Sam Comerford, a Dublin musician and composer now based in Brussels

Sam Comerford is a musician and composer from Dublin (Photograph © Chloë Delanghe, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

Sam Comerford is a musician and composer from Dublin now living and working in Brussels. He composes for and leads the trio Thunderblender, whose critically acclaimed debut album Stillorgan (WERF records, 2020) was described by RTÉ Lyric FM as ‘the estrangement of the familiar.’

He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1991, and grew up in Stillorgan in suburban south Dublin. Starting with Irish traditional music, he played tin whistle and Irish flute from the age of nine. A love of the music of Charles Mingus made him take up saxophone at 15. After four years studying with Patrice Brun, he attended the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music. Being surrounded by musicians such as Dave Douglas, Matana Roberts, Donny McCaslin and Drew Gress opened his mind to the possibilities of creative music.

Sam studied saxophone with Michael Buckley and composition with Ronan Guilfoyle, and he completed his BA in Jazz Performance at 21 in Newpark Academy of Music, Blackrock, now part of Dublin City University.

He then moved to Brussels to work on his master’s degree in Jazz saxophone from the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussel, the Royal Conservatory of Brussels (KCB). There he studied saxophone with John Ruocco, composition with Kris Defoort, and rhythm with Stéphane Galland. At KCB he was awarded the Toots Thielemans Award, given to their most exceptional masters student.

As a saxophonist, Sam represented Ireland in the European Saxophone Ensemble from 2012-2014. Led by Guillaume Orti, the project premiered works from composers working in contemporary improvised music, and performing 22 concerts in 14 European countries. He represented Ireland twice in the 12 Points Festival, in 2015 and 2016.

Sam received the ‘Best Instrumentalist prize from the Concours Tremplin d’Avignon, when performing at the Concours Tremplin Jazz d’Avignon in 2017 with Thunderblender. He has been supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Music Network, and the Vlaamse Overheid.

Alongside his own musical activities he has a busy schedule touring and recording in projects incorporating elements of jazz, improvised music, and Irish music. These include performances at venues and festivals in Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Taiwan, with the Hayden Chisholm saxophone quartet and with the European Saxophone Ensemble, led by Guillaume Orti.

He has worked with musicians and composers such as Hayden Chisholm, Ronan Guilfoyle, Guillaume Orti, Andrew Hozier-Byrne, Joao Lobo, André Vida, Ingrid Laubrock, Stéphane Payen, Yoch’ko Seffer, Nick Roth, Utsav Lal, and many more.

Sam is active on the European scene, and specialises in creative improvised music, playing tenor and bass saxophone. His current projects include his own trio Thunderblender, with Jens Bouttery and Hendrik Lasure, Insufficient Funs, a bass saxophone/drums duo with Matthew Jacobson, Aerie, an avant-garde jazz quintet led by Ingo Hipp, Umbra, Chris Guilfoyle’s contemporary jazz quintet, Hendrik Lasure’s warm bad, Heptatomic, a Belgian septet led by Eve Beuvens, and Brilliant Corners, a free jazz quartet founded by Manolo Cabras.

Sam Comerford leads Thunderblender, a trio from Brussels. Together with two trailblazers on the Belgian jazz scene, Hendrik Lasure and Jens Bouttery, they play Comerford’s dark and unpredictable compositions with joy and abandon. All three members are laureates of the ‘Toots Thielemans Award’ from the KCB.

Their music explores intense emotions, moving between order and chaos, free improvisation and intricate writing, heavy grooves and fragile intimate moments. This is a European band with a nod to the American avant-garde, influenced by Henry Threadgill and Tim Berne, with references to 20th century classical harmony.

Sam Comerford plays tenor and the rarely-heard bass saxophone, with playing that could be characterised as equal parts abrasive and lyrical. Jens Bouttery augments his drum set with left-handed bass synth, giving him complete freedom as a one-man rhythm section. Without a conventional bass player, Lasure is free to use the full range of the grand piano, sometimes with live sampling.

