Daily prayer in the Kingdom Season: 22, Friday 22 November 2024

‘The Cleansing of the Temple’, Giotto, the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the Kingdom Season, the time between All Saints’ Day and Advent, and this week began with the Second Sunday before Advent. The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today (22 November) remembers Saint Cecilia (ca 230), Martyr at Rome and the patron saint of musicians.

Later today we hope to attend the Choral Evensong in Southwark Cathedral in memory of Ian Keatley, the Director of Music who died suddenly in August 2024. I first got to know Ian when he was the Director of Music in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, and he warmly welcomed us to Southwark Cathedral last year when we were making our wedding arrangements. It seems appropriate that this memorial service should take place on Saint Cecilia’s Day.

Meanwhile, before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time early 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.

‘Christ driving the Traders from the Temple,’ by El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos, 1541-1614), ca 1600, The National Gallery, London

Luke 19: 45-48 (NRSVA):

45 Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; 46 and he said, ‘It is written,

“My house shall be a house of prayer”;
but you have made it a den of robbers.’

47 Every day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him; 48 but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard.

Preparing for the Eucharist in the Harvard Chapel in Southwark Cathedral … what distracts you from prayer in God’s House? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s reflection:

Do you have problems with prayer, with praying?

It can be difficult, and difficult for priests too.

When we are ordained as priests, we are told in the Ordinal that we are to lead God’s people in prayer, but we are also charged by the bishop to be diligent in prayer, in the reading of Scripture and in study.

But being told to do something, and actually doing it, are two very different things.

There are times when prayer is not easy, prayer can is often difficult for every one of us, and it is easy to be distracted.

Because the Church knew at an early stage that prayer could be difficult for all of us some of the time, and for some of us all the time, early and mediaeval churches were decorated to take account of our distractions, to catch us unaware of our distractions, and to bring us back to the reasons we find ourselves in church.

We can be distracted on a Sunday morning by the presence of other people, by thoughts that bring us back to the problems of the past week, by worries and anxieties about the coming week, by the weather outside, by traffic and noises outside the church, even by noises and people inside the church.

When we are distracted in prayer, we stop listening to God. But, frankly, one of the big distractions in prayer can be the feeling that God is not listening to us.

And the same thing can happen when we try to pray at home, in the privacy of our own homes or rooms.

In the past, many churches were decorated with frescoes and icons. Many Reformers objected to this as idolatry, and wanted to remove some, sometimes even all images from churches.

But the inspiration for those early church decorators was to call people back to prayer and the Bible, and to lift up their hearts and minds to God.

The bottom, ground level of the frescoes in a church were of earthly scenes. As our eyes moved up, we moved through the stories of saints, prophets and martyrs, through New Testament scenes, to events in the life of Christ, and finally, in the dome to Christ enthroned in splendour, as the Pantocrator or ruler of all, surrounded by the heavenly host of angels and the four evangelists.

Once, as I was a preparing for a seminar with students, I asked my sons when they were still children to close their eyes, to think of a church they knew, and to say what was the first thing they would see when they walked in.

One said, ‘The backs of people.’ It said a lot about how children can find some churches cold and unwelcoming.

The other said ‘Jesus.’

I thought he was pulling my leg and that he knew the reason for my little exercise.

But, no, he reminded me of how he held my hand as a small child as we walked into a dark church in a small village on a Greek island. He recalled how in the darkness his eyes were drawn up to the light streaming through the small windows in the dome, and he was startled by the image of Christ, lit up by the rays of sunshine and looking down lovingly on the two of us, father and son.

Would that everyone who came into our churches could say that the first thing they see is Jesus, rather than the backs of people.

Historically, Anglicans tried to undo the iconoclasm of over-zealous, small-minded reformers by providing a visual focus when our minds wander during prayer. This could be in stained glass windows or in a large painting behind or above the altar.

One traditional Anglican way of catching the eyes of the distracted was to place a number of boards in the chancel area, two decorated with the Ten Commandments and one on each side of these, with the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed.

These boards recognised that we can be bored by sermons and distracted in prayer. But they allowed people to learn the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, and so to learn to pray and to grow in faith and discipleship. And they allowed us to bring our focus back to why we were in church and to return to prayer.

Many of these boards survive in the Wren churches throughout London, and I know of at least three in Ireland: Kenure Church in Rush, north Co Dublin; Saint Carthage’s Cathedral, Lismore, Co Waterford; and Saint Nicholas Church, Adare, Co Limerick.

The frescoes, icons and Stations of the Cross in other churches serve the same purpose. They are positive distractions when our minds and our eyes are tempted to wander in prayer and in worship.

But there are negative distractions too.

Do not get me wrong, please. I never find children a distraction in church. Children should be as comfortable in church on a Sunday morning as they ought to be in their grannies’ on a Sunday afternoon.

But there are negative distractions that take our eyes and our minds away from where they should be on Sunday morning: what’s happening around us; the sounds outside. The first hit for the Saw Doctors was a song with a crude description of how a young man is distracted by a young woman at Sunday Mass. But it was ever so.

I cannot imagine that the only conversation that Mary and Joseph had when they brought the Child Jesus to the Temple was holy talk with Simeon and Anna.

In the Temple in Jerusalem, when they came together on high holy days and holidays, of course they stopped and joked and chatted, and consoled and congratulated one another as they caught up on the latest news.

It was building up community, the family of God. In churches today, our social chit-chat, before and after, is not just mere gossip or a distraction, but builds up the Body of Christ. This is positive distraction.

But in the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today, Christ is dealing with negative distractions, a whole package, a whole collection of negative distractions.

The Ten Commandments are the summary of our relationships with God and with one another. They summarise the purpose and direction of worship and prayer, and they summarise and express the core values of community relations. Christ’s action in the Gospel reading is a reaction to how those values have been abused and set aside for personal gain in a place that is supposed to be at the heart of these relationships.

In the outer court of the Temple, he finds a thriving market, where visitors can buy the animals needed for sacrifice and change coins with images of Caesar as a god for coins that are acceptable as Temple tax.

He must have known that Mary and Joseph had to change coins and to buy their turtle doves when they brought him in their arms to the Temple.

The Prophet Jeremiah had said that impurity would destroy the value of the Temple in God’s eyes, and it would ‘become a den of robbers’ in his sight (Jeremiah 7: 11).

All classes of people, indeed all the nations of the earth, should be able to worship God, the prophets had declared, so that ‘there shall no longer be traders in the house of the Lord’ (see Zechariah 14: 21; Isaiah 56: 7; Tobit 14: 5-7).

Christ’s action in this reading is not a mere outburst of temper, but the energy of righteousness being used to confront people whose business and sharp practice have become distractions from prayer and worship.

It is not those who are praying, or those who are distracted from prayer, that he wants to hear what he has to say, but those who have no time for prayer at all and instead are there to make quick profits out of money changing and large profits out of selling animals who distract or even deter those who should feel welcome to worship of God, and to meet one another. For the love of God and the love of others is the summary of the law of Moses.

The disciples are reminded, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me’ (see Psalm 69: 9).

But his rebuke is heard and interpreted only in material ways. Those around him are so distracted from their prayers that they cannot grasp that the true, lasting Temple is the body of Christ which, as the disciples would see after the Resurrection, would be raised up in three days.

