Saint Mary’s Church in Somers Town, the church of the great ‘slum priest’ Basil Jellicoe, is at risk

Saint Mary’s Church on Eversholt Street, between Euston Station and Camden High Street, is covered in scaffolding (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Saint Mary’s Church on Eversholt Street, halfway between Euston Station and Camden High Street, has been covered in scaffolding and corrugated fencing for a long time now and is on the ‘high risk’ register of English Heritage.

But the church, which was built 200 years ago, is part of the story of Somers Town, an area that once had some of the worst slum housing in London, and is forever associated with the work of Father Basil Jellicoe, one of the pioneering Anglo-Catholic ‘slum priests’ in London the early 20th century.

The slums expanded as the railway stations at Euston and King’s Cross opened in the 19th century. As time moved on, living standards in the area stagnated. Somers Town is also the location for a number of significant films, including the Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (1956), with Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers; Neil Jordan’s Mona Lisa (1986), starring Bob Hoskins; and Shane Meadows’s Somers Town (2008), filmed around Phoenix Court in Purchese Street.

Eversholt Street was originally the name of only the northern part of the street above Cranleigh Street, formerly Johnson Street, which is on the Bedford Estate. The portion in Somers Town includes the former Upper Seymour Street and the part of Seymour Street north of Drummond Crescent. The lower part continues south to the Euston Road immediately east of Euston Station.

Inside Saint Mary’s Church, Somers Town, designed by Henry William Inwood and his father William Inwood (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s Church was built as Saint Mary’s Chapel in 1824-1827 as a chapel of ease for Saint Pancras Old Church on what was then Upper Seymour Street. At an early stage it was known as ‘Seymour Street Chapel’ or ‘Mr Judkin’s Chapel’, referring to its first priest, the hymnwriter and painter the Revd Thomas James Judkin (1788-1871).

The church was designed by Henry William Inwood (1794-1843) and his father William Inwood (1771-1843), and was built by IT Seabrook in 1824-1827. Henry William Inwood was an architect, archaeologist, classical scholar and writer. Father and son are best known as the joint architects of Saint Pancras New Church (1819-1822), where their design was inspired by classical Greece, using elements from the Erechtheum, especially the caryatids, and the Tower of the Winds in Athens.

The Inwoods collaborated on two other Greek Revival churches in the parish of Saint Pancras: All Saints’ Church, Camden Town (1822-1824) and Saint Peter’s Church, Regent Square (1822-1825, now demolished). Both father and son died within four days of each other in 1843.

Inside Saint Mary’s Church, Somers Town, built in what was described as a naive ‘Carpenter’s Gothic’ style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s was built in what was described as a naive ‘Carpenter’s Gothic’ style. A parliamentary grant paid for the construction and local taxes funded the purchase of the site and for the interior decoration.

Saint Mary’s was consecrated on 11 March 1826. The Revd William Stephen Gilly (1789-1855) attended as the minister, but apparently he seldom preached there. Soon after its consecration, Saint Mary’s attracted some notoriety as the scene of the vaunted conversion of many people in the neighbourhood from Roman Catholicism. The church also became known as the ‘Cabbies’ Church’, serving the cabbies of the horse-drawn cabs that queued up at Euston Station and their families.

Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, the architect of the Gothic Revival in England and Ireland, satirised Saint Mary’s, comparing it with Bishop Skirlaw’s Chapel at Skirlaugh, Yorkshire, built in 1401-1405 by Walter de Skirlaw when he was the Bishop of Durham. Yet the architectural historian Sir Niklaus Pevsner later described the chapel as ‘a perfect piece of Perpendicular architecture’.

Charles Dickens went to church in Saint Mary’s during his schooldays when his family was living nearby at Cranleigh Street. Owen P Thomas, a schoolfellow at the Classical and Commercial Academy on Hampstead Road, relates how he and Dickens ‘very piously attended the morning service at Seymour Street Chapel.’

Inside Saint Mary’s Church, Somers Town, looking west ... it was originally built as a plain ‘preaching box’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s was built as a plain preaching box in an elegant Gothic style. It has a central tower, prominent pinnacles and a row of 12 windows along the north side. The church has slate pitched roofs and brick walling with stone dressings. Inside, elegant cast iron columns support Gothic style arches, and the ceiling has rib vaulting.

Three schemes reshaped the interior of Saint Mary’s in the 19th century: it was decorated by JK Colling in 1874; the chancel was added by Ewan Christian in 1888, when the side galleries were removed; and in 1890 by RC Reade inserted traceried transoms in the windows and the west gallery was taken out.

The High Altar and reredos date from 1915 and are by the sculptor Mary Grant (1831-1908), who also sculpted the figures on the West Door of Lichfield Cathedral. The Calvary in Saint Mary’s, originally from Saint Mary’s Church, Charing Cross Road, is also her work. It was moved to Somers Town in the early 1910s, and has been restored recently.

The Calvary in Saint Mary’s Church, Somers Town, first designed by Mary Grant for Saint Mary’s Church, Charing Cross Road (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Father Basil Jellicoe was Missioner at the Magdalen College Mission which was run from Saint Mary’s in the 1920s and 1930s. His ground-breaking work in the Saint Pancras Housing Association cleared the area’s slums and tackled the causes of poverty.