They released their debut album, Stillorgan, on 11 September 2020. It was recorded with producer Koen Gisen, in CD and LP formats on WERF Records. It was accompanied by a Belgian release tour in association with Jazzlab Series.

The album features Sam Comerford on tenor and bass saxophone and composition, with Hendrik Lasure, piano and effects, and Jens Bouttery, drums and bass synth. It was recorded and mixed at La Patrie in Ghent, Belgium, in 2019 and 2020, by Koen Gisen and was mastered by Rashad Becker at clunk.

Drawing on the mixture of heavy grooves and tender lyricism contained in their first EP Last Minute Panic (2017), this album offers an intensely personal statement from the bandleader and composer, Sam Comerford.

The album title Stillorgan refers to the Dublin suburb where Sam Comerford grew up. The sleeve was designed by Jelle Martens, and the cover photograph by Susan Keyes shows Sam Comerford with his father Will Comerford.

The album tracks reflect the core themes of family life and love which is affectionately conveyed through its intimate imagery. Given their impressionistic and haunting quality, reviewers say, the imagery is both opaque, and a glaring confrontation with that lived reality.

Stillorgan’s opening number, ‘Lament’ offers melancholic atmospheres, spacious chords, dispersed percussion and damp, grizzly saxophone textures, counterposed by the slightly jarring effect of Lasure’s use of live sampling techniques.

If ‘Lament’ offers a sense of contemplative flight, the LP’s single ‘Movin On’ brings the listener back to earth with its sense of urgency. Held together by Bouttery’s propulsive, syncopated groove, the track is driven forward by a lively conversation between Sam Comerford’s escalating and sinuous saxophone articulations and Lasure’s measured piano chords. This dialogue is propelled onto different sonic planes through its continually evolving and restless structure.

Following the earthy density of ‘Movin On!’, ‘Last Light Out’ oscillates into abstract speculative chaos. Reminiscent of Henry Threadgill’s admixture of contemporary classical and free jazz idioms, ‘Last Light Out’ offers a subtle dynamic between Bouttery’s cacophonous, dexterous grooves, Lasure’s complex chord progressions, and Comerford’s frenetic, yet agile tonal explorations.

‘Doubt’ shifts gear once again by plunging the listener into an eerie, contemplative state.

‘Hope’ leaps from solemn reflection into buoyancy, where obtuse angular jabs propel the track along its zigzagging terrain: we are invited to a macabre carnival, a rhizomatic tap dance.

‘Arrival’ picks up the pieces from the carnage of ‘Hope’ by offering shimmering lyrical sound passages.

Like Samuel Beckett said of his play Not I, that the piece should ‘work on the nerves of the audience, not its intellect,’ Thunderblender’s ‘Panic Redux’ operates as its sonic equivalent, hammering out electrifying doses of distilled sound clusters.

‘Lights Out’ brings to the surface many of the melancholic themes that are lurking throughout the LP into sharp relief with a sparse compositional language that is at once haunting and densely layered.

Ian Patterson, writing on their 2017 debut EP Last Minute Panic All About Jazz, says: ‘Even in Thunderblender’s most intense improvisational flights there's an abiding sense of the three musicians locked on the same intuitive wavelength, whereby freedom and control are but two sides of the same coin. Gutsy yet melodic, rhythmically complex yet grooving, there's plenty to admire in this fine debut.’

Sam Comerford’s other projects include a solo saxophone album based on the music of Irish fiddler Tommie Potts, a second album with Thunderblender, and the soundtrack of experimental horror film Hexham Heads.

Two Precentors of Limerick, two Rectors of Rathkeale, one bishop and a general

Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, Co Limerick … three Gough brothers were part of the Diocese of Limerick in the 17th century and the Rathkeale family was the ancestral line of Field Marshal Gough (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

After a project looking at my predecessors as Precentors of Limerick was postponed last month due to the pandemic limits on public events, I thought it might still be interesting to look at past precentors in a number of blog postings.