Hopefully, we shall continue to see this as we journey towards welcoming him as Christ the King next Sunday, and during Advent as we prepare to welcome him at his incarnation.

Saint Cecilia, Patron of Musicians and Composers … a stained glass window in Saint John’s Church, Sandymount, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Friday 22 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 ‘Coming Together for Climate Justice’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections by Linet Musasa, HIV Stigma and Discrimination Officer, Anglican Council of Zimbabwe.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Friday 22 November 2024) invites us to pray:

Let us pray for the strength of the youth in church who raise awareness in their communities and advocate for climate-friendly practices.

The Collect:

Heavenly Father,
whose blessed Son was revealed
to destroy the works of the devil
and to make us the children of God and heirs of eternal life:
grant that we, having this hope,
may purify ourselves even as he is pure;
that when he shall appear in power and great glory
we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom;
where he is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

Gracious Lord,
in this holy sacrament
you give substance to our hope:
bring us at the last
to that fullness of life for which we long;
through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Additional Collect:

Heavenly Lord,
you long for the world’s salvation:
stir us from apathy,
restrain us from excess
and revive in us new hope
that all creation will one day be healed
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

Today is Saint Cecilia’s Day (22 November) … over the years, I have been elected a Fellow of both the Fraternity of Saint Cecilia and the Academy of Saint Cecilia

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 Ordinary Time with USPG: Tuesday 22 November 2022

The bells in Preveli Monastery … a reminder of a story told by Nikos Kazantzakis in ‘Zorba the Greek’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This is the final week in Ordinary Time this year in the Calendar of the Church, the week between the Feast of Christ the King and Advent Sunday.

Today, the calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship remembers Saint Cecilia, Martyr at Rome, ca 230.

Saint Cecilia was one of the most revered martyrs of the Roman Church, but the only thing known for certain is that, at some point in the second or third century, a woman called Cecilia allowed the Church to meet in her house in Trastevere in the city of Rome and that, subsequently, the church erected on that site bore her name.

She was remembered as a brave woman who risked giving hospitality to the Christian Church when to do so was to court censure and possibly death. According to tradition, she converted her pagan husband and his brother to Christianity, and both were martyred before her. She is said to have been martyred on this day in about the year 230. She is honoured as the patron saint of musicians.

Before this day gets busy, I am taking some time this morning for reading, prayer and reflection.

During this week, I am reflecting in these ways:

1, One of the readings for the morning;

2, a reflection or thought from the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis;

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

‘As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down’ (Luke 21: 6) … classical remains in the Forum in Rome (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 21: 5-11 (NRSVA):

5 When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, 6 ‘As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.’

7 They asked him, ‘Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?’ 8 And he said, ‘Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and, “The time is near!” Do not go after them.

9 ‘When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.’ 10 Then he said to them, ‘Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; 11 there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.

‘Zorba the Greek’ … the film was released 58 years ago in December 1964

Nikos Kazantzakis, 2:

As I think today about Saint Cecilia, the patron of musicians and composers, I think too of the theme music composed by Mikis Theodorakis for the film Zorba the Greek

In my reflections on Saturday last, I referred to the actor Anthony Quinn, the star of Zorba the Greek, who was married for many years to Katherine Lester DeMille, granddaughter of Amy (Hunt) Lester, who is commemorated in a stained-glass window in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford.

The film Zorba the Greek is based on a well-known novel by the Greek writer and philosopher Nikos Kazantzakis. Last month marked the 65th anniversary of his death in Freiburg, Germany, on 26 October 1957.

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) is a giant of modern Greek literature, and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature on nine separate occasions. His books include Zorba the Greek, Christ Recrucified, Captain Michalis (also published as Freedom or Death), and The Last Temptation of Christ (1955). He also wrote plays, travel books, memoirs and philosophical essays such as The Saviours of God: Spiritual Exercises.

His fame spread in the English-speaking world because of the film adaptations of Zorba the Greek (1964) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).

Zorba the Greek was first published in Greek in 1946 as Life and Times of Alexis Zorbas (Βίος και Πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά).

Zorba the Greek includes the story of a monastery with a treasured icon whose name changes from Our Lady of Mercy to Our Lady of Revenge, and Zorba also tells a story in which his grandfather takes a piece of wood and claims it is part of the True Cross.

I was reminded of these episodes when I visited the Monastery of Preveli. The monastery is famed for its role in struggles against both the Turks and the Germans in the 19th and 20th centuries, and is celebrated in Greek lore, literature and movies for its part in helping allied soldiers escape Crete during World War II.

In the film, the adventurous Zorba is the antithesis of the bookish Basil. Zorba is a potential symbol of freedom in Basil’s quest to find freedom. In Zorba’s view, only people who want to be free are truly human.

In many ways, the conflicts that unfold in the book provide a way for Kazantzakis to work through his own inner conflicts. At one time he had rejected Christianity and sought fulfilment in Buddhism and other philosophies. But he returned to Christianity and later wrote powerful novels about the sufferings of persecuted Christians in Asia Minor and about the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.

For Zorba, the journey is more important than the destination. He claims to be an atheist, yet realises that Christianity is central to the villagers’ way of life. He tells Basil: ‘the highest point a man can attain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!’

In many ways, Zorba gives expression to Kazantzakis’ own spiritual struggles: ‘God changes his appearance every second. Blessed is the man who can recognise him in all his disguises.’

Given the inadequate conclusions to Cop27 in Egypt at the weekend, Kazantzakis now seems to have been ahead of his time too when he expresses his concern for the environment, nature and creation: ‘For I realise today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm.’

Zorba and Basil dance syrtáki on the beach in ‘Zorba the Greek’ … the music was composed by Mikis Theodorakis

Collect:

Eternal Father,
whose Son Jesus Christ ascended to the throne of heaven
that he might rule over all things as Lord and King:
keep the Church in the unity of the Spirit
and in the bond of peace,
and bring the whole created order to worship at his feet;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion:

Stir up, O Lord,
the wills of your faithful people;
that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works,
may by you be plenteously rewarded;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God the Father,
help us to hear the call of Christ the King
and to follow in his service,
whose kingdom has no end;
for he reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, one glory.

The theme in the USPG Prayer Diary this week is ‘Prophetic Voice of the Nation.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by Bishop Matthew Mhagama, from the Diocese of South-West Tanganyika in the Anglican Church of Tanzania.

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

Let us remember the evangelists working in difficult circumstances. May they be resilient, act honestly and be supported in their service.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

The Monastery of Preveli is celebrated in Greek lore, literature and movies (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

Saint Cecilia, Patron of Musicians and Composers … a stained glass window in Saint John’s Church, Sandymount, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity’

The house at 10 Ashfield Terrace (now 418 Harold’s Cross Road), Dublin, where WB Yeats lived during some of his schooldays (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I was writing a week ago about my grandfather, Stephen Edward Comerford (1867-1921), and how he died a lonely death in hospital 100 years ago, on 21 January 1921, after his harrowing experiences during World War I in the Dardanelles and Thessaloniki.

Some years after my grandfather’s death, my widowed grandmother, Bridget (Lynders) Comerford, moved to 5 Ashdale Park, Terenure, close to the junction of Terenure Road North, Brighton Square (which, to be honest, is a triangle) and Harold’s Cross Road.