The Revd John Basil Lee Jellicoe (1899-1935) was the eldest son of Bethia Theodora and the Revd Thomas Harry Lee Jellicoe (1861-1943), the Rector of Saint Peter’s Chailey and a cousin of John Jellicoe (1859-1935), 1st Earl Jellicoe. He was educated at Haileybury and Magdalen College, Oxford, and during World War I he was with the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean. He then studied at Saint Stephen’s House, Oxford, and was ordained in 1922.

Jellicoe became Missioner at the Magdalen College Mission, the outreach arm of Magdalen College, based at Saint Mary’s. When he arrived in Somers Town, the slums near Euston and King’s Cross had expanded and grown and it was an area of exceptional overcrowding and poverty. He believed people should see God’s work in action in their lives, and his great concern was that Christianity should be about showing people God loves them and they should have the right to decent lives.

The pulpit in Saint Mary’s Church in Somers Town ... Father Basil Jellicoe was Missioner at the Magdalen College Mission from 1922 to 1934 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In his crusade for slum clearance, he founding the St Pancras House Improvement Society, later the St Pancras Housing Association, in 1924. For many years it was run by Irene Barclay (1894-1989), a campaigner for social housing and the first woman to qualify as a chartered surveyor.

The association built high-quality homes at decent rents the people who were living in the slums and could to afford to rent the new properties. He commissioned ceramic decorations by Gilbert Bayes that continue to adorn some of the buildings where the slums used to be.

On one occasion, he theatrically burned paper mâché representations of vermin. He became the landlord of a local pub when he opened the Anchor in Chalton as a ‘reformed pub’ in 1929. The first drinks were served to the then-Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang.

Basil Jellicoe also founded several other housing associations in East London, St Marylebone, Kensington, Sussex and Cornwall. He toured England in his small car fundraising and selling loan stock to fund his housing projects.

He was at the Magdalen College Mission and curate of Saint Mary Somers Town until 1934, when he became the curate of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields, where Canon William Patrick Glyn (‘Pat) McCormick (1877-1940) had succeeded Canon Dick Shepherd as Vicar.

But, while he was improving the lives of others, Basil Jellicoe allowed his own health to suffer and probably worked himself to death. When he died in Uxbridge on 24 August 1935 he was only 36. He is commemorated in the Diocese of London with a memorial day on 24 August. The annual Jellicoe Sermon at Magdalen College is named in his honour, and his work continues to the present.

Saint Mary’s was one of the first churches in the Diocese of London to celebrate the Mass facing the people (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

After World War II, when much of the church building had fallen into disrepair, the interior was redecorated and refurbished in a simpler style. Saint Mary’s was designated a Grade II listed building in 1954.

Reflecting the new liturgical emphases from the 1970s on, Saint Mary’s was one of the first churches in London to decide to celebrate the Mass using the westward position, facing the people.

The church provided a safe haven for women who worked in the area in the 1970s and 1980s, when it was known as a red light district.

Saint Mary’s Church has been the spiritual heart of Somers Town for almost two centuries (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Saint Mary’s has been the spiritual centre of Somers Town for almost two centuries. But during work at the vicarage in 2022, serious structural faults were found at in the church, and these were confirmed in detailed studies by stonemasons, architects and structural engineers.

Saint Mary’s was temporarily closed in June 2022 and reopened in September 2022. Protective scaffolding was erected in 2023 to catch falling masonry. The roofs are in poor condition along with the gutters, flashings and rainwater goods. There is water staining internally, along with dampness at a low level. Areas of stone are decayed and past repairs using cement are becoming detached.

The parishioners were told in December 2023 the church could be demolished because of its crumbling disrepair. Today it remains wrapped in scaffolding and corrugated fences amid concerns about falling masonry.

The scaffolding and fencing cost £100,000 a year, and when Saint Mary’s exhausted its own funds, the Diocese of London agreed to bear this cost, but stated this is not an indefinite solution. Estimates suggest it could take £1.7 million to repair the building fully, including £1.2 million for immediate repairs to the stonework and cement, and another £500,000 is needed for urgent repairs to the roof, electrics and heating. The key priorities involve restoring the stonework, removing the costly scaffolding, decorating the porch after a leak repair, replacing the roof and installing a sustainable heating system.
The demolition of the church would be a drastic step that would mean the end for a church that has served generations of families since it was consecrated in 1826.

Looking out from Saint Mary’s Church through the cladding and scaffolding onto Eversholt Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Since 2003, Saint Mary’s has been part of a team of four parishes that includes Saint Michael’s Church, Camden Town, Saint Pancras Old Church and Saint Paul’s Church, Camden Square, as one parish with four districts. Father Paschal Worton, a former Franciscan friar and missionary in Zimbabwe, is the parish priest of Saint Mary’s.

The Magdalen Club is named after the Magdalen College Mission, which came to Saint Mary’s in 1908. The Magdalen Centre recalls the parish’s longstanding commitment to the local community. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the Magdalen Centre hosts a drop-in for young families from the local area between 1 and 3 pm.

In the winter months, Saint Mary’s joins with other churches in the area to host C4WS, a local charity providing shelter for the homeless, as well as helping people to find work and permanent housing.

