COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
Showing posts with label SPG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SPG. Show all posts
28 March 2026
Mowbray Stephen O’Rorke,
the bishop with the ‘tallest
mitre in Christendom’ and
his family roots in Ballinasloe
Patrick Comerford
For many years, I maintained a website and Facebook page for a project I had called the Dead Anglican Theologians Society. The project has been moribund for the past five years, but should I ever have thoughts about breathing new life into it, some of the 20th century theologians I ought to include are Alfred Hope Patten (1885-1958), Bishop Mowbray Stephen O’Rorke (1869-1953) and Eric Milner-White (1884-1963), three key Anglican theologians I was reminded of when I was in Walsingham earlier this month, speaking at the Ecumenical Pilgrimage.
The ashes of Bishop Mowbray Stephen O’Rorke are buried in the Shrine Church, beneath a very impressive, mediaeval-style effigy, close to the Holy House, the Annunciation Altar and a similar effigy memorialising Alfred Hope Patten.
It was said Bishop O’Rorke wore the ‘tallest mitre in Christendom’. He had been a bishop in what is now Ghana, where he was supported by the Anglican mission agency SPG (now USPG), and was one of the leading figures in the Anglo-Catholic movement throughout the first half of the 20th century. He also had very strong family links with Ireland, and his parents were married in Saint Peter’s Church, Dublin, before they emigrated to Birmingham.
The Right Revd Mowbray Stephen O’Rorke (1869-1953), second Bishop of Accra, was the second of five sons of William Joseph O’Rorke of Ballinasloe, Co Galway, and later of Birmingham and Nottingham, and Annie Elizabeth Wilson, daughter of William Wilson of Saunders Grove, near Baltinglass, Co Wicklow.
Although he was born in England, Bishop O’Rorke was proud of his Irish family background and chose to do his theological training at Trinity College, Dublin.
William Joseph O’Rorke may have romanticised that he was related to James Rorke (1827-1875), the Irish-born adventurer who gave his name to Rorke’s Drift in South Africa, explaining why William gave the name ‘The Drift' to the family home on Magdala Road in Nottingham.
However, it is more likely William Joseph O’Rorke was a closely related to a well-known clerical and land-owning branch of the O’Rorke family in Co Galway that once owned the Clonbern and Bermingham House estates. Some sources suggest he may have been related to the Revd John O’Rorke (1775-1849), and through him to Charles Dennis O'Rorke (1827-1915), of Clonbern House, Co Galway, and Sir George Maurice O’Rorke, the Irish-born Speaker of the House of Representatives, New Zealand.
The Revd John O’Rorke born in 1775, the son of the Revd Timothy O’Rorke, also known known as Timothy or Teige, Thaddeus or Thady, or later in late as Thomas O’Rorke. The Rev Thaddeus O’Rorke joined the Church of Ireland and after that was always known as Thomas O’Rorke. He was the Curate of Cong, Co Mayo, and his headstone bears the name Thomas. The Revd Timothy O’Rorke always referred to himself and to his father as Thomas.
John O’Rorke was educated at Trinity College Dublin (BA 1800), and from 1801 he was the curate of Moylough, Co Galway. He later became Rector of Foxford, Co Mayo, and Vicar of Straid, in the Diocese of Achonry, but he continued to live in Moylough.
He leased land from the Bellews of Mountbellew and bought the Clonbern estate in Co Galway from the family of Archbishop Beresford of Tuam in 1828. His landholdings included over 1,600 acres in Co Roscommon and 217 acres in Co Westmeath. He was not popular in the Moylough area and was frequently was involved in law suits, particularly with a neighbouring landholder, Daniel Moore Kilkelly.
John O’Rorke was married three times, and had a large number of children before he died at Moylough House, Co Galway, on 31 January 1849 at the age of 73 after a fall from his horse.
His son, Charles Dennis O’Rorke, built Clonbern House in the early 1850s and inherited Bermingham House, near Tuam, from his uncle, John Dennis, a famous huntsman. By the 1870s, Charles O’Rorke owned 1,302 acres in Co Galway and over 1,000 acres in Co Kerry. The Land Commission acquired an estate of over 5,200 acres belonging to Charles Trench O’Rorke of Clonbern in 1927.
The bishop’s father, William Joseph O’Rorke, was born in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, in 1835, the son of Owen O’Rorke; his mother, Ann Elizabeth Wilson (1840-1912), was the daughter of William Wilson of Sander’s Court, near Baltinglass, Co Wicklow.
The couple were married in Saint Peter’s Church, Dublin, on 23 September 1862. He gave his address as 20 Union Square, Islington, London, and she was living at 38 Longwood Avenue, Dublin. (No 39 Longwood Avenue was later the home of Adelaide Margaret Field (1878-1953) who was baptised in Saint Peter’s in 1878 and married Charles William Comerford (1877-1953) in Holy Trinity Church, Rathmines, in 1910).
Anne and William O’Rorke moved to Birmingham, and they were the proprietors of a temperance hotel in Yardley. Later they ran the Caledonian Hotel on Lister Gate, Nottingham, which was bombed on 24 September 1916 in the only Zeppelin raid on the city. They were the parents of six children, five sons and a daughter, who were born in Birmingham and Nottingham between 1863 and 1879.
Mowbray Stephen O’Rorke was born in Birmingham on 21 May 1869 and he was baptised in the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, Bristol Street, Birmingham, on 1 August 1869.
He was educated at University School, Nottingham, and Wesley College, Sheffield. He was engaged in business in London from 1885 to early 1899, and was called to the Bar at the Middle Temple. He moved to Dublin in 1899, where he studied theology at Trinity College, Dublin in preparation for ordination (BA, Div Test 1902; MA, 1905; BD and DD 1912).
He was ordained deacon on 21 September 1902 and priest on 20 December 1903 by the Bishop of Durham, Handley Moule, previously Norrisian Professor of Divinity at Cambridge.
His first appointments were as a curate in Jarrow (1902-1905) and at Saint Margaret’s, Durham (1905-1910). He then spent a year in Australia as the priest-in-charge of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Rockhampton, Queensland (1910-1911). He returned to England and the Diocese of Durham on 14 May 1912 as the curate of Saint Oswald’s, Durham (1912-1913). While he was there, his mother Ann Elizabeth (Wilson) O’Rorke died in Nottingham on 29 June 1912.
When Nathaniel Temple Hamlyn (1864-1929) retired as the first Bishop of Accra on the Gold Coast (now Ghana), he was succeeded by O’Rorke as the second Bishop (1913-1924). He was consecrated bishop in the chapel Lambeth Palace on 25 January 1913 by Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury; AF Winnington-Ingram, Bishop of London; George Nickson, Bishop of Jarrow; Henry Montgomery, secretary of SPG (now USPG) and former Bishop of Tasmania; Bishop Nathanael Temple Hamlyn; and Herbert Mather, former Bishop of Antigua, who had been in charge of the Diocese of Accra during the vacancy.