Although my grandmother’s family, like their neighbours, always considered Ashdale Park a part of Terenure, it was still listed as part of Rathmines District for many years. It was an area with interesting literary associations: James Joyce was born at No 41 Brighton Square in 1882, and William Butler Yeats lived part of his childhood, from 1883, at 10 Ashfield Terrace, now 418 Harold’s Cross Road.

But Yeats seems to have been ashamed of his family’s home between Terenure and Harold’s Cross, describing it in 1914 as ‘a villa where the red bricks were made pretentious and vulgar with streaks of grey slate.’ Perhaps this explains why he fostered the myth that he was from Sligo and not from Dublin – or from London.

Today marks the anniversary of the death of the poet William Butler Yeats, who was born in Sandymount Avenue, Co Dublin, on 13 June 1865 and died near Cannes on 28 January 1939.

He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, one of the founders of the Abbey Theatre, and in 1923 he was the first Irish writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature: he was followed by George Bernard Shaw in 1925; Samuel Beckett in 1969; and Seamus Heaney in 1995.

Once again, much is being written, said and performed to mark the Yeats anniversary this year. It is interesting that a Dublin-born poet is so often presented as a son of Sligo. His mother was from Sligo, but the myth that he was from Sligo was boosted in recent years by the visit of Prince Charles to the grave of Yeats in Drumcliffe churchyard.

The myth was also recycled by Leonard Cohen at a concert in Lissadell House in 2010. It was a night of poetry and music beneath the slops of Ben Bulben and Cohen was visiting the house where Yeats stayed when he visited the Gore-Booth sisters, the young Eva and the future Countess Constance Markievicz.

To applause, he quoted those lines from Yeats about the sisters:

The light of evening, Lissadell
Great windows open to the south
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle …

Perhaps Yeats would have enjoyed this too as someone who worked and reworked Irish myths and legends in his poetry.

In the grounds of Lissadell House at the Leonard Cohen concert ten years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

When the future poet was only a child of two, the Yeats family moved to England in 1867, and in 1877 he was sent to the Godolphin School in Hammersmith, where he spent almost four years.

Although family holidays were spent at his mother’s family home in Sligo, he was born in Dublin and spent most of his childhood years in London.

When the family returned to Dublin in 1880, they lived in Howth, first at Balscadden Cottage and then at Island View, before moving in 1883 to 10 Ashfield Terrace, now 418 Harold’s Cross Road.

Later, my father grew up around the corner in Ashdale Park. But Yeats was ashamed of his family’s home between Terenure and Harold’s Cross, describing it in 1914 as ‘a villa where the red bricks were made pretentious and vulgar with streaks of grey slate.’ Perhaps this explains why he fostered the myth that he was from Sligo and not from Dublin – or from London.

In Dublin, Yeats was sent to the High School, then on Harcourt Street. Despite some misconceptions, he was never a student at Trinity College Dublin – from 1884 to 1886, he was a student at the Metropolitan School of Art, now the National College of Art and Design (NCAD).

After seven years, the family returned to London in 1887. Two years later, in 1889, he met Maud Gonne, who was English-born without any Irish ancestry. He visited Maud Gonne in Ireland in 1891, when she rejected his first proposal of marriage. He would propose to her three more times – in 1899, 1900 and 1901, but she rejected him each time in 1903 married Major John MacBride.

The rise of violent nationalism caused Yeats to reassess his own nationalism, and in Easter, 1916 he wrote:

All changed, changed utterly
A terrible beauty is born

John MacBride had been executed for his role in the Easter Rising, and Yeats made one last proposal to Maud Gonne in mid-1916. Then in 1917, he proposed to her 21-year-old daughter, Iseult Gonne. Later that year, he proposed to 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees, and they were married on 20 October 1917.

The world was so changed and transformed WB Yeats could open his poem The Second Coming with these lines about Europe in the aftermath of World War I:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

The same could have been said about American politics in recent years, or about British politics throughout the Brexit and post-Brexit debates.

At first, TS Eliot expressed distaste for Yeats, and even mocked Yeats’s membership of the Theosophical Society. Later, following his attendance at the first performance of Yeats’s one-act play, At the Hawk’s Well, and after the publication of ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ in 1919, Eliot softened his opinion of Yeats’s poetry.

No 5 Woburn Walk … the Bloomsbury home of WB Yeats in London from 1895 to 1919 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yeats returned to live in Ireland in 1919, but distanced himself from the passionate intensity of Irish politics until 1922, when he was appointed a Senator in the new parliament of the Irish Free State, and was re-appointed for a second term in 1925.

Meanwhile, in December 1923, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

In one speech in the Senate, referring to the Church of Ireland, he said: ‘It is one of the glories of the Church in which I was born that we have put our Bishops in their place in discussions requiring legislation.’

When the Irish Free State was poised to outlaw divorce in 1925, Yeats delivered his famous speech in the new Senate:

I think it is tragic that within three years of this country gaining its independence we should be discussing a measure which a minority of this nation considers to be grossly oppressive. I am proud to consider myself a typical man of that minority. We against whom you have done this thing, are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Europe. We are the people of Burke; we are the people of Grattan; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created the most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence. Yet I do not altogether regret what has happened. I shall be able to find out, if not I, my children will be able to find out whether we have lost our stamina or not. You have defined our position and have given us a popular following. If we have not lost our stamina then your victory will be brief, and your defeat final, and when it comes this nation may be transformed.

It was not until 1935, in the Criterion, that TS Eliot publicly praised Yeats, when he called him ‘the greatest poet of his time.’ Eliot continued to praise Yeats, although in a lecture in Dublin in 1936 he regretted that Yeats ‘came to poetry from a Protestant background.’

But there was a nasty streak in Yeats too, and it should not be forgotten. His friendship with Ezra Pound introduced him to Benito Mussolini, whom he admired, and at one time he wrote three marching songs for Eoin O’Duffy’s fascist Blueshirts.

Yeats died in France at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, on this day 82 years ago, 28 January 1939, and was buried in the hilltop cemetery at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. After the death of Yeats, Eliot was invited to give the first annual Yeats lecture to the Friends of the Irish Academy in 1940.

Yeats had frequently spoken about his death with his wife George, who said he told her: ‘If I die bury me up there and then in a year’s time when the newspapers have forgotten me, dig me up and plant me in Sligo.’

In 1948, what was said to be the body of Yeats was moved in a coffin to Ireland on the naval corvette LÉ Macha. The operation was overseen by Maud Gonne’s son, Sean MacBride, who was then the Minister of External Affairs.

The coffin laid in state in Sligo Town Hall before it was given a full state funeral in Saint Columba’s Churchyard in Drumcliffe on 17 September 1948. The scene at Drumcliffe was set by Yeats himself. In his last poem, published in The Irish Times, he wrote:

Under bare Ben Bulben’s head
In Drumcliffe Churchyard Yeats is laid …

The committal service was taken by the Bishop of Kilmore, the Right Revd Albert Edward Hughes, who had been the chaplain to the last Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. As the words ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ were said, a handful of soil was thrown on the coffin. The epitaph on the grave quotes the last lines of Under Ben Bulben:

Cast a cold Eye On Life, on Death. Horseman, pass by!

