There is something peculiar about a number of churches

The Royal Foundation of St Katharine … a new Master has been appointed (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The Venerable Roger Preece, Archdeacon of St Helens and Warrington, in the Diocese of Liverpool, has been appointed as Master of the Royal Foundation of St Katharine in Limehouse, in the East End of London. Archdeacon Preece succeeds the Revd Mark Aitken, who retires at the end of next month [31 August 2019] after seven years as Master.

The announcement of this new appointment was made earlier today by the Court of the Royal Foundation of St Katharine and by the chair of the court, the Revd John Tattersall. Because Saint Katharine’s is a royal peculiar, the appointment is made by the Crown.

Saint Katharine’s is in a strategic position at Limehouse, between Canary Wharf and the City of London. It is embarking on a major development of part of its site including a significant extension of its retreat and conference business and the establishment of a resident community.

I have visited Saint Katharine’s twice in the past two years or so, taking part in meetings of trustees of the Anglican mission agency, USPG (United Society, Partners in the Gospel).

The Royal Foundation of St Katharine was established in 1147 as a hospice, and has a fascinating 872-year history. Today, the foundation operates a Retreat House and Conference Centre.

This is one of 14 Royal Peculiars, churches, chapels and communities of which the Queen is Patron. But what is a Royal Peculiar?

The Queen’s Chapel at Saint James’s Palace … one of the 14 Royal Peculiars (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In canon law, a ‘peculiar’ is an ecclesiastical district, parish, chapel or church that is outside the jurisdiction of the bishop and archdeacon of the diocese in which it is geographically located. They include the separate or ‘peculiar’ jurisdiction of the monarch, another archbishop, bishop or the dean and chapter of a cathedral. In the past they also included churches associated with the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller.

So, an Archbishop’s Peculiar is subject to the direct jurisdiction of an archbishop and a Royal Peculiar is subject to the direct jurisdiction of the monarch.

The concept dates from Anglo-Saxon times, and most peculiars survived the Reformation. But, with the exception of Royal Peculiars, were finally abolished in the 19th century by various Acts of Parliament and became subject to diocesan jurisdiction, although a few non-royal peculiars still exist.

Westminster Abbey is probably the best known Royal Peculiar in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The majority of Royal Peculiars that remain are within the Diocese of London. There, the best known is probably Westminster Abbey.

The other Royal Peculiars in London include the two royal chapels at Saint James’s Palace, the Queen’s Chapel and the Chapel Royal; two royal chapels at the Tower of London, Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Peter ad Vincula; as well as the Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy, the Chapel of Saint Mary Undercroft at the Palace of Westminster or Houses of Parliament, the Temple Church near Fleet Street, and the Royal Foundation of St Katharine.

The Chapel Royal at Hampton Court is in Surrey, in Richmond, about 20 km south-west of central London.

Saint Michael’s Collegiate Church in Penkridge … stood outside the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The four Royal Peculiars outside London include two chapels at Windsor, Saint George’s and All Saints; the Church of Saint Edward, King and Martyr, in Cambridge; and the Chapel Royal at Holyrood in Edinburgh.

Former royal peculiars include Saint Michael’s Collegiate Church in Penkridge – although it was also a peculiar of the Archbishop of Dublin within the Diocese of Lichfield – and Saint Mary’s Church, Stafford, both in Staffordshire.

But there are also non-royal peculiars, including Saint Mary-le-Bow, which is in London geographically but legally in the Diocese of Canterbury, and two chapels of the Inns of Court, Lincoln’s Inn Chapel and Gray’s Inn Chapel.

The Chapel Royal at Dublin Castle … ceased being the Chapel Royal in 1922 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

There have been at least three Chapels Royal in Dublin, as far as I can identify today. The Chapel Royal in Dublin Castle was the official chapel of the Household of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1814 until the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922.

The last Dean of the Chapel Royal in Dublin was Canon Charles William O’Hara Mease (1913-1922), who died in 1922. In 1943, the Chapel was consecrated by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid as a Roman Catholic military church, and in 1944 was renamed the Church of the Most Holy Trinity. The Chapel Royal was closed in the early 1980s. It was restored and reopened in the early 1990s, although it has not since been used for worship.

The second chapel royal in Dublin was Christ Church Cathedral, which for centuries served as the Chapel Royal until the Chapel Royal was built in Dublin Castle. Charles I had designated the cathedral ‘our chapel royal’ and there maintained Anglican rites and ceremonies. James II continued to recognise it as ‘our chapell royal’ and in the period 1688-1689 used it for Roman Catholic liturgies.

However, as a cathedral, Christ Church remained within diocesan jurisdiction and could not be regarded as a ‘royal peculiar.’

For a time, Saint Werburgh’s Church in Werburgh Street was the Viceroy, who had a private pew in the gallery under the organ. But I do not think it was ever a chapel royal and it was never a royal peculiar.

The third former Chapel Royal in Dublin is Saint Matthew’s Church, Irishtown. It was founded by Act of Parliament in 1703, built in 1707 on a site given by Thomas Fitzwilliam, Earl of Merrion, and was licensed by Letters Patent in 1723 as the ‘Royal Chapel of Saint Matthew of Ringsend.’

