Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 50, Sunday 24 May 2026, Day of Pentecost (Whit Sunday)

The Day of Pentecost depicted in a fresco in the Church of the Transfiguration in Piskopiano in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (5 April 2026) and continuing through Ascension Day until today, the Day of Pentecost or Whit Sunday (24 May 2026).

Later this morning, I hope to be part of the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, singing with the choir. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘Come Holy Spirit’ … the holy water stoup in the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 14: 8-17 (25-27), NRSVA:

8 Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ 9 Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. 12 Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

15 ‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you for ever. 17 This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

[25 ‘I have said these things to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.’]

Pentecost or the Descent of the Holy Spirit, by Titian, in the Church of Santa Maria della Salute, Venice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflections:

Rabbi David Aaron opens one of his books with a story about the comedian Henny Youngman, the ‘King of One-Liners,’ who once said, ‘I tried being an atheist, but I gave it up. There are no holidays.’

There are three great holidays in the Calendar of the Church when canon law expects the Eucharist to be celebrated in every cathedral and church: Christmas Day, Easter Day and the Day of Pentecost, today.

Each of these holidays or holy days is a day that celebrates how God has come among us and how God invites us to be with him.

They are just like our own holidays.

How often do you remember a holiday as a time when someone came to visit you, or you went to visit someone special in your family?

I have fond memories of long, extended holidays spent on my grandmother’s farm near Cappoquin in West Waterford.

How many of us know Christmas would not be Christmas without visiting the homes of family members, or special people in our lives and families coming to visit us, or even stay with us?

We have had two family members visiting our small flat in Stony Stratford in recent weeks. Despite its size, we have tried to make this flat a place of hospitality, where people can come and visit us, and sometimes stay with, live with us, even if only for a short time.

These principal holy days or holidays in the life of the Church – Christmas, Easter and Pentecost – are holidays to celebrate how God comes to dwell with us.

1, At Christmas, we celebrate the Incarnation: God comes as Christ to live among us, as one of us.

2, At Easter, God invites to us to come and dwell with him, to become what we are truly made to be.

3, At Pentecost, God as the Holy Spirit comes and dwells with us.

In a typical American way of telling it, David Aaron in that book, Inviting God In (Boston and London: Trumpeter, 2006), makes a distinction between a vacation and a holiday.

He argues that a vacation is a time to get away, such as time on the beach, playing golf or going to a good concert.

A holiday, on the other hand, is a time to celebrate. ‘A holiday,’ he says, ‘is not an escape from everyday life to paradise. Rather, it is a time to infuse paradise into everyday life.’

Playing with the words celebrate and celestial, he says a holiday is a holy day in which we see the celestial within the terrestrial.

The Hebrew name for a holy day, moed (מועד), is used especially for the three great Biblical festivals of Passover, Shavout or Pentecost, which was celebrated over the last few days (21-23 May 2026), and Sukkot (Booths). This Biblical word describes special days set apart from non-sacred days. It actually means ‘date,’ ‘appointed time’ or ‘meeting.’ In other words, these great holidays are actually times to meet God, they truly are dates with God.

And a date with someone special, involves getting dressed up, going somewhere special, perhaps having a special meal together, all in the hope and with the promise of getting to know each other better, of enjoying each other’s company.

David Aaron points out that each of these holy days is a date with God and celebrates a critical ingredient in the recipe for a loving relationship with God and with our fellow human beings – freedom, responsibility, fallibility, accountability, forgiveness, spontaneity, integrity, wholeness, intimacy, anticipation, hope and trust.

Those great holy days are about recalling the great encounters, dates with God in the past, making them real in the present, and looking forward to the promises that they are imbued with, that they may become real in the future.

David Aaron points out that each of these holy days is a date with God. Each holiday is an opportunity to relive the dramatic events that occurred on those days – to remember and celebrate God’s timeless love for us.

In the Feast of Pentecost, we remember how God the Holy Spirit comes to dwell with us, and the Church is formed on the Day of Pentecost.

Until then, they were a small collection of followers of Jesus. Now they become one body. And the Holy Spirit is living in this body.

There is a wise old maxim that you do not really know someone until you live with them. As Sean O’Casey has Joxer say in his play Juno and the Paycock (1925), ‘if you want to know me, come an’ live with me.’