But the bones moved from Roquebrune were never identified with certainty – his body had been exhumed and transferred to a communal ossuary sometime between 1939 and 1948, before the 10-year-lease on the grave had expired, and bones from other graves were mixed together.

Some writers have identified the actual remains with those of a man Alfred George Hollis who died on the same day and was buried in the same graveyard at the same time.

But then, as Yeats himself once wrote:

Though grave-diggers’ toil is long,
Sharp their spades, their muscles strong,
They but thrust their buried men
Back in the human mind again.

Perhaps my favourite poem by Yeats is ‘Sailing to Byzantium’:

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

WB Yeats was born at No 5 Sandymount Avenue, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Healy 2010/South Dublin County Libraries)

Silver Strand in Co Wicklow was a surprising new beach to discover

Inside a cave at Silver Strand in Co Wicklow watching the waves on the beach (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016; click on image for full-screen resolution)

Patrick Comerford

I try to go for a walk on a nearby beach at least once in a weekend, if not twice. It’s good for my lungs and good for my feelings about two conditions, Sarcoidosis and a Vitamin B12 deficiency.

Because I live so close to the M50, places like Bray are often no more than 15 minutes’ drive from home, and it is only little further to get to the beaches at Greystones and Kilcoole, further south in Co Wicklow, or beaches to the north at Malahide, the Velvet Strand at Portmarnock, Balcarrick Beach at Donabate, Portrane, Rush, Loughshinney, the two beach at Skerries, and Laytown, Bettystown and Mornington in Co Meath.

They are all within such easy reach, that I really have few excuses for not getting out for a healthy walk on a beach, taking in the fresh sea air and enjoying the sound of the sea and the waves lapping against the sand and the pebbles.

But I was surprised by the list of “50 Great Irish Beaches” in the ‘Weekend’ Review’ in The Irish Times on Saturday [30 July 2016]. I am familiar with only 20 of the 50 beaches listed by Catherine Murphy.

Few of the beaches I have named in north Co Dublin are included on the list, I am familiar with only one of the beaches on Achill Island, and I was surprised that the list did not include beaches such as Dugort on Achill Island, Brittas Bay in Co Wicklow, or more beaches in Co Wexford, and that the list included none of the beaches on the ‘Gold Coast’ of Co Meath.

Please don’t get me wrong, though. I’m not quibbling. I have long been vocal about the pollution on Bettystown Beach and the refusal of Meath County Council to stop its use as a car park, and the erosion of the beach in Courtown is symptomatic of the problems facing many beaches on the Wexford coast.

The list made me realise how limited I have been in my exploration of Irish beaches. So, after I had presided and preached at the Sung Eucharist in Saint John’s Church, Sandymount, this morning [31 July 2016], two of us decided this afternoon to go for a walk on one of the beaches on the list of ’50 Great Irish Beaches’ that I had not visited previously.

Silver Strand beach and caves in Co Wicklow came in at No 14 on the weekend list in ‘The Irish Times’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016; click on image for full-screen resolution)

Silver Strand beach and caves in Co Wicklow came in at No 14 on the list in The Irish Times. Catherine Murphy wrote: “Caramel sands, fragrant honeysuckle and intriguing waves await those who walk down the steep steps to the beach.”

The beach lies just 3 km south of Wicklow Town, but it is a private beach, and access is through one of two neighbouring caravan parks perched on the cliffs above Silver Strand, in picturesque rural settings.

Silver Strand Caravan Park is also known as Webster’s Caravan Park or Harry’s Place. The park is a family run business with coastal views and private access to Silver Strand Beach and Caves.

The park has been owned and operated by four generations of the Webster family and has been catering for the needs of mobile home owners for over a century. For over 40 years, the park has been run by Harry Webster with his wife Jean and their children.

The park has also been a location in a number of media productions, including TV series such as Love/Hate, Moonfleet, The Vikings, Camelot, George Gently, Fair City and ITV’s Primeval, and several feature films including Frankie Starlight, The Escapist, Driftwood and The Count of Monte Cristo.

A little further south, Wolohan’s Caravan and Camping Park has been run by the Wolohan family for over 70 years. This is a 22-acre site set in rural farmland and with spectacular coastal views.

During the week, both parks charge an entrance fee of €6 a day for a car. But this is a bank holiday weekend in Ireland and we paid €10 for the car and access to the beach and the facilities at the Silver Strand Caravan Park or Webster’s.

I know Irish people object to charges like this, but when you compare this with parking charges in high rise inner city parking lots in Dublin that offer no facilities, the charge seemed reasonable and goes towards maintaining a beach that truly deserves its place on that list of ‘50 Great Irish Beaches.’

From the top of the steps leading down to the beach, Silver Strand looks like a small bay. But as we made our way down, we were surprised how large the bay is, with plenty of space for families to stake out their own place with a degree of privacy.

Silver Strand is a collection of three small beaches, enclosed by a maze of caves that brought me back in my mind’s eye to a visit to Matala on the south coast of Crete almost two years ago [26 August 2014].

The tide and the waves were gentle, the sand was soft, and it seemed possible to walk out safely into the water for quite a distance. Inside, the caves acted as echo chambers, resounding with the sound of the waves on the beach.

Eventually, we climbed back up the steps, turning back every now and again for wistful glances at the beach below, before heading on to a late Sunday lunch in the Avoca Café at the Mount Usher Gardens, in the part of Co Wicklow that is known as the ‘Garden of Ireland.’

Memories of the caves at Matala in a cave at Silver Strand, Co Wicklow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016; click on image for full-screen resolution)

Storing up treasures for ourselves without being rich towards God

A large barn at Comberford Manor Farm in Staffordshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford,

Sunday 31 July 2016:

The Tenth Sunday after Trinity

11 a.m., The Sung Eucharist,

Saint John the Evangelist,

Sandymount, Dublin

Readings: Hosea 11: 1-11; Psalm 107: 1-9, 43; Colossians 3: 1-11; Luke 12: 13-21.

In the name of + the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I am not fond of television quiz programmes, or programmes that ask silly questions of people.

You have the programme presenter sitting there, looking smug with both the questions and answers, researched by a paid researcher, and the poor member of the public sitting there, anxious about obscure questions about the World Cup Final at Wembley in 1966, or No 1 hits in 2006, or celebrity weddings in 2016.

I could not, for the life of me, answer any one of those questions. But some poor people, for the sake of €100 or €1,000 – never, it seems, on the way to being a millionaire – are made to look silly or ridiculous.

Quite frankly, I find it demeaning. And I have never wanted to hoard up all the answers for a television quiz, or, for that matter, for a parish table quiz. As I get older, I know this is anxiety that I do not need, and it is probably knowledge I am better off not storing up.

Recently, watching one of those programmes as we were idly flicking through television channels, I was told: ‘I could never go on a programme like that with you!’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because I could never answer: “What is his favourite piece of music.” Or: “If money was no barrier, what would he buy?”’

Well there is a lot of good music to listen to.

But if money was no barrier, what would I buy?

Would it make me happy?

Would it make anyone else happy?

Would it tell anyone that they are loved, loving, worth loving, that I love them, that I really enjoy their love?

But do not get me wrong, please.

I understand why the man in this morning’s Gospel reading (Luke 12: 13-21) does many of the things he does.

He has a bumper crop one year, and not enough room to store it in. Was he to leave what he could not store to rot in the fields?