As a royal chapel, the king appointed the chaplain, who was paid from the customs revenue of the port of Dublin. This arrangement continued until the disestablishment of the Church in Ireland in 1871, when it became an independent parish. The original church was demolished in 1878-1879 and rebuilt by the architect James Franklin Fuller.

The Royal Foundation of St Katharine can be visited at www.rfsk.org.uk

Saint Mary-le-Bow is in London geographically … but canonically in the Diocese of Canterbury (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future’

‘Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future / And time future contained in time past’ (TS Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’) … summer returns to Cross in Hand Lane, Lichfield, last weekend (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

Sunday, 7 June 2015,

The First Sunday after Trinity

Saint Werburgh’s Church, Saint Werburgh Street, Dublin

10 a.m., The Parish Eucharist

Readings: I Samuel 8: 4-11, [12-15], 16-20, [11: 14-15]; Psalm 138; II Corinthians 4: 13 to 5: 1; Mark 3: 20-35.

May I speak to you in the name of + the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of TS Eliot on 4 January 1965. Eliot is, perhaps, the greatest poet in the English language in the 20th century, and he is one of the greatest Anglican literary figures.

As well as being a great poet, he was also a playwright, and his plays include Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party.

Murder in the Cathedral was first staged in the Chapter House in Canterbury Cathedral 80 years ago on 15 June 1935. This verse drama is based on the events leading to the murder in Canterbury Cathedral of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, on 29 December 1170.

The play was written at the prompting of the Bishop of Chichester, George Bell, a friend of the martyred German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and later one of the key critics of the excesses of violence unleashed in World War II.

The dramatisation in this play of opposition to authority was prophetic at the time, for it was written as fascism was on the rise in Central Europe and Bishop Bell had chosen wisely when he suggested Eliot should write this play.

The play is set in the days leading up to the martyrdom of Thomas Becket at the behest of King Henry II, and the principal focus is on Becket’s internal struggles.

As he reflects on the inevitable martyrdom he faces, his tempters arrive, like characters in a Greek drama, or like Job’s comforters, and question the archbishop about his plight, echoing in many ways Christ’s temptations in the wilderness when he has been fasting for 40 Days.

The first tempter offers Becket the prospect of physical safety:

The easy man lives to eat the best dinners.
Take a friend’s advice. Leave well alone,
Or your goose may be cooked and eaten to the bone.

The second tempter offers him power, riches and fame in serving the king so that he can disarm the powerful and help the poor:

To set down the great, protect the poor,
Beneath the throne of God can man do more?

Then the third tempter suggests the archbishop should form an alliance with the barons and seize a chance to resist the king:

For us, Church favour would be an advantage,
Blessing of Pope powerful protection
In the fight for liberty. You, my Lord,
In being with us, would fight a good stroke
At once, for England and for Rome.

Finally, the fourth tempter urges Thomas to look to the glory of martyrdom:

You hold the keys of heaven and hell.
Power to bind and loose: bind, Thomas, bind,
King and bishop under your heel.

Becket responds to all his tempters and specifically addresses the immoral suggestions of the fourth tempter at the end of the first act:

Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain:
Temptation shall not come in this kind again.
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

Saint Mark’s Gospel is very sparse in its account of the story of Christ’s temptations in the wilderness – just two verses (see Mark 1: 12-13) compared to fuller 11 or 13 verse accounts given by Saint Matthew (see Matthew 4: 1-11) and Saint Luke (see Luke 4: 1-13).

In those fuller temptation narratives, Christ is tempted to do the right things for the wrong reason.

What would be wrong with Christ turning stones into bread (see Matthew 4: 3; Luke 4: 3-4) if that is going to feed the hungry? With showing his miraculous powers (see Matthew 4: 3; Luke 4: 9), if this is going to point to the majesty of God (see Matthew 4: 4; Luke 4: 10-11)? With taking command of the kingdoms of this world (see Matthew 4: 9; Luke 4: 5-7), if this provides the opportunity to usher in justice, mercy and peace?

Let us not deceive ourselves, these are real temptations. Christ is truly human and truly divine, and for those who are morally driven there is always a real temptation to do the right thing but to do it for the wrong reason.

‘Other echoes / Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow’ (TS Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’) … in the garden at the Hedgehog in Lichfield last weekend (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

This theme of temptation and how to respond runs through this morning’s Scripture readings.

In the Old Testament reading (I Samuel 8: 4-11, [12-15], 16-20, [11: 14-15]), the elders of Israel want a king, and go to Samuel, claiming their motivation is to be “like other nations” (I Samuel 8: 5). But the real reason was a power grab, motivated by a loss of faith in the power of God. Israel is warned that a king would exploit the people and enslave them, but they refused to heed these warnings.

We all know Ireland benefitted in recent years from wanting to be a modern nation, like your neighbours. But that ambition turned to greed, and we were surprise when greed turned to economic collapse. We found we had given in to the temptation to do what appeared to be the right thing for the wrong reason.

