The churches and chapels of Walsingham: 4, the Chantry Chapelof Saint Michael and the Holy Souls

The Chantry Chapel of Saint Michael and the Holy Souls was built in the grounds of the shrine in Walsingham in 1965 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

During my visit to Walsingham last week, when I was invited to speak at the Ecumenical Pilgrimage, I visited at least ten churches and chapels in Walsingham, including two visits to Saint Mary and All Saints’ Church, the Church of England parish church in the small Norfolk village, the Shrine Church, where much of our worship took place during those days, and the Holy House.

The Anglican Shrine in Walsingham has other chapels and altars, including the Chantry Chapel of Saint Michael and the Holy Souls and the Barn Chapel, and the Garden Altar or ‘The Altar of the Mysteries of Light’ which creates an open-air chapel in the gardens.

The Chantry Chapel was built in 1965 in the grounds of the shrine at the top of the steps leading to the Shrine church. It is the Chantry Chapel of the Guild of All Souls and Mass is celebrated there every day. It was designed by the architect Laurence King, who also restored the Church of Saint Mary and All Saints, the Church of England parish church, after the fire in 1961.

Inside the Chantry Chapel of Saint Michael and the Holy Souls, designed for the Guild of All Souls by the architect Laurence King (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The word chantry, from the old French chanterie, implies chanting or singing. A chantry was an endowment for the maintenance of priests to sing masses for the soul of the founder or his family. A chantry was often associated with a particular altar in a parish church, or with a chapel specially built within the church. Many of them survive in English cathedrals and parish churches, and the one I am most familiar with is the Comberford Chapel in Saint Editha’s Collegiate Church, Tamworth.

While a chantry was most frequently founded to pray for the soul of an individual or a family, others were co-operative or were formed as guilds. The chaplain of the guild regularly ‘minded’ or recalled the names of departed members, a practice referred to as ‘bidding the bedes’. Once a year, every name on the parish bede-roll would be read aloud at the parish requiem.

Chantry chapels were also associated with almshouses and schools. For instance, many wealthy pious benefactors founded grammar schools whose pupils were taught by chantry priests who would pray for the founder’s soul.

It has been argued that the need to ensure that prayers were said for the dead led to the renewal and rebuilding of many East Anglian churches in the 15th and early 16th centuries, financed by wills, legacies and bequests that provided money for the priests who said those prayers.

The Chantries Acts in 1545 and 1547 abolished the chantries and effectively closed those grammar schools. But some were subsequently re-founded and today many an English school can trace its origin back to a chantry foundation, as can some almshouses and hospitals.

At the Reformation, the chantry priests were prevented from saying the traditional Masses for the dead and the term chantry became virtually obsolete until the 19th century, when the Guild of All Souls played a role in its revival.

The chantry church is octagonal in shape, with echoes of the Catholic Cathedral in Liverpool (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Guild of All Souls was formed in 1873 by Father Arthur Tooth at Hatcham in south London to provide priests in the Church of England with support and guidance on conducting funerals. The guild has sought to fulfil two main tasks since its foundation: to maintain a continuous chain of intercession for the souls of the faithful departed as a practical witness to the doctrines of the Communion of Saints and the Resurrection of the Dead; and to provide care for the dying. The guild maintained a chapel at Saint Stephen’s, Gloucester Road, London, for many years, and the scope of its work was widened to include prayer and care for the sick, dying and bereaved.

The chantry church built by the guild in Walsingham is octagonal in shape, with echoes of the Catholic Cathedral in Liverpool. The roof rising to a crown of light, with the lantern at the apex of the roof. A sculpture of Saint Michael vanquishing the devil on the outside wall of the chapel was designed by John Hayward and executed by the painter and sculptor Gordon Beningfield (1936-1998). John Hayward also designed the stained glass in the chapel, and he too designed the East Window and the font cover in Saint Mary and All Saints, the parish church at the other hand of the village.

The inside of the chantry chapel is open, with a sanctuary flanked by glass walls at the far end. The lantern above is dramatic, and another band of coloured glass creates a fiery effect below the roof line. The space is organised for a college of priests, their seats around the outside.

The sculpture of Saint Michael on the outside wall was designed by John Hayward and executed by Gordon Beningfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Mass is celebrated in the chantry chapel daily and departed guild members are remembered in prayer on the anniversary of their death. Their names are printed in the Chantry List displayed in the chapel and on the guild website. Candles are available to burn as a sign of prayer for departed loved ones.

At the weekend, the names of dead members of the guild whose anniversaries fall on a Saturday or Sunday are read and remembered in the chapel.

Bishop Robert Ladds, former Bishop of Whitby, recently retired as the chantry priest. Priests of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and local priests continue to celebrate Mass at the Chantry Chapel.

• The Chantry Chapel is open daily from 7 am to 10 pm. Mass is celebrated every weekday, Monday to Friday, at 5 pm.

Inside the Chantry Chapel, facing the liturgical west (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Smeared blackberries, childhood memories, and Michaelmas reflections on the beauty of creation

Michaelmas blackberries ripening on Mill Lane in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

This was a bumper summer for fruit, with the extra sunshine and rain at the right time giving bumper crops of apples and pears. Most of this year's blackberries are gone by now, but there are still some blackberries coming to full fruit along Mill Lane in Stony Stratford. I I wonder, though, how many people will reach up to pick them and taste them after today, Michaelmas (29 September).

