In the 1990s, the top clubs broke away to form the Premier League.

But all of this is light years away from the origins of many English clubs, that can be traced to works kick-abouts and the ‘social gospel’ ideas of many Victorian parishes and churches, keen to provide facilities that offered healthy exercise and social activities for young men and boys in the rapidly expanding, industrial swaths of England.

Aston Villa, for example, was formed in 1874 by members of the Villa Cross Wesleyan Chapel in Handsworth, which is now part of Birmingham, and played its first match against the local Aston Brook Saint Mary’s rugby team, formed in a Church of England parish church that was demolished in the 1970s.

Aston Villa was one of a dozen teams that competed in the inaugural Football League in 1888, and one of the club’s directors, William McGregor (1846-1911), was the league’s founder and chair of the Football Association Aston Villa became as the most successful English club in the Victorian era, winning five League titles and three FA Cups by 1901.

For 40 years, McGregor worshipped at Wheeler Street Congregational Church in Aston. The Revd WG Percival said the best thing about him ‘was not so much the genial, kindly, honest sportsman, but the Christian behind it all.’ When he died, McGregor was buried in the churchyard at Saint Mary’s, Handsworth.

The former Hibernian Military School played a role in the formation of Bohemian AFC (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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Aston Villa’s arch-rivals are Birmingham City, with games between the two clubs – first played in 1879 – known as the ‘Second City Derby.’ Birmingham City was formed by members of Holy Trinity Church choir and Saint Andrew’s, the name of the club’s home ground, also points to early church links.

Other teams in the region include Wolverhampton Wanderers, another founding club in the Football League in 1888. Wolves were formed as Saint Luke’s FC in 1877 by John Baynton and John Brodie, two schoolboys at Saint Luke’s Church School in Blakenhall, when they were presented with a football by their headmaster, Harry Barcroft.

Newcastle United, the focus of division in this household, plays at Saint James’ Park, another name reflecting the early links many clubs had with local churches. To this day, Southampton glories in the nickname of ‘The Saints.’ They were founded from Saint Mary’s Parish, which gives the stadium its name.

Manchester City (1880) owes it origins to the Revd Arthur Connell of Saint Mark’s Church and his efforts to regenerate the former rural district of West Gorton. There are similar church origins for many other clubs.

In Scotland, Glasgow Celtic was established in 1888 by several Roman Catholic parishes trying to raise money to help feed poor children in the city. Sadly, the divisions between supporters In Liverpool and Glasgow perpetuate sectarian divisions among early Irish immigrants.

Watching an Irish home game in Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

An Anglican bishop who
played soccer at Croke Park

I wonder whether there are similar origins for Saint Patrick’s Athletic in Dublin. It is said the colours of Drogheda United represent the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Conception of Mary.

The original founder clubs of the League of Ireland were Shelbourne, Bohemians, Saint James’s Gate, Jacobs, Olympia, Frankfort, Dublin United and YMCA, some with obvious links with the Church of Ireland or seen at the time as ‘culturally Protestant.’

Bohemian Football Club, the second oldest League of Ireland club in continuous existence, began when a small group from Bells Academy in North Great George’s Street joined students from the Hibernian Military School in the Phoenix Park to form a club in 1890.

The founding secretary, Andrew Philip Magill (18), was a Protestant, and the founding secretary Paul Bell (17) was a Protestant. The name Bohemian AFC reflected the club’s difficulties in finding a suitable venue, wandering between the Phoenix Park, Jones Road and Whitehall, until their move to Dalymount in Phibsboro in 1901.

Jacobs Football Club was based in Crumlin. In the 1919-1920 season, during the Irish War of Independence, a group of Jacobs players invaded the dressing room of their opponents, Olympia, after a Leinster Senior Cup game. Two Jacobs players and an Olympia player were suspended when it emerged that Jacobs had been taunted for ‘playing soldiers’ in their team.

Bishop John Curtis (1880-1962) … the Irish missionary bishop who played soccer at Croke Park

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The United Churches Football League was formed in 1948 to facilitate Saturday-only football opportunities. It was founded at a meeting in Saint Mark’s Parish Hall in Westland Row, chaired by Canon George Hobson, but its origins can be traced back to the 1920s, when an early league was formed by former members of the Boys’ Brigade in the Old Boys Union.

Early clubs with links with Church of Ireland parishes included Saint Paul’s, North Strand, Saint Marks, Saint George’s and Clontarf. Key figures in the league included Canon Robin Armstrong, later Rector of Dun Laoghaire, who was an amateur international player while with Bohs, George Fitch of Kildare Place School, and Jim Carroll of Hibernian Marine.

Another renowned player was John Curtis (1880-1962), the last Irish Anglican bishop to work in China. In his late teens, Curtis played at inside-left for Bohs in 1897-1898, when Oliver St John Gogarty played at outside-left, and they won the Leinster Senior Cup. He played again when Bohs won the Leinster Senior Cup the following season.

In 1899-1900, Bohemians got to the Irish Cup final against Cliftonville after John Curtis scored a vital goal in the semi-final against Belfast Celtic at Jones Road, now Croke Park. But Bohs lost that final 2-1 in Grosvenor Park in Belfast. His two younger brothers, Edward (Ned) and Harry, also played for Bohs.

His career became the stuff of schoolboy adventure stories and comic strips: after the Japanese invaded China at the start of World War II, he was a prisoner of war in Shanghai. He stayed in China as a missionary bishop after the revolution, living in Hangzhou until he was forced to leave in 1950.

Clarendon House, Rathgar Road … the childhood home of Bishop John Curtis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

This two-page feature was first published in June 2021 in the Church Review (Dublin and Glendalough)