Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 10, Wednesday 12 February 2025

‘It is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come’ (Mark 7: 21) … hearts at Winchester Walk near Southwark Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar. This week began with the Fourth Sunday before Lent (9 February 2025), and Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent are just three weeks away (5 March 2025).

Later today, I hope to take part in both a lunchtime meeting in Wolverton of clergy in the Milton Keynes area and in the evening choir rehearsals in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, where we are beginning to look at Handel’s Messiah. Before today begins, however, I am taking some quiet time 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.

‘There are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles’ (Mark 7: 4) … pots and pans in the kitchen in Bryce House on Garinish Island, Co Cork (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 7: 14-23 (NRSVA):

14 Then he called the crowd again and said to them, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand: 15 there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.’

17 When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 He said to them, ‘Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, 19 since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?’ (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20 And he said, ‘It is what comes out of a person that defiles. 21 For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22 adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’

‘Why do your disciples … eat with defiled hands?’ (Mark 7: 5) … preparing to eat lunch at a restaurant in Piskopianó in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

I have been in two hospitals within the past week, with two consultations in Milton Keynes University Hospital and and an unexpected visit to A&E in University College London Hospital. Distracted from my own concerns, I found it interesting to see how many people are still wearing face masks and sanitising their hands in these places.

It is so easy to forget how we are all wearing facemasks in public places not so long ago, sanitising our hands, and used to having our temperatures taken in many buildings.

The arguments about sanitising our hands and wearing facemasks are a very different order of argument to the arguments in today’s Gospel reading (Mark 7: 14-23) about washing my hands before I prepare food, and about presenting that food with clean cups and plates and knives and forks.

It is so easy for me to look at the people I do not like and then to find passages in the Bible that shore up, that support, that justify that prejudice, and make me feel good because I now feel a little more smug, a little more superior.

And that is precisely the moment when the Jesus of today’s Gospel reading steps in and upbraids me, and calls me a hypocrite.

As we saw with the Gospel reading yesterday (Mark 7: 1-13), in Greek, the word hypocrite (ὑποκριτής, hypokrités) was used for an actor who masked or hid his face. It came to mean someone who plays a part on stage. Because these people did not speak their own words, this label came to mean a pretender, what we call today a hypocrite.

When I speak words taken at random, or taken out of context in the Bible, I need to be careful I am not using them out of context, or condemning people for a fault that is not necessarily theirs, something I project onto them.

Some years ago, I came across this piece of doggerel inside a church porch in Ardmore, Co Waterford:

I was shocked, confused bewildered
as I entered heaven’s door,
not by the beauty of it all,
nor the lights or its décor.

But it was the folks in Heaven
who made me sputter and gasp –
the thieves, the liars, the sinners,
the alcoholics and the trash.

There stood the kid from sixth class
who swiped my lunch box twice.
Next to him was my old neighbour
who never said something nice.

Bob, who I always thought
would rot away in hell,
was sitting pretty on cloud nine,
looking oh so well.

I nudged Jesus, ‘What’s the deal?
I would love to hear your take.
How come these sinners get up here?
God must have made a mistake.

‘And why is everyone so quiet,
so sombre – give me a clue?’
‘Hush child,’ he said ‘they’re all in shock.
They weren’t expecting you.’

If I saw myself the way others see me, I would be less reluctant to open my mouth so often.

But the Church is full of people who continue to judge others – even other members of the Church – and justify their judgmentalism with passages of Scripture they quote out of context, sometimes even claiming passages of Scripture that simply do not exist.

And it is not just about washing hands and pots and pans. If it was only that, it might be funny.

There are people who condemn people for their sexuality, they look down on people because of who they fall in love with or marry, they even claim to uphold Biblical standards of marriage. But David, for example, offered no Biblical standards of marriage; and . Solomon, who had 700 wives and 300 concubines, hardly offered a Biblical standard of marriage either.

I find it quite shocking, yet it seems inevitable, that many people in the Church use arguments about sexuality, bolstered with phrases such as ‘Biblical standards of marriage,’ to express prejudices about sexuality. Some even remain opposed to women being ordained priests and bishops.

This is using another voice, another set of words, Biblical quotations, to express what is not in the Bible; the very origins of the word ‘hypocrite’ in the classical Greek and in this reading readily come to mind.

In the Church, there can be no discrimination against people in ministry based on gender, age, sexuality, ethnicity or language, for God knows no such discrimination.

I too easily become a hypocrite when I use the words or behaviour of others to condemn them, without having the courage to say exactly where I stand.

Father Tikhon (Murtazov) was a much-loved Russian spiritual guide who died in 2018. A nun, Sister Olga (Schemanun of Snetogorsk Monastery), recalled how he welcomed everyone who came to visit him and who asked for his guidance and prayers.

Amazed at his kindness, she asked him one day: ‘Why don’t you refuse anyone? You bless whatever they ask of you.’

‘We’re in difficult times now,’ he said. ‘It’s better to sin by love than by strictness.’

We should worry as much about making careless wounding remarks as much as we would worry about preparing food unhygienically.

Can you imagine how much more positively people at large would view the churches if every parish and church put as much care into seeing that our children are not abused or infected with racism or discrimination or hate as much as we put into seeing we have sanitised our hands, were wearing colourful facemasks a few years ago, seeing that the cups are clean for the tea and coffee after church on Sunday morning – or even as much as we attend to the cleanliness of the sacred vessels used for the Eucharist or Holy Communion?