In Irish, sméar dubh or the definite form sméar dhubh is the word for blackberry, and it translates literally as ‘black berry’: smear is the base word for ‘berry’, while dubh means black.

Smearagan is another but less common term for blackberry, while the words dris and dris-choille refer to brambles and blackberry bushes.

The phrase sméar dubh translates directly as ‘black berry’. But when I first heard it as a young boy I imagined – with childish humour – how descriptive the phrase was, thinking how often and how easily I smeared my face and mouth and hands black while picking and eating blackberries on the brambles and hedgerows by the lanes around my grandmother’s farm near Cappoquin in Co Waterford.

A well-known belief states that blackberries should not be picked after Michaelmas Day on 29 September because it is believed the devil spits on them after this date.

I remember too the way the phrase ‘Blackmouth’ was used a derogatory label for Presbyterians, especially in parts of Northern Ireland. It goes back to the times in the 18th and 17th century, when Presbyterians were seen as political radicals due to their opposition to the established Church and monarchy.

Before that, in Tudor and Stuart England, a ‘blackmouth’ was a railer, a slanderer, a foulmouthed or malicious person. In the north of England it later referred to a seditious person, and was even used occasionally in the sense of Blackleg.

Some say the phrase was used in Ulster for fugitive Presbyterians or Covenanters eating blackberries as sustenance while they hid, staining their lips and tongues black, although others relate it to their refusal to take the ‘Black Oath’ in 1639.

In Scotland, ‘Blackneb’ emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as a label to denote a person who had sympathies with French revolutionaries.

The phrase ‘Blackmouth’ gained prominence in Ulster once again at the end of the 18th century as an insult, used in a contemptuous way to demean Presbyterians who supported the United Irish rebellion in 1798. Many Presbyterians were seen as politically disaffected and radical and were suspected of being a threat to church and state in Ireland. They were reviled and accused of republican sympathies and revolutionary activities, and the epithet came to be applied to the whole Presbyterian community.

Sadly, as my friend and former Irish Times colleague Andy Pollak observes in a blog posting earlier today, much of Presbyterian Ulster has, ‘unfortunately … become … right-wing, fundamentalist, separatist and Orange.’

Saint Michael depicted in a window by Charles Eamer Kempe in the tower of Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

As I was looking at those blackberries along Mill Lane in Stony Stratford at the weekend, I was brought back to childhood memories of West Waterford, and how we were told as children that Michaelmas Day is the last day for picking blackberries.

According to folklore, when the Archangel Michael expelled the Devil from Heaven on this day, he fell into a blackberry bush, cursed the brambles he had fallen into, and continues to spit on them after this day. It is a superstition shared across these islands, from Achill to Lichfield, and from Wexford to Essex and Cambridge.

In his poem ‘Trebetherick,’ the late John Betjeman seems to link ripening blackberries and the closing in of the autumn days with old age and the approach of death:

Thick with sloe and blackberry, uneven in the light,
Lonely round the hedge, the heavy meadow was remote,
The oldest part of Cornwall was the wood as black as night,
And the pheasant and the rabbit lay torn open at the throat.

Betjeman had spent much of his childhood in Trebetherick, and he died there on 19 May 1984, at the age of 77. But the former poet laureate had a more benign view of blackberries on a visit to the Isle of Man, when he described ‘wandering down your late-September lanes when dew-hung cobwebs glisten in the gorse and blackberries shine, waiting to be picked.’

Saint Michael in a statue at the tower in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In his poem ‘At the chiming of light upon sleep,’ first drafted on this day 79 years ago [29 September 1946], the poet Philip Larkin links Michaelmas and a lost paradise with the chances and opportunities that he failed to take in his youth.

In contrast to Larkin’s dejection, I was reminded earlier today of a well-known story in Orthodox piety:

The devil appeared to three monks and said to them: ‘If I gave you power to change something from the past, what would you change?’

The first monk replied with great fervour: ‘I would prevent you from making Adam and Eve fall into sin so that humanity could not turn away from God.’

The second monk pondered awhile and then said: ‘I would keep you far from God so that you condemn yourself eternally.’

The third monk was the simplest. Instead of responding, he fell to his knees, made the sign of the cross and prayed: ‘Lord, free me from the temptation of what could be and was not’.

The devil cried out, shuddered in pain, and vanished.

The other two, surprised, asked: ‘Brother, why have you responded like this?’

He replied: ‘First, we must never dialogue with the devil. Second, Nobody in the world has the power to change the past. Third: satan’s interest was not to prove our virtue, but to trap us in the past, so that we neglect the present, the only time God gives us his grace and we can cooperate with him to fulfil his will.’

Of all the demons, he continued, the one that catches the most people and prevents us from being happy is that of ‘what could have been and was not’. The past is left to the mercy of God and the future to his Providence. Only the present is in our hands. ‘Live in God, in the moment.’