Last week, I recalled some previous precentors who had been accused of ‘dissolute living’ or being a ‘notorious fornicator’ (Awly O Lonysigh), or who were killed in battle (Thomas Purcell). There were those who became bishops or archbishops: Denis O’Dea (Ossory), Richard Purcell (Ferns) and John Long (Armagh).

There was the tragic story too of Robert Grave, who became Bishop of Ferns while remaining Precentor of Limerick, but – only weeks after his consecration – drowned with all his family in Dublin Bay as they made their way by sea to their new home in Wexford (read more HERE).

In the 17th century, two members of the Gough family were also appointed Precentors of Limerick. In all, three brothers in this family were priests in the Church of Ireland and two were priests in the Church of England, and the Rathkeale branch of the family was the ancestral line of one of Ireland’s most famous generals.

The Gough family was descended from John Gough (ca 1525-ca 1562), who lived in Wiltshire in the mid-16th century. His son, the Revd Hugh Gough (ca 1562-1635), was the Rector of All Cannings, near Devizes, Wiltshire, in the Diocese of Salisbury, and was the father of at least seven sons, including five sons who were ordained as Anglican priests.

Two of these sons – the Revd Edward Gough and the Revd John Gough – remained in England and became vicars of parishes in Dorset and Hampshire. But three sons – Robert, Francis and Hugh – moved to Co Limerick, and these brothers helped each other to acquire prominent positions in the diocese.

The eldest of the three Gough brothers to move from Wiltshire to Limerick was the Venerable Robert Gough (1584-1641). He was educated at Baliol College, Oxford (BA 1606), and was ordained deacon in 1608 and priest in 1608. He was appointed Precentor of Limerick in 1614, and was appointed Archdeacon of Ardfert in 1628 by his younger brother, Bishop Francis Gough.

Robert Gough remained Precentor of Limerick and Archdeacon of Ardfert until he died in 1641.

His younger brother, Francis Gough (1594-1634), the fifth son of the Revd Hugh Gough, followed Robert to Limerick in 1618. when Francis was educated at Saint Edmund Hall, Oxford (BA 1615; MA 1618). He was a priest at New College, Oxford, in 1618 when he moved to Ireland at the age of 24 and was appointed Vicar of Rathkeale, Rector of Kilscannel and Chancellor of Limerick (1618-1626). Six years later, he also became Vicar of Ballingarry (1624-1626).

At the age of 31 or 32, Francis Gough was appointed Bishop of Limerick and Ardfert on 18 April 1626, and was consecrated bishop in Cashel on 17 September 1626. He died on 29 August 1634, still Bishop of Limerick, at the age of 39 or 40.

The window in the tower in Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale … for most of the 17th century, Rathkeale had only two rectors, both of them members of the Gough family (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

The third Gough brother to move from Wiltshire to Limerick was Canon Hugh Gough (1599-1682), who was Rector of Rathkeale for 54 years. He seems to have been ordained in 1619, when was barely 20, and priest. At the age of 23 or 24, he became Prebendary of Donaghmore (1623-1626) in Limerick, and when his brother Francis became Bishop of Limerick, he succeeded him as Rector of Rathkeale and Kilscannel, Vicar of Clonelty and Chancellor of Limerick (1626).

Canon Hugh Gough held these church positions for the rest of his life, and also became Rector of Kildimo (1639) and Rector and Vicar of Mahoonagh, south of Rathkeale and Newcastle West. He married Eleanor Bolton, continued to live in Rathkeale, survived the disturbances of the Cromwellian era, and was 82 or 83 when he died in office in 1682.

So, for most of the 17th century, from 1618 to 1683, for 65 years spanning eight decades, the parish of Rathkeale in Co Limerick, had only two rectors, both of them members of the Gough family, Bishop Francis Gough and his brother Canon Hugh Gough.

Canon Hugh Gough was the ancestor of the main branch of the Gough family in Co Limerick. His son, George Gough, who was living in Rathkeale in 1682, married Anne Robert, and was the father of the second Precentor of Limerick from this family, yet another Canon Hugh Gough (ca 1661/1662-1730).