In the Diocese of Accra, he worked hard to train local priests, introduced a number of Anglo-Catholic liturgical practices and oversaw the establishment of new churches. However, he understood that the success of the Anglican Mission depended on the development of Ghanaian leadership, and he ordained two Ghanaian priests in 1916. But O’Rorke was aware too of the factors that led to the listlessness of the Anglican mission in Ghana. His work was hampered at times by interference from the colonial government.
He attended the sixth Lambeth Conference of bishops in July 1920 and August 1920 and also took part in the Anglo-Catholic Congress that year. On Tuesday 29 June 1920, he was among the 1,200 robed priests and 22 bishops who walked through Holborn in central London to Mass in Saint Alban’s Church and the opening of the first Anglo-Catholic Congress.
He returned to England in 1924, and was succeeded by John Aglionby as Bishop of Accra (1924-1951). By then, there were only three African clergy in the diocese, and it was not until O’Rorke left in 1924, that a theological college was started.
He was the Rector of Blakeney and Langham Parva in the Diocese of Norwich in 1924-1934, and with Cockthorpe in 1924-1929. As the Rector of Blakeney, Norfolk, he was the close neighbour of Father Hope Paten when he was restoring the shrine and pilgrimage in Walsingham.
O’Rorke offered the necessary pontifical services, from the consecration of churches to the blessing of bell and became and became one of the first Guardians of the Shrine at Our Lady of Walsingham. He was the episcopal presence on 13 October 1931, when the image of Our Lady of Walsingham was moved from the parish church of Saint Mary and enthroned in the newly-built Holy House, and consecrated the Holy House and the Shrine Church. As a founding priest guardian (1931-1953), he had Saint Cuthbert’s stall on the south side of the chancel, although he did not sign the Guardians’ Roll.
When he retired to the west country for health reasons, he remained a guardian and he returned to Walsingham in 1938 to bless the newly-built Shrine Church. He held a general licence in the Diocese Bath and Wells (1934-1939) as chaplain of Saint Audries School, West Quantoxhead, Somerset and then of King’s College, Taunton.
O’Rorke retired in 1939, and had a general licence in London from 1939 and Exeter from 1947. He lived in Roborough, South Devon, and died in a nursing home in Eastbourne, Sussex, on 15 March 1953. His will included a £500 bequest to SPG (now USPG). He was also a friend and supporter of exiled Russian Orthodox Christians.
His ashes were buried in the Shrine Church in Walsingham under his stately effigy beside the Annunciation Altar, close to the Holy House and to the monument to Hope Patten. He is depicted in one of the six carved heads in the shrine church roof.
Bishop O’Rorke’s siblings also led interesting lives. He was one of the two brothers among five who were ordained, one was an army chaplain and prisoner of war, and another brother was a vet and army officer.
His parents, Ann Elizabeth (Wilson) O’Rorke, who died in Nottingham on 29 June 1912 and William Joseph O’Rorke who died in Nottingham on 2 March 1924, were the parents of six children, a daughter and five sons:
1, Owen William Wilson O’Rorke (born 1863), born Birmingham, later lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he married Celina Marie Bonnafon (1875-1945) and was the father of two sons and a daughter.
2, George Samuel O’Rorke MA LLD (1866-1963), born Birmingham, a solicitor in Nottingham.
3, (Right Revd) Mowbray Stephen O'Rorke MA DD (1869-1953), later Bishop of Accra.
4, Annie Elizabeth O’Rorke (1874-1962), born Nottingham.
5, (Revd) Benjamin Garniss O’Rorke MA DSO (1875-1918), was an army chaplain and prisoner of war. He studied at Oxford and was ordained deacon in Exeter Cathedral in 1898 and priest in 1899, serving his title at Saint Peter's, Tiverton, until 1901.
He was a chaplain during the Boer War, and became assistant deputy chaplain general with the British Expeditionary Force. He was captured during the retreat from Mons on 25 August 1914 when the Coldstream Guards and others fought a rear guard action to hold off the Germans as the British forces escaped. He was a prisoner of war in Germany for 10 months before being repatriated as a non-combatant. He returned to France with the 33rd Division as senior chaplain. He was mentioned in Despatches and awarded the DSO. He died from pneumonia in Falmouth Military Hospital, Cornwall, on Christmas Day 1918, aged 43, and is buried in Falmouth Cemetery. His book In the Hands of the Enemy, was one of the first books to describe what it was like to be a POW.
He was also the author of Our opportunity in the West Indies, published by SPG in 1913.
He married Myra Roberta MacDougall (1872-1958), daughter of the Revd Henry MacDougall (1820-1900). They were the parents of one daughter, Kathleen Myra Frances O’Rorke (1910-2010), who later lived in Ithaca, New York. The widowed Myra O’Rorke married Major Steuart Menzies (1862-1939) in 1928.
6, (Lieut-Col) Frederick Charles O’Rorke FRCVS (1879-1976), born Nottingham, was a vet with the Army Veterinary Corps on the Western Front, 1914-1919. He also served in World War II. He married Dorothy Violet Whitaker (1880-1963), who died in Castlebar, Co Mayo, and they were the parents of (Lieut-Col) Frederick Denis Whitaker O’Rorke (1909-1998).
01 March 2026
Saint Thomas’s Cathedral,
Kuching, celebrates its
70th anniversary in 2026,
but dates back to 1851
Patrick Comerford
During this visit to Kuching, I am attending the Cathedral Eucharist each Sunday in Saint Thomas’s Cathedral, Kuching, the cathedral of the Anglican Diocese of Kuching, which includes Sarawak and Brunei. We are staying beside the cathedral, which is a three-minute walk from where we stay, and I hear the cathedral bell ringing thtroughout the day, including ringing for the angelus at 6 am, 12 noon and 6 pm.
The present cathedral is celebrating its 70th anniversary. The cathedral grounds include the cathedral, the bishop’s house on the top of a hill, the diocesan offices, the cathedral hall, the parish centre, and the House of the Epiphany, the theological college for the Diocese of Kuching. Nearby are Saint Thomas’s, the diocesan boys’ school, Saint Mary’s, the diocesan girls’ school, and the Marian Hotel, once the Ong family home, then the boarding house of Saint Mary’s School, later became the diocesan guesthouse, and now a charming boutique hotel where we stayed for a week at the beginning of our visit in 2024.
Saint Thomas’s Cathedral was built in 1954-1956. It is a plain but modern structure that in many ways is typical of many large churches of this size and importance built in the English-speaking world in the mid-20th-century.
The cathedral faces Padang Merdeka (Independence Square) with its monumental kapok or Java cotton tree. But the cathedral compound is also accessed from Jalan McDougall, a street named after the first Anglican bishop in Kuching, Francis Thomas McDougall (1817-1886), who arrived in Sarawak on Saint Peter’s Day, 25 August 1848.
The Borneo Church Mission and McDougall and his party were invited to Sarawak by James Brooke, the Rajah of Sarawak. McDougall who led the group was both a doctor and a priest. The Rajah gave the missionaries a considerable area of jungle-covered hill. on which they built Saint Thomas’s Church, a wooden church that could seat up to 250 people.
Saint Thomas’s served as a pro-cathedral for many years and stood on a hill where the parish hall now stands, about 50 metres north of the present cathedral. These first missionaries also built a school that later became Saint Thomas’s and Saint Mary’s, and a dispensary.