I was listening yesterday to Morning Worship broadcast from Lichfield Cathedral on BBC Radio 4. The theme was drawn from the Nicene Creed – ‘Maker of all that is, seen and unseen’ – and Canon Gregory Platten reminded us of what it means to believe in God as Creator in a world facing climate change, extinction, and disconnection from nature.

The ripening blackberries along Mill Lane in Stony Stratford these days are yet another reminder that Michaelmas today is a day to allow my mind to wander back to childhood memories, and a time for contemplation and unstructured prayers, but to think less of lost opportunities not taken in youth and more about giving thanks for the beauty of the creation and taking responsibility for it.

‘Thick with sloe and blackberry, uneven in the light’ … ripening blackberries in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 140, Monday 29 September 2025, Saint Michael and All Angels

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

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. This week began with the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XV, 28 September 2025) and today the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels (29 September).

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

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

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

John 4: 47-51 (NRSVA):

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

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

Today’s Reflections:

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

‘Archangel Michael The Protector’ is in onyx and can be viewed in the church grounds from Upper Woburn Place, around the corner from Euston Road. An inscription on a plaque between the sculpture and the railings reads: ‘In memory of the victims of the 7th July 2005 bombings and all victims of violence. ‘I will lift up my eyes unto the hills’ Psalm 121.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s Prayers (Monday 29 September 2025, Saint Michael and All Angels):

The theme this week (28 September to 4 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘One Faith: Many Voices’ (pp 42-43). This theme was introduced yesterday with Reflections from Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 29 September 2025, Saint Michael and All Angels) invites us to pray in these words:

O God, who has given us the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, grant us your protection and guidance. May we, with the help of your heavenly hosts, stand firm in the faith and be strong in your service.

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

The Collect:

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

The Post Communion Prayer:

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

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

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

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

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

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 97, Thursday 14 August 2025

‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?’ (Matthew 18: 32-33) … a stained-glass window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and this week began with the Eighth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VIII). The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers the life and witness of Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941), Carmelite friar and martyr in Auschwitz.

I am back in Stony Stratford this morning after my short-mid-week visit to Dublin. Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and for reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything’ (Matthew 18: 26) … old, worthless banknotes heaped up outside an antiques shop in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Matthew 18: 21 to 19: 1 (NRSVA):

21 Then Peter came and said to him, ‘Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?’ 22 Jesus said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.

23 ‘For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. 24 When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him; 25 and, as he could not pay, his lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, and payment to be made. 26 So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” 27 And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. 28 But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow-slaves who owed him a hundred denarii; and seizing him by the throat, he said, “Pay what you owe.” 29 Then his fellow-slave fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” 30 But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he should pay the debt. 31 When his fellow-slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. 32 Then his lord summoned him and said to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 Should you not have had mercy on your fellow-slave, as I had mercy on you?” 34 And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he should pay his entire debt. 35 So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’

1 When Jesus had finished saying these things, he left Galilee and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.

‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything’ (Matthew 18: 29) … a collection of denarii among old Greek coins in an exhibition in Callan, Co Kilkenny (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

The Gospel reading at the Eucharist this morning (Matthew 18: 21 to 19: 1) looks critically at the limits we place on forgiveness and the over-abundant generosity and universal scope of God’s forgiveness.

What are the limits to my capacity to understand and forgive others?

Are there limits to God’s willingness to forgive?

Forgiveness is so central to Christian faith and life, that it is emphasised throughout Saint Matthew’s Gospel.

In this reading, Saint Peter asks how many times he should forgive, and is told ‘not seven times but, I tell you, seventy-seven times,’ or, as some sources put it, seventy times seven.

In Biblical thinking, the number seven always indicates holiness, as in the seventh day, the seventh month, the seventh year or ‘year of release,’ and the Jubilee year that follows seven cycles of seven years.

As the former Chief Rabbi, the late Lord (Jonathan) Sacks, has said, seven is the symbol of the holy, that God exists beyond time and space.

But what about the number 70 when Christ says ‘seven times seventy’ or ‘seventy-seven times’?

Talmudic scholars approach the Torah as if it has ‘seventy faces’ (Numbers Rabbah 13: 15-16). The number 70 has sacred significance in Biblical Hebrew: 70 is the number of people who first went down to Egypt, the elders chosen by Moses, the years of King David, the Babylonian exile, the sages of the Sanhedrin, the translators of the Septuagint, the span of human life, the words of Kiddush, the nations of the world …

The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy points out in The Genius of Judaism that the number 70 is ‘no ordinary number.’ He calls it the ‘secret universal.’ It represents the fullness of humanity, the ‘other universal that escorts human beings on the path of their history and to the centre of their substance.’ It is ‘the number of infinity extended.’

So, Christ tells us in this Gospel reading that divine forgiveness is to be extended ‘seventy-seven times’ or ‘seventy times seven’ – in other words, God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach.

In the second part of this reading, Christ explains what he is saying in a parable that is unique to Saint Matthew’s Gospel and that involves three distinct episodes:

1, A king decides to settle his accounts with his slaves or servants: the word δοῦλος (doulos) means either, so those who first heard this parable could imagine an end-of-year audit with court officials, financiers or tax collectors. One of these officials owes 10,000 talents, the equivalent to £3,358,735,524 (€3,877,551,979) today. No ordinary slave could accumulate such a debt. Of course, he is unable to clear a debt of such magnitude.

