Daily prayer in Lent with early English saints: 33, 17 March 2024, Saint Osmund of Salisbury

Saint Patrick depicted in a window by Burlison and Grylls in the Church of Saint John the Baptist, Spon Street, Coventry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Patrick Comerford

Lent began over a month ago on Ash Wednesday (14 February 2024), and Passiontide – the last two weeks of Lent – begins today. This is the Fifth Sunday in Lent (Lent V), also known as Passion Sunday. But today is also Saint Patrick’s Day (17 March 2024), and I hope to say more about Saint Patrick later today.

Later this morning, I hope to be at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, and I hope to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day and my name day appropriately later in the day.

Throughout Lent this year, I am taking time each morning to reflect on the lives of early, pre-Reformation English saints commemorated in the Calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship.

Before this day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, A reflection on an early, pre-Reformation English saint;

2, today’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

A statue of Saint Osmund in Salisbury Cathedral (Photograph: James Bradley/ Wikipedia/ CC BY 2.0)

Early English pre-Reformation saints: 33, Saint Osmund of Salisbury

Saint Osmund (1099), Bishop of Salisbury, is remembered in Common Worship on 16 July.

Osmund was born the son of a Norman count and came to England in the wake of William the Conqueror, his mother’s half-brother. He was quickly promoted to Chancellor in 1072. Six years later he became Bishop of Salisbury and completed the building of the new cathedral at Old Sarum.

He was a scholar and a good administrator but was best loved for his lack of avarice and ambition, traits apparently not common in the new hierarchy of Church and State. He took part in collecting the information for the Domesday Book and was present at Sarum when it was presented to the king in 1086. He is said to have compiled the Sarum Use.

Saint Osmund died on 4 December 1099 and his remains were translated to the new cathedral in Salisbury on 16 July 1457.

Saint Patrick depicted on cladding during recent restoration work at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 12: 20-33 (NRSVA):

20 Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ 22 Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.

27 ‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say – “Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’ 29 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to him.’ 30 Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31 Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ 33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

Saint Patrick receiving his mission to Ireland from Saint Celestine … a stained-glass window in a church in Dundalk, Co Louth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 17 March 2024, Lent V, Passion Sunday, Saint Patrick’s Day):

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 ‘Lent Reflection: True repentance is the key to Christian Freedom.’ This theme is introduced today by the Revd Dr Simon Ro, Dean of Graduate School of Theology at Sungkonghoe (Anglican) University, Seoul, Korea:

Read Luke 13: 1-9

‘Freedom is an idea that permeates most of the major religions in our world. This idea is essential to any spiritual journey, and for many the journey focuses on how to become liberated from a love for self, a state of self-righteousness and complacency.

‘What is Christianity’s approach towards freedom? The Gospel of Luke (13: 1-9) gives insight to answers this question, but a key idea is that of repentance. Jesus Christ stresses the universal need for repentance and shows us that unless we repent and respond to the challenges of our world, we will suffer such “disasters” as hopelessness, loneliness, frustration, anger and fear. Jesus does not want just devotion but rather a deep sincere change in heart and attitude which results in a change of behaviour – both spiritual and physical.

‘For true freedom to happen, true repentance must occur. We are challenged to recognise the need for true repentance and pursue a change in our thinking, attitude, and behaviour. This is definitely a message for consideration and change during this Lent season.’

This is a sample taken from the 2024 USPG Lent Course which can be downloaded and ordered from the USPG website www.uspg.org.uk

The USPG Prayer Diary today (17 March 2024, Lent V, Passion Sunday, Saint Patrick’s Day) invites us to pray reflecting on these words:

Praise to you, O Christ, King of eternal glory.
Christ humbled himself and became obedient unto death,
even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him
and given him the name that is above every name.

The Collect:

Most merciful God,
who by the death and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ
delivered and saved the world:
grant that by faith in him who suffered on the cross
we may triumph in the power of his victory;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ,
you have taught us
that what we do for the least of our brothers and sisters
we do also for you:
give us the will to be the servant of others
as you were the servant of all,
and gave up your life and died for us,
but are alive and reign, now and for ever.