Kuching was then within the Diocese of Calcutta, and Bishop Daniel Wilson of Calcutta, consecrated Saint Thomas’s Church on 22 January 1851. The church became the home church and base of the Borneo Church Mission in Sarawak.
McDougall returned to England in 1853 to manage the transfer of the mission from the Borneo Mission Society, whose funds came to an end, to the Anglican mission agency SPG (the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel), now USPG.
The initiative to create a separate diocese based in Kuching came from SPG and SPG contributed £5,000 (about £875,00 today) towards the endowment of the new diocese. McDougall returned to Sarawak in 1854 and the work of the mission grew.
McDougall was appointed the first Bishop of Labuan and Sarawak in 1855. His title was chosen carefully because Labuan was a British territory and Sarawak was not, and was ruled as an autonomous state by the Brooke family with the title of rajah. McDougall was consecrated a bishop in Calcutta on Saint Luke’s Day, 18 October 1855, by Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta, under a commission from John Bird Sumner, Archbishop of Canterbury. His consecration was said to be ‘the first consecration of an English bishop performed outside the British Isles.’
Saint Thomas’s Church was wrecked in the Chinese insurrection in 1857, but was restored soon after, and continued to serve as the Pro-Cathedral after McDougall returned to England in 1868.
Walter Chambers (1824-1893) was the second Bishop of Labuan, Sarawak and Singapore from 1868 to 1881. Chambers had arrived in Sarawak in 1851, and he brought his first four converts to Kuching to be baptised on Christmas Eve 1854. He married Lizzie Wooley, another missionary and a cousin of McDougall’s wife, Harriette McDougall, in 1857.
George Frederick Hose (1838-1922), a former Archdeacon of Singapore, was the third Bishop of Labuan, Sarawak and Singapore from 1881 to 1909. He organised the first Iban conference in 1893, and expanded mission work in Sabah. Hose is also credited with having planted the first rubber seeds in Borneo.
When Hose retired, a separate Diocese of Singapore was formed, and the diocese reverted to the name of Labuan and Sarawak with William Robert Mounsey (1867-1952) as the fourth bishop (1909-1916). He founded the Borneo Mission Association in 1909, and after he retired, he joined the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield, where he was known as Father Rupert.
Ernest Denny Logie Danson (1880-1946) was the fifth Bishop of Labuan and Sarawak (1917-1931). During his time, the old Saint Thomas’s continued to serve as the Pro-Cathedral. While Danson was bishop, the building was enlarged and it was given the status of a cathedral in 1920.
Danson saw these enlargements as temporary measures, and by 1920 he was proposing a permanent cathedral building of brick. However, those dreams were not realised for another 35 years.
Danson was succeeded as bishop by Noel Hudson in 1932-1937 and Francis Hollis in 1938-1948. After Hudson resigned from Sarawak, he became Secretary of SPG, then Bishop of St Albans, of Newcastle and later of Ely.
Francis Hollis (1884-1955) first came to Sarawak in 1916, and was the assistant priest at Saint Thomas’s Cathedral, Kuching (1916-1923), priest-in-charge of the Land Dayak mission of Saint James, Quop and Tai (1923-1928), principal of Saint Thomas’s School (1928-1938), and Archdeacon of Sarawak (1934-1938).
He became Bishop of Labuan and Sarawak in 1938. During World War II, Hollis was interned at Batu Lintang camp near Kuching for 3½ years (1942-1945), and his time in internment seriously undermined his health and his eyesight. He resigned in 1948 after 32 years in Sarawak.
During World War II, the wooden cathedral suffered from four years of neglect and abuse, and the occupying Japanese forces used the old cathedral as a store. After the devastation of World War II, the Diocese of Labuan and the bishopric of Sarawak were joined into the Diocese of Borneo.
Nigel Edmund Cornwall (1903-1948) became the first Bishop of Borneo in 1949. His immediate task was to restore the churches, schools and other church property destroyed during the Japanese occupation. The high points of his time as bishop were the construction of the new Saint Thomas’s Cathedral in Kuching, and the centenary of the founding of the Anglican Church in Borneo.
Soon after he arrived in Kuching, Cornwall commissioned an architect in England to design a new cathedral and an appeal was launched.
The foundation stone of a new cathedral was laid by Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, on 15 October 1952. The old cathedral building was dismantled carefully, and the parts that could be reused were taken by boat to the Iban village of Sungai Tanju, located in the Samarahan division.
The architect’s plans sought to incorporate a western plan and layout with the outward appearance of the Far East. However, it was soon realised the plans would have placed a heavy financial burden on the diocese. Alfred George Church of the Singapore architects Swan and McLaren drew up new plans that were unanimously approved in October 1954.
The Swan and Maclaren group is one of the oldest architectural practices in Singapore and was formerly known as Swan & Maclaren and Swan & Lermit, and was one of the most prominent architectural firms in Singapore when it was a crown colony during the early 20th century.
The firm has designed numerous heritage buildings in Singapore and Malaysia, including Raffles Hotel (1899), the Teutonia Club (1900, now the Goodwood Park Hotel) and Victoria Memorial Hall (1905, now the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall), the Chesed-El Synagogue (1905), and the Sultan Mosque (1924-1928) in Singapore.
The architect of the new cathedral in Kuching, Alfred Church, had been a prisoner of war during World War II at Kanu Camp, a Japanese POW camp in Siam (Thailand).
Bishop Cornwall cut the first sod on 27 January 1955, the building was completed by May 1956, and Cornwall consecrated the cathedral on 9 June 1956.
Saint Thomas’s Cathedral is built in the style of a basilica, with a bright red barrel-vaulted ceiling. As light pours in the upper windows, the of yellow and golden light and the red ceiling create a combination of colours that many Chinese people associate with prayers, worship and the spiritual life.
The 12 pillars are each marked with consecration crosses. The white pillars are thin at the bottom and thick at the top, and the arches reach a height of about 48 ft. The Rood Beam has a figure of the Crucified Christ, with the Virgin Mary and Saint John on either side. The figure of Christ on the Crucifix appears to be modelled on a man from one of the indigenous people of Sarawak.
The greater part of the cost of building the cathedral came from within the Diocese of Kuching, but there were generous outside contributions, while each parish in the diocese provided a part of the building.
The chancel was built with funds from SPG (USPG) to mark more than 100 years of links between the diocese and SPG. The six stained glass windows high above the chapter and choir stalls depict six of the seven sacraments and commemorate Geraldine Ng Siew Lan, who died in 2014.
A plaque above the lectern reads: ‘Borneo Mission Association, 1909-2015, For its memorial look around you.’
The coats-of-arms of the Diocese of Kuching, Singapore, Calcutta, London, Canterbury and other linked dioceses decorate the walls above the chapter and choir stalls.
A plaque at the west end records that Saint Andrew’s in Brunei paid for the roofing, Saint Philip and Saint James in Kuala Belait provided the cost of the terrazzo paving of the floor, and the new parish of Saint Margaret and All Saints, Seria in Brunei bore the cost of the electric lighting.