The king might have been reminded that Jewish law prohibits demanding payment from a debtor who is unable to pay (mitzvah 234; Exodus 22: 24). A lender may not embarrass a borrower by harassing him, and is forbidden to seize the debtor’s land or to sell him or his family into slavery.

When the servant seeks forgiveness, the king goes beyond the narrow constraints of rabbinical law, shows overflowing generosity, and agrees to clear off the loan.

2, Now, however, this senior official demands the repayment of a loan of three month’s wages, 100 denarii – about £6,473 (€7,473) today – from a lower-level servant. Imagine the senior official as the line manager for the official who asks for forgiveness. Once again, there is commandment not to take a pledge from a debtor by force (mitzvah 239; Deuteronomy 24: 10). The man already forgiven now refuses to forgive when it is his turn, even his obligation, and he compounds this with his use of force.

3, When the king hears about this, he retracts his original forgiveness.

After telling this parable, Christ identifies the king as God, the first servant as any Christian, and the second as anyone else.

Christ makes the point that God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach. He calls us to forgive in a way that is so difficult that I am still wrestling with it.

Many of us grew up with language that chided us, so that when we did something wrong and said sorry, we were told, ‘Sorry is not enough’ or ‘Sorry doesn’t fix anything.’ Such phrases allow a hurt person to withhold forgiveness, to find comfort in their own hurt, to control us in a way that allows us to know mercilessly how much we are in need of mercy.

But we also live in a culture of half-hearted apologies that are difficult to forgive. Politicians and business leaders say they accept responsibility by resigning – so they never have to answer for their actions. Half-hearted apologies – ‘I am sorry if I have offended you’ – mean that those who are hurt feel they need to apologise for their response, their reaction, for being hurt.

There are times that I have no right to forgive, when it is not my place to forgive. I cannot forgive the perpetrators of the Holocaust, because, no matter how many times I have visited places that are an intimate part of the Holocaust story, I am not one of the victims.

I cannot forgive slaveholders or mass murderers in wars and killing fields, because I am not one of their victims. On the other hand, perhaps, because I am not a victim, I might find it is not so difficult.

The true difficulties arise in my own personal life: members of my own family, lost friends, near neighbours, former colleagues I think hurt me in the past. I walk around with perceived slights, insults and hurts, like some crutch that helps the wounded, broken me to walk through this broken and hurting world.

But then I am reminded, time and again, that God’s forgiveness in its abundance is holy in its giving and infinite in its reach.

‘And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt’ (Matthew 18: 27) … a stained-glass window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 14 August 2025):

The theme this week (10 to 16 August) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Serving God in the Gulf’ (pp 26-27). This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections from Joyaline Rajamani, Administrator at the Church of the Epiphany, Doha, Anglican Church in Qatar.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 14 August 2025) invites us to pray:

Gracious God, we thank you for Joyaline. Grant her wisdom, patience, and courage to reflect Christ’s love in all she does. Bless her as a faithful steward of your calling.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty Lord and everlasting God,
we beseech you to direct, sanctify and govern
both our hearts and bodies
in the ways of your laws
and the works of your commandments;
that through your most mighty protection, both here and ever,
we may be preserved in body and soul;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Strengthen for service, Lord,
the hands that have taken holy things;
may the ears which have heard your word
be deaf to clamour and dispute;
may the tongues which have sung your praise be free from deceit;
may the eyes which have seen the tokens of your love
shine with the light of hope;
and may the bodies which have been fed with your body
be refreshed with the fullness of your life;
glory to you for ever.

Additional Collect:

Lord God,
your Son left the riches of heaven
and became poor for our sake:
when we prosper save us from pride,
when we are needy save us from despair,
that we may trust in you alone;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Collect on the Eve of the Blessed Virgin Mary:

Almighty God,
who looked upon the lowliness of the Blessed Virgin Mary
and chose her to be the mother of your only Son:
grant that we who are redeemed by his blood
may share with her in the glory of your eternal kingdom;
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 reflectons
Continued Tomorrow

Forgiveness and love in the face of death and mass murder … a fading rose on the fence at Birkenau (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 Lent 2025: 8, Wednesday 12 March 2025

‘The people of Nineveh … repented at the proclamation of Jonah’ (Luke 11: 32) … a whale depicted in the Saint Brendan window in Saint Michael’s Church, Sneem, Co Kerry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Lent began a week ago on Ash Wednesday, and this week began with the First Sunday in Lent (Lent I).

Later today, I hope to take part in a lunchtime meeting of local clergy in the Servant King Church and Community Centre, Furzton, a partnership of the Church of England, the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church and the United Reformed Church, and a choir rehearsal in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford.

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

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘The people of Nineveh … repented at the proclamation of Jonah’ (Luke 11: 32) … a reconstruction of the gates of an Assyrian palace in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 11: 29-32 (NRSVA):

29 When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, ‘This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. 30 For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so the Son of Man will be to this generation. 31 The queen of the South will rise at the judgement with the people of this generation and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here! 32 The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here!’