The regular services at Saint Mary’s include the Parish Mass at 11 am and Benediction at 5 pm on Sundays, and weekday Masses at 11 am on Tuesdays, 6 pm on Thursdays, 1:05 pm on Fridays and 10:30 on Saturdays. Benediction at 5 pm on Sundays is described as ‘a gentle half-hour with Jesus, as he comes to us in love in the Blessed Sacrament’, with prayers, hymns, contemplation and silence. Tuesday morning Masses are followed by coffee and conversation.

Saint Mary’s Church is part of a team of four parishes in the Old Saint Pancras and Camden Town area (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

After 60 years, ‘Zorba the Greek’ continues to challenge some myths

Zorba the Greek … the film was released 60 years ago in December 1964

Patrick Comerford

I was back in Crete earlier this year, staying in Rethymnon, an old Venetian town on the north coast that for years is as close as I get to being at home in Greece.

There was time for walks on the beach and by the sea, long lingering meals with friends, visits to galleries and exhibitions, trips into the mountains, time for prayer in churches and monasteries, and time to listen to some old but favourite stories.

The best-known storyteller in modern Crete was Nikos Kazantzakis, author of the book that gave birth to Zorba the Greek, perhaps the best-loved Greek films. The book was first published in Greek in 1946 as Life and Times of Alexis Zorbas (Βίος και Πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά).

The Oscar-winning film was produced in 1964 and this month marks the sixtieth anniversary of the release of the joint British-Greek production in Greece on 14 December 1964 and in New York on 17 December 1964. It was one of my earliest introductions to Greek culture, music and literature.

A week in Rethymnon earlier this year brought back memories of Zorba (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Zorba the Greek was directed by the Cypriot-born Michael Cacoyannis and the cast includes Anthony Quinn as Zorba, Alan Bates, Irene Papas and Lila Kedrova.

The film was shot in black and white on location in Crete, including Chania, the village of Kokkino Chorio in the Apokoronas region and Stavros Beach in the Akrotiri peninsula. The scene in which Quinn's character dances the Sirtaki was filmed on the beach at Stavros.

Six decades later, most people today know syrtáki as a typical Greek folkdance. But on one of my many visits to Crete in recent years, as I was crossing the mountains to visit the Monastery of Preveli and some remote beaches on the south coast, I was told that syrtáki was invented by Anthony Quinn as the dance scene was being filmed on a beach near Chania. And, while Zorba has become a stereotype of hardy Cretan men, Anthony Quinn had no Greek family connections but was from a mixed Irish and Mexican background.

Those two old myths have been shattered, but I return time and again to reading the original novel by Kazantzakis.

Traditional Greek musical instruments in a shop window in Rethymnon … Zorba is a gruff but boisterous peasant and musician (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Basil (Alan Bates) is a half-English, half-Greek writer raised in England who returns to his father’s village in Crete to inherit some land and to restart an old mine. On the way, he meets Zorba, a gruff but boisterous peasant and musician.

When they arrive in Crete, they stay with Madame Hortense (Lila Kedrova), a French war widow, in her self-styled Hotel Ritz. Zorba wants to log trees in the local forest to fuel the mine, but the land is owned by a nearby monastery. He visits the monks and gets them drunk. Later, on the beach, he begins to dance in a way that mesmerises Basil. Meanwhile, they also get to know a young widow (Irene Papas).

Basil sends Zorba to buy cables and supplies in Chania – in the book the town is Iraklion or Candia, where Kazantzakis was born and is buried. There, Zorba squanders the money on drink and women. When he returns, he rows with Basil and a local man who overhears the content of their conversation drowns himself in the sea. At the funeral, the villagers blame the young widow for his death, and despite the best efforts of Basil and Zorba, she is murdered by the young man’s father.

When Madame Hortense contracts pneumonia, word spreads that ‘the foreigner’ is dying. The poor villagers crowd around her hotel, planning to steal her few possessions, and when she dies the house is ransacked and stripped bare. But she is refused a funeral because of her religion: ‘There will be no funeral. She was a Frank, she crossed herself with four fingers. The priest will not bury her like everybody else.’

Zorba eventually builds his machine to take timber down the hill and it is blessed by the priests. But all his efforts to make it work turn to disaster and everything is wrecked.

Zorba and Basil dance syrtáki on the beach … but the dance is Anthony Quinn’s own invention

The film ends with the spine-tingling ‘teach me to dance’ sequence, the two men alone together on the beach, realising that although life’s dance can be learned along many different paths, sometimes the destination is the same, no matter what route is chosen. And they dance syrtaki together on the beach.

Zorba the Greek was filmed on location in Crete, mainly in Chania and the surrounding area. The score, written by the Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis who was buried in Chania in 2021, has remained popular ever since.

The film was made on a tight budget of $783,000, but grossed up to $23.5 million worldwide, making it a commercial success and one of the top earning films of 1964. It won three Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actress (Lila Kedrova), Best Art Direction, Black-and-White (Vassilis Photopoulos) and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (Walter Lassally).