It is a foundational principle of all economics, whatever your political values – from Marx and Malthus to Milton Freedman – that the production of surplus food is the beginning of the creation of wealth and the beginning of economic prosperity.

Even if you are a complete suburbanite, it should bring joy to your heart the see the fields of green and gold these weeks, for the abundance of the earth is truly a blessing from God.

And it would have been wrong for this man to leave the surplus food to rot in the fields because he failed to have the foresight to build larger barns to store the surplus grain.

It provides income, creates wealth, allows us to export and so to import. Surplus food is the foundation of economics … and makes possible generosity, charity and care for the impoverished.

For the people who first heard this story, just image those people who first heard this parable – they would have imagined so many images in the Old Testament of the benefits of producing surplus food.

Joseph told Pharaoh to store surplus food in Egypt and to prepare and plan ahead for years of famine (see Genesis 41: 1-36). In the long run, this provides too for the survival of the very brothers who had sold him into slavery (see Genesis 42), and, eventually, for the salvation of the people of God.

The production of extra grain in the fields at the time of the harvest allows Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi to glean in the corners of the field behind the reapers (Ruth 2: 1-4). In the long run, this provides too for the survival of Boaz and his family line, and, eventually, for the salvation of the people of God.

When the people of God go hungry, the provision of surplus food is seen as a sign of God’s love and God’s protection … whether it is:

● the hungry people in the wilderness who are fed with manna (see Exodus 16), which is alluded to in this morning’s Psalm (Psalm 107: 1-9, 43);

● or the way the Prophet Hosea reminds the people, in this morning’s Old Testament reading (Hosea 11: 1-11), that God is the God who can say throughout their history: “I bent down to them and fed them” (Hosea 11: 4);

● or the hungry people who are fed with the abundant distribution of five loaves and two fish (Matthew 14: 13-21; Mark 6: 30-44; Luke 9: 10-17; John 6: 1-14; see Mark 8: 1-9);

● or the Disciples who find the Risen Christ has provided for their needs with breakfast (John 21: 9-14).

Surplus food, wealth, providing for the future, building bigger and better barns … it is never an excuse to “relax, eat, drink, [and] be merry.”

A barn on a farm at Cross in Hand Lane, outside Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Our Gospel reading this morning offers the abundance and generosity of God’s provision as a sign of God’s love, for us as individuals and for all around us.

The rich man is not faulted for being an innovative farmer who manages to grow an abundant crop.

The rich man is not faulted this morning for storing up those crops.

The rich man is not condemned for tearing down his barns and building larger ones to store not only his grain but his goods too.

The rich man is not even condemned for being rich.

The man condemns himself, he makes himself look foolish, for thinking that all that matters in life is our own pleasure and personal satisfaction.

We are human because we are made to relate to other humans.

There is no shared humanity without relationship.

We are made in the image and likeness of God, but that image and likeness is only truly found in relationship … for God is already relational, God is already revealed as community, in God’s existence as Trinity.

This man thinks not of his needs, but of his own pleasures. He has a spiritual life … we are told he speaks to his Soul. But he speaks only to his own soul. His spiritual life extends only to his own spiritual needs, to his own Soul, it never reaches out to God who has blessed him so abundantly, the God who in this morning’s Psalm reminds us that he “fills the hungry soul with good” (Psalm 107: 9).

His spiritual persona never reaches out to or acknowledges God who has blessed him so abundantly, or to the people around him who have needs and who could benefit from his charitable generosity or from his business acumen.

In failing to take account of the needs of others, he fails to realise his own true needs: for a true and loving relationship with God, and a true and loving relationship with others.

He has no concern for the needs of others, physical or spiritual. He is spiritually dead. No wonder Saint Paul says in our epistle reading that greed is idolatry (Colossians 3: 5).

But if he has stopped speaking to God, God has not stopped speaking to him. And God tells him that night in a dream that this man is spiritually dead.

God says to him in that dream that his life is being demanded of him. (Luke 12: 20).

But did you notice how we never hear how he responds, how we never hear whether he dies?

The story ends just there.

The Gospel reading for the last Sunday at the end of September [25 September 2016, the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity] is the story of the rich man who kept Lazarus at the gate, and then died (see Luke 16: 19-31). But unlike that rich man, we are never told what happened to the rich man in this morning’s Gospel reading.

Did he die of fright?

Did he die after drinking too much?

Did he wake up and carry on regardless?

Or, like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, did he wake up and realise his folly, and embrace the joys of the Incarnation?

I am challenged not to pass judgment on the Rich Man. Instead, Christ challenges me, in the first part of this reading (Luke 12: 13-15), to put myself in the place of this man.

If we are to take the earlier part of this Gospel reading to heart, perhaps we might reserve judgment on this foolish rich man.

Perhaps, instead of judging this young man with the benefit of hearing this story over and over again, perhaps in the light of the first part of this Gospel reading, we might reflect on this Gospel reading by asking ourselves two questions:

“If money was no barrier, what would I buy?”

and:

“Would that choice reflect the priorities Christ sets us of loving God and loving one another?”

[Silence]

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

A barn on a farm in Co Wexford waiting for the harvest (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Collect:

Let your merciful ears, O Lord,
be open to the prayers of your humble servants;
and that they may obtain their petitions,
make them to ask such things as shall please you;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post-Communion Prayer:

O God, as we are strengthened by these holy mysteries,
so may our lives be a continual offering,
holy and acceptable in your sight;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Luke 12: 13-21

13 Εἶπεν δέ τις ἐκ τοῦ ὄχλου αὐτῷ, Διδάσκαλε, εἰπὲ τῷ ἀδελφῷ μου μερίσασθαι μετ' ἐμοῦ τὴν κληρονομίαν. 14 ὁδὲ εἶπεν αὐτῷ, Ἄνθρωπε, τίς με κατέστησεν κριτὴν ἢ μεριστὴν ἐφ' ὑμᾶς; 15 εἶπεν δὲπρὸς αὐτούς, Ὁρᾶτε καὶ φυλάσσεσθε ἀπὸ πάσης πλεονεξίας, ὅτι οὐκ ἐν τῷπερισσεύειν τινὶ ἡ ζωὴ αὐτοῦ ἐστιν ἐκ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων αὐτῷ. 16 Εἶπεν δὲ παραβολὴν πρὸς αὐτοὺς λέγων, Ἀνθρώπου τινὸς πλουσίου εὐφόρησεν ἡ χώρα. 17 καὶ διελογίζετο ἐν ἑαυτῷ λέγων, Τί ποιήσω, ὅτι οὐκ ἔχω ποῦ συνάξω τοὺς καρπούς μου; 18 καὶ εἶπεν, Τοῦτο ποιήσω: καθελῶ μου τὰς ἀποθήκας καὶ μείζονας οἰκοδομήσω, καὶ συνάξω ἐκεῖ πάντα τὸν σῖτον καὶ τὰ ἀγαθά μου, 19 καὶ ἐρῶ τῇ ψυχῇ μου, Ψυχή, ἔχεις πολλὰ ἀγαθὰ κείμενα εἰς ἔτη πολλά: ἀναπαύου, φάγε, πίε, εὐφραίνου. 20 εἶπεν δὲ αὐτῷ ὁ θεός, Ἄφρων, ταύτῃ τῇ νυκτὶ τὴν ψυχήν σου ἀπαιτοῦσιν ἀπὸ σοῦ: ἃ δὲ ἡτοίμασας, τίνι ἔσται; 21 οὕτως ὁ θησαυρίζων ἑαυτῷ καὶ μὴ εἰς θεὸν πλουτῶν.