Additional Collect:

Gracious Father,
you gave up your Son
out of love for the world:
lead us to ponder the mysteries of his passion,
that we may know eternal peace
through the shedding of our Saviour’s blood,
Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday: Saint Wulfstan of Worcester

Tomorrow: Saint Anselm of Canterbury

Saint Patrick depicted in a window in Saint Patrick’s Church, Waterford (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

Praying in Lent and Easter 2021: 36, Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Killarney

Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Killarney, was designed by Pugin as a three-quarter size scale model of Salisbury Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

During Lent and Easter this year, I am taking some time each morning to reflect in these ways:

1, a photograph of a church or place of worship that has been significant in my spiritual life;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel).

This week I am offering photographs from seven churches that were designed by Augustus Welby Pugin (1812-1852), the architect singularly responsible for shaping and influencing the Gothic revival in church architecture on these islands.

Tomorrow is the Feast of the Annunciation, and my photographs this morning (24 March 2021) are from the Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Killarney, Co Kerry.

Saint Mary’s Cathedral, built between 1842 and 1855, is one of the most beautiful Gothic revival cathedrals in Europe. Just as Saint Aidan’s Cathedral, Enniscorthy, is a three-quarter size replica of Tintern, so Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Killarney, is a three-quarter size scale model of Salisbury Cathedral.

This was said to be Pugin’s favourite Irish church, and is one of his finest buildings in Ireland, despite recent alterations that have stirred controversy among architectural and church historians.

Inside Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Killarney, Co Kerry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 8: 31-42 (NRSVA):

31 Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ 33 They answered him, ‘We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, “You will be made free”?’

34 Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there for ever. 36 So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you look for an opportunity to kill me, because there is no place in you for my word. 38 I declare what I have seen in the Father’s presence; as for you, you should do what you have heard from the Father.’

39 They answered him, ‘Abraham is our father.’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing what Abraham did, 40 but now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. 41 You are indeed doing what your father does.’ They said to him, ‘We are not illegitimate children; we have one father, God himself.’ 42 Jesus said to them, ‘If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here. I did not come on my own, but he sent me.’

Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary:

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (24 March 2021), prays:

Let us give thanks for all who stand in solidarity with those who are on the margins of society.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Killarney, was built in 1842-1855 (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

Art for Christmas (11), ‘Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows’ by John Constable

Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows,’ by John Constable

My choice of a work of Art for Christmas is Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows by John Constable. This large masterpiece was painted in oil on canvas in 1831 and measures 151.8 x 189.9 cm. It has been on display for many years in the National Gallery, London, on loan from a private collection, and was bought by the Tate last year for £23.1 million.

Constable (1776-1837) is best-known for his landscapes, including The Hay Wain (1821), which are mostly of the Suffolk countryside, where he was born and lived. He was born in East Bergholt, and was largely self-taught. Like Thomas Gainsborough, Constable was influenced by Dutch artists such as Jacob van Ruisdael and Peter Paul Rubens.

However, the realism and vitality of his work make him highly original. “I should paint my own places best,” he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, “painting is but another word for feeling.”

In 1816, when he was 40, he married his childhood friend Maria Bicknell, whose grandfather, the Revd Dr Durand Rhudde, was the Rector of East Bergholt. They were married in Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, with the Bishop of Salisbury, John Fisher (1748-1825), officiating, and spent their honeymoon in Fisher’s house in Salisbury and in Osmington Vicarage with John and Mary Fisher.

Constable died on 31 March 1837 and was buried in the graveyard of Saint John-at-Hampstead with his wife Maria, who died in 1828.

Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows was on loan to the National Gallery for 30 years, and was at risk of being sold abroad before it was bought last year. “It’s one of the quintessential images of 19th century British art and it’s worth every penny,” Tate Britain’s Director, Sir Nicholas Serota, told the BBC.

“This is one of Constable’s most important paintings,” he said. “He regarded it as one of his masterpieces and always wanted it to be in the national collection.”

The BBC Arts Editor, Will Gompertz, said: “It is arguably the most accomplished work by one of the finest, most exciting painters of the Romantic period.” Constable’s The Lock became one of the most expensive British paintings ever sold when it fetched £22.4 million at auction in July 2012.

Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows is one of a series of monumental six-foot canvases painted by Constable, who reserved this scale for his finest compositions. It was painted shortly after his wife’s death, and depicts Salisbury Cathedral under a stormy sky and a striking rainbow viewed from across the River Avon.

Constable first exhibited the painting at the Royal Academy in 1831 and later in a regional exhibition in Birmingham, but he continued working on it in 1833 and 1834.

When it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1831, it was accompanied by a quotation from James Thomson’s poem Summer, which refers to a “danger past” before describing how “a glittering robe of joy … invests the fields and nature smiles revived.”