Classical masks from the theatre in Athens in the Acropolis Museum … the word ‘hypocrite’ comes from the Greek word for an actor who masked or hid his face (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 12 February 2025):

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 ‘Founders’ Day.’ USPG and SPCK are celebrating ‘Founders’ Day’ in Saint James’s Church, Picadilly, next week (Monday 17 February 2025). This theme was introduced on Sunday with a Reflection by Dr Jo Sadgrove, Research and Learning Advisor, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 12 February 2025) invites us to pray:

Father, teach us to honour truth, and lead us in writing new stories of justice, humility, and reconciliation.

The Collect:

O God,
you know us to be set
in the midst of so many and great dangers,
that by reason of the frailty of our nature
we cannot always stand upright:
grant to us such strength and protection
as may support us in all dangers
and carry us through all temptations;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Go before us, Lord, in all we do
with your most gracious favour,
and guide us with your continual help,
that in all our works
begun, continued and ended in you,
we may glorify your holy name,
and finally by your mercy receive everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:
Lord of the hosts of heaven,
our salvation and our strength,
without you we are lost:
guard us from all that harms or hurts
and raise us when we fall;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

‘It is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come’ (Mark 7: 21) … (Mark 7: 4) … street art in Porto (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

Praying with the Psalms in Easter: 2 May 2022 (Psalm 68)

‘As the smoke vanishes, so may they vanish away’ (Psalm 68: 2) … smoke at a mountain railway station in Wales (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Today (2 May 2022) is a public holiday, marking the May Day holiday. During this season of Easter, I am reflecting each morning on the Psalms, and in this Prayer Diary on my blog I am reflecting in these ways:

1, Short reflections on a psalm or psalms;

2, reading the psalm or psalms;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Psalm 68:

Psalm 68 begins in the Latin version: Exsurgat Deus et dissipentur inimici eius. In the slightly different numbering in the Septuagint and Vulgate, this is Psalm 67.

It has 35 verses in most English translations, including the NRSVA, and the Latin Vulgate version, but 36 according to the Hebrew numbering. It has been called ‘The Great Redemption Accomplished’ and ‘one of the greatest Psalms.’

God’s name is found in seven different forms in this psalm: YHWH, Adonai, El, Shaddai, Yah, Yahweh-Adonai and Yah-Elohim.

This Psalm is sometimes difficult to interpret. It consists of snippets, each a few verses long, commemorating how God has looked after the people. For the Early Church, this psalm foretold the ascension of Christ.

It may have accompanied a liturgy or drama in the Temple depicting the escape of the people from Egypt (verse 7), through their presence before God on Mount Sinai (verses 8, 16) to the promised land (verse 9-10) and to Jerusalem, where God dwells (verse 17). However, this movement is difficult to see in the selections of verses in the lectionary readings.

The opening verse echoes Moses’s words whenever the Ark was moved (see Numbers 10: 35).

The language in verse 2, ‘as wax melts,’ is the language of God’s presence. In Canaanite culture, the storm god, Baal, ‘rides upon the clouds’ (verse 4), but both here and in verse it is the Lord God who does his. This is God who is the defender of orphans and widows, the needy and the prisoners (verses 5-6).

Marc-Antoine Charpentier composed Exsurgat Deus (H. 215) ca 1690, set for soloists, chorus, two treble instruments and continuo, based on this psalm. Handel’s oratorio Messiah cites verses 1 and 18. There are settings by many other composers, including Johann Pachelbel and John Stainer.

The second part of verse 31, ‘Let Ethiopia hasten to stretch out its hands to God,’ was part of the coat of arms of Emperor Haile Selassie, and was once used as the national motto of Ethiopia.

‘Lift up a song to him who rides upon the clouds’ (Psalm 68: 4) … small clouds and clear skies over Skerries, Co Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Psalm 68 (NRSVA):

To the leader. Of David. A Psalm. A Song.

1 Let God rise up, let his enemies be scattered;
let those who hate him flee before him.
2 As smoke is driven away, so drive them away;
as wax melts before the fire,
let the wicked perish before God.
3 But let the righteous be joyful;
let them exult before God;
let them be jubilant with joy.

4 Sing to God, sing praises to his name;
lift up a song to him who rides upon the clouds—
his name is the Lord—
be exultant before him.

5 Father of orphans and protector of widows
is God in his holy habitation.
6 God gives the desolate a home to live in;
he leads out the prisoners to prosperity,
but the rebellious live in a parched land.

7 O God, when you went out before your people,
when you marched through the wilderness,
Selah

8 the earth quaked, the heavens poured down rain
at the presence of God, the God of Sinai,
at the presence of God, the God of Israel.
9 Rain in abundance, O God, you showered abroad;
you restored your heritage when it languished;
10 your flock found a dwelling in it;
in your goodness, O God, you provided for the needy.

11 The Lord gives the command;
great is the company of those who bore the tidings:
12 ‘The kings of the armies, they flee, they flee!’
The women at home divide the spoil,
13 though they stay among the sheepfolds—
the wings of a dove covered with silver,
its pinions with green gold.
14 When the Almighty scattered kings there,
snow fell on Zalmon.

15 O mighty mountain, mountain of Bashan;
O many-peaked mountain, mountain of Bashan!
16 Why do you look with envy, O many-peaked mountain,
at the mount that God desired for his abode,
where the Lord will reside for ever?

17 With mighty chariotry, twice ten thousand,
thousands upon thousands,
the Lord came from Sinai into the holy place.
18 You ascended the high mount,
leading captives in your train
and receiving gifts from people,
even from those who rebel against the Lord God’s abiding there.
19 Blessed be the Lord,
who daily bears us up;
God is our salvation.
Selah

20 Our God is a God of salvation,
and to God, the Lord, belongs escape from death.

21 But God will shatter the heads of his enemies,
the hairy crown of those who walk in their guilty ways.
22 The Lord said,
‘I will bring them back from Bashan,
I will bring them back from the depths of the sea,
23 so that you may bathe your feet in blood,
so that the tongues of your dogs may have their share from the foe.’