In the ‘reality television’ series First Dates, now in its eleventh series on RTÉ, when people have their first dates, they behave so nicely to one another. They put on their best clothes and finest perfume or aftershave, they are polite, they try to have the best table manners, show they know the best wine and food, and are oh so courteous, considerate and caring.

But when you live with someone, you get to know that person really. Their highs and their lows, their habits and their fads, what they really smell like, how short their fuses may be … even what they really think.

Pentecost celebrates how the Holy Spirit comes to dwell among us, how God wants to live with us and wants us to live with God.

This is the promise of Jesus to his Disciples at the Last Supper that we hear in the Gospel reading this morning (John 14: 8-17, 25-27):

He tells them first that he is alive in God the Father, and that God the Father is alive in him, and that he will ask the Father to send the Holy Spirit, who ‘abides with you, and he will be in you.’

It is the promise at our Confirmation, it is the promise at my ordination. But it is God’s promise to all, at Pentecost.

Because of Pentecost, God lives with us, and we live with God. We have been formed into one body, the Body of Christ. There are no more barriers, based on social class, gender, birth, job title, language, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity … or any of the other barriers we search for to separate us one from another.

The Holy Spirit breaks down all those barriers.

It sounds crazy.

It is crazy … by the normal pushy standards we see all around us. No wonder some people who saw what happened that first Pentecost in Jerusalem sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine’ (Acts 2: 13).

But then, God loves us, and wants more than a first date. God wants to live with us, and wants us to live with God.

Like a holy date, our Pentecost Eucharist or Holy Communion later this morning includes some of the elements we might expect on a date with God. We dress up nicely, we tell stories, we ask about one another, in our prayers we share our hopes and dreams and sorrows, we eat with another.

God has come to live with us, and now invites us to share his love, and to show this love in how we care for one another, pray for another, and how we now look at the world through the love-tinted glasses of being filled with the Holy Spirit.

Christ is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Pentecost breaks down the doors we lock and the walls we build to separate ourselves from God and from each other … a locked old door in the streets of the old town in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Acts 2: 1-21 (NRSVA):

1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs – in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’ 12 All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘What does this mean?’ 13 But others sneered and said, ‘They are filled with new wine.’

14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. 15 Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. 16 No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

17 “In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
19 And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
20 The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

The Day of Pentecost depicted in an icon in the Greek Orthodox Church in Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 24 May 2026, Day of Pentecost, Whit Sunday):

This week in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), from 24 to 30 May 2026 (pp 58-59), the theme is ‘Carriers of the Flame’ and is introduced today with reflections by Carol Miller, Church Engagement Manager, USPG:

‘At Pentecost we remember how the Holy Spirit came like fire, igniting the hearts of the first disciples and sending them out into the world. That same Spirit continues to inspire USPG supporters today – people whose faith has led them to champion mission, justice, and care across generations.

Some have served overseas: “I was a missionary in Zimbabwe from 1981 to 1985 … I keep USPG and the church in Zimbabwe in my prayers.” Others have shared professional skills: “I first volunteered in the USPG library in Tufton Street in 1980 and shortly after was appointed Librarian.”

‘For some, USPG is part of their heritage: “My mother was an SPG medical missionary in Delhi in the late 1930s and early 40s, so it has always been part of my heritage.” For others, it has shaped a lifelong vocation: “We went as missionaries to Southern Africa with USPG between 1983–1991 … later I joined the staff.”

‘At Pentecost we give thanks for this great cloud of witnesses - ordinary people carrying the flame of faith, passing it on to the next generation, and reminding us that the Spirit still calls, still sends, and still empowers us to serve God’s world.

‘USPG continues this mission today. You can be part of it; by praying, volunteering, becoming a parish contact or representative in your diocese, or giving to support life-changing projects. Together, we carry the flame.’