This second Canon Hugh Gough was born in Rathkeale ca 1661/1662, when his grandfather, Canon Hugh Gough, was still Rector of Rathkeale. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin (BA 1684, MA 1688), and was ordained around 1686.

He was the Precentor of Limerick for over 40 years. His church appointments included Vicar of Duagh, between Listowel and Castleisland, Co Kerry, in the Diocese of Ardfert and Aghadoe (1686-1703), Vicar of Mungret, Limerick (1687-1730), Precentor of Limerick (1689-1730) and Vicar of Ballingarry and Corcomohide (1692-1730); he was also a Vicar Choral of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick (1693).

By the end of the 18th century, the principal Gough family home was at Woodstown, near Annacotty, Co Limerick, when it was the home of the grandson of the second Canon Hugh Gough, Captain George Gough of Woodstown (1722-1783).

His son, Colonel George Gough (1750-1836) of Woodstown, married Letitia Bunbury of Lisnavagh House, Co Carlow, in 1775. He was Deputy Governor of the City of Limerick, and during the 1798 Rising fought with the militia at Edenderry and the Battle of Colooney.

Their six children included the Very Revd Thomas Bunbury Gough (1777-1860), who continued the family’s clerical tradition, becoming Chancellor of Ardfert (1811-1815) and later Dean of Derry (1820-1860).

Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan, and the Gough family tombs seen from the parish centre (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

But their most famous son was Field Marshal Sir Hugh Gough (1779-1869), 1st Viscount Gough, a famous 19th century general who fought in the Peninsular War, the Opium War, various wars in India, and was the commander-in-chief in China and in India.

Lord Gough was born at Woodstown, Co Limerick, and once lived at Saint Helen’s, on the Stillorgan Road, Booterstown – now the Radisson Hotel – which he bought in 1851. When Gough died at Saint Helen’s in 1869, he was buried in Saint Brigid’s Churchyard, Stillorgan.

The graves in the churchyard also include those of his son, George Gough (1815-1895), 2nd Viscount Gough, and Hugh Gough (1849-1919), 3rd Viscount Gough.

Lord Gough’s nephew, George Gough, still owned 2,398 acres in Co Limerick in the 1870s. But by then the house at Woodstown had long been ‘in ruins.’ Another house was later built by the Bannatyne family and was the home of the Goodbody family in the early 20th century. The house is now part of the Saint Vincent’s Centre run by the Sisters of Charity for people with intellectual disabilities.

The Gough family graves in Saint Brigid’s Churchyard, Stillorgan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan: suburban parish with Celtic roots

Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan, and the Gough family tombs seen from the parish centre (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

I was invited to preach at two Harvest Eucharists yesterday [2 October 2016], in All Saints’ Church, Blackrock, and Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan.

These are two very different suburban Dublin parish churches, and while this was my first time in All Saints’ Church, I had been in Saint Brigid’s before, and it was a pleasure to be invited back to the parish centre for the generous Harvest Lunch.

Karen Poff (Karen Dalton) has engaged in extensive research on the history of Stillorgan and the surrounding locality. On the parish website, she points out that the name Stillorgan comes from Tig Lorcain or the ‘House of Lorcan’ and dates from ca 900. However, before that Stillorgan was first known as Acranakill or Atnakill (the ‘place of the church’).

It is said that a church stood on this site from the early ninth century and that it was a dependency of Saint Brigid’s monastery in Kildare, which was founded in the fifth or sixth century. A stone slab found in Saint Brigid’s graveyard in 1781 was thought to be from a ninth century church. However, the evidence for a church named Saint Brigid’s only dates from 1216.

In 1181, the lands of Stillorgan and Dundrum were granted to Holy Trinity Church (Christ Church Cathedral), Dublin, as part of the Manor of Kill o’ the Grange.