24 Your solemn processions are seen, O God,
the processions of my God, my King, into the sanctuary—
25 the singers in front, the musicians last,
between them girls playing tambourines:
26 ‘Bless God in the great congregation,
the Lord, O you who are of Israel’s fountain!’
27 There is Benjamin, the least of them, in the lead,
the princes of Judah in a body,
the princes of Zebulun, the princes of Naphtali.

28 Summon your might, O God;
show your strength, O God, as you have done for us before.
29 Because of your temple at Jerusalem
kings bear gifts to you.
30 Rebuke the wild animals that live among the reeds,
the herd of bulls with the calves of the peoples.
Trample under foot those who lust after tribute;
scatter the peoples who delight in war.
31 Let bronze be brought from Egypt;
let Ethiopia hasten to stretch out its hands to God.

32 Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth;
sing praises to the Lord,
Selah

33 O rider in the heavens, the ancient heavens;
listen, he sends out his voice, his mighty voice.
34 Ascribe power to God,
whose majesty is over Israel;
and whose power is in the skies.
35 Awesome is God in his sanctuary,
the God of Israel;
he gives power and strength to his people.

Today’s Prayer:

The theme in this week’s prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) is ‘Truth Tellers,’ and it was introduced yesterday by Steve Cox, Chair of Christians in the Media.

The USPG Prayer Diary this morning (2 May 2022) invites us to pray:

Let us pray for the work of Christians in the Media, a network which supports Christians who work in our media industries.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow



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

Haydn and Handel or Brahms and Liszt in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick

John Armour Haydn (1845-1920) had a life-time interest in the music of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick … was he related to Joseph Haydn?

Patrick Comerford

‘Brahms and Liszt’ is a description in rhyming slang in England for being drunk. But it seems Brahms and Liszt only ever met on one occasions, in Weimar in 1853, when Brahms presented some of his compositions to a group of composers that included Liszt.

Liszt played some of Brahms’s work, and then performed his own B-minor Piano Sonata. But Brahms was impressed neither with Liszt’s music nor with the work of most of the rest of the ‘New German School.’

In the Irish imagination, Keats and Chapman are inextricably linked, arm-in-arm, not because of the Keats poem, ‘On first looking into Chapman’s Homer,’ but because come together in so many of the writings of Myles na Gopaleen.

Which major figures in European culture are inextricably linked or inseparable opposites for you? Mozart and Beethoven? Keats and Shelley? Livingstone and Stanley? Crick and Watson? The Rolling Stones and the Beatles? Swann and Topping? Torvill and Dean? Saint and Greavsie?

Before my lunchtime lecture on John Desmond Bernal in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, yesterday (18 May 2021), I was surprised to find that the cathedral offers a curious link – well, a musical link of sorts – between Haydn and Handel … and in the process, with this group of parishes.

Canon John Armour Haydn (1845-1920) was the Rector of Nantenan, between Askeaton and Rathkeale, Co Limerick, and was successively a canon, the Treasurer and the Chancellor of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, and the Archdeacon of Limerick.

Haydn and his family are commemorated by a mural on the west wall of the cathedral. Dean Maurice Talbot, in The Monuments of St Mary’s Cathedral, says Haydn ‘was the mainstay for 40 years in the cathedral.’ He was the first secretary of the Friends of Saint Mary’s, and his whole family were ‘dedicated to Saint Mary’s and lived for its worship and its music.’

Haydn was born in Tallow, Co Waterford, and spent all his ordained ministry in the Diocese of Limerick, first as curate of Saint Michael’s (1868-1869), and then as Rector and Vicar of Chapel Russell (1869-1872), Rector of Nantenan (1873-1918), Prebendary of Saint Munchin’s (1891-1906), Treasurer of Limerick (1906-1912), Chancellor of Limerick (1912-1913), and Archdeacon of Limerick (1913-1918).

I have no idea whether this Haydn was related in any way to the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn (1732-1809). But John Haydn was a skilled musician and composed some church services and anthems. He also designed and made the pine cover for the ancient font in the cathedral. He died on 21 May 1920, and was buried with his wife in the cathedral churchyard.

John Haydn gave £4,000 – a substantial sum over 100 years ago – in gifts to the cathedral, including a substantial gift for the choir. He was also a keen campanologist and was ‘always at his ‘Sally’ mornings and evening, on Sundays.’

Without a curate in Nantenan, it is difficult to imagine how Haydn could devote so much time to the life and music of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, and still attend to his parochial and pastoral duties in Nantenan, where he was the rector for quarter of a century. Many of his parishioners in Nantenan were the descendants of Palatine families, religious refugees who settled in West Limerick in the early 18th century. Dean Talbot recalls that ‘he is perhaps the last priest who buried with its owner a German Bible.’

John Armour Haydn (1845-1920) … he was Rector of Nantenan, near Askeaton, in 1873-1918

A previously hidden 19th-century source documenting the story of the renovation of the cathedral in 1859-1863, is now in the Representative Church Body (RCB) Library in Dublin. Ms 1048 was assembled by John Armour Haydn to record how his predecessors raised funds and awareness of the cathedral.

The title page of this volume contains an explanatory ‘preliminary statement’ revealing why the mid-19th century restoration works were required in 1859, and the volume is a window on hidden history detailing the causes of the restoration and conservation. A detailed analysis of the Haydn volume was carried out at the RCB Library by Matthieu Isbell, a first-class honours graduate of Trinity College Dublin, who spent a two-month intern placement at the library.