The USPG prayer diary today (Sunday 24 May 2026, Day of Pentecost, Whit Sunday) invites us to pray and to reflect by reading and meditating on John 20: 19-23, celebrating the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The Collect:

God, who as at this time
taught the hearts of your faithful people
by sending to them the light of your Holy Spirit:
grant us by the same Spirit
to have a right judgement in all things
and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort;
through the merits of Christ Jesus our Saviour,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Faithful God,
who fulfilled the promises of Easter
by sending us your Holy Spirit
and opening to every race and nation
the way of life eternal:
open our lips by your Spirit,
that every tongue may tell of your glory;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Holy Spirit, sent by the Father,
ignite in us your holy fire;
strengthen your children with the gift of faith,
revive your Church with the breath of love,
and renew the face of the earth,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

The Day of Pentecost depicted in the iconostasis in the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

‘The fruits of my hands … The fruits of my heart … The fruits of my mind … The fruits of my soul … ’

It is customary On Shavuot to eat dairy foods, especially cheese, cheesecake and ice cream, a tradition that may comefrom the biblical description of a land ‘flowing with milk and honey’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

On Shavuot it is customary to eat dairy foods. Although no one knows for certain where this tradition comes from, many believe it is derived from the biblical references to a land ‘flowing with milk and honey’. The holiday of Shavuot or Shavuos (שָׁבוּעוֹת‎, ‘Weeks’), or the Festival of Weeks, begins at sunset on Sunday evening (1 June 2025), and ends at nightfall on Tuesday 3 June 2025. This holiday in the Jewish Calendar celebrates harvest of first fruits and commemorates the giving of the Torah and Commandments on Mount Sinai. Shavuot is one of the three pilgrim festivalsand also celebrates harvest of first fruits.

The Feast of Weeks is sometimes referred to as Pentecost (Πεντηκοστή) because of its timing 50 days after the first day of Passover.

This Jewish holiday occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan. The word Shavuot means ‘weeks’ and it marks the conclusion of the seven-week Counting of the Omer, beginning on the second day of Passover and followed immediately by Shavuot. This counting of days and weeks is understood to express anticipation and desire for the giving of the Torah.

On Shavuot it is customary to eat dairy foods, especially cheese, cheesecake and ice cream. Although no one knows for certain where this tradition comes from, many believe it is derived from the biblical references to a land ‘flowing with milk and honey’. Sephardic communities, some of which refer to Shavuot as the Festival of Roses, also have a tradition of eating dishes made with rosewater.

On the evening that marks the beginning of Shavuot, the memorial prayer ‘Father of compassion’ (אב הרחמים‎, Av Harachamim) is said in many synagogues and congregations.

This poetic prayer was written in a time of profound grief, at the end of the 11th or in the early 12th century. It dates from the massacre of Jewish communities around the Rhine River in 1096 by Christian crusaders at the beginning of the First Crusade (1096-1099), one of the darkest moments in mediaeval Jewish history.

This prayer first appeared in siddurim or Jewish prayer books in 1290. Since then, it has been printed in every Orthodox siddur in the European traditions of Sephardic and Ashkenazic prayers. It has become the custom to say this prayer on two special moments in the Jewish year: the Shabbat before Shavuot, as the anniversary of the massacre of the Rhineland Jewish communities, and the Shabbat before Tishah B’Av, when the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem and the victims of later persecutions are mourned. It has come to serve as a remembrance of other pogroms and tragedies, and for the victims of the Holocaust, so that it is now a prayer recalling all Jewish martyrs.

The prayer emphasises the merit of the martyrs who died and quotes several scriptural verses: Deuteronomy 32: 43; Joel 4: 21; Psalm 79: 10; Psalm 9: 13; Psalm 110: 6, 7. God is asked to remember the martyrs, to avenge them, and to save their offspring. The wording of the last part of the prayer, invoking Divine retribution on the persecutors, has undergone many changes.

On first reading or hearing this last part of the prayer, it sounds like a call to violence. But it is nothing of the sort. Like so many of the psalms, it turns to God in honesty and despair, and lays honest feelings before God. But as we pray, of course, we realise that God is the God of both peace and justice.

The prayer is recited after the Torah reading and before the scroll is returned to the Ark. Another short prayer of the same name, ‘May the Father of mercy have mercy upon a people that has been borne by him …’, is recited in Orthodox synagogues immediately before the reading from the Torah.

Father of compassion, who dwells on high:
may he remember in his compassion
the pious, the upright and the blameless –
holy communities who sacrificed their lives
for the sanctification of God’s name.

Lovely and pleasant in their lives,
in death they were not parted.

They were swifter than eagles and stronger than lions
to do the will of their Maker,
and the desire of their Creator.

O our God, remember them for good
with the other righteous of the world,
and may he exact retribution for the shed blood of his servants,
as it is written in the Torah of Moses, the man of God:

‘O nations, acclaim his people,
wreak vengeance on his foes,
and make clean his people’s land.’