On one of those trips across the mountains from Rethymnon to Preveli on the south coast, I was told the story of syrtaki (συρτάκι), the dance Giorgos Provias choreographed for the film. Many think it is the archetypal Greek folkdance, and it is danced in countless restaurants, tavernas and resorts during the holiday season. But it is not a traditional Greek folkdance, and instead is a mixture of the slow and fast versions of a dance known as hasapiko.

The music was composed by Milis Theodorakis, but the movements were contrived on location by Anthony Quinn. Superstitious actors wish each other well on stage with the greeting, ‘Break a leg.’ Quinn had actually broken a bone in his foot on location, yet remained determined to continue filming. He improvised unexpectedly by mixing the slow and fast versions of hasapiko.

When he was asked by the production team what he was dancing, he replied: ‘Syrtáki’. His reply played on a Greek word for dragging, for Quinn should have been hopping when he was dragging his leg. No-one imagined that two generations later, syrtáki would be a popular Greek dance.

Syrtáki is danced in a line or circle, with dancers holding their hands on the neighbours’ shoulders. The dance begins with slower, smoother actions, gradually transforming into faster, vivid ones, often including hops and leaps. The Guinness World Record was set in 2012 by 5,614 people dancing syrtáki for five minutes in Volos.

Dancing Syrtáki in the mountains above the south coast of Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

As for Anthony Quinn (1915-2001), he was born Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca in Chihuahua, Mexico, and denied being the son of an ‘Irish adventurer.’ He said his mother Nellie had Aztec ancestors, while his father, Frank Quinn, was the Mexican-born son of an Irish immigrant and once rode with Pancho Villa.

A year after Zorba was released, at the height of the film’s success, Anthony Quinn divorced his wife Katherine Lester DeMille in 1965. They had been married in All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Beverly Hills, in 1937, and they were the parents of five children. But that marriage provides a link with Stony Stratford.

Katherine Lester DeMille was born Katherine Paula Lester in Vancouver on 29 June 1911. She played 25 credited film roles from the mid-1930s to the late 1940s. She was considered Hollywood royalty and was noted for her dark beauty. Her father Edward Gabriel Lester (1887-1917), was a son of the Revd John Moore Lester (1851-1884), Vicar of Stony Stratford in 1880-1884, and of Amy (Hunt) Lester (1850-1895), who is commemorated in a window in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. Katherine Lester DeMille died in Tucson, Arizona, in 1995.

Olive groves in the mountains in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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

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

For Zorba, the journey is more important than the destination. He claims to be an atheist, yet realises that Christianity is central to the villagers’ way of life. He tells Basil: ‘The highest point a man can attain is … Sacred Awe!’

As Basil sets out for Crete, he wants to rid himself of the Buddha and abstract thinking. He finishes writing a book or paper on Buddha only to realise that he has exorcised the Buddha within. Kazantzakis eventually abandoned his own experiments with Buddhism, and despite strong criticism of his writings, he received an Orthodox funeral in Crete, where was buried on the bastion above Iraklion, looking out to the sea. The simple epitaph on his grave reads: Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα, δεν φοβούμαι τίποτα, είμαι ελεύθερος, ‘I hope for nothing, I fear for nothing, I am free.’

Kazantzakis prefaces his autobiographical novel Report to Greco with a prayer: ‘Three kinds of souls, three kinds of prayers: 1, I am a bow in your hands, Lord, draw me lest I rot. 2, Do not overdraw me, Lord, I shall break. 3, Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break!’

The grave of Nikos Kazantzakis in Crete has a simple epitaph: ‘I hope for nothing, I fear for nothing, I am free’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Daily prayer in Advent 2024: 2, Monday 2 December 2024

‘Jesus Heals the Centurion’s Servant’ … a modern Greek Orthodox icon

Patrick Comerford

The Season of Advent – and the real countdown to Christmas – began yesterday with the First Sunday of Advent (1 December 2024).

Before the day begins, 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.

‘Jesus Heals the Centurion’s Servant,’ depicted by Ilyas Basim Khuri Bazzi Rahib, a 17th century Coptic monk in Egypt

Matthew 8: 5-11 (NRSVA):

5 When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him 6 and saying, ‘Lord, my servant is lying at home paralysed, in terrible distress.’ 7 And he said to him, ‘I will come and cure him.’ 8 The centurion answered, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed. 9 For I also am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, “Go”, and he goes, and to another, “Come”, and he comes, and to my slave, “Do this”, and the slave does it.’ 10 When Jesus heard him, he was amazed and said to those who followed him, ‘Truly I tell you, in no one in Israel have I found such faith. 11 I tell you, many will come from east and west and will eat with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.’

What did John Wayne really say, and did he say it with awe?

Today’s reflection:

Movie trivia is one of those subjects that make for great rounds in table quizzes.

For example, it is said that when that great Biblical epic, The Greatest Story Ever Told, was being filmed almost 60 years ago (1965), Telly Savalas shaved his head for his role as Pontius Pilate. He kept his head bald for the rest of his life, as many remember from the 1970s television series Kojak.

The Swedish actor Max von Sydow said that the hardest part about playing Christ was the expectations people had of him to remain in character at all times. He could not smoke between takes, have a drink after work, or be affectionate with his wife on the set.