Haydn’s son, Thomas James Armour Handel Haydn (1874-1892), was the assistant organist in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, and a scholar of the Royal College of Music, London. Another son, John Armour Haydn (1881-1957), who worked with Guinnesses, was secretary of the cathedral vestry from at least the 1930s, wrote a visitors’ guidebook in 1950 and a booklet on the 15th-century misericords, and presented a frontal press to the cathedral in 1947.

I also came across the name Handel in another cathedral monument too. Because of the current work on the new west porch in the cathedral, a number of monuments at the west end of the cathedral are screened by display boards.

However, close to the Glentworth Chapel, I caught a glimpse of the plaque that is ‘in loving memory of George Frederick Handel Rogers, born 7th September 1807, died 12th January 1892. For fifty years organist, thirty years vicar choral, of this cathedral. Also of Frances Phillips, his wife …’

Despite this monument in the cathedral, George Frederick Handel Rogers (1807-1892) and his wife Frances are actually buried in Saint Munchin’s churchyard in Limerick.

I cannot connect Rogers with the family of the German composer George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), no more than I can connect John Haydn and Joseph Haydn. In my imagination, I think, perhaps, the connection is even less tenuous than that between Brahms and Liszt. But, as the Precentor, I am supposed to take a particular interest in the music of the cathedral.

The monument to George Frederick Handel Rogers (1807-1892) in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

When McNamara truly was the leader of the band in Saint Mary’s Parish, Limerick

The ‘birthplace’ of McNamara’s Band in Mary Street, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

The Chas Flats are part of a boarded-up complex of apartments, with broken windows and doors and a sad air of abandonment, on the corner of Mary Street and Creagh Lane, awaiting redevelopment in heart of the old city on King’s Island.

A fading green plaque placed on one of the gable ends on Mary Street by Limerick Civic Trust is now almost illegible to make out but once read:

McNamara’s Band
1905-1927
This world-wide
celebrated musical ensemble got
its name from the Limerick brothers –
Paddy, Michael, Jack and Tom
McNamara,
all of whom were born in
St Mary’s Parish

“My name is McNamara,
I’m the leader of the Band”.

The fading plaque placed on the Chas Flats by Limerick Civic Trust (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

This is one of the oldest parts of Limerick, the street names are reminders of the city’s mediaeval legacy, and these houses stand beside Fanning’s Castle, a tower house dating from the 16th and 17th centuries and built by the Whitamore and Fanning families, two of the leading merchant and political families in late Tudor, Stuart and Cromwellian Limerick.

A few doors away down Mary Street, the band room of Saint Mary’s Band Room bears the date 1885. But the building was erected in 1922, and the date refers to the foundation of the band in 1885.

Three years later, in 1889, Shamus O’Connor and John J Stamford wrote the first version of ‘McNamara’s Band.’ The song was originally about a one-man band, but people in Limerick insist it was inspired by Saint Mary’s Band, which at the time included many members of the McNamara family from Saint Mary’s Parish.

Stamford, who wrote the lyrics, was then the manager of the Alhambra Theatre in Belfast and the song was written expressly for the theatre’s owner, the Irish-American music hall veteran William J ‘Billy’ Ashcroft.

Saint Mary’s Fife and Drum Band was founded in 1885. From its humble beginnings in the Yellow Driller on the King’s Island, it moved to Nicholas Street, then to Barrington’s Mall, Fish Lane and finally in 1922 the new band room was built in Mary Street.

The band was the brainchild of Patrick ‘Todsy’ McNamara, an Abbey fisherman, and many of his fisher friends formed the original band.

The founding figures in the band included Paddy Salmon, Steve Collins, the brothers Patrick and Michael McNamara, Paddy (Halley) Kennedy, Jack Gogarty, Jim Ring, Paddy (Sparrow) O’Donoghue and his two brothers, Ned Walsh, John Lynch, Tom Forward, Jack McNamara, John Hayes, Jim Doyle, and Gerry, Michael and Jimmy Frawley.

At its first attempt in September 1885, the band won the All-Ireland Championship under the baton of Steve Collins. By the late 19th century, Saint Mary’s Fife and Drum Band included the four McNamara brothers named on the fading plaque – Patrick, John, Michael and Thomas – and played throughout Ireland.

In the early 20th century, Patrick and Thomas McNamara emigrated to New York, where they formed ‘McNamara’s Band’ with Patrick ‘Patsy’ Salmon, another Limerick emigre. When Patsy Salmon left, Patrick and Thomas McNamara formed ‘McNamara’s Trio,’ with Thomas on piccolo, Patrick on violin and Patrick’s daughter Eileen on the piano. The trio recorded and released several songs.

During World War I, three members of the band were killed in action within six months of each other in 1915. John McNamara, who remained behind in Limerick, enlisted in the Royal Munster Fusiliers and fought in the Second Boer War and World War I. He was killed in action on 9 May 1915, and his body was never recovered. He is remembered on Le Touret Memorial in France.

Saint Mary’s Prize Band was founded in 1885, and the present band room on Mary Street was built in 1922 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

A recording of ‘McNamara’s Band’ features in the film The Way to the Stars (1945), in which Stanley Holloway leads the crowd in a pub close to a Royal Air Force base during World War II.

Later that year, on 6 December 1945, Bing Crosby recorded the best-known version of the song. It was released early in 1946, when the lyrics were credited to ‘The Three Jesters’ (Red Latham, Wamp Carlson and Guy Bonham). It was an immediate Top 10 hit for Bing Crosby and remains one of his most popular songs.

The English Premier League team Tottenham Hotspur also adopted the song as its club anthem. Supporters claim the song was written in Barnet, not far from White Hart Lane, the Spurs home in North London until last year (2017).