And by your servants, the prophets, it is written:
‘I shall cleanse their which I have not yet cleansed,
says the Lord who dwells in Zion.’

And in the Holy Writings it says:
‘Why should the nations say: Where is their God?
Before our eyes, may those nations know
that you avenge the shed blood of your servants.’

And it also says:

‘For the Avenger of blood remembers them
and does not forget the cry of the afflicted.’

And it further says:

‘He will execute judgment among the nations,
heaping up the dead,
crushing the rulers far and wide.
From the brook by the wayside he will drink,
then he will hold his head high.’

Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Torah and Commandments on Mount Sinai … a ceramic glazed tile by Joel Itman, depicting Moses with the Ten Commandments and illustrating a Jewish Art Calendar published in Italy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat has blogged as The Velveteen Rabbi since 2003, and in 2008, Time named her blog one of the top 25 sites on the internet, she was named in 2016 by Forward as one of America’s Most Inspiring Rabbis. She is author of six book-length collections of poetry.

She wrote her poem Fruits: a poem for Shavuot eseven years ago, in May 2018:

Fruits: a poem for Shavuot, by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat:

The fruits of my hands
bright origami cranes
minced garlic and chiffonaded kale
clean t-shirts, folded.

The fruits of my heart
poems of yearning and ache
text messages that say I love you
in a hundred different ways.

The fruits of my mind
sentences and paragraphs
eloquence and argument
new ideas casting bright sparks.

The fruits of my soul
the harmony that makes the chord
prayer with my eyes closed tight
inbreath of tearful wonder.

I offer the first of these
the best of these
in my smudged imperfect hands
from my holy imperfect heart.

I have been in tight places
I’ve cried out – and You heard me!
Now I stand on the cusp
of flow and abundance.

I give You these first fruits
not because they’re ‘enough’
but because I want to draw near
to You, now and always.

Chag Shavuot Sameach, חג שבועות שמח‎

Shabbat Shalom, שבת שלום‎

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024: 33, 11 June 2024

Holy Trinity Church, Rathmines … with Semple’s distinctive pinnacles and deep-set windows and doors (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This week began with the Second Sunday after Trinity (Trinity II, 9 June 2024). Today, the Church Calendar commemorates Saint Barnabas the Apostle (11 June 2024). In the Jewish Calendar this is Shavuot, one of the three pilgrim festivals. This festival celebrates the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

In the two weeks after Trinity Sunday, I illustrated my prayers and reflections with images and memories of cathedrals, churches, chapels and monasteries in Greece and England dedicated to the Holy Trinity. I am continuing this theme this week, with images and memories of churches I know in Ireland that are dedicated to the Holy Trinity.

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

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

Holy Trinity Church, Rathmines, was designed by John Semple, the ‘presiding genius of the Board of First Fruits’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 15: 12-17 (NRSVUE):

[Jesus said:] 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”

The eagle lectern in Holy Trinity Church, Rathmines (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Holy Trinity Church, Rathmines, Dublin:

I visited Rathmines again last Friday during my short visit to Bray and Dublin last week. Over the years, I have on occasions been invited to preside at the Eucharist, preach, and take part in many other services in Holy Trinity Church, Rathmines.

For four years, from 2002 to 2006, I worked in Belgrave Road, only a few footsteps away from this church. Holy Trinity Church is one of the three of four landmark buildings in Rathmines, the others being the Clock Tower on the old Town Hall, the Carnegie Library at the end of Leinster Road, and the green copper dome on the Roman Catholic parish church.

But Holy Trinity Church, Rathmines, is also an important church architecturally as one of the churches designed in the Gothic style by John Semple before Pugin’s arrival in Ireland. His other churches in Dublin include the Church of Ireland parish church in Kiltiernan (1826); Saint Mary’s Church, Donnybrook (1827); Saint Maelruain’s Church, Tallaght (1829); Saint Mary’s, otherwise known as the Black Church, in Saint Mary’s Place (1830); and the parish church in Monkstown (1833).

Maurice Craig has described Semple as the ‘presiding genius of the Board of First Fruits.’ He was the board’s architect for the Province of Dublin, and he invented his peculiar brand of Gothic, flinging to the winds every notion of scholarship and orthodoxy. This style is like his paintings: he reduced everything to the severest geometry, including buttresses, pinnacles and mouldings, so that everything is expressed as a contrast of planes.