When Walter de Ridelsford founded a convent at Graney, Co Kildare, ca 1200, he endowed it with the churches of Kilmacud and Bray. The convent continued to hold the church at Kilmacud until the dissolution of the monastic houses at the Reformation. The tithes were then granted to the Lord Deputy, Sir Anthony St Leger. He in turn sold then to the de Bathe family of Drumcondra, who then assigned them to Christ Church Cathedral.

Meanwhile, in 1216, Raymond Carew of Stillorgan granted Saint Brigid’s to the Priory of the Holy Trinity or Christ Church Cathedral, along with the church lands. From then, Saint Brigid’s was attached to the church in Kill o’ the Grange until the Reformation, although Saint Brigid’s Church was in ruins by 1500.

After the Reformation, the Deans of Christ Church Cathedral continued to appoint the clergy to Saint Brigid’s, although Stillorgan was part of Monkstown parish from the 16th century and Saint Brigid’s was still in ruins in 1590.

In 1578, the Wingfield family, later of Powerscourt, acquired some lands in Stillorgan, along with the ruined church and the leased the Manor and lands of Stillorgan to the Wolverston family in 1587. James Wolverston devoted himself to the ‘improvement of his property at Stillorgan,’ and when he died in 1609 he was buried at Stillorgan church.

The Parishes of Booterstown, Blackrock, Stillorgan, Kilmacud, Dundrum, Donnybrook and Irishtown were established in 1616. When William Petty drew up his first map of Co Dublin in 1655, Stillorgan was in the Parish of Kill. By 1660, Saint Brigid’s is described as a church surrounded by trees, and the parish of Stillorgan and Kilmacud was united to Monkstown.

In 1684, Sir Joshua Allen acquired Stillorgan and its manor He was a master builder, and was Sheriff, Alderman and then Mayor of Dublin. He moved to Chester, but returned to Ireland after the Battle of the Boyne and died shortly afterwards in 1691.

Inside Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan … the present church was built through the generosity of the Allen family in 1706-1712 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Stillorgan began to develop as a village after Captain John Allen (1660-1726), later the first Viscount Allen, built Stillorgan House in 1695, when he received a royal patent to enclose a demesne and deer park. Stillorgan Park and house probably stood on the site of the present Stillorgan House (Rehab Ireland).

John Allen was High Sheriff of Co Dublin in 1691, and was MP for Co Dublin three times (1692-1693, 1703-1713 and 1715-1717) and in intervening years he was MP for Co Carlow (1695-1703) and Co Wicklow (1713-1715).

From 1706 to 1712, John Allen helped to rebuild Saint Brigid’s Church with the support of Archbishop William King. In 1717, he was given the titles of Viscount Allen in Co Kildare and Baron Allen of Stillorgan in Co Dublin. His wife Mary FitzGerald was a granddaughter of George FitzGerald, 16th Earl of Kildare. When he died in 1726, his son Joshua Allen (1685-1742), MP for Co Kildare (1709-1727) became the 2nd Viscount Allen.

When the family title eventually passed to distant cousins for want of a male heir, he Stillorgan estates were inherited by the second viscount’s daughter, Elizabeth Allen, who married John Proby (1720-1772) in 1750, and two years later he was given the title of Baron Carysfort. Stillorgan remained a mainly rural and agricultural area in the 18th and 19th centuries, with additional employment provided by a local brewery in which the Guinness family had an interest.

By 1760, Saint Brigid’s has fallen into disrepair once again and needed to be rebuilt. In 1762, Stillorgan was separated from Monkstown to form an independent parish, and in 1762 the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church Cathedral transferred the tithes to the incumbent.

In 1781, the parish boundaries were realigned once more, and Booterstown, including Blackrock, Stillorgan, Kilmacud and Dundrum, was separated from Donnybrook.

In 1812, the church was restored extensively, and north aisle and tower were added to Saint Brigid’s Church with a loan of £800 from the Board of First Fruits. Two schoolrooms, a schoolhouse and a residence for a schoolmaster and schoolmistress were built in 1820.

With the death of Joshua William Allen (1782-1845), 6th Viscount Allen, in 1845, the Allen titles came to an end. The last Allen family land holdings in Stillorgan were sold off in 1851, and their former house was demolished in 1880-1887.