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ 14 But he said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’ 15 And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ 16 Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” 18 Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” 20 But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

An empty barn on my grandmother’s former farm near Cappoquin, Co Waterford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘The Doctor, the Countess and the Organist: 1916 tales from Saint John’s, Sandymount’

Saint John’s, Sandymount … presiding at the Sung Eucharist at 11 a.m. this morning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I am back in the Church of Saint John the Evangelist in Sandymount this morning [31 July 2016], presiding and preaching at the Sung Eucharist at 11 a.m.

This month’s edition of the Church Review tells how Saint John’s is planning an exhibition for Heritage Week next month [25-28 August 2016] as part of the programme for the 1916-2016 centenary commemorations.

The exhibition – ‘The Doctor, the Countess and the Organist: 1916 Tales from Saint John’s, Sandymount’ – reflects the connections between Saint John’s and its people with the events of 1916, both at home and abroad.

The exhibition focusses principally on the dissonant narratives of a Sandymount resident, Dr Charles Calthrop de Burgh Daly, and Cecil Grange McDowell, the organist of Saint John’s. At the time, the Incumbent of Saint John’s was the Revd Fletcher Sheridan Le Fanu.

Dr Charles Calthrop de Burgh Daly of 71 Park Avenue, Sydney Parade, was a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps and was fired on by Countess Markievicz in Dublin in April 1916. He was standing in the window of the University Club when Countess Markievicz stepped from behind a statue in Saint Stephen’s Green and fired at him.

An early edition of the ‘Soldier’s Song’ acknowledges Cathal Mac Dughghaill as the composer

Cecil Grange McDowell, from Carlow, was the organist and choirmaster at Saint John’s and a vestry member. He was also an engineer with Dublin Corporation and an artist who specialised in architectural work. He went on to change his name to Cathal Mac Dubhghaill. He forsook his background to join the rebellion in 1916 and he wrote the first arrangement of the National Anthem.

While he was fighting with Eamon de Valera at Boland’s Mills in Easter Week 1916, he was baptised a Roman Catholic by a Father O’Reilly from Westland Row.

After the rising, he was prisoner in Richmond Barracks and Frongoch, and in 1921 he married the poet Maeve Cavanagh MacDowell of the Irish Citizen Army. She was a sister of the cartoonist, Ernest Cavanagh, who was killed in 1916 and who is remembered especially for his cartoons in the The Irish Worker of William Martin Murphy during the lockout in 1913, depicting him as ‘William Murder Murphy’ and the ‘Vulture of Dartry Hall.’

Cecil McDowell or Cathal Mac Dubhghaill died 10 years after the Rising in Nice in 1926.

The exhibition will recall other elements in the life of Saint John’s during 1916, including the loss of Dr Daly’s younger son, Charlie, during the Battle of the Somme, and the launch of a book by Emily French de Burgh Daly, the wife of Dr Daly and a sister of the songwriter Percy French. The book, An Irishwoman in China describes the time when the family lived in Manchuria, where Dr Daly was the medical officer at the British consulate.

Alyson Gavin, a genealogist and churchwarden of Saint John’s has researched the memorial plaque in erected Saint John’s in 1920 and naming local men who fought in World War I.

Arthur Charles de Burgh Daly of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers was only 19 when he was killed in action in 1916

Second Lieutenant Arthur Charles de Burgh Daly of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers was only 19 when he was killed in action at the Battle of Ginchy on 9 September 1916. His parents had lived in Newchwang in Manchuria, in China, where he was born. When his parents returned to live in Ireland, he went to school in Worthing and Tonbridge Wells, and was planning to have go up to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

But on leaving school he obtained a commission on 26 August 1915 and was sent to the front on 19 July 1916. He went straight into the fighting on the Somme and took part in the Battle of Guillemont on 6 September.

In his last letter home, written on 8 September, he said: “We attack Ginchy tomorrow. In case of accidents, I played the game two days ago, and will, please God, tomorrow.” On the following morning, he was killed at the head of his men charging the German trenches. He got no further than four or five yards before he was shot through the brain by two bullets from a machine gun, and was killed instantly. He is buried at Delville Wood cemetery in Longueval, France.

Due to an administrative error, his family received a telegram on 18 September 1916 giving his date of death as 4 September. However, his letter dated 8 September, the actual day before his death, had already arrived at his family home in Sandymount. His family believed some mistake had been made and they hoped that he was still alive. His father, Dr Charles de Burgh Daly, wrote to the War Office pleading for clarification. The War Office eventually established that the wrong date had been given erroneously.

His elder brother, Major Ulick de Burgh Daly of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, was wounded at Richebourg L’Avoue on 9 May 1915. Shortly after his return to the Front in June 1916, he was invalided home with appendicitis. He was subsequently “mentioned in dispatches” for distinguished services.

Their sister Lucy was in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nursing service, where she served in hospitals around Dublin and at a British army base in Boulogne before being demobilised in 1919.

Captain Edward Stafford-King-Harman … his wife was pregnant when he was killed in Flanders in 1914

Another name on the memorial in Saint John’s is Captain Edward Stafford-King-Harman, who was the heir to the vast Rockingham estate in north Co Roscommon and to his family title of baronet. The family had moved to Taney, Dundrum, but attended Saint John’s Church, Sandymount. He married Olive Pakenham-Mahon of Strokestown Park, Co Longford and after joining the Irish Guards in 1911, and was later posted to Flanders in September 1914.

He was reported missing after intense fighting at Klein Zillebeke on 6 November 1914. Reports indicate that Harman’s company were holding the frontline when they were surrounded and cut off from the main body of British troops. For some time, there was confusion about whether he had been killed or captured as a prisoner of war.

During the eight months that followed, Edward’s family wrote continuously to the War Office, seeking confirmation and an indication of his status and the possible location of his body in France. In June 1915, the family were finally notified that he was listed as “killed in action in Ypres” in Flanders on 6 November 1914.

Posthumously, he was promoted to the rank of captain in the midst of confusion surrounding his death. Edward Stafford-King-Harman was honoured in the Irish Life magazine on 30 July 1915 in a supplement entitled “our heroes from Mons to the Somme August 1914 to July 1916.”

At the time of his death, his wife, Olive was pregnant at the time and she gave birth to their daughter Lettice Mary Strafford-King-Harman on 10 April 1915. Olive and Lettice returned to live at Strokestown, and the Rockingham estate was inherited by Edward’s brother, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Cecil William Francis Stafford-King-Harman. Sir Cecil sold off what remained of the Rockingham Estate in the early 1960s and died in 1987. Most of the estate was bought by the Land Commission, and a large part of this land later became part of Lough Key Forest Park.