It was said that in his final years Archbishop William Magee (1822-1831) would only consecrate churches that could be used as fortresses because he suffered from delusions, believing that the Protestant population was under siege and in danger of being massacred. Perhaps this fear explains why Urbs Fortitudinis is still a favourite canticle in the Church of Ireland. It may also explain why Semple built so many churches with such extraordinary solidity.

Semple’s church in Monkstown is adorned with towers and turrets, ‘for all the world like chessmen,’ according to Craig. Inside, there is an elaborate internal plaster vault to simulate masonry, described by Semple’s contemporaries as ‘a mule between the Gothics and Saracens.’

Peter Costello even suggests that Semple’s Moorish elements may have been inspired by the Alhambra in Granada – Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra had been published in 1832.

Semple’s church in Church Avenue, Rathmines, has his distinctive pinnacles and deep-set windows and doors. The three wide gables, the tall steeple, and the plain exterior are all typical of Semple’s interpretation of Gothic.

The church stands on an island in the middle of the road where Church Avenue and Belgrave Road meet. It was built 195 years ago in 1828 as a chapel-of-ease for Saint Peter’s Church in Aungier Street, now long demolished. Holy Trinity was consecrated on 1 June 1828 by Archbishop Magee, but Rathmines did not become a separate parish until 1883. Since then, the parish has only had seven rectors.

The vestry walls are lined with photographs of past rectors, including Canon Ernest Lewis-Crosby (1914-1924), who later became Dean of Christ Church Cathedral (1938-1961), and who was still dean when he died at the age of 97. His successor and biographer, Evelyn Charles Hodges (1924-1927), later became Bishop of Limerick (1943-1960).

The present rector of Rathmines is Revd Rob Jones, who was the curate to his predecessor, Canon Neill McEndoo.

‘Till He Come’ … Holy Trinity Church, Rathmines, was built in 1829 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 11 June 2024, Saint Barnabas the Apostle):

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 ‘Estate Community Development Mission, Diocese of Colombo, Church of Ceylon.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update. The Church of Ceylon is one of USPG’s Partners in Mission (PIM).

The USPG Prayer Diary today (11 June 2024, Saint Barnabas the Apostle) invites us to pray:

God our Father, you filled Saint Barnabas with faith and the Holy Spirit. Help us to follow his example and proclaim the gospel by word and deed. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Williamson monument in Holy Trinity Church, Rathmines (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Collect:

Bountiful God, giver of all gifts,
who poured your Spirit upon your servant Barnabas
and gave him grace to encourage others:
help us, by his example,
to be generous in our judgements
and unselfish in our service;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Post Communion Prayer:

Almighty God,
who on the day of Pentecost
sent your Holy Spirit to the apostles
with the wind from heaven and in tongues of flame,
filling them with joy and boldness to preach the gospel:
by the power of the same Spirit
strengthen us to witness to your truth
and to draw everyone to the fire of your love;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The offices of Holy Trinity Church on Lower Rathmines Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition copyright © 2021, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Saint Barnabas Church in Jericho, Oxford … today the Church Calendar commemorates Saint Barnabas (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2023)

A new Torah scroll honours scholar who saved the synagogue in Crete

Etz Hayyim Synagogue stands in a small alley off Kondhilaki Streer in Evraiki or the former Jewish quarter in the old town of Chania (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

The Jewish holiday of Shavuot or Shavuos (שָׁבוּעוֹת‎, ‘Weeks’) began this year at sunset yesterday (Thursday 25 May 2023), and ends at sundown tomorrow (Saturday 27 May 2023).

The Feast of Weeks is sometimes referred to as Pentecost (Πεντηκοστή) because of its timing 50 days after the first day of Passover.

This Jewish holiday occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan. In the Bible, Shavuot marks the wheat harvest in the Land of Israel (see Exodus 34: 22) and, according to the Jewish Sages, it also commemorates the anniversary of the giving of the Torah by God at Mount Sinai.

The word Shavuot means ‘weeks’ and it marks the conclusion of the seven-week Counting of the Omer, beginning on the second day of Passover and followed immediately by Shavuot. This counting of days and weeks is understood to express anticipation and desire for the giving of the Torah.