Too often when I am offered the opportunity to do the right thing, to make a difference in this society, in this world, I ask: “What’s in this for me?”

When I am asked to speak up for those who are marginalised or oppressed, this should be good enough reason in itself. But then I wonder how others are going to react – react not to the marginalised or oppressed, but to me.

How often do we use external sources to hide our own internalised prejudices?

How often have I seen what is the right thing to do, but have found an excuse that I pretend is not of my own making?

I hear people claim they are not racist, but speaking about migrants, immigrants and asylum seekers in language that would shock them if it was used about their own family members in England, America or Australia.

The victims of war in Syria or boat people in the Mediterranean are objects for our pity on the television news night after night. But why are they not being settled with compassion, in proportionate numbers in Ireland?

How often do I think of doing the right thing only if it is going to please my family members or please my neighbours?

How often do I use the Bible to justify not extending civil rights to others? Democracy came to all of us at a great price paid by past generations, but how often we try to hold on to those rights as if they were personal, earned wealth.

How often we use obscure Bible texts to prop up our political, racist, social and economic prejudices, forgetting that any text in the Bible, however clear or obscure it may be, depends, in Christ’s own words, on the two greatest commandments, to love God and to love one another.

Christ is challenged in this morning’s Gospel reading in two fundamental ways, about his calling those on the margins to come inside and be part of the Kingdom of God.

Christ is challenged about whether his work is the work of God or the work of the Devil (Mark 3: 22). And he is challenged to think about what his family thinks about what he doing (Mark 3: 32).

It would have been so easy for any one of us to give in under these twin pressures. To give up because of what people think of us, or how our family members might be upset when we do the right thing and there is nothing in it for them or for us – nothing at all except sneers and jeers and isolation.

We can give in so easily … we can convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing when we are doing it for the wrong reason. And when we allow ourselves to be silenced or immobilised, those we should have spoken up for lose a voice, and we lose our own voices, and our own integrity.

A wrong decision taken once, thinking it is doing the right thing, but for the wrong reason, is not just about an action in the present moment. It forms habits and it shapes who we are, within time and eternity.

The Revd Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), a prominent German Lutheran pastor and an outspoken opponent of Hitler, spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. He once said:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.

Eighty years ago, TS Eliot took some of the material that his producer Martin Browne asked him to remove from Murder in the Cathedral and he transformed it into his poem Burnt Norton (1935), the first of his Four Quartets, four poems concerned with the conflict between individual mortality and the endless span of human existence.

In Burnt Norton, TS Eliot tells us that the past and the future are always contained in the present. Past, present, and future cannot be separated with any precision:

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.

What we do today or refuse to do today, even if we think it is the right thing to do but we do it for the wrong reasons, reflects how we have formed ourselves habitually in the past, is an image of our inner being in the present, and has consequences for the future we wish to shape.

I pray that I, we, and our Church recover our voices and speak up for the oppressed and the marginalised, not because it is fashionable or politically correct today, but because it is the right thing to do today and for the future. Because all our actions must depend on those two great commandments – to love God and to love one another. And because, as Christ reminds us this morning, “whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3: 35).

And so may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

‘Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future’ (TS Eliot, ‘Burnt Norton’) … walking through the fields beside Cross in Hand Lane, near Lichfield, last weekend (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Collect:

God,
the strength of all those who put their trust in you:
Mercifully accept our prayers
and, because through the weakness of our mortal nature
we can do no good thing without you, grant us the help of your grace,
that in the keeping of your commandments
we may please you, both in will and deed;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post Communion Prayer:

Eternal Father,
we thank you for nourishing us
with these heavenly gifts.
May our communion strengthen us in faith,
build us up in hope,
and make us grow in love;
for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This sermon was preached on Sunday 7 June 2015 at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Werburgh’s Church, Dublin.

Wiping out the memory of mediaeval saints is a way of wiping out the memory of a city

Saint Werburgh or Saint Barbra … named after Saint Werburgh of Chester, Ely and Lichfield, or Barbra Streisand? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford

I often wonder who decides on the Irish names of inner city streets in Dublin. Sometimes I think they render the street names into Irish with a distorted sense of humour; sometimes I wonder if they have idea at all of what they are doing; and sometimes I think they simply want to destroy and eliminate collective memory and a communal sense of identity.

The Czech writer, Milan Kundera, in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, offers a series of reflections on the importance of memory as the root from which individuals and groups begin to shape the self-understanding of their identities.

In an essay in this book, Kundera analyses the writings of Franz Kafka and comments:

Prague in his novels is a city without memory. It has even forgotten its name. Nobody there remembers anything, nobody recalls anything … No song is capable of uniting the city’s present with its past by recalling the moments of its birth.

Time in Kafka’s novel is the time of humanity that has lost its continuity with humanity, of a humanity that no longer knows anything nor remembers anything, that lives in nameless cities with nameless streets or streets different from the ones they had yesterday, because a name means continuity with the past and people without a past are people without a name.