The director George Stevens was such a perfectionist that he did many takes of John Wayne’s single line, ‘Truly, this man was the Son of God.’ There is an apocryphal story that at one rehearsal Stevens pleaded with Wayne to show more emotion, to show some sense of awe. At the next take, Wayne changed his line to, ‘Aw, truly this man was the Son of God.’

But have you ever noticed how centurions show up frequently in the Gospels (see Luke 7: 1-10; Luke 23: 47; perhaps cf. Luke 3: 14), and in the Acts of the Apostles (see Acts 10: 1; 30-32, 42-44; 27: 1-3)?

A centurion (ἑκατόνταρχος, hekatóntarkhos) was a commander, nominally of a century or a military unit of 100 legionaries. The size of the century changed over time, and by the time of Christ it had been reduced to 80 men. A centurion's symbol of office was the vine staff – in contrast to Christ, who is the true vine.

Roman soldiers and officials play such positive, even devout, roles in Luke and Acts that we have to ask why Saint Luke writes like this. There is a series of devout centurions whose intervention at significant points leads to the furtherance of the Gospel.

It is surprising that these figures in the Roman occupation are portrayed in such positive ways in the New Testament, including today’s Gospel reading at the Eucharist (Matthew 8: 5-11; cf Luke 7: 1-10). They respond to Christ by recognising his identity and, at times, with faith.

This morning’s Gospel story deals with some everyday questions that we all come across in our lives: compassion and healing, humanity and humility, power and authority, how employers treat the workforce, who is an insider in our society and who is an outsider?

In Saint Luke’s telling of this story, a group of Jewish elders come to Jesus, not on behalf of the dying slave, but on behalf of the centurion. They come not on behalf of a powerless person, but on behalf of the powerful man. They speak up for him, not because he might return the favour … but because he has already done them favours.

The onlookers and the early readers would know that it was against Jewish custom to enter a gentile’s, a Roman’s, a centurion’s home.

The centurion, for his part, must surely know that despite what Jesus may do, the slave too will eventually die, even if in old age, so his only motivations can be love and compassion, like the love of a parent.

This centurion can say do this, can say do that, but there is one thing he cannot do. He cannot give life itself. He recognises his limitations. He knows that he is dependent on Christ. In other words, he knows he is not self-dependent, he has to depend on God. He is a man of moving humility.

The centurion in Capernaum is not Jewish, he is an outsider. We do not know how he prays, or how he lives, or how he worships. In Saint Luke’s account, it is enough for the people of Capernaum, and for Jesus, that he loves the people. He builds a place for the people to worship, to learn and to meet. He cares for their needs, physical and spiritual.

I imagine this centurion already knew about Jesus and his disciples, and that Jesus and the disciples knew who the centurion was. It is probable that Capernaum was the hometown of Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John, as well as the Gospel writer Matthew. Jesus has taught in the synagogue in Capernaum and then heals a man there who was possessed by an unclean spirit. Immediately after this incident, he also healed Simon Peter’s mother-in-law at her home in Capernaum (Matthew 8: 15-17).

When we have finished reading this morning’s Gospel story, we do not know the after-story. We do not know about the future faith of this centurion, whether he changed roles, changed his lifestyle, left politics and the army life behind him.

We do not know about the past or the future of the servant. Culturally, because of translations over the centuries, we have referred to him as the centurion’s servant or slave. But the centurion calls him ‘παῖς μου’ (pais mou, my child) in Matthew, and the word παῖς is instead δοῦλος (doulos, ‘born slave’) in Luke 7: 2.

We know this servant, child or slave is found in good health … but for how long? Did he live to old age? Did he gain promotion, or even his freedom? What about his later religious beliefs? We do not know.

This surprising story tells us that those we perceive as our enemies, as outsiders, as strangers, as foreigners, can teach us so much about trust and faith. In the end, this story is reminiscent of Christ’s teaching earlier in the Sermon on the Mount: ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you’ (Matthew 5: 44).

If we concentrate on healing and the miracle potential of this story, we may just sell ourselves short and miss the point of the story. Indeed, we know very little about the healing in this story, it tells us nothing about a healing ministry, it just tells us later that ‘the servant was healed in that hour’ (see verse 13).

Perhaps the real miracle is to be found when we wake up to the reminder once again that Jesus is concerned for those we regard as the outsider, those we treat as the other, those we exclude.

Who are our modern-day Gentiles? Those we describe as unbelievers, agnostics, atheists or secularists? These are the people the Church needs to listen to and to talk to today, just as Christ listens to the centurion.

Jesus commends the centurion for his πίστις (pistis), faith, trust or belief. He has seen nothing like it, even among his own people. He commends the centurion for his faith, and invites us to embrace that calling to live as people of faith.

It is interesting in all of this that seemingly the child, servant or slave is not aware of any of this, and is left playing a rather passive role in the story.

So, we should note that Christ does not discriminate against the centurion, or against the child, servant or slave. He makes no distinctions, no categorisation, allows no compartmentalisation. We do not know the religion, the ethnicity, the sexuality or the cultural background of the one who is healed.

Christ does not allow us to hold on to any prejudices or attitudes that tolerate racism, sexism, and ageism. We judge other people’s worthiness every time we withhold compassion or refuse to stand up for justice in solidarity with the oppressed, the ostracised, and the under-served. Will we take our cues from Christ and let God’s compassion and justice demolish the dividing lines we draw to protect ourselves?