Thursday evening (25 May 2021) was the beginning of Shavuot, when the memorial prayer ‘Father of compassion’ (אב הרחמים‎, Av Harachamim) is said in many synagogues and congregations.

A new Sefer Torah or Torah scroll in memory of Nikos Stavroulakis is being inaugurated at a number events in the Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Chania over these few days.

Nicholas Peter Stavroulakis, or Peter Stavis (1932-2017), was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, to immigrant parents: his Jewish mother Annie was from Turkey and his Greek Orthodox father Petros was from Crete. Nikos moved to Chania in 1994, and was the driving force behind restoring the synagogue of Etz Hayyim, which had been in ruins since World War II.

The Erev Shavuot Evening Service yesterday (Thursday 25 May 2023) was followed by a Leil Limud evening discussion on the topic ‘Elonei Mamre. The Encounter of Judaism and Orthodox Christianity.’ This involved a conversation between Etz Hayyim’s visiting rabbi, Rabbi Nicholas de Lange, and Father John Raffan of the Archdiocese of Athens.

Professor Nicholas de Lange is a Reform rabbi and historian, Emeritus Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of Cambridge, and an emeritus fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge. He has lectured on Modern Judaism and the Reading of Jewish texts at the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge. His research programmes have included Mapping the Jewish Communities of the Byzantine Empire.

He has written and edited several books about Judaism and translated numerous works of fiction by Amos Oz, S Yizhar and AB Yehoshua into English. He received the Risa Domb/Porjes Prize for Translation from the Hebrew in 2007 for his translation of A Tale of Love and Darkness by Amos Oz.

To mark the first day of Shavout today, Rabbi Nicholas de Lange officiated at the Morning Service Etz Hayyim Synagogue, and is officiating at the Erev Shabbat service this evening. Later this evening, the Leil Limud is with Professor Geoffrey Khan, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge since 2012.

The new Sefer Torah is being inaugurated tomorrow morning (Saturday, 27 May 2023). The programme includes a welcome from Vassiliki Yiakoumaki, President of the Board of Trustees of oration Etz Hayyim, the Shabbat and Second Day of Shavuot Morning Service, officiated at by Etz Hayyim’s Visiting Rabbi Nicholas de Lange, and the Sefer ceremony and reading, officiated at by Rabbi Nicholas de Lange.

Other speakers tomorrow include David Saltiel, President of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, Victor Eliezer, Secretary General of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, and Lior Asher and Ahouva Amar, the main organisers of fundraising for the new Sefer.

Later in the day, a reception in synagogue courtyard and guided tours in the afternoon of Etz Hayyim Synagogue and the historic Jewish Quarter in Chania. A reading of the Book of Ruth in the evening is followed by Havdalah and a musical performance by Marty Eisenstein.

The annual memorial service for the victims of the Tanais sinking takes place at the Tanais Memorial in Koum Kapi at noon on Sunday (28 May 2023). This is followed by a memorial service for the Cretan Jewish Community at Etz Hayyim Synagogue, with Rabbi Gabriel Negrin officiating.

The Aron haKodesh or Ark in the Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Chania … a new Sefer Torah is being inaugurated this weekend in memory of Nikos Stavroulakis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘Father of compassion’ (אב הרחמים‎, Av Harachamim):

Father of compassion, who dwells on high:
may he remember in his compassion
the pious, the upright and the blameless –
holy communities who sacrificed their lives
for the sanctification of God’s name.

Lovely and pleasant in their lives,
in death they were not parted.

They were swifter than eagles and stronger than lions
to do the will of their Maker,
and the desire of their Creator.

O our God, remember them for good
with the other righteous of the world,
and may he exact retribution for the shed blood of his servants,
as it is written in the Torah of Moses, the man of God:

‘O nations, acclaim his people,
wreak vengeance on his foes,
and make clean his people’s land.’

And by your servants, the prophets, it is written:
‘I shall cleanse their which I have not yet cleansed,
says the Lord who dwells in Zion.’

And in the Holy Writings it says:
‘Why should the nations say: Where is their God?
Before our eyes, may those nations know
that you avenge the shed blood of your servants.’

And it also says:
‘For the Avenger of blood remembers them
and does not forget the cry of the afflicted.’

And it further says:
‘He will execute judgment among the nations,
heaping up the dead,
crushing the rulers far and wide.
From the brook by the wayside he will drink,
then he will hold his head high.’