In his essay, Milan Kundera explores this theme in relation to the way in which the state authorities tried to change the awareness of the identity of the Czech people since the end of World War II. An attempt has been made to erase the nation’s memory, and through this the identity of the people has been eroded.

As Kundera notes, when he quotes his friend Milan Hubi:

The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory.

The culture, traditions, songs, religious commitment, political ideas embodied in the literature and the poetry of the community are important vehicles communicating and challenging the identity of the society.

Street names in our cities and towns, like our family names, are a way of passing on and inheriting identity and memory. As a schoolboy in the 1960s, I deeply resented the efforts of misguided teachers who, in the fervour leading up to marking the golden jubilee of the 1916 Rising, tried to render my name into Irish.

Patrick is a perfectly good name on its own. It is the name I was baptised with, and so I like to imagine it is the name God knows me by. Why would someone want to render it as “Padraig” or “Padriac”? Perhaps they thought Saint Patrick was from England, and that Patrick is an English name – even though he was born long before the arrival of the Anglo-Normans.

As for Comerford, there were too many aggressive efforts to render it as “de Comartún” or even the ludicrous “O Comartún” or convoluted but simply wrong “Mac Cumascaigh.” What was wrong with Comerford, in their eyes, of course, is that it is derived from the name of an English village. A pretty village, and a delightful place, but those self-appointed patriots knew from the sound of my name that it was an English village, no matter how long the Comerford family was living in Ireland.

“Saints alive!” you may respond. But it even happens to saints.

Now that we are coming up to the centenary of the 1916 Rising, the greening of names is plaguing us again … most visibly in the green street names around the city centre in Dublin.

As I came out of Christ Church Cathedral today and was heading down Saint Werburgh Street to Dublin Castle for lunch in the Silk Road Café, I looked up at the street sign on the “Lord Edward” on the corner of Saint Werburgh Street and Christ Church Place.

There the street sign told me in English that I was standing on “Werburgh Street” (not Saint Werburgh Street), and in Irish it told me I was on Sr[aid] Barbra [sic]. Obviously, whoever was charged with this translation thought poor Saint Werburgh was too English. But the same benighted translator did not know how to spell Barbara … perhaps he had Barbra Streisand in mind.

Upper Exchange Street … is it Upper Isolde Street or Upper Exchange Street (Photographs: Patrick Comerford)

Some years ago, I wrote about neighbouring Upper Exchange Street, off Lord Edward Street, which apparently is in both Dublin 2 and Dublin 8, and which has been rendered in Irish on one sign as Sráid an Mhalartáin Uachtarach, or Street of the Upper Exchange – did no-one know how to translate it into Upper Street of the Exchange, or did they think there were two exchanges? And then, at the corner of Lord Edward Street, opposite the former Royal Exchange, the same people have translated Upper Exchange Street as Sráid Iosóilde Uacht or Upper Isolde Street.

I have often taken services and preached on Sundays in Saint Werburgh’s Church, which is one of the churches in the Christ Church Cathedral group of parishes. It is one of the oldest churches in Dublin, dating back to 1178, when a church was built on this site shortly after the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in Dublin.

The church is named after Saint Werburgh, the Abbess of Ely and patron saint of Chester. She died in 699 AD, and the church in Dublin is first mentioned in a letter of Pope Alexander III dated 1179. However, the parish dates back much further than the Anglo-Norman foundation. In Viking Dublin, the parish church was named after Saint Martin of Tours, and the church stood near the south end of Werburgh Street.

In the 18th century, Saint Werburgh’s became a fashionable city centre church, attended by the Lord Lieutenant and his entourage, and with a reserved Viceregal pew. Saint Werburgh’s was the Chapel Royal attached to Dublin Castle, and the Viceroys were sworn into office there and seats were reserved for the officers and soldiers of Dublin Castle until 1888.

The self-appointed patriots who want to wipe out the memory of Saint Werburgh in the Irish language ought to remind themselves that Lord Edward FitzGerald, one of the leaders of the 1798 Rising, is buried in that church in a vault that was reserved for the Rectors of Saint Werburgh’s.

Saint Werburgh’s Statue at the south west-corner of Lichfield Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Werburgh was a Staffordshire saint, the daughter of King Wulphere of Mercia. She was trained at home by Saint Chad, the founding saint of Lichfield Cathedral. Of course, while Saint Chad came from an Anglo-Saxon background, he too had Irish connections: he received his early training under Saint Aidan at Lindisfarne and later spent some time in a monastery in Ireland.

Later, Werburgh became a nun in the Abbey of Ely, where the abbess was her aunt, Saint Etheldreda. She became the Abbess of Ely before she died in the seventh century. She was buried at Hanbury in Staffordshire, but her body was later reburied at the Saxon Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, which was rededicated to Saint Werburgh and Saint Oswald in 907 and eventually became Chester Cathedral.

Monks from Chester or perhaps Bristol later brought the cult of Saint Werburgh to Ireland, and Saint Werburgh’s Church in Dublin was first built in 1178.