The gravestone of the chief centurion Marcus Caelius … his vine staff breaks the frame and runs across the inscription (Photograph: Agnete, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 2 December 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Hope – Advent’. This theme was introduced yesterday with Reflections by Esmeralda Pato, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa Representative and Chair of USPG’s Communion-Wide Advisory Group.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 2 December 2024) invites us to pray:

Lord, we pray for all places suffering from violent conflicts and genocide. Bring peace where hatred reigns, protect the innocent, and strengthen people and activists working for justice. May your love heal wounds and overcome evil.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
Give us grace to cast away the works of darkness
and to put on the armour of light
now in the time of this mortal life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
that on the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

O Lord our God,
make us watchful and keep us faithful
as we await the coming of your Son our Lord;
that, when he shall appear,
he may not find us sleeping in sin
but active in his service
and joyful in his praise;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Almighty God,
as your kingdom dawns,
turn us from the darkness of sin
to the light of holiness,
that we may be ready to meet you
in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

Two centurions depicted in the Crucifixion panel in the Royal or MacMahon tomb in the Franciscan Friary in Ennis, Co Clare (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

‘Medea’ comes to Stony Stratford with a timeless tragedy of passion and betrayal

Patrick Comerford

While I am away, I am going to miss not just one but many opportunities to see Medea by Euripides which is being staged between 19 and 23 October in the Swinfen Harris Greek Church Hall on London Road, Stony Stratford.

This is a new adaptation of the play by Tim Dalgleish and Sally Luff, based on the translation by Robinson Jeffers, and features original music by songwriter Mark Denman.

The Greek tragedy Medea opens in a state of chaos and conflict and passion, betrayal and revenge take centre stage. Jason, the hero of the Argo has abandoned his wife of 10 years and two sons so he can marry Glauce, daughter of the King of Corinth, to increase his status and standing in Greece. Medea had assisted Jason to steal the Golden Fleece and became his wife. But she is an outsider and when she is spurned she plans her revenge with a series of murders.

Medea has been adapted by the Carabosse Theatre Company, and this new and immersive adaptation promises to be a powerful and unforgettable theatrical experience.

The Carabosse Theatre Company is known for pushing the boundaries of traditional theatre and with Medea has blurred the lines between audience and actors, drawing the audience deeper into the story than ever before.

As Medea (played by Danni Kushner) plots her chilling revenge, the production captures the raw emotion and intensity of a timeless tragedy in an evening of passion, power, and the dark depths of the human soul.

Medea by the English Pre-Raphaelite painter Frederick Sandys … its rejection for exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1868 caused a storm of protest

The rise of far-right politics across Europe, and the anti-immigrant grand-standing of Reform and hard ‘Brexiters’ in Britain, are symptomatic of a hardening of hearts towards the plight of refugees and asylum.

The marginalisation and demonising of the foreigner and the perceived outsider is at the heart of Medea, which remains the great classical Greek tragedy about the fear of the foreigner and about confusion that arises about the sexuality of the other when we objectify the foreigner in our midst.

I first started to try reading Medea in the original Greekof Euripides almost 40 years ago, in the 1980s, when, following a course in Biblical Greek, I began a Cambridge course in Classical Greek. Shortly afterwards, I was in Rethymnon in Crete when Medea was staged using the original text in the theatre in the Fortezza.

Of course, this is a familiar story in Crete, and Medea herself is associated with the Cave of Melidoni near the village of Mylopotamos, in the mountains above Rethymnon. During the Minoan era, the cave was a centre for the worship of the mythical bronze giant of Crete, Talos, who was believed to ensure the safety and the security of the island. The giant robot ran the round of Crete twice a day, but legend says that Medea removed the tack that protected his only vein, his vital fluid flushed out, and Talos died.

The Theatre of Dionysus in Athens, where ‘Medea’ was first staged (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Medea (Μήδεια) is a tragedy by Euripides, based on the myth of Jason and Medea, and it was first produced in 431 BCE. The plot centres on the actions of Medea, a barbarian and the wife of Jason. After the adventures of the Golden Fleece, Jason takes his wife Medea into exile at Corinth. However, he then leaves her, seeking to advance his political ambitions by marrying Glauke, the daughter of King Creon of Corinth.

Medea seeks vengeance by killing Jason’s new wife, his father-in-law and the children Medea had with Jason. Having taken her revenge, she escapes to Athens to begin a new life.

This tragedy is generally considered the best play written by Euripides and one of the greatest plays ever. However, it only came third when it was presented at the Dionysia Festival in 431 BCE. This may have been because of the extensive changes Euripides made to the conventions of Greek theatre in the play. These include an indecisive chorus, implicitly criticising Athenian society and showing disrespect for the gods.

As with most Greek tragedies, the play does not require any change of scene and takes place throughout outside the façade of the palace of Jason and Medea in Corinth. Events that occur off-stage, such as the deaths of Glauke and Creon and Medea’s murder of her children, are described in elaborate speeches delivered by a messenger, rather than enacted before the audience.