‘Hold up the sandal, as he has commanded us!’ (Monty Python, ‘The Life of Brian’) … sandals outside a shop in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

Signs are part of the humour throughout Monty Python’s Life of Brian, also known as Life of Brian, a controversial 1979 film by the Monty Python team, including Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.

Scene 18, ‘The Holy Gourd of Jerusalem’, includes this dialogue:

FOLLOWERS: … Look! Ah! Oh! Oh!

ARTHUR: He has given us a sign!

FOLLOWER: Oh!

SHOE FOLLOWER: He has given us … His shoe!

ARTHUR: The shoe is the sign. Let us follow His example.

SPIKE: What?

ARTHUR: Let us, like Him, hold up one shoe and let the other be upon our foot, for this is His sign, that all who follow Him shall do likewise.

EDDIE: Yes.

SHOE FOLLOWER: No, no, no. The shoe is …

YOUTH: No.

SHOE FOLLOWER: … a sign that we must gather shoes together in abundance.

GIRL: Cast off …

SPIKE: Aye. What?

GIRL: … the shoes! Follow the Gourd!

SHOE FOLLOWER: No! Let us gather shoes together!

FRANK: Yes.

SHOE FOLLOWER: Let me!

ELSIE: Oh, get off!

YOUTH: No, no! It is a sign that, like Him, we must think not of the things of the body, but of the face and head!

SHOE FOLLOWER: Give me your shoe!

YOUTH: Get off!

GIRL: Follow the Gourd! The Holy Gourd of Jerusalem!

FOLLOWER: The Gourd!

HARRY: Hold up the sandal, as He has commanded us!

ARTHUR: It is a shoe! It is a shoe!

HARRY: It's a sandal!

ARTHUR: No, it isn't!

GIRL: Cast it away!

ARTHUR: Put it on!

YOUTH: And clear off!

How often do we pray unusual signs as indications of God’s blessing, favour, approval or intervention, or even God’s judgment?

In today’s Gospel reading (Luke 11: 29-32), Jesus faces this sort of request too. with that in his own day. People wanted some spectacular sign from him to establish beyond doubt that he was who he said he was.

In this reading, Jesus addresses the crowds who gather around him as a wicked generation because they are asking for a sign. Today people can be very impressed by visionaries who claim to have visions that are denied to the rest of believers.

The church has traditionally been very wary of all such claims. In the Gospel reading Jesus accuses his contemporaries of failing to see what is there before them. They want signs and yet all they need already stands in front of them in the person of Jesus, someone greater than Solomon, greater than Jonah, greater than all the prophets and kings.

If the people of Nineveh responded to Jonah and if the Queen of the South responded to Solomon, how much more should Jesus’ contemporaries respond to him?

Jonah serves 40 days’ notice on the city. These are the years of wandering in the wilderness after the Exodus, the days and nights Moses spends on Mount Sinai, the days the spies spend in the land of Canaan, the days Ezekiel spends repenting for the sins of Judah, the days Elijah spends without food or water on his way to Mount Horeb, the days Jesus spends fasting in the wilderness, the days between the Resurrection and the Ascension …

To Jonah’s dismay, the people of Nineveh take his words to heart; even the king puts on sackcloth and ashes and prays for God’s redemption. They turn from their evil ways, and God changes his mind about the calamity they had faced. They are 40 days that are comparable to our observance of Lent, and at the end the promise of mew life is fulfilled.

But, instead of being pleased with a mission accomplished, Jonah is not only displeased but is angry. He is convinced that the king and the city are not sincere about their repentance. Is he fearful that, having survived, they are now going to turn their attention to his people? This is the Jonah who, only some time earlier, had faced drowning and being devoured, but now he is so angry he would prefer to be dead. And when he survives, he goes away, separating himself from God and people, and sulks.

Even then, when he might have been saved from the harsh weather and climate only to find his shelters destroyed, he is angry with God yet again.

The story of Jonah ends not with an answer to Jonah’s complaints, or a solution to Israel’s conflict with Assyria, or even an indication of whether the king and people of Nineveh remain faithful, but with a question from God: should God not be concerned for the lives of people – even their animals – no matter how immoral or sinful I may see them as being, not knowing their right hand from their left?

It is a salutary lesson for the Church when we think at times that we think we have heard God’s word, think we are following God’s ways, but are reluctant to share with others – whether they are outside our parish, outside our society or culture, outside our country.

Are there times when I limit God’s salvation to those I want to be counted in?

Are there times when I resent calls to recognise that God loves others beyond my circle or circles of faith, family or friends?

No matter how threatening I see outsiders to be, does this justify putting limits on reaching out to them, on my compassion for them?