The Two Saints’ Way … makers along the road at Cross in Hand Lane (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Two Saints’ Way is a project to recreate a pilgrim way linking the shrines of Saint Chad in Lichfield and Saint Werburgh in Chester. This pilgrim way gives its name to Cross in Hand Lane in Lichfield, where I stay regularly at the Hedgehog on the corner with Stafford Road.

The project owes everything to David Pott, an experienced long distance walker. At an early stage, his dream was of a pilgrimage trail from Stafford over Cannock Chase along the Heart of England Way to Lichfield Cathedral and the shrine of Saint Chad.

Later, he learned about the pilgrimage route between Chester Cathedral and Lichfield Cathedral. Many pilgrims on that route would continue to Canterbury or even to Rome or Jerusalem. He then thought of linking Lichfield with the shrine of Saint Werburgh, using existing paths to create a revived pilgrimage route between the two cathedral cities.

The discovery of the Staffordshire Hoard six years ago brought a new interest in Mercian heritage, attracting support from people with links with Staffordshire University, British Waterways, local tourist boards, and the cathedrals in Chester and Lichfield.

Saint Weburgh is one of the many saints carved on the west front of Lichfield Cathedral. If Lichfield, Chester and Ely can remember her, why can she not be remembered – and celebrated – in the street names of Dublin?

Yes, it was all enough to make a saint blush. All in a weekend that was disappointing for any fans or followers of the Irish cricket and rugby teams.

Barry Sheehan’s new installation in the gardens of Dublin Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

And so, after admiring Barry Sheehan’s new installation in the gardens of Dublin Castle and visiting a new design exhibition in the Coach House, two of us went out to Malahide to clear our heads and walk along the beach on a cold grey afternoon, enjoying the views back to the Marina and across Broadmeadow Estuary to the sandy end of the peninsula at Donabate.

Despite the strong currents, it was dangerously tempting to think it would be possible to wade or swim across on sunnier days. But I knew no saints would come to my rescue.

We drove back through Portmarnock, Sutton and Clontarf to the city centre, where there were countless tourists dressed in those green hats with attached red beards.

The Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations are already under way. But who will remember where he came from? Who remembers Saint Werburgh? And who remembers that Saint Barbara was a very different woman, from Nicomedia in present-day Turkey or Heliopolis of Phoenicia, in present-day Lebanon?

Looking across Broadmeadow Estuary from Malahide to the tip of the Donabate Peninsula (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Seizing the day and enjoying a walk along the shore in Bray

Pink lights in the white clouds beyond Bray this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Patrick Comerford

After Christmas Day and Saint Stephen’s Day, it seems everyone needs to get out of the house, go for a walk and clear their heads.

It was a busy Christmas this year, helping to administer the Chalice at the Midnight Mass in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, celebrating the Christmas Eucharist in Saint Werburgh’s Church on Christmas Morning, and then crossing the street for the Christmas Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral, celebrated by Archbishop Michael Jackson, and once again assisted at the administration of the Holy Communion.

After dinner on Christmas Day, I was quite tired, and sat up to watch the most talked-of movie of the season, The Interview. Saint Stephen’s Day was more relaxed, with opportunities to catch up on the Christmas editions of East Enders and Downton Abbey. I even began watching the box set of House of Cards.

But today was a day for clearing the head and getting a little fresh air, and two of us drove out to Bray. Thirty years ago, Bray, in north Co Wicklow, was quite a distance away. But now the M50 ring road around Dublin means Bray is only 20 minutes away from where I live on a day like today.

For a few years, I edited the front page of the Bray People when I worked with the People Group of local newspapers based in Wexford. A generation before that, my parents moved to Bray and lived there for a short time immediately after they married.

But today I like Bray for some of my own reasons.

Although the beach at Bray is pebbly without much remaining sand, Bray is a good location for beach walks, with views to the south of Bray Head and the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains, and to the north of the Dalkey Islands and Dublin Bay.

Bray can be run-down in many places, but it has its own unique character that means it can never be mistaken for another suburb of Dublin.

Even though the old Town Hall has been inexplicably handed over to McDonalds, there is some elegant Victorian and Edwardian architecture in the town that rivals any to be found in English and Welsh seaside resorts, thanks to the patronage of the Brabazon family of Kilruddery House, Earls of Meath.

Bray has good maritime and seafaring facilities, so that at the south end of the beach there is a rowing club, and at the north end of the beach there is a small marina with a sailing club.

And Bray seems to have its own colony of Italian families, to the second or even third generation, which means it has a generous number of genuine Italian cafés and restaurants.

Two men and a dog in a boat rowing parallel with the shoreline in Bray this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

This afternoon, two of us went for a walk on the pebbly shoreline on the beach in Bray, and in the late winter afternoon delighted in the white, snow-filled clouds on the horizons. Thankfully, the clouds have not broken in this part of Ireland, and we have not been hit by the snow that has blanketed parts of England during the past few days.