When Archbishop William Whately died in 1863, a memorial window was erected in Saint Bigid’s Church, Co. Dublin. In 1874, there was a proposal to remove tower, galleries and vestibule in Saint Brigids’ Church, but this was never carried out.

The rectory at Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan, was designed by James Franklin Fuller (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The rectory at Saint Brigid’s dates from 1881, and the architect was James Franklin Fuller. The old glebe house was sold to James O’Brien in 1889 and its name was changed to Saint Ita’s.

James Franklin Fuller (1835-1924) was born in Glashnacree, near Kenmare, Co Kerry, and went to school in Blackrock, Co Cork, with the architect Thomas Newenham Deane. Fuller trained as architect in Southampton and London, and worked with William Burges before returning to Ireland in 1861. He became a district architect with the Irish Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and set up his own office at 179 Great Brunswick Street, Dublin, at the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869.

In 1871 he became architect to the Representative Church Body (RCB) for the dioceses of Dublin, Glendalough, Kildare, Meath, Ossory, Ferns and Leighlin, and held that post for 42 years until his resignation in 1913. In addition, he was also architect to Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, the Benchers of King’s Inns and the National Board of Education. His pupils and assistants included George Francis Beckett, Laurence Aloysius McDonnell and Richard George Thompson.

As a writer, he published several novels, as well as articles on genealogy, heraldry and antiquarian subjects. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (FRSAI, 1915), a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA, 1915), and an active member of the Kerry Archaeological Association. He died at his house at 51 Eglinton Road, Dublin, in 1924.

Canon Ernest Henry Lewis-Crosby (1864-1961), the last chaplain to a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, became the Rector of Stillorgan in 1923. He was a member of the Cornwall family of Rathmore House, Naas, Co Kildare, who are commemorated in windows and memorials in Saint Brigid’s. He was later Dean of Christ Church Cathedral (1938-1961).

The graves in the churchyard include those of the Gough family of Saint Helen’s, and Bishop Evelyn Charles Darby Hodges (1887-1980), a former principal of the Church of Ireland Theological College (1928-1942) and a former Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert and Aghadoe (1944-1960). In his retirement, he was priest-in-charge of Saint Andrew's, Dublin (1965-1971), where his father, the Revd William Henry Hodges, had been curate almost a century earlier (1889-1991).

In 1978, All Saints’, Blackrock, was united with Saint Brigid’s, Stillorgan, and the present rector is the Revd Ian Gallagher, who was instituted in 2001. A new Parish Centre was built at Saint Brigid’s in 1994, and was opened by President Mary Robinson and Archbishop Donald Caird. There, during the Harvest Lunch yesterday afternoon, many reminiscences of the parish and its clergy were shared.

The grave of Bishop EC Hodges, a former principal of the Church of Ireland Theological College, in Saint Brigid’s Churchyard, Stillorgan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

‘You crown the year with your goodness and give us the fruits of the earth in their season’

Harvest fields in Pollerton, Co Carlow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

2 October 2016,

The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity,

Harvest Thanksgiving Eucharist,

11.30 a.m.: Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan, Co Dublin.

Readings: Deuteronomy 26: 1-11; Psalm 100; Philippians 4: 4-9; John 6: 25-35.

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

I am grateful to your Rector, the Revd Ian Gallagher, for inviting to preach at your Harvest Thanksgiving Service here in Stillorgan this morning.

We were both in Christ Church Cathedral last Sunday for the ordination of the Revd Kevin Conroy, who spent his two years as a deacon in this parish. Kevin was one the students whose dissertation I supervised, and I know how much he appreciated his time in this parish.

It involved commuting through rural Co Wicklow to be in suburban Dublin, and I was often reminded of how living in a city separates us from rural life in so many ways: from the times and seasons, from rural isolation, from the problems created by the closure of village pubs and village post offices, from springtime and harvest.

And no number of successive attendances at ‘Electric Picnic’ is going to count up for one day at ‘The Ploughing.’