The Lady Chapel is the gift of Yap Ghee Heng (1880-1967).
The chime of bells in the tower were presented jointly in 1956 by Sarawak Oilfields Ltd, British Malayan Petroleum and the Shell Company of North Borneo. The eight bells in the tower were dedicated to eight priests who were ordained on the centenary of the diocese in 1955.
Sarawak and Sabah became parts of the new Federation of Malaysia in 1963. Bishop Cornwall was succeeded by Bishop David Nicholas Allenby (1909-1995), and the Diocese of Borneo was the divided into the Diocese of Kuching and the Diocese of Jesselton, later renamed the Diocese of Sabah.
Allenby appointed the Very Revd Michael Lim as the first Sarawakian Dean of Saint Thomas’s Cathedral, and Ven (later Bishop) Basil Temenggong, the first Sarawakian and Iban, as Archdeacon.
Bishop Allenby retired in 1968 and spent the last years of his life at Willen Hospice, near Milton Keynes. When he died in 1995, he was is buried in the churchyard of Saint Mary Magdalene, Willen.
The Diocese of Sabah, which covers Sabah and Labuan, was formed in 1962. The Diocese of West Malaysia was formed to separate that region from Singapore in 1970.
Bishop Basil Temenggong, who became bishop in 1968, was the first Sarawakian and the first Iban to be made bishop. He died suddenly in Simunjan while administering Confirmation in 1984. Bishop John Leong was consecrated in 1985 and enthroned in Saint Thomas’s Cathedral, Kuching.
The Diocese of Kuching became a part of the Province of South East Asia when it was formed in 1996, with the neighbouring Dioceses of Sabah, West Malaysia, and Singapore. The Church of the Province of South East Asia is celebrating the 30th anniversary of its formation this year (2026).
Today, the Diocese of Kuching includes Sarawak in Malaysia and Brunei, as well as part of Indonesian Borneo lying north of the equator and west of longitude 115 42. The Right Revd Danald Jute has been the 14th Bishop of Kuching and Brunei since 2017; the Right Revd Andrew Shie is the assistant bishop.
The House of the Epiphany beside the cathedral was established in 1952 and has provided ordination training for the diocese. The House of the Epiphany has been closely identified with the work of Peter Howes (1911-2003), later an assistant bishop in Kuching. He was arrested by the Japanese at Kuap in 1942. While he was interned in the Batu Lintang Prison Camp, he celebrated the Eucharist for the prisoners, together with Biship Hollis and other missionaries.
After World War II, Howes returned to Sarawak to begin rebuilding the Church. He became the first Warden of the House of Epiphany when it opened in 1953. Later, he became Archdeacon of Sarawak and Brunei, Archdeacon of Brunei and North Sarawak, and then Principal of the re-founded House of the Epiphany (1971-1976). He was an assistant bishop in the Diocese of Kuching from 1976 to 1981.
There has been a warm welcome in Saint Thomas’s Cathedral from the Dean of Kuching, the Very Revd Kho Thong Meng, the Revd Dato Bong Ah Loi who preached last Sunday and who presided this morning, from my friend the Revd Dr Jeffry Renos Nawie, who preached this morning, and from the priests of the cathedral each time I visit. Saint Thomas’s has become my home church and cathedral each time I visit Kuching.
• Saint Thomas’s Cathedral has six regular Sunday services: Holy Communion in English, 6:30 am; Sung Eucharistic in English, 8:30 am; Bahasa Malaysia Service with Holy Communion (McDougall Hall, Level 3, Parish Centre), 10:30 am; Mandarin Service with Holy Communion, 10:30 am; Iban Service with Holy Communion, 2 pm; Evensong with Holy Communion in English, 5:30 pm.
14 November 2025
Daily prayer in the Kingdom Season:
14, Friday 14 November 2025
Patrick Comerford
We are in the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints and Advent, and this week began with the Third Sunday before Advent, which was also Remembrance Sunday. The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (14 November) remembers Samuel Seabury (1729-1796), the first Anglican Bishop in North America.
Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time early this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading 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.
Luke 17: 26-37 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 26 ‘Just as it was in the days of Noah, so too it will be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 They were eating and drinking, and marrying and being given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed all of them. 28 Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, 29 but on the day that Lot left Sodom, it rained fire and sulphur from heaven and destroyed all of them 30 – it will be like that on the day that the Son of Man is revealed. 31 On that day, anyone on the housetop who has belongings in the house must not come down to take them away; and likewise anyone in the field must not turn back. 32 Remember Lot’s wife. 33 Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it. 34 I tell you, on that night there will be two in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. 35 There will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken and the other left.’ 37 Then they asked him, ‘Where, Lord?’ He said to them, ‘Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.’
Today’s reflection:
The Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (Luke 17: 26-37) is one of the stories about preparing for the kingdom of God and the arrival of the Son of God on earth, not only as the incarnate Christ Child at Christmas in nativity story or in a decorative crib, but also as Christ the King.
As we prepare for the Feast of Christ the King in nine days’ time (Sunday 23 November 2025) and for Advent, we should expect many of our readings to have apocalyptic themes, looking forward to that Coming of Christ the King at his second coming.
The apocalyptic images in today’s Gospel reading anticipate some of these themes, looking back at unexpected terrors in the past and with apocalyptic warnings about what the future may hold.
TS Eliot’s poem East Coker, the second of his Four Quartets, is set in late November and ends:
In my end is my beginning.
But it opens:
In my beginning is my end.
The radical author, professor, preacher and peace activist, the Revd Robin Meyers, once described by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu as ‘scholarly, pastoral, prophetic, and eloquent,’ has written: ‘Life itself passes daily judgment on the idea that [God is in control], that good deeds and righteous living exempt us from mindless tragedy, or that the meek will inherit anything other than a crushing debt and a dead planet.’
But in a sermon some years ago in the First [Congregational] Church in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the First Sunday of Advent, his former colleague, the church historian, the Revd Dr J Mary Luti of Andover Newton Theological School, responded: ‘Nonetheless, and hoping against hope, today’s scriptures emphatically encourage us to stand firm, to refuse to throw in the towel. God really is in charge, they assert, and one day you won’t have to take that on faith.’
She says: ‘Advent intends to make a pre-emptive strike on despair as the Church sets out on another year of following Christ from manger to grave, and beyond.’
As we approach Advent, we find ourselves in a unique position, standing both at the beginning and at the end, at the turning–point of the liturgical year. This peculiar experience of living within a paradox is a characteristic of the Christian faith. However, perhaps the greatest paradox of Advent, we shall find, is the tension between the joyous anticipation of the birth of Jesus and the inevitability of the cross.
In a true sense, Advent does not end at Christmas. The nativity, the Incarnation, cannot be separated from the crucifixion, the Atonement and the Resurrection. The purpose of Christ’s coming into the world, of the ‘Word made flesh’ and dwelling among us, is to reveal God and his grace to the world through Jesus’ life and teaching, but also through his suffering, death, and resurrection.