Private John Drew Mitchell of 21 Ailesbury Road, who is also named on the memorial, was a son of Frank William Drew Mitchell, the Secretary of the Congested Districts Board, and Emily Wild. He died on the same day as Charles de Burgh Daly, at the battle of Ginchy. As Trooper JD Mitchell, he transferred from the Royal Horse Guards to the 1st Battalion, the Gloucestershire Regiment, on 13 May 1916 and he entered the conflict on 23 May. He received a fatal wound and died in action at the age of 28. He was buried at Heily Station Cemetery, Mericourt-L’Abbé.

Inside Saint John’s Church, Sandymount (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The other names on the memorial include: Second Lieutenant Thomas Coote Cummins of the York and Lancaster Regiment, who died of wounds in France; Lieutenant Eric Greaves, MC, of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers; Private Trevor Eyre Symes, of the Royal Highlanders; Second Lieutenant Ivan Philip Watson of the Royal Irish Rifles; Second Lieutenant John Godfrey Baird Dunne of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, who died in Persia; Corporal Ronald Stuart Baird Dunne, of the Army Service Corps, who was killed in action in Thessaloniki; Corporal Henry Augustus Kavanagh of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, who was killed in action in Palestine; and Private Arthur Thomas Avison, Machine Gun Corps.

A verse below the memorial says: “As gold in the furnace hath he tried them and received them as a burnt offering.”

The exhibition at Saint John’s closes on 28 August with a recital by the organist, Eoghan Ward, featuring music from both narratives, including pieces by Cecil MacDowell.

Eoghan Ward has been the resident organist at Saint John’s since 2012. He began his musical career as a chorister in the Palestrina Choir at Saint Mary’s Pro-Cathedral under Ite O’Donovan. He received his first organ lessons at Clongowes Wood College under Raymond O’Donnell and, after reading music at Trinity College Dublin, he studied organ under Dr Kerry Houston.

Admission to all events is free. The opening hours are: Thursday-Saturday, 25-27 August 2016, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sunday 28 August, exhibition 12 noon to 3 p.m., recital 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Saint John’s Church is located on Park Avenue, Sandymount. The nearest DART station is at Sydney Parade. Buses 1 and 47 stop at the church, and buses 4, 7 and 8 stop nearby at Ailesbury Road.

Saint John’s, Sandymount … details of the gargoyles (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

When compassion is the victim of my hidden values, others become the true victims

‘I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree’ … fresh figs in a supermarket in Rethymnon, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Patrick Comerford,

Sunday 28 February 2016,

The Third Sunday in Lent,

Saint John’s Church, Sandymount,

11 a.m., The Solemn Eucharist

Readings: Isaiah 55: 1-9; Psalm 63: 1-9; I Corinthians 10: 1-13; Luke 13: 1-9.

In the name of + the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen

The story is told of a well-known priest in this diocese who was once asked what he had given up for Lent. He replied: “I have given up the slice of lemon in my gin and tonic. But do not fear, I remain as bitter and tested as ever.”

This morning we have reached the Third Sunday in Lent. We are half-way through Lent, but already, I’m sure, for many of us, our Lenten resolutions have faded, and we are probably as resolute about them as we were about our New Year’s resolutions three weeks into January.

We hungered or thirsted so much for the little food or the little drink that we gave up for Lent that we soon succumbed. But instead of being made feel guilty, instead of being chided, what most of us need is encouragement and affirmation. Both are found in our readings this morning, but those readings also urge us to hunger and thirst for the real food and drink that God offers us.

Our Old Testament reading (Isaiah 55: 1-9) concludes the section known as Second Isaiah, which begins in Chapter 40. It was written during the Exile, after Babylon had fallen to the Persians. The key themes are: the way of the Lord, calling the people to enjoy God’s gifts, a new deliverance, the word of the Lord, the king, heaven and earth, God’s relationship with Israel, forgiveness, and the participation of other nations.

All who thirst for God, especially those who are impoverished and have no money, are invited to eat freely at the heavenly banquet, the meal that symbolises God’s loving generosity and abundance (verse 1).

We are told that God’s “everlasting covenant,” first with one person, David, has been extended to his successors, then to his people, and is now offered all nations, all people (verses 4-5), even those who have done evil in the past but who now forsake those ways (verse 7). God is not only to be found in the Temple, but among all who seek him:

Seek the Lord while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near … (verse 6).

In our Psalm too (Psalm 63: 1-8), we hear what it is to thirst for the Lord (verse 1). But the same mouths that thirst for God in the wilderness, also praise him with joyful lips (verse 5).

That thirsting in the wilderness helps the Apostle Paul to illustrate our Epistle reading (I Corinthians 10: 1-13), where he urges the Christians in Corinth to thirst for the true “spiritual food” (verse 3), for the true “spiritual drink” (verse 4).

These are interesting preludes to our Gospel reading (Luke 13: 1-9), where we hear of the chilling and horrific deaths of two groups of people that made headline news at the time.

In those days, it was commonly believed that pain and premature death were signs of God’s adverse judgment. We think like that today: how often do people think those who are sick, suffer infirmities, have injuries, die because they cannot afford health care? They don’t die because they cannot afford healthcare – they die because governments prefer to spend money on weapons and wars or in giving tax breaks to the rich, rather than spending money on health care for those who need it.

Looking across the countryside in Crete from an old Venetian tower … why were the workers killed accidentally in the Tower of Siloam? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

The first group in this Gospel reading, a group of Galileans, from Christ’s own home province, believed they were doing God’s will as they worshipped in the Temple. But they were killed intentionally as they sacrificed to God in the Temple. Even in death, they were degraded further when, on Pilate’s orders, their blood was mixed with the blood of the Temple sacrifices.

In a single act of capricious violence, Pilate humiliated the nation, its religion, its culture, and the very presence of God. In a single act, he violated: the altar in the Temple; the ritual practices held there; the sacred place reserved for priests; the animals made holy by prayers; and the murdered Galileans who had been standing at that altar.

Think of our horror today at people who are murdered at worship: the people in the Gospel Hall in Darkley (1983); Oscar Romero saying Mass in San Salvador (1980); or children murdered in Dunblane (1996) or in recent school shootings and drive-by shootings in the United States.

The second group in our Gospel reading, numbering 18 in all, were building workers who were killed accidentally as they were building the Tower of Siloam.

Think of our horror today at people who die accidently, not because of their own mistakes or sinfulness; people who die daily of hunger and poverty; children born to die because they are HIV +, because their parents live in poverty, because of circumstances not of their choosing; children who die in dangerous and treacherous sea crossing in the Aegean between the coast of Turkey and the Greek islands ...

How easy it is for us, for example, to talk about “innocent victims” – of wars, of AIDS, of gangland killings – as though some people deserve to die like that.

But in both cases in our Gospel reading – in all these cases – Christ says no, there is no link between an early and an unjust death and the sins of the past or the sins of past generations.

In those days, it was commonly believed that pain and premature death were signs of God’s adverse judgment. At the time, it was commonly believed that severe physical disabilities or an early death were natural and just consequences for the sins of the past, even the sins of past generations.

We think like that today: how often do people think those who are sick, suffer infirmities, have injuries die because they cannot afford health care? How often do we shift our focus so that we blame people traffickers rather than asking why people are fleeing war? How often do we forget or deny their humanity and instead listen to politicians talking of “hordes” and “swarms” of people threatening “Fortress Europe”?