Other sources say it became the Spurs song because Peter McWilliam was a long-time Spurs manager (1912-1927, 1938-1942) and ‘Mac’s Band’ became his song appropriately.

With its Irish resonances, the song was revived at White Hart Lane when the Northern Ireland international Danny Blanchflower joined Spurs in 1954. The song experienced another revival in the ‘Glory years’ of the early 1960s, and continued to be played until last year as the players emerged from the tunnel after half-time and returned to the pitch for the second half.

The original lyrics of the song are:

My name is McNamara, I’m the Leader of the Band,
And tho’ we’re small in number we’re the best in all the land.
Oh! I am the Conductor, and we often have to play
With all the best musicianers you hear about to-day.

(Chorus)

When the drums go bang, the cymbals clang, the horns will blaze away,
MacCarthy puffs the ould bassoon while Doyle the pipes will play;
Oh! Hennessy Tennessy tootles the flute, my word ’tis something grand,
Oh! a credit to Ould Ireland, boys, is McNamara’s Band!

Whenever an election’s on, we play on either side –
The way we play our fine ould airs fills Irish hearts with pride.
Oh! if poor Tom Moore was living now, he’d make yez understand
That none could do him justice like ould McNamara’s Band.

(Chorus)

We play at wakes and weddings, and at every county ball,
And at any great man’s funeral we play the ‘Dead March in Saul,’
When the Prince of Wales to Ireland came, he shook me by the hand,
And said he’d never heard the like of ‘McNamara’s Band.’

In the Bing Crosby 1946 version, the politics of ‘Ould Ireland’ are removed and the words are made more ‘Oirish.’ ‘My name is ...’ becomes ‘Me name is ...,’ the Prince of Wales becomes General (Ulysses) Grant, and stereotypes are added in the final lines to make it a comedy song.

Oh!, me name is McNamara, I’m the Leader of the Band,
And tho’ we’re few in numbers we’re the finest in the land.
We play at wakes and weddings, and at every fancy ball,
And when we play at funerals we play the march from Saul.

(Chorus)

Oh! the drums go bang, and the cymbals clang,
and the horns they blaze away,
McCarthy pumps the old bazoon
while I the pipes do play;
And, Hennessey Tennessey tootles the flute,
and the music ’tis somethin’ grand,
A credit to old Ireland is McNamara’s Band!

Right now we are rehearsin’ for a very swell affair,
The annual celebration, all the gentry will be there.
When General Grant to Ireland came,
he took me by the hand,
Says he, ‘I never saw the likes of McNamara’s Band.’

(Chorus)

Oh me name is Uncle Yulius
and from Sweden I have come,
To play with McNamara’s Band
and beat the big bass drum,
And when I march along the street
the ladies think I’m grand,
They shout ‘There’s Uncle Yulius
playing with an Irish band.’

(no chorus)

Oh! I wear a bunch of shamrocks
and a uniform of green,
And I am the funniest looking Swede
that you have ever seen.
There’s O’Briens and Ryans and Sheehans and Meehans,
they come from Ireland,
But by Yimminy I’m the only Swede
in McNamara’s Band.

This version also misses the cultural significance of the reference to ‘The Dead March’ in Act 3 of Handel’s oratorio Saul. ‘The Dead March’ introduces the obsequies for the deaths of Saul and Jonathan, and includes an organ part and trombones alternating with flutes, oboes and quiet timpani. It has been played at most British state funerals, and was performed too at the funerals of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

The White Hart Lane version has changed one verse:

Oh the whistle blows the cockerel crows,
and now we’re in the game,
It’s up to you, you Lilywhites,
to play the Tottenham way.
Oh there’s many a team from many a town
and some are great and small,
But the famous Tottenham Hotspur
are the greatest of them all.

In August 1965, Arthur Quinlan interviewed Thomas McNamara, the last surviving member of McNamara’s Band, for RTÉ News outside the venue where it all began in 1885. Thomas, who played flute and piccolo with the quartet, died in May 1978.

Saint Mary’s Band has continued to honour the custom of parading through Saint Mary’s Parish on New Year’s Eve and then to Saint Mary’s Cathedral to ring out the old year and to ring in the New.

Saint Mary’s Band continues as part of the life of Saint Mary’s Parish (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Christmas: A story that is uncomfortable

The Irish Times carries the following full-length editorial on the ‘Comment & Letters’ page [page 17] this morning [24 December 2014]:

Christmas:
A story that is
uncomfortable

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.

The opening words of Handel’s Messiah are linked by many with the Christmas story. They are the pleading and plaintive words of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, repeated in the wilderness by St John the Baptist. But the Christmas story is not a comfortable story.

Despite Christmas being wrapped and packaged in the tinsel and baubles of shopping centres and the annual hijacking of carols for commercialism and consumerism, the Christmas story is less the comfortable tale of profits and more about the uncomfortable call of the prophets.

Isaiah’s words at the opening of Handel’s oratorio come at a time of exile and conflict. He wonders who is going to comfort a distressed and dispossessed people in their dark time. These words are a reminder that the Gospel story is not for one people at one time of the year but is a challenge at every time and to all societies.

There is no Christmas story in either St Mark’s or St John’s Gospel. Instead, they begin with the voice of St John the Baptist crying in the wilderness. When the Christmas story is told in the two other Gospels, St Matthew and St Luke tell it in a way that challenges the priorities of every generation.