So, at the beginning of things, we think about the end of things. The Gospel reading today reflects this emphasis on Christ’s second coming and include themes of accountability, judgment, but also prompts us to renew our hope of eternal life. In the words of TS Eliot,
What we call the beginning is often the end
and to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. (TS Eliot, Little Gidding)
Today’s Prayers (Friday 14 November 2025):
Samuel Seabury, who is remembered in the church calendar in Common Worship today (14 November), was born in Connecticut in 1729 and, after graduating from Yale, was ordained priest in England and assigned by SPG (the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, now USPG) to a church in New Brunswick, in New Jersey.
During the American War of Independence, he was a chaplain in the British army. After the war, at a meeting of the clergy in Connecticut, he was chosen to seek consecration as bishop. However, after a year of fruitless negotiations with the Church of England, he was ordained bishop by the nonjuring bishops in the Scottish Episcopal Church on 14 November 1784.
Returning to America, he held his first Convention in Connecticut in August 1785 and the first General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1789. The church adopted a version of the Scottish Eucharist. Samuel Seabury died on 25 February 1796.
The theme this week (9 to 15 November) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Hope for the Future’ (pp 54-55). This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections from Laura D’Henin-Ivers, Chief Executive Officer at Hope for the Future, to mark COP30 in Brazil this week.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 14 November 2025) invites us to pray:
God of wisdom, we pray for those in positions of authority making decisions at COP30 and beyond. May their hearts attune to the cries of the earth and its people. May they pursue policies that protect the most vulnerable and honour the integrity of creation.
The Collect:
Almighty Father,
whose will is to restore all things
in your beloved Son, the King of all:
govern the hearts and minds of those in authority,
and bring the families of the nations,
divided and torn apart by the ravages of sin,
to be subject to his just and gentle rule;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Post Communion Prayer:
God of peace,
whose Son Jesus Christ proclaimed the kingdom
and restored the broken to wholeness of life:
look with compassion on the anguish of the world,
and by your healing power
make whole both people and nations;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Additional Collect:
God, our refuge and strength,
bring near the day when wars shall cease
and poverty and pain shall end,
that earth may know the peace of heaven
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflections
Continued Tomorrow
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
23 March 2025
Daily prayer in Lent 2025:
19, Sunday 23 March 2025,
Third Sunday in Lent (Lent III)
Patrick Comerford
We are in the middle of Lent, which began on Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025), and today is the Third Sunday in Lent (Lent III), known in some places as Oculi Sunday (meaning ‘eyes’) or Scrutiny Sunday.
Later this morning, I hope to be at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. 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.
Luke 13: 1-9 (NRSVA):
1 At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4 Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’
6 Then he told this parable: ‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. 7 So he said to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” 8 He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down”.’
Today’s Reflection:
‘Oculi’ is the Latin name for the Third Sunday in Lent, meaning ‘eyes' because this Sunday was associated with Psalm 25: 15: ‘My eyes are ever toward the Lord, for he will pluck my feet out of the net.’ Today’s Bible readings encourage us to look and search, seek and find, taste and discover. They raise questions about some of the choices we make, inviting us to look more closely at how we live and to exercise scrutiny.
We are almost half-way through Lent, and by now, at this half-way point, we probably need encouragement and affirmation.
Encouragement and affirmation are found in good measure in the lectionary readings this morning. But these readings also urge us to hunger and thirst for the real food and drink that God offers us.
The Old Testament reading (Isaiah 55: 1-9) this morning tells us God is to be found among all who seek him:
Seek the Lord while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near … (verse 6).
In the Psalm too (Psalm 63: 1-8), we hear what it is to thirst for the Lord. But the same mouths that thirst for God in the wilderness, also praise him with joyful lips.
That thirsting in the wilderness provides the Apostle Paul with an illustration in the Epistle reading (I Corinthians 10: 1-13), in which he urges us to thirst for the true ‘spiritual food,’ for the true ‘spiritual drink.’
Emphasising the spiritual without understanding the world we live in leads to us being irrelevant. On the other hand, actively doing good, without any deep and truly spiritual foundations, leads to burn-out and disillusion.
Some years ago, in an address at the Pontifical University in Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Bishop John Kirby spoke of the way many people ask why we are relatively prosperous while so many people live in poverty. But, he said, we need to realise instead that we are relatively prosperous in rich countries in the northern hemisphere precisely because so many people live in poverty and hunger and thirst in the two-thirds world.
Of course, we are called to hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5: 6). But wishing is not enough. Christ reminds us in today’s Gospel reading that we are called to bear fruit too … and he is patient in waiting for faith to produce fruit.
In the middle of the recent economic crisis in Greece, the Greek Prime Minister accused other European leaders of failing to put compassion into action, and warned of the danger of Greece becoming ‘a warehouse of souls.’
These thoughts are interesting preludes to today’s Gospel reading (Luke 13: 1-9), where we hear of the chilling and horrific deaths of two groups of people that made headline news at the time.
We all know that people often ask why God allows bad things to happen to good people. In this reading there are two examples. In the first case, it was Galileans at prayer in the Temple who were slaughtered in their innocence, and who then, sacrilegiously, had their blood mixed with the Temple sacrifices. In the second case, innocent building workers, working on the Tower of Siloam near the Temple, died when the work collapsed on top of them.
In those days, it was a common belief that pain and premature death were signs of God’s adverse judgment. We think like that today: how often do people think those who are sick, suffer infirmities, have injuries, die because they cannot afford health care? They do not die because they cannot afford healthcare – they die because governments prefer to spend money on weapons and wars or in giving tax breaks to the rich, rather than spending money on health care for those who need it.
The first group in this Gospel reading, a group of Galileans, from Christ’s own home province, believed they were doing God’s will as they worshipped in the Temple. But they were killed intentionally as they sacrificed to God in the Temple. Even in death, they were degraded further when, on Pilate’s orders, their blood was mixed with the blood of the Temple sacrifices.
Think of the horror we feel when people are murdered at worship in attacks on churches, synagogues or mosques, or Oscar Romero saying Mass 45 years ago in San Salvador (24 March 1980).
The second group in the Gospel reading, numbering 18 in all, were building workers who were killed accidentally as they were building the Tower of Siloam.
Think of our horror today at people who die randomly or accidentally, not because of their own mistakes or sinfulness: people who die sleeping in their own homes at night during Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities; children who die in attacks on hospitals or schools in Gaza; people who die daily of hunger and poverty; children born to die because they are HIV +, because their parents live in poverty, or other circumstances not of their choosing such as Trump’s capricious cancellation of US financial support; the children who die in treacherous sea crossings in the English Channel or in the Mediterranean …
How easy it is to talk about ‘innocent victims’ – of wars, of AIDS, of gangland killings – as though some people are ‘guilty victims’ who deserve to die like that anyway.
But in both cases in our Gospel reading – in all these cases – Christ says no, there is no link between an early and an unjust death and the sins of the past or the sins of past generations.
In both stories, we could explain away what we might otherwise see as the inexplicable way God allows other people to suffer and die by saying they brought it on themselves by their sins, or the sins of their ancestors … or, in today’s language, by saying they cannot afford to pay for health care, or they bring it upon themselves by their lifestyle, or they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or they ought to stay in their own countries.