Although there are virtually no stage directions, Medea’s appearance in a chariot drawn by dragons towards the end of the play probably required a construction on the roof of the skene or suspended from a mechane, a kind of crane used in Greek theatres for flying scenes.

The play explores many universal themes.

It deals with passion and rage, for Medea is a woman of extreme behaviour and emotion, and Jason’s betrayal of her has transformed her passion into rage and intemperate destruction.

It discusses revenge, for Medea is willing to sacrifice everything to make her revenge perfect.

It explores greatness and pride. In classical Greece, people were fascinated by the thin line between greatness and hubris, or pride, and the idea that the same traits that make a man or woman great can lead to destruction.

It asks us to consider how we deal with the Other. Medea’s exotic foreignness is emphasised, and is made worse by her status as an exile. But Euripides shows during the play that the Other is not exclusively something external to Greece.

It confronts our prejudices about intelligence and our abilities to be manipulative. Jason and Creon both seek to be manipulative, but Medea is the great manipulator, playing on the weaknesses and needs of both her enemies and her friends.

It challenges our concepts of justice in an unjust society, especially where women and foreigners are concerned, and so it is seen by some as one of the first works of feminism.

Medea’s opening speech to the Chorus is the most eloquent statement in classical Greek literature about the injustices that befall women. Indeed, the relationship between the Chorus and Medea is one of the most interesting in Greek drama. The women are alternately horrified and enthralled by Medea, living vicariously through her. They both condemn her and pity her for her horrible acts, yet do nothing to interfere.

Is Medea a monster because she is a foreigner or because of the way she is treated by the men in her life?

How do we react to a foreigner who moves beyond being the object of our pity and is seen as noble, proud, efficient, and unwilling to be the object of pity, to be marginalised, to be denied rights, to continue to be treated as the outsider?

The form of the play differs from many other Greek tragedies by its simplicity. All the scenes involve only two actors, Medea and someone else. These encounters serve to highlight Medea’s skill and determination in manipulating powerful male figures to achieve her own ends.

The play is also the only Greek tragedy in which a character kills family members yet remains unpunished by the end of the play, and the only play about child-killing in which the deed is performed in cold blood rather than in a state of temporary madness.

Medea exposes the false pieties and hypocritical values of her enemies, and uses their own moral bankruptcy against them. Her revenge is total, but it comes at the cost of everything she holds dear. She murders her own children in part because she cannot bear the thought of seeing them hurt by an enemy.

Jason, on the other hand, is a condescending, opportunistic and unscrupulous man, full of self-deception. The other main male characters, Creon and Aegeus, are weak and fearful, considering only their own interests and ambitions.

When it was first staged in Athens in 431 BCE as one of plays at the City Dionysia, Medea shocked the judges and the audience and came last. Each year, three playwrights competed against each other at the festival, and in 431 BCE the competition was between Euphorion, the son of Aeschylus, Sophocles, who was the main rival of Euripides, and Euripides. Euphorion won, and Euripides was placed last.

The City Dionysia (Διονύσια τὰ ἐν Ἄστει) or Great Dionysia (Διονύσια τὰ Μεγάλα) was an urban festival celebrating the end of winter and harvesting the year’s crops. The Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus is sometimes confused with the later and better-preserved Odeon of Herodes Atticus, on the south-west slope of the Acropolis. It is one of the earliest theatres in Athens, and is considered the first theatre in the world. It could seat 17,000 people, compared with the theatre in Epidaurus, which can still seat 14,000 people.

Euripides’ characterisation of Medea exhibits the inner emotions of passion, love, and vengeance. Until then, tradition said Medea’s children were killed by the Corinthians after her escape. Euripides’ retelling of the story so that Medea kills her own children might have offended his audience.

Medea is set in Corinth some time after Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece, where he met Medea. The play opens in a state of conflict. Jason (Ἰάσων) has abandoned his wife, Medea, along with their two children. He hopes to advance his place in life by marrying Glauke (Γλαυκή), the daughter of Creon (Κρέων), the King of Corinth. Medea grieves over the loss of her husband’s love, and curses her own existence, as well as that of her two children.

Her elderly nurse and the Chorus of Corinthian women, who are generally sympathetic to her plight, fear what she might do to herself or her children.

Jason accuses Medea of over-reacting. By voicing her grievances so publicly, she has endangered her life and the lives of their children. He claims his decision to remarry is in everyone’s best interest. Medea says he is spineless, and she refuses to accept his token offers of help. She reminds him that she left her own people for him: ‘I am the mother of your children. Whither can I fly, since all Greece hates the barbarian?’

King Creon fears the possibility of revenge, and so he banishes Medea and her two sons from Corinth. Medea pleads for mercy, and is granted one more day before she must leave. It goes against his better judgment, but he allows it out of pity for Medea’s two sons.

However, Medea is not the sort of woman to take mistreatment easily, and she plans swift and bloody revenge through killing Creon, Glauke and Jason.

Medea needs to secure a safe place to retreat to once she has committed the murders. By chance and by coincidence, Aegeus, King of Athens, appears on the scene. He has no sons and heirs, and Medea promises to cure his sterility if, in return, he gives her refuge. Of course, she does not mention she is about to kill so many people.