St Luke tells of a young couple over-burdened with taxes who are forced by a cruel and demanding government to leave their home so they can register for even more taxes. At the end their journey, they find themselves homeless, in a city where St Luke tells us “there was no place for them”. And the young Mary gives birth to her Christ Child in dank and dismal conditions that are familiar to the increasing number of homeless families seeking shelter on the streets throughout Ireland on this lean Christmas. The good news of that first Christmas is announced first not to the rich and the powerful in the comfortable places in the city, but to poor agrarian workers, labouring at night outside the city and so, in a real way, on the margins of respectable society.

St Matthew alone tells us that soon after the birth of their child this couple find themselves homeless again when they are forced into exile in neighbouring Egypt. Once more, the voice of an Old Testament prophet is heard in the Gospel narrative of Christmas, as the words of Jeremiah are quoted to describe the suffering brought down on innocent people and their children by a cruel and tyrannical ruler:

A voice was heard in Ramah,
Wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
She refused to be consoled because they are no more.

At the heart of the Christmas story is an uncomfortable, stark reminder that the birth of the Christ Child is supposed to be the beginning of good news for the poor and the marginalised, for the homeless and the displaced, for the migrants and the refugees, for the victims of racism, war and genocide.

It is a story that speaks compellingly to our society in Ireland today, and that challenges a world wracked with violence. How much we need to see Mary, Joseph and the Christ Child in every homeless person sleeping in doorways or seeking shelter on our streets this Christmas Eve. How much we need to hear the voice of Rachel weeping and wailing for her children in Ramah echoed in the voice of mothers weeping for their children in the Gaza Strip this year. It is a voice heard throughout the world from the weeping mothers of kidnapped schoolgirls in Nigeria to the wailing of mothers in Syria, Iraq and Pakistan.

Yet the voice of the angels to the poor and uneducated shepherds on the first Christmas Eve proclaimed God’s promise of peace, not in the future and not in heaven, but on earth and today. It is such a compelling promise that it silenced the guns in the trenches on the first Christmas in the first World War.

It is such a hopeful promise that instead of gunfire, the sounds heard on the battlefields 100 years ago this evening were voices singing in unison, in English and in German, “Silent night, holy night,” “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht”.

It is a promise that Isaiah shouts too, and that is repeated as the opening words of Handel’s Messiah continue:

Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem,
and cry unto her,
that her warfare is accomplished,
that her iniquity is pardoned.

The true voice of Christmas is not one more sales pitch, one more effort to clinch a deal, one more hijacked image for a seasonal advertising campaign. Instead, it is the voice of the pregnant Mary before she sets out for Bethlehem, realising the birth of her child on that first Christmas night promises to scatter “the proud in the thoughts of their hearts”, to bring “down the powerful”, to fill “the hungry with good things”, and “to send the rich away empty”.

Christ is coming: ‘In my beginning is my end ... In my end is my beginning’

‘Now the light falls / Across the open field, leaving the deep lane / Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon’ (TS Eliot, ‘East Coker’) … a walk in Rathfarnham on Friday afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Patrick Comerford

Church of Ireland Theological Institute,

Sunday 7 December 2014,

The Second Sunday of Advent
.
11.30 a.m., The Community Eucharist

Readings: Isaiah 40: 1-11; Psalm 85: 1-2, 8-13; II Peter 3: 8-15a; Mark 1: 1-8.

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

“To begin at the beginning” – these are the opening lines of Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas (1954), who was born 100 years ago [27 October 1914].

Or I might begin with words from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol. In Chapter 12, the White Rabbit puts on his spectacles.

“Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?” he asked.

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

TS Eliot’s “East Coker,” the second of his Four Quartets, is set at this time of the year and opens:

In my beginning is my end.

It is Advent time, and he goes on to say:

In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon …

The opening words at the beginning of a play, a novel or a poem – or for that matter, a sermon – can be important for holding the reader’s or the listener’s attention and telling me what to expect. Begin as you mean to go on.

That is why I am surprised that Charles Dickens waits until the second sentence in David Copperfield to say: “To begin my life with the beginning of my life …”

So Advent marks the beginning of the Church Year, preparation for the beginning of the Christ story, and expresses our hopes for the beginning of – the ushering in of – the Kingdom of God.

We might expect then that the Advent Gospel readings are all about preparing for Christmas, and so begin at the beginning.

But it is curious how each Gospel begins to tell the story, each in a different way.

Saint John begins at the beginning, at the very beginning: “In the beginning was the word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1: 1).

Saint Luke begins with a personal explanation to Theophilus of why he is beginning to write the Gospel (Luke 1: 1-4), before moving on to the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth (Luke 1: 5 ff). It takes him a full chapter before he gets to tell the story of the first Christmas (Luke 2: 1-20).

Saint Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus, generation after generation, with long lists of sometimes unpronouncable names (Matthew 1: 1-17) before he summarises the story of the first Christmas in seven crisp verses … and even then he seems to concentrate more on how Joseph’s fears and suspicions were allayed than on the Christmas story (see Matthew 1: 18-25).

Saint John the Baptist baptises Christ in the River Jordan ... a detail from a window in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

But Saint Mark’s Gospel has no Nativity narrative at all, has no story of the first Christmas.

Instead, this morning, Saint Mark begins his Gospel with his account of the Baptism of Christ by Saint John the Baptist in the River Jordan, an event that comes a little later on in the other three Gospels (see Matthew 3: 1-17; Luke 3: 1-21; John 1: 19-34).

Although in Year B the [Revised Common] Lectionary is taking us through Saint Mark’s Gospel, because Saint Mark has no Nativity story, the main Gospel reading on Christmas Day is either the Nativity Narrative in Saint Luke’s Gospel (Luke 2: 1-14 or 1-10) or the Prologue to Saint John’s Gospel (John 1: 1-14 or John 1: 1-18).