‘The shoe is … a sign that we must gather shoes together in abundance’ (Monty Python, ‘The Life of Brian’) … collecting shoes in Carlow for Syrian refugee children (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 12 March 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 ‘The Church and Unity.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections by the Right Revd Dr Royce M Victor, Bishop in the Diocese of Malabar, Church of South India.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 12 March 2025) invites us to pray:

We pray for all parts of the world where there is religious conflict and unrest. Lord, may we focus on what connects us rather than what divides.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness,
and was tempted as we are, yet without sin:
give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your Spirit;
and, as you know our weakness,
so may we know your power to save;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord God,
you have renewed us with the living bread from heaven;
by it you nourish our faith,
increase our hope,
and strengthen our love:
teach us always to hunger for him who is the true and living bread,
and enable us to live by every word
that proceeds from out of your mouth;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Heavenly Father,
your Son battled with the powers of darkness,
and grew closer to you in the desert:
help us to use these days to grow in wisdom and prayer
that we may witness to your saving love
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

Saint Michael with the whales in a window depicting the stories of Jonah and Saint Brendan in Saint Michael’s Church, Sneem, Co Kerry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

Daily prayer in Christmas 2024-2025: 38, Friday 31 January 2025

‘The earth produces of itself’ (Mark 4: 28) … fields at Shutlanger Road in Stoke Bruerne, Northamptonshire (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

This is the last week in the 40-day season of Christmas, which continues until Candlemas or the Feast of the Presentation on Sunday (2 February 2025). This week began with the Third Sunday of Epiphany (Epiphany III, 26 January 2025).

The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers John Bosco (1888), priest and founder of the Salesian teaching order. I hope to find somewhere appropriate this evening to watch the opening match of the Six Nations between France and Wales. 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, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘The seed would sprout and grow’ (Mark 4: 27) … a mulberry tree in Stoke Bruerne, Northamptonshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Mark 4: 26-34 (NRSVA):

26 He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, 27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. 28 The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. 29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.’
30 He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’

Willow trees by the Monastery Lakes in Shutlanger, Northamptonshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Reflection:

Chapter 4 in Saint Mark’s Gospel is the ‘parables chapter,’ recalling parables that make this chapter the central teaching section of this Gospel. Christ is in a boat beside the sea teaching a very large crowd who are listening on the shore (see Mark 4: 1-2). In this morning’s reading (Mark 4: 26-34), Christ describe the ‘kingdom of God’ by explaining the parable of sower scattering seed on the ground, which we read earlier this week, in the hope and expectation of the harvest (verses 26-29) and of the mustard seed that grows into a great tree (verses 30-32).

We may ask why Christ decides to talk about a mustard seed, or in Saint Luke’s Gospel about a mustard seed and a mulberry tree (Luke 17: 5-6), rather than, say, an olive tree. After all, as he was talking in the incident in today’s Gospel reading, he must have been surrounded by grove after grove of olive trees.

But, I can imagine, he is also watching to see if those who are listening have switched off their humour mode, if they have withdrawn their sense of humour. He is talking here with a great sense of humour, using hyperbole to underline his point.

We all know a tiny grain of mustard is incapable of growing to a big tree. So, what is Christ talking about here? Because, he not only caught the disciples off-guard with his hyperbole and sense of humour … he even wrong-footed some of the Reformers and many Bible translators who make mistakes about what sort of trees he is talking about in the Gospels.

Why did Christ refer to a mustard seed and a mulberry or sycamine tree, and not, say, an olive tree or an oak tree?

Christ first uses the example of a tiny, miniscule kernel or seed (κόκκος, kokkos), from which the small mustard plant (σίναπι, sinapi) grows. But mustard is an herb, not a tree. Not much of a miracle, you might say: tiny seed, tiny plant.

In Saint Luke’s Gospel, he then mixes his metaphors and refers to another plant. Martin Luther, in his translation of the Bible, turned the tree into a mulberry tree. The mulberry tree – both the black mulberry and the white mulberry – is from the same family as the fig tree.

As children, some of us sang or played to the nursery rhyme or song, Here we go round the mulberry bush. Another version is Here we go gathering nuts in May. The same tune is used for the American rhyme Pop goes the weasel and for the Epiphany carol, I saw three ships.

Of course, mulberries do not grow on bushes, and they do not grow nuts that are gathered in May. Nor is the mulberry a very tall tree – it grows from tiny seeds but only reaches the height of an adult person.

It is not a very big tree at all. It is more like a bush than a tree – and it is easy to uproot too.

However, the tree Christ names in Saint Luke’s Gospel (Greek συκάμινος, sikámeenos) is the sycamine tree, which has the shape and leaves of a mulberry tree but fruit that tastes like the fig, or the sycamore fig (συκόμορος, Ficus Sycomorus).

Others think the tree being referred to there is the sycamore fig (συκόμορος, Ficus Sycomorus), the big tree that little Zacchaeus climbs in Jericho to see Jesus (Luke 19: 1-10).

The sycamine tree is not naturally pollinated. The pollination process is initiated only when a wasp sticks its stinger right into the heart of the fruit. In other words, the tree and its fruit have to be stung in order to reproduce. There is a direct connection between suffering and growth, but also a lesson that everything in creation, including the wasp, has its place in the intricate balance of nature.

Whether it is a small seed like the mustard seed, a small, seemingly useless and annoying creature like the wasp, or a small and despised figure of fun like Zacchaeus, each has value in God’s eyes, and each has a role in the great harvest of gathering in for God’s Kingdom.

Put more simply, it is quality and not quantity that matters when it comes faith and love.