My compassion is the victim of my hidden values, and so others become the victims.
Many may have expected Christ to say that their deaths were in punishment for their rebellious behaviour, in the case of the Galilean rebels, or collaborative behaviour, in the case of the workers who were building a water supply system for the Roman occupiers.
Is Christ indifferent to political and environmental disasters?
Instead of meeting those expectations, Christ teaches that death comes to everyone, regardless of how sinful I am, regardless of my birth, politics or social background, or – even more certainly – my smug sense of religious pride and righteousness. And he goes on to teach how we each need to repent – even when, in the eyes of others, we do not appear to need repentance.
Seek the Lord while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near …
It is so tempting to excuse or dismiss the sufferings of others. To say they brought it on themselves offers us an opt-out: we can claim to have compassion, but need not respond to it, nor need to do anything to challenge the injustices that are the underlying causes of this suffering.
Yet, in the parable of the fig tree, we are called on to wait, we are urged not to be too hasty in our judgment on those who seem in our eyes to do nothing to improve their lot.
It makes logical, economic and financial sense for the owner to want to chop down the fig tree – 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. And even then, in a vineyard, the figs are not a profit – they are a bonus.
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 this 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 profit, 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.
But we can decide where we place our 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.
Seek the Lord while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near …
Today’s Prayers (Sunday 23 March 2025, Lent III):
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 ‘Towards Reconciliation and Renewal’. This theme is introduced today with a programme update by the Revd Canon Dr Carlton J Turner, Anglican Tutor in Contextual Theology and Mission Studies and Deputy Director of Research at the Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham:
7 September 2024 will forever be a significant date in the life of USPG and the Caribbean region. The launch of the joint project seeking to bring reparative justice for the legacies of plantation slavery on the Codrington Estates, Barbados, is the first of its kind for the region. As one of the Church of England’s earliest mission agencies, USPG (then SPG) owned two slave plantations in Barbados as per the bequest of Barbadian planter, Sir Christopher Codrington III in 1710. Between 1710 and 1838, USPG benefitted from the labour of enslaved persons on the Codrington Estate. This is deeply disturbing history that has legacies into the present day, not only for the life of the descendants of the slaves in the community of St John, but for the Church of England generally as it grapples with its deep ties and involvement in human trafficking and enslavement.
In thinking about how the subject of reparations is handled, I’m grateful for the three things that have been placed at the centre of the project. Firstly, there is honesty, acknowledgement, and repentance. Secondly, the project seeks to model partnership and collaboration, but with a key emphasis letting those on the ground take the lead. Finally, there is an insistence on openness and transparency. Being held accountable is a primary aim in the partnership. With these three thoughts in mind, USPG is carrying out the gospel mandate about reconciliation and renewal.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 23 March 2025, Lent III) invites us to pray reflecting on these words:
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3: 28).
The Collect:
Almighty God,
whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain,
and entered not into glory before he was crucified:
mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross,
may find it none other than the way of life 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:
Merciful Lord,
grant your people grace to withstand the temptations
of the world, the flesh and the devil,
and with pure hearts and minds to follow you, the only God;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Eternal God,
give us insight
to discern your will for us,
to give up what harms us,
and to seek the perfection we are promised
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
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
17 February 2025
A day with USPG at Saint Jame’s,
Piccadilly, and memories of a day
with ‘a Very Dangerous Man’
Patrick Comerford
I spent much of today at the celebrations of Founder’s Day with the Anglican mission agency USPG and the publishers SPCK in Saint James’s Church, Piccadilly. The day celebrates the life of the Revd Dr Thomas Bray, who was commemorated in the Calendar of the Church of England on Saturday (15 February) and who was the founder of both the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and SPG (the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, now USPG).
This year, Founder’s Day began with a celebration of the Eucharist in Saint James’s, and included reflections on the people who bring hope in the midst the ongoing conflict in the Holy Land, with an address by Dr Ruth Valerio, Advocacy Director at Embrace the Middle East. There was an opportunity too to meet many of friends during the buffet lunch that followed.
Canon Lucy Winkett, who presided at the Eucharist today, is a writer, broadcaster and musician. She has been the Rector of Saint James’s since 2010 and Priest-in-Charge of Saint Pancras, Euston Road, since 2023. She was one of the first generation of women to be ordained priest in the 1990s, and the first woman priest to be appointed to Saint Paul’s Cathedral.
She is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day and the author of Our Sound Is Our Wound, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book in 2010.
Saint James’s was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and was consecrated in 1684. Since then, it has had many distinguished rectors, including four future Archbishops of Canterbury: Thomas Tenison, William Wake, Thomas Secker and William Temple, who was the rector throughout World War I.
Temple’s immediate predecessor was a Liverpool-born Irish priest, Canon Joseph McCormick (1834-1914), whose father, William McCormick (1801-1878), was the MP for Derry City in 1860-1865. Joseph McCormick played Cricket for Ireland under the alias of J Bingley, the name of one of the schools he had attended, to disguise his participation from his parishioners in Dunmore East, Co Waterford. He also rowed in the Cambridge Boat in March 1856, helping to defeat Oxford in 22 minutes 45 seconds, and he was a well-known mountain climber.
Joseph McCormick was the Rector of Dunumore East, Co Waterford, before moving to England, where he was a chaplain to three successive monarch, Queen Victoria, Edward VII and George V. When I was working on doctoral research on Irish Anglican missionaries in South Africa, one of the people I came to know as ‘my missionaries’ was Joseph McCormick’s son, Canon (William) Patrick ‘Pat’ Glyn McCormick (1877-1940), who worked with SPG in the Transvaal in 1903-1910. Pat McCormick played cricket for Devon and had one first class match for MCC in 1907, and also played Rugby for Transvaal. He later succeeded Dick Shepherd (1880-1937) as the Vicar of Saint Martin in the Fields in London, and continued his work among the ‘down and outs.’
Another son, Joseph Gough McCormick (1874-1924) became the Dean of Manchester, and also played cricket with distinction for Norfolk 1899 to 1909, scoring four hundreds.
The Revd Donald Reeves (centre) at the Irish School of Ecumenics with Canon Patrick Comerford of the Church of Ireland Theological Institute (left) and Dr Andrew Pierce of the Irish School of Ecumenics in Dublin in 2011Many years ago, I spent a memorable day with another former Rector of Saint James’s, the Revd Donald Reeves, who died a few months ago (31 October 2024) at the of 90. He was once described by Margaret Thatcher as ‘a very dangerous man’ and by The Times as the ‘radical rector’ and ‘the most extraordinary clergyman in the Church of England.’
While he was the Rector of Saint James’s, Donald Reeves developed a reputation among Thatcher’s allies as a ‘turbulent priest’ – an eminent and honourable place to hold in Anglican tradition.
I spent a day with Donald Reeves when he visited Dublin in June 2011. By then, he was in his late 70s, but he was still working on peace-building and peace-making projects in the Balkans. He had long been a thorn in the side of the Establishment, and when he heard Thatcher’s description of him as ‘a very dangerous man’, he was ‘rather pleased … it felt like a natural title.’ It is a sobriquet that he came to wear with pride and that inspired the title of his autobiography The Memoirs of a Very Dangerous Man.