Many people think they know the Christmas story as it is told in the Gospels. Perhaps then they would be surprised to learn there is no Christmas story in either Saint Mark’s or Saint John’s Gospel. We might be even more surprised to learn that what they think is part of the Christmas story is actually found in the Old Testament reading this morning. They are familiar with it, and they immediately associate it with Christmas, because of the opening words of Handel’s Messiah:

But it is often the opening words of Handel they are familiar with and not the beginning of the Gospel story.

Saint Mark’s account of the Baptism of Christ is a story that promises that the Advent of Christ, the arrival of Christ, is the fulfilment of the Prophets – he quotes not just Isaiah but Malachi too – and is the fulfilment of the promises of Creation.

Later in this chapter, Saint Mark brings together all the elements of the creation story in [the Book] Genesis: we move from darkness into light; the shape of the earth moves from wilderness to beauty; there is a separation of the waters of the new creation as Christ and John go down into the waters of the Jordan and rise up again; and, as in Genesis, the Holy Spirit hovers over the waters of this beautiful new creation like a dove.

And then, just as in the Genesis creation story, where God looks down and sees that everything is good, God looks down in this Theophany story and lets us know that everything is good. Or, as Saint Mark tells us: And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1: 11).

God is pleased with the whole of creation; God so loves this creation, the κόσμος (kosmos), that Christ comes into it, identifies with us in the flesh, and is giving us the gift and the blessings of the Holy Spirit.

Isaiah talks about the promise of the return of the people through the wilderness and the desert to Jerusalem and to freedom (Isaiah 40: 3). Saint John the Baptist calls the people from Jerusalem back out into the wilderness, where he proclaims that forgiveness and freedom is available to all who repent and are baptised. His baptism is a sign of turning to God again, of accepting God’s forgiveness and judgment.

Christ’s baptism re-establishes that link between God and humanity. This is the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

To us, Saint John the Baptist comes to prepare for, and to announce, Christ’s coming. But if all we expect from the coming of Christ and Christ’s work among us is finding forgiveness for sin, finding a relationship with God, and joining God’s people if we are willing to repent and turn around, then – I’m sorry – we are in for a big surprise.

As the opening verse of the Gospel reading tells us, this is just the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is the beginning – and only the beginning.

During Advent, we expect the coming of Christ and the fulfilment of his reconciling work on earth. As the Epistle reading (II Peter 3: 8-15a) tells us, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home, where God’s justice is done (verse 13).

The Epistle writer says the apparent delay in Christ’s coming is merely a delusion in time, for God does not measure time in the way we do (verse 8). Instead, God wishes all to be found worthy, and does not want any to perish. He is waiting patiently for all to repent of their waywardness (verse 9), but the end will come suddenly and unexpectedly, like a thief (verse 10).

Today in our society, though, many people must think not that the end is near, but that the end is already here. At every level of society in Dublin today, people have been so hard pressed by austerity measures they wonder whether there is any light at the end of the tunnel.

The city has been shocked by the death of a homeless man on the streets near Dáil Éireann in the past week. But despair is not confined to the addicts, delinquents and the marginalised.

It was heart-breaking to hear Father Peter McVerry, like a voice crying in the wilderness, talk on the Late, Late Show on Friday night about the hundreds of families being made homeless in Dublin because of the squeezes in the property market – ordinary families, without any dependency problems or delinquency, forced to walk the streets by day because Bed and Breakfast provision is only for the night; parents and children sleeping in cars or in the airport because it is warm; parents forced to place their children in care so they are not sleeping on the streets and in doorways tonight.

As Giles Fraser said in his thought-provoking column in the Guardian yesterday [6 December 2014], “Christmas Christianity insists that fully to imagine God is to imagine a human child – little, weak and helpless.”

Yet, for many families, their income has dropped, their houses are in danger of being repossessed because they cannot afford rent rises or to pay the interest on their mortgages, never mind paying off some of the capital, their skilled adult children have been forced to emigrate with their grandchildren.

Who will comfort, who will comfort my people?

The proposed water charges may not seem exorbitant; however, they may yet prove to be the final straw that has broken the camel’s back. And the opinion polls indicate that the prospect for our future politically is not one of either stability or responsibility.

But this Epistle reading promises a very different future that ushers in “new heavens and a new earth.” As we wait, we should be signs of this promise, and his apparent delay is an opportunity to prepare, to become signs, to become sacraments of the “new heavens and a new earth.”

And once again, I call to mind TS Eliot in “East Coker”:

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark …
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God …

Yet, in this apocalyptic, visionary, poem, Eliot is neither all doom nor all gloom. He talks about Faith

... pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

And he concludes “East Coker”:

Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

Giles Fraser tried to summarise Advent and Christmas values in that column in the Guardian: “I have come that they may have life and have it to the full” is how Jesus expresses his mission in Saint John’s gospel. “The glory of God is a human being fully alive,” wrote Irenaeus in the second century.

“In my beginning is my end ... In my end is my beginning.”

Christ is coming, and in his birth, life, agony, death and resurrection he is reconciling the whole world, each of us with one another and with God. He is coming with a vision of a world in which all of the barriers that separate us – poor and rich, North and South, male and female, Jew and Gentile, nation and nation, home-happy and homeless – will be no more.

His coming is just the beginning of the Good News and the beginning of hope. Let us prepare the way of the Lord: cast down the mighty and raise up the lowly, let justice and righteousness go before him, let peace be the pathway for his feet, do justice and make peace. And let this be just the beginning.