I spent a lot of the important growing-up times in my childhood on my grandmother’s farm in West Waterford. Perhaps that alone helps explain why I often need to get out of cities and go for walks, long walks, in the countryside.

But sometimes I worry that in idealising the countryside, we often forget that in cities and suburbs we too have the harvests of our gardens and the harvests of our hearts and of our faith.

The green and gold of the harvest fields in Comberford, Staffordshire, a few weeks ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

In recent weeks, I have had long walks in the countryside, in rural Ireland and in rural England. One summer Sunday afternoon, I walked through the fields in a part of rural Staffordshire that I knew intimately.

The harvest was just beginning, and the fields were that beautiful mixture of green and gold that are so much a part of summer on these islands.

So often, clergy feel guilty about doing nothing. We have to be on the go, filling empty time with planning our next sermon, our next study group, our next vestry or committee meeting.

But on that Sunday afternoon, thinking of how Christ emptied himself, I emptied myself, and allowed my mind and my body to wander aimlessly, enjoying God’s blessing of allowing me to be in a place I like being in so much. I had a busy week ahead of me, and in those few hours of almost absent-minded bless, I enjoyed being in God’s company in God’s creation.

Like Saint Paul in our epistle reading this morning, I could call out that afternoon, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always’ (Philippians 4: 4).

In the few weeks that have passed since then, the countryside has changed in its colours. The blackberries have ripened on the brambles in the lanes, most of the harvest is now complete, and the stubble gives the countryside different shades and balances of green and gold beneath the blue skies and white clouds.

A golden harvest stubble near Tolleshunt Knights in Essex (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Just a month ago, while I was on a one-day retreat in a monastery in the countryside in Essex, I heard a story of a monk from Cyprus who was the gardener in his monastery. He was happy at his work, growing vegetables, tending the vines and orchards, bringing the flowers to bloom, and looking after the soil, in season and out of season.

He enjoyed his work, and never sought to do anything more in the monastery.

One day, the Abbot called him aside and told him he wanted this monk to be ordained a priest.

The monk was perplexed. He was from a simple farming background, he was a brother among the monks, and he had never thought about being ordained a priest.

But Father Abbot, he protested, I do not know how to serve the liturgy.

But the garden is your liturgy, the Abbot insisted. And the garden shall continue to be your liturgy.

Despite this monk’s protests, he was ordained a priest.

He continued to work in the garden. The flowers bloomed and the vegetable grew in such vast quantities that the monks had to give them away freely to the local villagers.

Often, while the other monks were praying the offices or hours in the monastery chapel, Father John was still out on his tractor, looking after the garden, the flowers, the vegetables, the vines and the orchards. They needed constant attention, Father John understood nature, and there he prayed with them.

There are three degrees in Orthodox monasticism:

When the novice becomes a monk, he is clothed in monk’s clothing and receives the tonsure.

Some years later, when the abbot feels the monk has reached an appropriate level of discipline, dedication, and humility, he moves on to the second degree known as the Little Schema.

Many monks remain at this level. But sometimes, monks whose abbots feel they have reached a high level of spiritual excellence reach the final stage, known as the Great Schema.

In his dying days, Father John received the Great Schema from his Abbot. He died a few days later, but his gardens continue to bloom and to blossom, and both he and his generosity are still remembered by the villagers many years later.

The fruit and the flowers, the vine and vegetables, may have been Father John’s liturgy. But the people he blessed with the produce of the fields and the gardens are themselves the harvest of the monastery.

Shortly after hearing this story that day, I found myself face to face with a fresco in one of the monastery chapels depicting the Resurrection scene where Mary Magdalene is in the garden and mistakes the Risen Christ for the gardener.

It seemed to me that day that there is something spiritually beautiful and appropriate about the monk-gardener becoming a priest, and that the Risen Christ might at first sight be confused with the gardener.

It was the Gospel reading at last Sunday’s ordination of priests in Christ Church Cathedral.