The Sower and the Seed … an image in the East Window by Mayer & Co in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 31 January 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 ‘A Reflection on 2 Timothy’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Programme Update by the Revd Canon Dr Nicky Chater, Chair of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Friendly Churches and Chaplain for these communities in the Diocese of Durham.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 31 January 2025) invites us to pray:

Holy God, we pray for people who cannot make use of many good things a society can offer because of our systems. We think of people who cannot prove their identity, or understand the necessary language, or fill in forms.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
whose Son revealed in signs and miracles
the wonder of your saving presence:
renew your people with your heavenly grace,
and in all our weakness
sustain us by your mighty power;
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:

Almighty Father,
whose Son our Saviour Jesus Christ is the light of the world:
may your people,
illumined by your word and sacraments,
shine with the radiance of his glory,
that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed
to the ends of the earth;
for he is alive and reigns, now and for ever.

Additional Collect:

God of all mercy,
your Son proclaimed good news to the poor,
release to the captives,
and freedom to the oppressed:
anoint us with your Holy Spirit
and set all your people free
to praise you in Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

‘World’s Smallest Seed,’ 40”x30” oil/canvas, by James B Janknegt

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 the Kingdom Season: 8, Friday 8 November 2024

The Unjust Steward … part of the East Window in Saint Michael’s Church, Limerick, made in 1878 by Mayer & Co and illustrating 10 parables (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints and Advent. The Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers the Saints and Martyrs of England (8 November).

Before today begins, before having breakfast, 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.

‘The Unjust Steward,’ by the Kazakhstan Artist, Nelly Bube (Bubay)

Luke 16: 1-8 (NRSVA):

1 Then Jesus said to the disciples, ‘There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2 So he summoned him and said to him, “What is this that I hear about you? Give me an account of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.” 3 Then the manager said to himself, “What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4 I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.” 5 So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, “How much do you owe my master?” 6 He answered, “A hundred jugs of olive oil.” He said to him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.” 7 Then he asked another, “And how much do you owe?” He replied, “A hundred containers of wheat.” He said to him, “Take your bill and make it eighty.” 8 And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.’

A ‘Shop To Let’ sign within view of Sidney Sussex College chapel, Cambridge … can we reconcile the values of the Kingdom and the demands of commercial life? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s reflection:

In the Gospel reading for the Eucharist today, we read the parable of ‘the Unjust Steward’ or the ‘Parable of the Dishonest Manager’.

Whatever name you give it, this morning’s reading is about ignoring and exploiting the plight of the oppressed and the poor and tells us that this amounts to turning away from God and turning towards idolatry. We are called to turn around, and in turning to the needs of the poor we find that we are turning to God.

So, let me tell this morning’s Gospel story (Luke 16: 1-13) in another way. When I left school, I started training as a chartered surveyor and in estate management. I never finished that training, but I can visualise some of the characters in this story.

A very, very rich man lives in a big city, let’s say it is Dublin. He has a luxurious lifestyle made possible by the income from the apartments, hotels and office blocks he owns in the city centre. He has been a major property developer, and a key shareholder in one of the business banks lending to developers.

He has hired an estate manager to run his property holding company, his building society, and his insurance agency while he spends most of his time in his large country house in Co Kildare or Co Meath, in the Algarve playing golf or in Marbella on his yacht.

All the work of painting, maintaining the lifts and the plumbing in his apartment blocks, working the bar and servicing the rooms in his hotels, and working at the call centres in the office blocks, is done by people who travel in and out from the rims of the city, people whose grandparents probably once lived in the small terraced houses that once stood along the docks or the canal banks but were levelled to build those apartments, office blocks and hotels.

They pay their mortgages to the bank that financed the apartment blocks and similar developments. Their overdrafts are from the same bank. Their mortgage, insurance and life assurance policies are from an agency he owns. They find themselves increasingly in debt, paying school fees and health insurance, running a car or two cars, meeting hire purchase payments for fridges, freezers, TVs, and laptops … What they earn is never enough to pay off their mortgages, their overdrafts, their term loans.

These families are slipping further and further into debt, working harder and harder to pay what cannot be paid.

But they never meet the rich developer. The immediate face of this system, of his companies and his investments, is the face of the estate agent who manages the blocks – a man whose grandparents came from the same families as the people who now suffer under his management.

However, his parents had escaped the system, he got a good education, and then got sucked into the system.

The developer hears rumours that the estate manager, who is also his insurance agent, has been squandering the developer’s resource, and gives him his dismissal notice. Now, remember that ‘squandering’ is not necessarily a bad word here – the sower in another parable squanders seed by tossing it on roads and in bird-feeding zones, and the shepherd in one of this week’s parables potentially squanders 99 sheep by running after the lost one; the widow searching for her lost coin risks losing her other nine as she sweeps everything out.

Meanwhile, the estate agent has to work out his notice, but is no longer authorised to let, to rent, to buy, to sell, to do anything at all in the developer’s name.

He probably shares the same background only a generation or two ago with the maintenance workers, the tenants, the workers in the office blocks. But when he is out on his ear, they are not going to help him to find a place to live, or find a new job, given that up to now he has allied himself with the developer’s interests, collecting high rents, refusing to bring down rents when the reviews are due, managing the work rotas for the maintenance workers, forcing them to work longer hours rather than taking on the staff needed for the job, dealing unjustly with both tenants and workers.

He has been demanding higher rents and premiums, and longer working hours, yet providing fewer and fewer services – doing what certain economists have advised him to do: increasing profit margins and productivity and cutting costs at one and the same time.