Chag Shavuot Sameach

Shabbat Shalom

Nikos Stavroulakis was the driving force behind restoring the synagogue of Etz Hayyim in Chania

Father of compassion, who dwells on high: remember … the pious, the upright and the blameless

Patrick Comerford

The Jewish holiday of Shavuot or Shavuos (שָׁבוּעוֹת‎, ‘Weeks’) begins at sunset tomorrow evening (Saturday 4 June 2022), and ends at sundown on Monday (6 May 2022).

The Feast of Weeks is sometimes referred to as Pentecost (Πεντηκοστή) because of its timing 50 days after the first day of Passover. This year, it coincides with the Christian celebrations of Pentecost (Sunday 5 June 2022)

This Jewish holiday occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan. In the Bible, Shavuot marks the wheat harvest in the Land of Israel (see Exodus 34: 22) and, according to the Jewish Sages, it also commemorates the anniversary of the giving of the Torah by God at Mount Sinai.

The word Shavuot means ‘weeks’ and it marks the conclusion of the seven-week Counting of the Omer, beginning on the second day of Passover and followed immediately by Shavuot. This counting of days and weeks is understood to express anticipation and desire for the giving of the Torah.

This evening (3 June 2022) is the beginning of the Shabbat before Shavuot, when the memorial prayer ‘Father of compassion’ (אב הרחמים‎, Av Harachamim) is said in many synagogues and congregations.

This poetic prayer was written in a time of profound grief, at the end of the 11th or in the early 12th century. It dates from the massacre of Jewish communities around the Rhine River in 1096 by Christian crusaders at the beginning of the First Crusade (1096-1099), one of the darkest moments in mediaeval Jewish history.

This prayer first appeared in siddurim or Jewish prayer books in 1290, and since then it has been printed in every Orthodox siddur in the European traditions of Sephardic and Ashkenazic prayers.

It has become the custom to say this prayer on two special moments in the Jewish year: the Shabbat before Shavuot, as the anniversary of the massacre of the Rhineland Jewish communities, and the Shabbat before Tishah B’Av, when the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem and the victims of later persecutions are mourned.

It has come to serve as a remembrance of other pogroms and tragedies, and for the victims of the Holocaust, so that it is now a prayer recalling all Jewish martyrs.

The prayer emphasises the merit of the martyrs who died and quotes several scriptural verses: Deuteronomy 32: 43; Joel 4: 21; Psalm 79: 10; Psalm 9: 13; Psalm 110: 6, 7. God is asked to remember the martyrs, to avenge them, and to save their offspring. The wording of the last part of the prayer, invoking Divine retribution on the persecutors, has undergone many changes.

On first reading or hearing this last part of the prayer, it sounds like a call to violence. But it is nothing of the sort. Like so many of the psalms, it turns to God in honesty and despair, and lays honest feelings before God. But as we pray, of course, we realise that God is the God of both peace and justice.

The prayer is recited after the Torah reading and before the scroll is returned to the Ark. Another short prayer of the same name, ‘May the Father of mercy have mercy upon a people that has been borne by him …’, is recited in Orthodox synagogues immediately before the reading from the Torah.

Father of compassion, who dwells on high:
may he remember in his compassion
the pious, the upright and the blameless –
holy communities who sacrificed their lives
for the sanctification of God’s name.

Lovely and pleasant in their lives,
in death they were not parted.

They were swifter than eagles and stronger than lions
to do the will of their Maker,
and the desire of their Creator.

O our God, remember them for good
with the other righteous of the world,
and may he exact retribution for the shed blood of his servants,
as it is written in the Torah of Moses, the man of God:

‘O nations, acclaim his people,
wreak vengeance on his foes,
and make clean his people’s land.’

And by your servants, the prophets, it is written:
‘I shall cleanse their which I have not yet cleansed,
says the Lord who dwells in Zion.’

And in the Holy Writings it says:
‘Why should the nations say: Where is their God?
Before our eyes, may those nations know
that you avenge the shed blood of your servants.’

And it also says:

‘For the Avenger of blood remembers them
and does not forget the cry of the afflicted.’

And it further says:

‘He will execute judgment among the nations,
heaping up the dead,
crushing the rulers far and wide.
From the brook by the wayside he will drink,
then he will hold his head high.’

Shabbat Shalom