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

The Baptism of Christ depicted in stucco relief in the Baptistery in the Church of Saint Nicholas of Myra, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Collect:

Father in heaven,
who sent your Son to redeem the world
and will send him again to be our judge:
Give us grace so to imitate him
in the humility and purity of his first coming
that when he comes again,
we may be ready to greet him with joyful love and firm faith;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post Communion Prayer:

Lord,
here you have nourished us with the food of life.
Through our sharing in this holy sacrament
teach us to judge wisely earthly things
and to yearn for things heavenly.
We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This sermon was preached at the Community Eucharist on 7 December 2014, as part of a residential weekend with part-time MTh students.

‘Comfort ye, comfort ye my people’

Fishamble Street, near Christ Church Cathedral … Handel’s Messiah was first performed here in 1742 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2012)

Patrick Comerford

Opening music:

‘For unto us a child is born’ from GF Handel, Messiah

Reading: Isaiah 40: 1-11.

My choice of music for the opening of our reflection this afternoon is one of the best known arias from Handel’s Messiah, second only in popularity to the ‘Hallelujah Chorus.’

But the reading I have chosen (Isaiah 40: 1-11) is not just because the candle we light on the Advent Wreath this week is to remind us of the Prophets, especially Isaiah, but because this too is the reading in the weekday lectionary of the Church of Ireland for Evening Prayer this evening. It was quoted in our Gospel reading yesterday morning (Sunday 9 December 2012, Luke 3: 1-6). It also inspired the opening words of Handel’s Messiah:

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is
accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness; prepare ye the way of the Lord;
make straight in the desert a highway for our God. (Isaiah 40: 1-3)

I cannot count how many times in recent weeks I have heard snippets from the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ on the radio, in supermarkets and in shopping centres. I hear people humming along to the airs of this well-known and well-loved piece. But how many shoppers know the words they are humming as they push around their shopping trolleys come from Isaiah or, in the case of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus,’ are selective and jumbled excerpts from Revelation 11 and 19 (Revelation 19: 6, then Revelation 11: 15, and then Revelation 19: 16)?

Yet, so many people are familiar with the Christmas story, and with the words of Isaiah, not from reading Scripture, but because they are so familiar with Handel’s Messiah.

More often than not, the oratorio is known as The Messiah rather than Messiah, the simple name Handel gave it. Indeed, it was originally titled A Sacred Oratorio. But then, Dublin people are good at jumbling the name of so many things.

For example, there is a memorable scene in the movie Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (1970), where Quackser, played by Gene Wilder, misappropriates some information he has received from Zazel (Margot Kidder), an American studying at Trinity, and tells a group of tourists as they pass Saint Michan’s Church that Messiah’s Handel was first performed there.

Of course, the organ on which Handel is said to have composed Messiah is in Saint Michan’s Church. But Handel’s Messiah was first performed in the Fishamble Street Musick Hall, beside Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on 13 April 1742.

Saint Michan’s Church, Church Street, Dublin … Handel is said to have composed ‘Messiah’ on the organ in the church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Holy Week and Easter seem to us now to be an inappropriate season for Messiah. Yet, although it is associated traditionally with Advent and Christmas, Handel’s original hope was that Messiah would be performed in Lent and Easter.

We also think of both the music and words as Handel’s own work, forgetting that the libretto is a compilation by Charles Jennens (1700-1773), who first suggested writing Messiah when he wrote to Handel, setting out how that he wanted to create a Scriptural anthology set to music.

Jennens was a literary scholar from Baliol College, Oxford, who was known already for his edition of Shakespeare’s plays. Before Messiah, he had collaborated with Handel on Saul and Belshazzar. Handel composed the entire music for Messiah in only 24 days. A planned London debut in Holy Week 1741 never materialised and so Handel’s Messiah was heard for the first time in Dublin.

Jennens chose the texts for Messiah and used them selectively. A large portion of the libretto is from the Old Testament, particularly the Book of Isaiah, but there are New Testament texts too, including passages from three Gospels (Saint Matthew, Saint Luke and Saint John), as well as passages from I Corinthians, Hebrews and the Book of Revelation. In all, he quotes from 13 books of the Bible, although he deviates from the King James Version when it comes to the Psalms, quoting instead from the Psalter in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

Long before Windows, this might have been an early example of “copy and paste”!

Because so many of us hear or have heard those texts in their relationship to one another in Messaih, it has often determined how they – our society, our culture – perceive and receive Isaiah.

Isaiah provides more of the quoted verses in Messiah than any other book of the Bible in Messiah. Yet, who ever asks which parts of Isaiah could Jennens have used but did not? And why? There are some intriguing omissions, probably because of Jennens’ views on atonement theology.

What are Jennens and Handel saying about salvation, as opposed to what are they saying about the incarnation, is a question we are unlikely to wrestle with because we now associate Messiah with Advent and Christmas rather that with Holy Week and Easter.

It has been said at times that Jennens mistranslated, misappropriated and rearranged the texts. And this could give rise, potentially, to many textual debates. For example, what has been the influence and impact over the years of the use of the word “virgin” from Isaiah 7:14, where Jennens and the KJV rely on the Greek Septuagint rather than using the “young woman” in the Hebrew text? But then, of course, Jennens was using the King James Version of the Bible, and not the New Revised Standard Version.

Or how about Job, who is quoted in the aria ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ (Job 19: 25)? These words have become so ingrained in us culturally that they decorate many chancel arches in churches up and down the land. Yet, what was Job talking about here?

Others critics say Jennens and Messiah show contempt for Jews and Judaism. Others still point out that there are sections of the libretto that are obscure.

Nevertheless, Handel’s Messiah offers real potential for devotional or Bible studies in small groups or in parish settings, where so many people, even if they have never sung Messiah, are used to listening to it at this time of the year with a combination of affection and faith.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism and Liturgy, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral. This reflection was shared at a faculty meeting on 10 December 2012.