Once again, parallel to the shoreline, the two men and a dog I had seen in a boat at the beginning of November were enjoying the journey between Bray Head and the marina. They came had come from Bray Head and were rowing parallel with the full length of the beach, with the men working hard as the rowed persistently and consistently, while the dog was enjoying himself, wagging as his tail as he watched the waves roll and break against the shoreline.

And once again, all three, those two men and the dog, seemed oblivious to the number of people enjoying their post-Christmas walk on the beach and along the Promenade.

Throwing down the gauntlet ... signs along the Promenade are inviting swimmers to join the Bray Charities Sea Swim on New Year’s Day Swim (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

All along the Promenade, signs are inviting participants to join the Bray Charities Sea Swim at noon on New Year’s Day. Now, that’s a challenge.

Carpe Diem … a taste of Sardinia and Florence at the end of December (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

After walking the full-length of the Promenade, we returned for coffee in Carpe Diem on Albert Avenue, close to the corner with Strand Road and across the street from the Promenade and Sealife.

We each had a Piadina, a traditional, thin Italian flatbread, filled with goat’s cheese, spinach and roasted peppers, and two great double espressos. The café also offers great Italian wines by the glass, and I had a glass of Vermentino, a dry white wine unique to Sardinia.

Outside, a man was parking a carefully nourished and cherished care dating back to 1958. But a more wondrous sight was the way those snow-filled white clouds over the Dalkey Islands were catching the pink lights from the setting sun to the west. There was a bright crescent moon in the blue sky to the south.

Carpe Diem … we had seized the day.

A surprise sight in Albert Avenue outside Carpe Diem (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

To give and to receive the best of all presents this Christmas

The Birth of Christ, a Christmas icon by Juliet Venter, from The Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies, Cambridge, 2014

Patrick Comerford

25 December 2014, Christmas Day

The Nativity of our Lord

10 a.m., The Parish Eucharist, Saint Werburgh’s Church, Dublin.

Readings: Isaiah 52: 7-10; Psalm 98; Hebrews 1: 1-4 (5-12); John 1: 1-14 (15-18).

May I speak to you in the name of + the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

I know you are not expecting a sermon this morning, and that everyone would like to get home as soon as possible to spend the rest of Christmas Day with the family.

But on this day we celebrate, as Saint John says in our Christmas Gospel reading, that “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” And so it would be a pity this morning if we did not share a few words about the Word that was in the beginning and that came to dwell among us.

It is a puzzle to the followers of other religions in the region where Saint John the Evangelist was living that the God of Christians is described not in terms of power and might and majesty, but as the Word.

Tradition tells us that Saint John spends his last days in the Eastern Mediterranean, in prison on the island of Patmos, and then in Ephesus, where the Johannine church lived side by side with the worshippers of the cult of Artemis, whose temple was one of the seven wonders of the world.

The incarnate God, the Word made Flesh, was not the sort of God his neighbours could accept. Nor was he the sort of Messiah his contemporaries could expect.

The sort of Messiah that was expected at the time was one who would drive out the Romans, who would reallocate and redistribute the positions of power and authority, who would make them feel good about themselves.

But the God revealed at Christmas-time, to the Shepherds in Bethlehem and then to the Magi, is not just God incarnate, God become human, but God who takes on all our frailty, all our weakness, all our vulnerability. As Canon Giles Fraser pointed out in the Guardian recently, this is God as a human baby, at “the raw limits of human existence.”

God almighty, God the creator, is not a remote powerful, awesome and fearsome despot hidden behind the clouds, high in the sky. The God who loves us becomes a powerless baby, with all the needs and all the screams of a helpless baby.

God loves us, and all we can do in response is to love God, and to love one another.

God gives up all his power, position, place and authority, not empower us and to make us strong and brave, but to call us to love, to love more and to love more fully.

And the first people to hear this Good News were not the powerful merchants in the warmth and comfort of the bright city, but the shepherds in the isolated cold and dark on the hillside.

The first people to hear this Good News were not Herod and his courtiers in the warmth and comfort of his bright place, but three wise men or kings who give up their own privileges to travel in the cold and dark to a strangely poor household.

At the heart of the Christmas story is Christ’s teaching that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.

If you feel last, forgotten and powerless this Christmas, then God has identified with you, identifies with you now, this Christmas, in his incarnation, in the Christmas story.

The religion of the baby born in Bethlehem is not the religion of power, and wealth and privilege. It is about love, unconditional love. And the greatest Christmas presents are the love of God and the love of others. To give and receive these are to give and receive the greatest Christmas presents of all.

So, may all we think, say and so be in the name of + the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This reflection was shared at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Werburgh’s Church, Dublin, on Christmas Day, 25 December 2014.

Collect:

Almighty God,
you have given us your only-begotten Son
to take our nature upon him
and as at this time to be born of a pure virgin:
Grant that we, who have been born again
and made your children by adoption and grace,
may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Introduction to the Peace:

Unto us a child is born,
and his name shall be called the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9: 6).

Preface:

You have given Jesus Christ your only Son
to be born of the Virgin Mary,
and through him you have given us power
to become the children of God:

Post Communion Prayer:

God our Father,
whose Word has come among us
in the Holy Child of Bethlehem:
May the light of faith illumine our hearts
and shine in our words and deeds;
through him who is Christ the Lord.