In both stories, we could explain away what we might otherwise see as the inexplicable way God allows other people to suffer and die by saying they brought it on themselves by their sins, or the sins of their ancestors … or, in today’s language, by saying they cannot afford to pay for health care, or they bring it on themselves by their lifestyle, or they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or they ought to stay in their own countries.

My compassion is the victim of my hidden values, and so others become the victims.

Siloam provides an interesting place for Christ to challenge this “received wisdom” when he meets the man born blind and heals him at the Pool of Siloam, one of the seven “signs” in Saint John’s Gospel (see John 9: 1-7).

Now, we have another story about Siloam, as Christ links the execution of Galilean rebels with the tragedy surrounding the collapse of the Tower of Siloam.

Many may have expected him to say that their deaths were in punishment for their rebellious behaviour, in the case of the Galilean rebels, or collaborative behaviour, in the case of the workers who were building a water supply system for the Roman occupiers.

Is Christ indifferent to political and environmental disasters?

Instead of meeting those expectations, Christ teaches that death comes to everyone, regardless of how sinful I am, regardless of my birth, politics or social background, or – even more certainly – my smug sense of religious pride and righteousness. And he goes on to teach how we each need to repent – even when, in the eyes of others, we do not appear to need repentance.

Death comes to everyone. But that death need not be physical at all – spiritual death is the most deadening, for it brings with it not only loss of Communion with God, but it brings with it the loss of hope, the loss of trust, the loss of love for others and for ourselves, the loss of true compassion. And sometimes that sort of death comes suddenly and without warning.

Seek the Lord while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near …

It is so tempting to excuse or dismiss the sufferings of others. To say they brought it on themselves offers us an opt-out: we can claim to have compassion, but need not respond to it, nor need to do anything to challenge the injustice that is the underlying cause of this suffering.

Yet, in the parable of the fig tree, we are called on to wait, we are urged not to be too hasty in our judgment on those who seem in our eyes to do nothing to improve their lot.

It makes logical, economic and financial sense for the owner to want to chop down the fig tree – after all, not only is it taking up space, but it also costs in terms of time, tending, feeding, caring and nurturing. The owner knows what it is to make a quick profit, and if the quick profit is not coming soon enough he wants to cut his losses.

It takes much tender care and many years – at least three years – for a fig tree to bear fruit. And even then, in a vineyard, the figs are not a profit – they are a bonus.

Even if a fig tree bears early fruit, the Mosaic Law said it could not be harvested for three years, and the fruit gathered in the fourth year was going to offered as the first fruits. Only in the fifth year, then, could the fruit be eaten.

So, if this tree was chopped down, and another put its place, it would take longer still to get fruit that could be eaten or sold. In his quest for the quick buck, the owner of the vineyard shows little knowledge about the reality of economics.

The gardener, who has nothing at stake, turns out to be the one not only has compassion, but has deep-seated wisdom too. The gardener, who is never going to benefit from the owner’s profits, can see the tree’s potential, is willing to let be and wait, knowing what the fig tree is today and what it can do in the future.

I once saw a T-short on sale in the Plaka in Athens with the slogan: “To do is to be, Socrates. To be is to do, Plato. Do-be-do-be-do, Sinatra.”

Of course there are different types of people: there are the “do-ers” and there are the “be-ers.”

But whichever you are, we need the balance of the other. Emphasising the spiritual without understanding the world we live in leads to us being irrelevant. On the other hand, actively doing good, without any deep and truly spiritual foundations, leads to burn-out and disillusion.

We are called to hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5: 6), but wishing is not enough. Christ reminds us in our Gospel reading this morning that we are called to bear fruit too … and he is patient in waiting for faith to produce fruit.

Last week, the Greek Prime Minister accused other European leaders of failing to put compassion into action, and warned of the danger of Greece becoming “a warehouse of souls.”

Saint Paul reminds the Corinthians – and so reminds us too this morning – that we are called to be both “do-ers” and “be-ers.” In that way, all may know that they are invited to the heavenly banquet, where there will be eating and drinking for the hungry and the thirsty, and for all.

But we can decide where we place our trust – in the values that I think serve me but serve the rich, the powerful and the oppressor, or in the God who sees our plight, who hears our cry, and who comes in Christ to deliver us.

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

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford lectures in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This sermon was preached at the Solemn Eucharist in Saint John’s Church, Sandymount, Dublin, on the Third Sunday in Lent, Sunday 28 February 2016.

Luke 13: 1-9:

1 Παρῆσαν δέ τινες ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ καιρῷ ἀπαγγέλλοντες αὐτῷ περὶ τῶν Γαλιλαίωνὧν τὸ αἷμα Πιλᾶτος ἔμιξεν μετὰ τῶν θυσιῶν αὐτῶν. 2 καὶ ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Δοκεῖτε ὅτι οἱ Γαλιλαῖοι οὗτοι ἁμαρτωλοὶ παρὰ πάντας τοὺς Γαλιλαίους ἐγένοντο, ὅτι ταῦτα πεπόνθασιν; 3 οὐχί, λέγω ὑμῖν, ἀλλ' ἐὰν μὴ μετανοῆτε πάντες ὁμοίως ἀπολεῖσθε. 4 ἢ ἐκεῖνοι οἱ δεκαοκτὼ ἐφ' οὓς ἔπεσεν ὁ πύργος ἐν τῷ Σιλωὰμ καὶ ἀπέκτεινεν αὐτούς, δοκεῖτε ὅτι αὐτοὶ ὀφειλέται ἐγένοντο παρὰ πάντας τοὺς ἀνθρώπους τοὺς κατοικοῦντας Ἰερουσαλήμ; 5 οὐχί, λέγω ὑμῖν, ἀλλ' ἐὰν μὴ μετανοῆτε πάντες ὡσαύτως ἀπολεῖσθε.

6 Ἔλεγεν δὲ ταύτην τὴν παραβολήν: Συκῆν εἶχέν τις πεφυτευμένην ἐν τῷ ἀμπελῶνι αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἦλθεν ζητῶν καρπὸν ἐν αὐτῇ καὶ οὐχ εὗρεν. 7 εἶπεν δὲ πρὸς τὸν ἀμπελουργόν, Ἰδοὺ τρία ἔτη ἀφ' οὗ ἔρχομαι ζητῶν καρπὸν ἐν τῇ συκῇ ταύτῃ καὶ οὐχ εὑρίσκω. ἔκκοψον [οὖν] αὐτήν: ἱνατί καὶ τὴν γῆν καταργεῖ; 8 ὁ δὲ ἀποκριθεὶς λέγει αὐτῷ, Κύριε, ἄφες αὐτὴν καὶ τοῦτο τὸ ἔτος, ἕως ὅτου σκάψω περὶ αὐτὴν καὶ βάλω κόπρια: 9 κἂν μὲν ποιήσῃ καρπὸν εἰς τὸ μέλλον. εἰ δὲ μή γε, ἐκκόψεις αὐτήν.

1 At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4 Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them – do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’

6 Then he told this parable: ‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. 7 So he said to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” 8 He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down”.’

Collect:

Merciful Lord, Grant your people grace to withstand the temptations
of the world, the flesh and the devil
and with pure hearts and minds to follow you, the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post Communion Prayer:

Lord our God,
you feed us in this life with bread from heaven,
the pledge and foreshadowing of future glory.
Grant that the working of this sacrament within us
may bear fruit in our daily lives;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.