But the man who enjoyed excoriating Thatcherite dogma and episcopal complacency in the 1980s, emphasised his role as a peacemaker rather than as a troublemaker. He continued to co-direct the Soul of Europe, working at peacemaking and peace-building in the Balkans. When we met, he was visiting Dublin, preaching in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral and speaking about the work of the Soul of Europe at a seminar organised by the Irish School of Ecumenics and co-sponsored by the Church of Ireland Theological Institute.
Through the Soul of Europe project, Donald Reeves spent much of his time in the Balkans, trying to build durable trust between communities only nominally at peace after terrible conflicts. He sought to help people living through post-conflict situations to realise Nelson Mandela’s words first addressed to politicians in Northern Ireland: ‘If you want to make peace do not speak with your friends, you must speak with your enemies.’
He was frustrated by the way in which ignorance of religion has become an embedded in official thinking, so that religion is seen as matter of choice and that a real illiteracy of religion has emerged. It means churches and mosques are valued only and merely as places of cultural heritage and not as living religious communities. But ‘religion is the crucible in which the “chosen trauma’ of a community is held.’
He expressed a deep-seated ‘nervousness’ about growing Islamophobia in Europe, describing it as an ‘alarming phenomenon.’
‘The Muslims are the new Jews of Europe,’ he told us.
Donald St John Reeves was born in 1934 and was educated at Sherborne School, Queens’ College, Cambridge. While he was teaching in Beirut in the 1960s, he felt called to ordained ministry, and after training at Cuddesdon Theological College he was ordained deacon in 1963 and priest in 1964. After two years as a curate, he became chaplain to Bishop Mervyn Stockwood of Southwark, who had a reputation for controversy and socialist politics.
His heyday was as the Rector of Saint James’s, Piccadilly, a space he filled with extraordinary worship, celebrated pulpit dialogues, a coffee house and street market. Those who passed through the church doors included leading international film-makers, writers, theologians and politicians.
He was the Rector of Saint James’s for 18 years (1980-1998). When he first arrived there, it was not an auspicious place. Although the church was known for society weddings, there was little evidence of a congregation rooted in the community. ‘On my arrival,’ he said, ‘I could see no justification for keeping the church open.’
The church where William Blake was baptised was in decay and facing closure. Four years later, as the church celebrated it tercentenary, he was able to tell the Guardian: ‘There’s only one thing to do with a church which is slap in the centre of London and whose congregation has dwindled ever since the 19th century brought business to where town houses used to be: you use the site and turn it into a showcase for Christianity.’
Gradually, he turned Saint James’s into a thriving institution, closely linked to local people, both rich and poor, and a place for exploring ideas. Saint James’s soon had its own orchestra, a full-time arts director, a programme of lectures called ‘Turning Point,’ and a programme called ‘Dunamais’, offering lectures, workshops and the opportunity to explore issues of personal, national and international security in the nuclear age. The church became a centre of both liturgical innovation of theological debate and radical politics. He encouraged debate across the boundaries, inviting speakers as diverse as Norman Tebbit and Tony Benn, non-believers as well as believers.
‘Jesus wasn’t exactly into garden parties. He was regarded as a nuisance,’ he said. ‘The churches shouldn’t be creating little managers of sectarian communities but should be places of dissent.’
His own challenge to Thatcherism was overt. He sparked lively debate by speaking out against the Falklands War and by helping the miners’ wives during their husbands’ bitter strike. After several brushes with Thatcher, she described him as ‘a very dangerous man’ – an acknowledgement that by then he was part of the Anglican tradition of ‘troublesome priests’ – apt to turn critical fire not only on the world but on the Church too.
Bishop Trevor Huddleston, a veteran campaigner against apartheid, who lived in the Saint James’s Vicarage for many years, was another significant influence.
Donals Reeves was made MBE in 2006 for his peace-building in Bosnia, received awards for fostering good relations between the Abrahamic Faiths, and was a Visiting Fellow in Peace Studies at Leeds Metropolitan University.
Canon Paul Oestreicher, in a tribute in the Church Times, wrote: ‘Donald was a spiritual activist whose own “Eucharistic Prayer” (below) will tell you all you need to know about him.’
We had lunch together before he left Dublin, and I said then how I hoped we continue to hear his radical voice for many years to come. His mark is still evident today in Saint James’s, Piccadilly, with its inclusiveness, its celebration of other faith traditions, its social justice ministries to the marginalised in greater London, and its continuing work with asylum seekers.
‘Eucharistic Prayer’
We break this bread for those who love God,
For those who follow the path of the Buddha
And worship the God of the Hindus;
For our sisters and brothers in Islam,
And for the Jewish people from whom we come.
We break this bread for the great green earth;
We call to mind the forests, fields and flowers
Which we are destroying,
That one day, with the original blessing, God’s creation will be restored.
We break this bread for those who have no bread,
The starving, the homeless and the refugees,
That one day this planet may be a home for everyone.
We break this bread for the broken parts of ourselves,
The wounded child in all of us,
For our broken relationships,
That one day we may glimpse the wholeness that is of Christ.
15 February 2025
Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025:
13, Saturday 15 February 2025
Patrick Comerford
We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent are less than three weeks away (5 March 2025), and tomorrow is the Third Sunday before Lent (16 February 2025).
The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers Sigfrid (1045), bishop and Apostle of Sweden, and Thomas Bray (1730), priest and the founder of SPCK and SPG, now USPG (15 February). Before today begins, however, 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.
Mark 8: 1-10 (NRSVA):
1 In those days when there was again a great crowd without anything to eat, he called his disciples and said to them, 2 ‘I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. 3 If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way – and some of them have come from a great distance.’ 4 His disciples replied, ‘How can one feed these people with bread here in the desert?’ 5 He asked them, ‘How many loaves do you have?’ They said, ‘Seven.’ 6 Then he ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground; and he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute; and they distributed them to the crowd. 7 They had also a few small fish; and after blessing them, he ordered that these too should be distributed. 8 They ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. 9 Now there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away. 10 And immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha.
Today’s Reflection:
There are six different accounts of two miracle stories associated with the Feeding of the Multitude. The first story, the feeding of 5,000, is found in all four Gospels (see Matthew 14: 13-21; Mark 6: 31-44; Luke 9:10-17; and John 6: 5-15). This is the only miracle – apart from the Resurrection – that is found in all three Synoptic Gospels and in Saint John’s Gospel. The second story, the feeding of 4,000, is told by both Mark in today’s reading (Mark 8: 1-10) and by Matthew (Matthew 15: 32-38), but not by either Luke or John.
In the Feeding of the 5,000, Jesus feed the multitude with five loaves and two fish shared by a boy. When Jesus hears that John the Baptist had been killed, he take a boat to a solitary place, near Bethsaida. The crowds follow him on foot from the towns, and when Jesus lands he sees a large crowd. He had compassion for them and heals their sick. As evening approaches, the disciples tell him it is a remote place, it is late, and urge him to send the crowds away, so they can go to the villages and buy food.