Blessing:

Christ, who by his incarnation gathered into one
all things earthly and heavenly,
fill you with his joy and peace:
and the blessing of God almighty,
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,
be with you and remain with you always. Amen.

Trinity Sunday: made dull by celebrating a doctrine rather than joining the dance?

A modern icon in the style of Andrei Rublev’s icon of the Old Testament Trinity or the Hospitality of Abraham

Patrick Comerford

Sunday, 15 June 2014: Trinity Sunday

10 a.m., Saint Werburgh’s Church, Dublin, Holy Communion 2.

Readings: Genesis 1: 1-2: 4a or Isaiah 40: 12-17, 27-31; Psalm 8; II Corinthians 13: 11-13; Matthew 28: 16-20.

May I speak to you in the name of + the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Although Trinity Sunday is one of my favourite Sundays in the liturgical year, I am aware that many clergy are reluctant to preach on this Sunday for fear of heresy.

The difficulties of preparing for this Sunday are compounded because this is the only festival in the Church year that celebrates a doctrine rather than an event or a person.

But perhaps if we approached Trinity Sunday thinking about how to celebrate our life in the Trinity rather than explaining our doctrine about the Trinity we might have very different sermons, with a very different approaches.

Heavy on the celebrations, light on the explanations – would it work better?

In the Western traditions of the Church, Trinity Sunday is the Sunday following the Day of Pentecost.

Interestingly, Trinity Sunday is a very Anglican day too: Thomas Becket (1118–1170) was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on the Sunday after Pentecost, and his first act was to ordain that the day of his consecration should be held as a new festival in honour of the Holy Trinity. This observance then spread from Canterbury throughout the Western Church.

Trinity is a popular name for churches and colleges throughout the English-speaking world. The official name of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, is actually the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, but it is also the official name of Christ Church Cathedral, Waterford, and there are Trinity Colleges in Dublin, Cambridge and Oxford as well as a Trinity Hall in Cambridge.

Trinity College Dublin ... Trinity is a popular name for cathedrals and colleges, so why do we shy away from talking about the Trinity? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

So, why are Anglican clergy, and clergy in general, so reluctant to talk about the Trinity, or so turgid and tortured when they do so? I know that for some preaching can be a difficult task. But sometimes preachers make it difficult – not only for ourselves, but for those who must listen to us.

And I wonder why so many clergy who get into the pulpit to preach on Trinity Sunday either descend to the depths of heresy or rise to the heights of lunacy.

The novelist and Anglican spiritual writer, Dorothy Sayers, wrote a humorous essay, ‘The Dogma is the Drama’ (Dorothy L. Sayers, Creed or Chaos, London: Methuen, 1947), on the relevance of Christian doctrine to real life. In that essay, she drew up a kind of questionnaire with the sort of answers she felt ordinary people would give to questions like this. She wrote:

Question: What does the Church think of God the Father?

Answer: He is omnipotent and holy. He created the world and imposed on man conditions impossible of fulfilment. He is very angry if these are not carried out. He sometimes interferes by means of arbitrary judgment and miracles, distributed with a good sense of favouritism. He likes to be truckled to, and is always ready to pounce on anybody who trips up over a difficulty in the Law, or is having a bit of fun. He is rather like a dictator, only larger and more arbitrary.

Question: What does the Church think of God the Son?

Answer: He is in some way to be identified with Jesus of Nazareth. It was not his fault that the world was made like this and, unlike God the Father, he is friendly to man and did his best to reconcile man and God. He has a good deal of influence with God, and if you want anything done, it’s best to apply to him.

Question: What does the Church think of God the Holy Ghost?

Answer: I don’t know exactly. He was never seen or heard of till Whit Sunday. There is a sin against him which damns you for ever, but nobody knows what it is.

Question: What is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity?

Answer: “The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the Holy Ghost incomprehensible” – the whole thing incomprehensible. Something put in by theologians to make it more difficult. Nothing to do with daily life and reality.

Incomprehensible?

Nothing to do with daily life and reality?

Are these some of the difficulties you could imagine when it comes to thinking and talking about the Trinity?

In the grounds of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin ... officially known as the Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

It might be easier on Father’s Day to talk about our images of God the Father. But this is also Trinity Sunday, so allow me to introduce us this morning to some ways of thinking of God as the Trinity.

If I were to introduce you to my world, to my story, I might invite you to visit the places that have shaped and made me.

I might invite you to imagine what it was like for a small boy to lay awake in his grandmother’s farmhouse in west Waterford, it was so bright outside on a balmy summer’s evening. Downstairs, I can hear the old clock chiming out the time: it’s 10, and a hush descends on the house as the adults settle down in their chairs to listen to the news on the wireless. I hear the black kettle boiling on the open fire as someone prepares to make a pot of tea. Outside, a pigeon is still cooing in the thatch, I imagine I can hear the abbey bells ringing out the time across the fields, and I know I am safe and loved in this world.