He may be shrewd, but that is why he is called ‘the dishonest manager’ (verse 8).

The agent then does something that is extraordinarily clever.

He gathers all the tenants and workers who owe him money, and he declares that their debts have been written down, more than the courts could ever write them down, to something that might be repaid, freeing families from heart-breaking choices. He has been upping their rents and their premiums; now he brings them all back to a payable rate. And in doing this, he manages to wipe out the arrears that have been mounting up.

The smart agent manages not to tell the tenants or the workers that he has been sacked. Nor does he tell them that the developer has not authorised any of his largesse. But the tenants and the workers now think the developer, their landlord, is more generous than anyone else in his position could be. The developer is now a hero in their eyes – and, by extension, the agent is too.

The developer comes back for his quarterly or annual visit to pick up the income the agent has collected for him, and he gets a surprise that is exhilarating and challenging. The people are delighted to see him. Workers shake his hands, tenants lean out of the balconies to wave at him, children want to have ‘selfies’ taken with him.

Then, as he inspects the books in the small office the agent has worked from in the complex, he finds out what the agent has done in telling the tenants and the workers that the developer has forgiven their debts.

He has a choice to make.

He can go and tell them that it was all a terrible mistake, that the agent’s ‘stroke’ amounted not to generosity but to theft, or at least to dishonesty, and has no legal basis – he can tell them they are still responsible for the unpaid rent, for the overdrawn loans.

The warm welcome could quickly turn to nasty protests.

Or, the developer can go outside, bask in the unexpected welcome he has received, and take credit for the agent’s actions. At least he has cash in his hand where once he might have had nothing because of defaulting tenants and clients. That would save him going to court, but has he to take the agent back to work for him?

What would you do?

Picture yourself in this dilemma, both as the agent and as the developer.

From the agent’s point of view, does it matter any more what the developer decides to do? Whatever decision the developer makes, his future is safe – either he gets his job back, or his own people are going to look after him.

But here is the big problem: what the agent did is clearly dishonest. He has taken the landlord’s property and squandered it – even after he was sacked and had no right to do anything in the developer’s name.

What is it that the agent has done, without permission? Who has he deceived?

The agent forgives. He forgives things that he had no right to forgive. He forgives for all the wrong reasons, for personal gain and to compensate for his past misconduct. But that decisive action that he undertakes redeems him from a position to which it seems he could not be reconciled, to the developer any more than to the tenants and workers.

So what is the moral of the story?

This story is unique to Saint Luke’s Gospel, and for him there is a significance that is important throughout the third gospel: Forgive. Forgive it all. Forgive it now. Forgive it for any reason you want. Forgive for the right reason. Forgive for the wrong reason. Forgive for no reason at all. Just forgive.

Remember, Saint Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer includes the helpful confusion: καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν, καὶ γὰρ αὐτοὶ ἀφίομεν παντὶ ὀφείλοντι ἡμῖν: καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν (‘and forgive us our sins for indeed we ourselves are forgiving everyone who is [monetarily] indebted to us’) (Luke 11: 4) – the monetary indebtedness is obvious in the original Greek.

We pray it, but do we put it into practice?

The arrival of the Kingdom of God is no occasion for score-keeping of any kind, whether monetary or moral.

Why should I forgive someone who has sinned against me, or against my sense of what is obviously right? I don’t have to do it out of love for the other person.

I could forgive the other person because of what I pray in the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday if not every morning.

I could forgive because I know I would like to be forgiven myself.

I could forgive because I know what it is like to be me when I am unforgiving.

I could forgive because I am, or I want to be, deeply in touch with a sense of Christ’s power to forgive and free someone just like me.

Or I could forgive because I think it will improve my life and sense of well-being.

It boils down to the same thing: deluded or sane, selfish or unselfish, there is no bad reason to forgive.

Extending the kind of grace God shows me in every possible arena – financial and moral – can only put me more deeply in touch with God’s grace.

If a crafty agent, a dishonest manager, an unjust steward, the sort of person we meet in this Gospel reading, can forgive to save his job or give himself a safety net when he is sacked, then those of us who have the experience of real grace, we who have been invited to the Heavenly Banquet, have a better reason than most people to forgive.

Where is the place for Christian values in today’s world of finance and debt? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 8 November 2024):

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 ‘Conflict, Confluence and Creativity’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections by Rebecca Boardman, former Operations Manager, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 8 November 2024) invites us to pray:

We give thanks to all who have answered your call to ministry and for all who educate and support them to shape them for your service. May you challenge and nurture them with your Word.

The Collect:

God, whom the glorious company of the redeemed adore,
assembled from all times and places of your dominion:
we praise you for the saints of our own land
and for the many lamps their holiness has lit;
and we pray that we also may be numbered at last
with those who have done your will
and declared your righteousness;
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.

Post Communion Prayer:

God, the source of all holiness
and giver of all good things:
may we who have shared at this table
as strangers and pilgrims here on earth
be welcomed with all your saints
to the heavenly feast on the day of your kingdom;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

The memorial to the Martyrs of the Reformation, both Catholic and Protestant’ in the University Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Oxford (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