Constable first visited Salisbury in 1811 at the invitation of Bishop John Fisher. The bishop later invited him to paint Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop’s Gardens, and that painting in is now in the Frick Collection in New York.

Constable visited Salisbury many more times in course of the years that followed, producing over 300 paintings and watercolours of the area. In Salisbury, he also formed a close friendship with the bishop’s nephew, John Fisher, and he turned to Fisher after the great shock of his wife’s death in the autumn of 1828. These events provide keys to interpreting this morning’s painting.

The scene depicts Salisbury Cathedral seen from across the River Avon. The vantage point was well-considered, and for many months, Constable produced sketches from different viewpoints as he prepared for the final work.

The painting is a composite construction based on these sketches, with topographical features artfully put into place, such as Leadenhall, where the rainbow ends and where John Fisher lived, and the Church of Saint Thomas to the left. Neither of these is visible from this viewpoint.

The painting has an extraordinary vitality, with closely observed topography and markers such as the framing foliage and the three neatly-placed cows. However, the rainbow provides the most noticeable feature from nature, softening the horizon and creating rich echoes with the curve of the river, and uniting the different elements in the painting. It is surprising, then, that X-rays reveal the rainbow was an afterthought for Constable.

A year after the painting was exhibited, his friend John Fisher died at the age of 44.

It is interesting that while Constable was putting his finishing touches to this painting, the architect AWN Pugin moved to Salisbury after his second marriage in 1833, he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1835 while living there, and he continued to live there until 1837.

Pugin, who first visited Salisbury Cathedral as a 13-year-old, saw it as “both an inspiration and an agony,” and regarded it as “the supreme work” of church architecture and the beau idéal if Early English Gothic. Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Killarney, Co Kerry, is Pugin’s homage to Salisbury Cathedral.

Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Killarney ... Pugin’s homage to Salisbury Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Constable was a devout Anglican, and this painting has been interpreted as a metaphor for pressure felt by the Church of England from its waning political importance in the early 19th century.

At the time Constable was working on this painting, the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, and others were seen as pulling down the steeple of the church. The Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 allowed Roman Catholics to sit in Parliament, and Fisher and Constable who saw this as an assault on the fabric of the establishment.

In 1833, John Keble preached his Assize Sermon in Oxford on “national apostasy,” criticising state interference in the affairs of the Church, denouncing the nation for turning away from God, and for regarding the Church as a mere institution of society, rather than as the prophetic voice of God.

These circumstances may explain why Constable painted the sky bearing down ominously on a masterpiece of English church architecture, representing the Church of England.

Other critics attribute political meanings to this painting, including the clash of industrialisation and nature represented through the clash of elements.

But was Constable was a religiously intolerant reactionary who opposed reform and rights for minorities? And why have I chosen this painting to contemplate as we come towards the end of the Christmas season?

The painting can be seen as a personal statement of Constable’s turbulent emotions and his changing states of mind. The sky reflects this turbulence and shows his emotional state of being; but the rainbow is a symbol of hope after a storm.

Some of the symbols we can see in this painting include: a grave marker, as a symbol of death; an ash tree as a symbol of life; the church as a symbol of faith and resurrection; and the rainbow as a symbol of renewed optimism.

Constable worried about the future of the Church of England. So Salisbury Cathedral is not allowed to dominate this painting in a smug, triumphant way. The largest form confronting us is the ancient tree on the left, and it seems shaken by the impact of the storm. It may even be in danger of falling into the darkness beyond, where a small church tower and houses look threatened by the black sky.

The dog isolated in the muddy foreground stares back at this tree, as if to wonder where the storm will strike next. Lightning flashes to the left of the cathedral spire, and the man in the wooden cart looks hunched, as if bracing himself for another apocalyptic storm.

The three horses pulling his cart through the water appear burdened by their task. Directly behind the cart, a tiny cottage is being smothered by a tangle of foliage growing over its vulnerable white wall and orange roof. The withered stump of a willow on the far right is perilously close to the water’s edge.

But Constable did not sink into despair about the future of the Church. In a series of lectures on the history of landscape painting in 1834, he referred in particular to this painting, Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, and said: “I mean more than the rainbow itself, I mean dewy light and freshness, the departing shower, with the exhilaration of the returning sun.”

Tomorrow: ‘The Adoration of the Shepherds,’ by El Greco.