How do we best celebrate the harvest do we have to offer today?

There is a harvest lunch here after this service. But like the people who follow Christ to the other side of the lake in our Gospel reading, are we there because we are being fed (see John 6: 26), or because of who Christ is for us?

What harvest do we have to offer as individuals, as a parish, as a diocese, as the Church of Ireland?

What did we mean when we prayed those words in this morning’s Collect that say: ‘Grant that we may use them to your glory, for the relief of those in need’?

I am just back from a meeting in London of the trustees of the Anglican mission agency USPG at which we heard harrowing accounts of the suffering of Syrian refugees who are fleeing places like Aleppo and Damascus and fleeing to Greece, only to find themselves treated with uncivilised inhumanity in holding facilities on the islands, in Athens and on the borders.

When Saint Paul tells us this morning to ‘keep on doing the things we have learned and received and heard and seen,’ then it must be in loving God and loving our neighbour. And it must involve too remembering, as our Old Testament reading reminds us, that we must ‘celebrate … all the bounty that the Lord God given us’ (Deuteronomy 26: 11) in the harvest ‘with the aliens who reside among us.’

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

Collect:

Eternal God,
you crown the year with your goodness
and give us the fruits of the earth in their season:
Grant that we may use them to your glory,
for the relief of those in need
and for our own well-being;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord of the harvest, with joy we have offered thanksgiving for your love in creation
and have shared in the bread and wine of the kingdom.
By your grace plant within us such reverence
for all that you give us
that will make us wise stewards of the good things we enjoy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This sermon was preached at the Harvest Thanksgiving Eucharist in Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan, Co Dublin, on 2 October 2016.

Harvest time in Alvecote near Tamworth (Photograph: Ken Robinson, 2016)

A winter wonderland

Christ Church Cathedral in the lights of last night’s crisp winter weather (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Patrick Comerford

Dublin was aglow last night, with Christmas shoppers thronging the city centre streets, and a holiday buzz in the narrow streets in the Temple Bar area, where weekend revellers appeared to be enjoying the dry, crisp and bright mid-winter weather.

About 20 of us with cathedral links – some chapter members, others choir members and acolytes, and some priests who are involved in the liturgical and pastoral life of the cathedral – had our pre-Christmas dinner in Essex Gate last night.

Later, as we strolled back past the cathedral, I was amazed how many people were enjoying the peace and tranquillity of the grounds of the cathedral late at night.

That sharp crisp weather continued today, with clear blue skies and few clouds, and in the bright morning I was at a funeral in Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan.

Stillorgan is an ancient parish, but the original church was in ruins by the late 17th century and the present church was built between 1706 and 1712, but it was given a much later Georgian appearance when the tower and north aisle were added in 1812.

The Gough family graves in Saint Brigid’s Churchyard, Stillorgan (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

The graves in the churchyard include those of three generation of the Gough family, who once lived at Saint Helen’s, on the Stillorgan Road – now the Radisson Hotel – which was bought in 1851 by Field Marshall Hugh Gough (1779-1869), 1st Viscount Gough. He is buried in the churchyard at Saint Brigid’s alongside his son, George Gough (1815-1895), 2nd Viscount Gough, and Hugh Gough (1849-1919), 3rd Viscount Gough.

The parishioners of Saint Brigid’s also included Archbishop Richard Whatley (1787-1863), who lived at Redesdale House and who once pronounced: “Happiness is no laughing matter.”

Blue skies and blue seas in Greystones, Co Wicklow, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

From Stillorgan, two of us went down the N11 to Greystones, Co Wicklow, and had lunch in the Happy Pear on Church Road, before going for a walk on the beach. The tide was in, and as the waves broke gently on the sand and the water receded, they left a shining, silvery glow on the sand.

We stopped again in Bray for a coffee and ice cream in Gino’s and a second walk on the beach there. It was so bright that was almost possible to imagine that this could have been a Spring day.

Blue skies and blue seas in Bray, Co Wicklow, this afternon (Photograh: Patrick Comerford, 2012)