Twenty or so years later, once again it’s late at night, in the top storey of a tall house in a narrow street in Wexford town.

It’s comforting to hear the clock of Rowe Street church count out the hours. Is that a late train I hear trundling along the quays? A lone voice in the Theatre Royal braving a late rehearsal for one of next week’s operas? And I am so looking forward to the Festival Service in Saint Iberius’s Church.

Let us move forward another two decades or so. I can’t sleep in this house in suburban Dublin. But I can hear my children snoring contentedly in their own rooms. Outside, the unseasonable rain is pelting down, the wind is rustling through the cherry tree outside, and I wonder whether all the cherry blossom will be shaken down and washed onto the grass below by the time morning dawns.

We can use words not only to tell our stories, but to paint pictures, to invite others into our communities, into our families, and into our lives. Now that you have heard and seen what has shaped me, where I have been formed, what made me feel loved and secure, now that you have been invited into my story, my family, and know me, we are ready to sing the same songs, to sit together at the same table. Why, we might even dance!

The Trinity is an image of God, a perfect community, a community of God that invites us to share God’s story, to sit at table with God, to sing songs with God, … all the things we’re doing at this Eucharist this morning. Why, as Karen Baker-Fletcher says in her recent book, the Trinity could be God’s invitation for us to dance with God [Karen Baker-Fletcher, Dancing With God: A Womanist Perspective on the Trinity (St Louis: Chalice Press, 2006; 2007)].

Two of the great Early Fathers of the Church, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus and Saint John of Damascus, use the term περιχώρησις (perichoresis), an image of going around, enveloping, to describe the mysterious union of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Clark Pinnock writes: “The metaphor suggests moving around, making room, relating to one another without losing identity” [Clark Pinnock, Flame of Love, A theology of the Holy Spirit (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996)].

There is a play on words – a pun on the Greek origins of the word – that allows us to think of creative choreography, to imagine a dance of reciprocal love. This divine unity is expressed in the relationship of the three as one, for relationship is at the heart of the unity of the three-in-one. It is a relationship that is mutual and reciprocal. The Trinity tells us that shared life is basic to the nature of God: God is perfect social relationship, perfect mutuality, perfect reciprocity, perfect peace, perfect love.

“As a circle of loving relationships, God is dynamically alive.” The three persons of the Trinity are caught up in an eternal dance of reciprocity, so intertwined that at times it may appear difficult to tell who is who. They move with choreographed harmony. The love emanating from within cannot help but create, for it is the nature of love not to harbour and to hoard but to expand and to create.

God has, from the beginning, been wooing creation to dance. The community of God desires community with us. You and I are being courted, God wants to dance with you, and with me. The love that created us and our world is the same love that longs to be in fellowship with us.

When we worship in spirit and in truth, do others, does the world, see us united as one, bound by love, dancing in harmony and flinging out new creation from within our midst? And do we call others to dance with us?

The Russian icon writer Andrei Rublev tried to create the same picture in a different way. In his famous icon of “The Visitation of Abraham,” he depicts three visitors who arrive at Abraham’s door. The guests become the hosts, the host becomes the guest, and Abraham is invited to a meal that is past, present and future. It is every domestic meal, it is a foretaste of the Eucharist, it is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.

In welcoming strangers, Abraham is entertaining angels. But in entertaining angels, he is invited into communion with God as Trinity.

It is a moment in the past, a moment in the present and a moment in the future, when we shall all be restored to being in the image and likeness of God our Creator. God, in creating us, creates out of love, making our destiny eternal life with him. We are created to experience life within the Trinitarian communion of persons.

For there are three things we all encounter in our lives:

● we all need to be cared for;
● we all encounter suffering;
● we all need company.

God the Father creates us and cares for us; God in Christ identifies with our suffering, takes on and takes away our suffering; God the Holy Spirit enlivens our communities, gives us that divine measure. God has, in a very real way, entered into the mystery of our humanity, so that we may enter into the mystery that is his communio personarum.

“This deifying union has, nevertheless, to be fulfilled ever more and more even in this present life, through the transformation of our human nature and by its adaptation to eternal life.” [Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: Saint Vladimir’s Press, 2002), p. 196.]

God invites us in creation, in Christ, in the Church, in the Word, and in the Sacrament, to be in union with God, to share God’s story, to sit down and dine with God, to sing and dance with God, to find our inner dwelling with God, and to be at one with God. And that is the purpose and the fulfilment of Christian life.

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Inside Saint Werburgh’s Church, Church Street, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you have given us your servants grace,
by the confession of a true faith,
to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity
and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the Unity:
Keep us steadfast in this faith,
that we may evermore be defended from all adversities;
for you live and reign, one God, for ever and ever.

Post-Communion Prayer:

Almighty God,
may we who have received this holy communion,
worship you with lips and lives
proclaiming your majesty
and finally see you in your eternal glory:
Holy and Eternal Trinity,
one God, now and for ever.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, Dublin, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This sermon was preached at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Werburgh’s Church, Werburgh Street, Dublin, on Trinity Sunday, 15 June 2014.