Jesus says they do not need to go away, and asks the disciples to give them something to eat. They find five loaves and two fish, Jesus asks the people to sit on the grass in groups of 50 and 100, takes the five loaves and two fish, looks up to heaven, gives thanks, breaks them. Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people. Taking, blessing, breaking and giving are the four essential liturgical actions at the Eucharist identified by Dom Gregory Dix in The Shape of the Liturgy.
All eat and are satisfied, and the disciples pick up 12 baskets full of broken pieces that are left over. The number of those who ate was about 5,000 men, as well as women and children.
If there were 5,000 men there that day, and one woman with each man and two children with each couple, then we are talking about the feeding of 20,000 people, or the population of a town like Wexford, Carlow or Sligo in Ireland, Berkhamsted, Brownhills, Truro or Wednesbury in England, Ierapetra or Agios Nikolaos in Crete.
Professor Colin Humphreys of Selwyn College, Cambridge, challenges many early calculations and now suggests the number of men, women and children at the Exodus was about 20,000. So, in feeding the multitude, Christ is bringing all our wanderings, all our journeys, all our searches for God, to their fulfilment when we meet him in sharing the good news and break bread together.
In Apocryphal writings, II Baruch 29: 8, a Jewish pseudepigraphical text thought to date from the late 1st century CE or early 2nd century CE, also connects the feeding in the wilderness in Exodus 16 with the Messianic age.
The feeding with the fish also looks forward to the Resurrection. The fish is an early symbol of faith in the Risen Christ: Ichthus (ἰχθύς, ΙΧΘΥC) is the Greek word for fish, and can be read as an acrostic, a word formed from the first letters of words, spelling out ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ (Iēsous Khristos Theou Huios, Sōtēr), ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.’
The story of the feeding of the 4,000 is told only by Matthew and Mark. A large crowd gathers and follows Jesus. He calls his disciples and tells them he has compassion for the people, who have followed him for three days and now have nothing to eat. He does not want to send them away hungry, for fear they may collapse on the way.
The disciples say they are in a remote place and ask where they could find enough bread to feed such a crowd. All they have is seven loaves and a few small fish.
Jesus tells the people to sit down on the ground, he takes the loaves and fish, gives thanks, breaks them and gives them to the disciples, who then give them to the people. All ate and were satisfied. Afterwards, the disciples collect seven basketfuls of broken pieces that are leftover. The number of those who eat is 4,000 men, with the number of women and children not counted. Jesus then sends the crowd away, gets into the boat and goes to the area of the district of Dalmanutha (Matthew names it as Magadan or Magdala).
There are differences in the details of the two feeding stories. Are they two distinct miracles?
The baskets used to collect the food that remains are 12 κόφινοι (kófinoi, hand baskets) in Matthew (14: 20) and Mark (6: 43). But they are seven σπυρίδες (spyrídes, large baskets) in Matthew 15: 37 and Mark 8: 8. A σπυρίς (spyrís) or large basket was double the size of a κόφινος (kófinos). An indication of the size of a spyrís is that the Apostle Paul was let out in one through a gap in the city wall in Damascus to escape a plot to kill him (Acts 9: 25).
The two feeding miracles – the feeding of the 5,000 and the feeding of the 4,000 – show that Christ cares for all seek him and listen to his teaching, both Jew and Gentile.
At the feeding of the 5,000, the people were certainly almost all Jews. They came from the surrounding towns and were familiar with where Jesus was going with his apostles to get some time alone. Then, after he fed them, they were about to come and make him king (see John 6:15).
When Jesus makes the people sit in groups of hundreds and fifties (Mark 6: 40; Luke 9: 14), the numbers may recall the place in the Exodus story where the people had rulers over fifties and hundreds (Exodus 18: 25). When the 12 have fed the multitude, each gets a full basket back. Perhaps the 12 baskets of leftovers represent the 12 tribes of Israel.
The feeding of the 4,000, on the other hand, may take place in a Gentile setting. It takes place after Jesus goes to the region of Tyre and Sidon. This is Gentile territory, although there would have been some Jews that lived there, which is why he was able to stay in a house there (Mark 7: 24).
This is the area where Christ heals the daughter of the Greek-speaking Syro-Phoenician or Canaanite woman (see Matthew 15: 22, Mark 7: 26), the only miracle of Jesus recorded in that region, and which we read about on Thursday. Both may be seen as clear signs that the Messianic blessing now extends to all people through the Messiah, and a fulfilment of the prophecy that the Messiah is to be a ‘light to the Gentiles’ (Isaiah 42: 6, 49: 6), which is one of the Christmas promises at Candlemas two weeks ago (see Luke 2: 29-32, 2 February).
When Jesus leaves the area, Mark says, he goes to the Sea of Galilee and then to its east coast, ‘the region of the Decapolis’, populated by Gentiles (Mark 7: 31). There he heals a deaf man who has a speech impediment, and the people spread the word about him (Mark 7: 31-37, which we read on Friday, 14 February 2025).
By now, a large number of Gentiles from the region of Tyre and Sidon and from the Decapolis are following Jesus. He goes up a mountain and does many healings (Matthew 15: 29-31), and ‘they praised the God of Israel’. This last phrase indicates that these people are not primarily Jews, for when Jesus does miracles among Jews, they ‘praised God’ (see Matthew 9: 8; Mark 2: 12; Luke 13: 13; 18: 43; etc.).
What is the significance in Mark 8: 8 of saying that there are seven large baskets of leftover bread? In the Gentile context of the feeding of the 4,000, perhaps the seven full baskets harken back to the seven Gentile nations in Canaan that had once been driven out God but that are now counted in by Christ.
All are invited to be healed and fed at the Eucharist. As were reminded at Candlemas two weeks ago,
‘Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.’ (Luke 2: 29-32).
Today’s Prayers (Saturday 15 February 2025):
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 ‘Founders’ Day.’ USPG and SPCK are celebrating ‘Founders’ Day’ in Saint James’s Church, Picadilly, next Monday, 17 February 2025. This theme was introduced last Sunday with a Reflection by Dr Jo Sadgrove, Research and Learning Advisor, USPG.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Saturday 15 February 2025, Founders’ Day) invites us to pray:
We pray for the work of USPG on the day that we remember its founder, Thomas Bray. May we look back with open minds to discover new insights to inform the path we tread.
The Collect:
O God,
you know us to be set
in the midst of so many and great dangers,
that by reason of the frailty of our nature
we cannot always stand upright:
grant to us such strength and protection
as may support us in all dangers
and carry us through all temptations;
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:
Go before us, Lord, in all we do
with your most gracious favour,
and guide us with your continual help,
that in all our works
begun, continued and ended in you,
we may glorify your holy name,
and finally by your mercy receive everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Lord of the hosts of heaven,
our salvation and our strength,
without you we are lost:
guard us from all that harms or hurts
and raise us when we fall;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Collect on the Eve of the Third Sunday before Lent:
Almighty God,
who alone can bring order
to the unruly wills and passions of sinful humanity:
give your people grace
so to love what you command
and to desire what you promise,
that, among the many changes of this world,
our hearts may surely there be fixed
where true joys are to be found;
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 Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
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
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