With a guarantee of a safe haven in Athens, Medea has cleared all obstacles to completing her revenge. Her plan grows to include the murder of her own children. The pain their loss will cause her does not outweigh the satisfaction she will feel by making Jason suffer.

Now that Medea has a promise of a safe exile, she develops her plan. She pretends to Jason that she understands his new marriage. Medea begs her husband to ask Glauke to secure a promise from her father that their two sons can stay in Corinth. Jason is moved and agrees. Medea gives Jason a gossamer dress and a golden crown as gifts for Glauke, but does not tell him that the gifts are cursed.

The coronet and dress are poisoned, and their delivery causes Glauke’s death. Seeing his daughter ravaged by the poison, Creon chooses to die by her side by dramatically embracing her and absorbing the poison himself.

A messenger returns and tells Medea the gruesome details of these deaths. When the princess put on the gown and crown, her entire body caught fire and her flesh melted from her bones.

King Creon is so distraught when he sees his daughter’s flaming corpse that he throws his body onto hers and dies as well.

Medea listens to all this with a cool attention to the detail. Her earlier state of anxiety, which intensified as she struggled with the decision to kill her children, now gives way to an assured determination to fulfil her plans and so leave Jason totally devastated.

Against the protests of the chorus, Medea murders her children. The murder of her children is not easy for Medea. She struggles with her motherly instincts, but in the end her revenge is more important. She drags the boys inside the house and kills them with a sword. Jason arrives too late to save his sons.

Medea flees the scene, escaping in a dragon-pulled chariot provided by her grandfather, the sun-god. Jason is left cursing his lot. He begs to have the children’s bodies so that he can bury them. She refuses him even this, and takes their corpses away with her as she flies away triumphant.

She confronts Jason, revelling in his pain at being unable to ever hold his children again: ‘I do not leave my children’s bodies with thee; I take them with me that I may bury them in Hera’s precinct. And for thee, who didst me all that evil, I prophesy an evil doom.’

She escapes to Athens with the bodies. The chorus is left contemplating the will of Zeus in Medea’s actions:

Manifold are thy shapings, Providence!
Many a hopeless matter gods arrange.
What we expected never came to pass,
What we did not expect the gods brought to bear;
So have things gone, this whole experience through!

I missed the opportunity to see ‘Medea’ performed in the theatre in the Fortezza in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Modern interpretations

My early memories of Medea are the 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts, in which Medea, played by Nancy Kovack, is portrayed as a Temple Dancer who is saved by Jason after her ship sinks, and the 1969 film Medea, directed by the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini and featuring the Greek opera singer Maria Callas in the title role.

A new translation of the play by Kenneth McLeish and Frederic Raphael was staged in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in 2000. When Medea was staged in the National Theatre in London in 2014, the Guardian interviewed two actors, Helen McCrory and Diana Rigg, who played the role 20 years apart and spoke about why it still resonates.

As part of the celebrations marking the 90th birthday of the Greek composer the late Mikis Theodorakis, the film Recycling Medea directed by Asteris Koutoulas had its world premiere in 2015. Koutoulas had been Theodorakis’ music producer and manager abroad since 1986 and had worked with him in many countries.

This film is a hybrid ballet performance music and political documentary film collage, with a poignant relevance given the present crises in Greece. This film by Asteris Koutoulas includes music by Theodorakis, with choreography by Renato Zanella and featuring Maria Kousouni as Medea.

The classical Greek tragedy served as an astute metaphor for the Greek political, social and economic tragedy at the time. Script, sound and dance joined in a powerful film reflecting the desperation of a society that had spent all of yesterday turning its children into today’s lost generation.

The protagonists are flanked and contrasted by the disturbingly mild-mannered 15-year-old Bella, who is innocence incarnate but is destroyed by the hand of a hostile and selfish world. Against this background, she seems an almost unreal, fictitious character. On the other hand, there is no fiction in the words of Anne Frank, hidden away in her Amsterdam hideout and filling the pages of her diary. Another child victim of racism in Europe lends today’s isolated and trusting Bella her ‘voice’ and thoughts.

Medea, Jason, Bella and Anne Frank, composer and protester Theodorakis, the dancers, the rebelling hooded teenagers, advancing police, the choreographer and camera crew – they all become (in)voluntary actors in this complex tragedy spanning the ages. Recycling Medea has been dedicated to the betrayed youth – and their parents who sacrificed the dreams and future of their own children.

But Medea is relevant to Europe’s problems today and Britain’s problems too, and our responses to the foreigners we refuse to accept among us.



• The performances of Medea in the Swinfen Harris Greek Church Hall, London Road, Stony Stratford, are on 19 October (7:30), 20 October (1:30 and 7:30), and 21, 22 and 23 October (7:30).

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024: 156, Monday 14 October 2024

‘Let these holy mysteries open the eyes of our understanding’ (Post-Communion Prayer) … an icon of the Mystical Supper or the Last Supper in a shop window in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and this week began with the Twentieth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XX).

I am on a long odyssey since Sunday afternoon, having left Birmingham on a delayed flight yesterday to Schiphol in Amsterdam. We ought to be arriving in Singapore later today, but instead we are in Schiphol, hoping to board a flight that is going to get us to Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. There, in turn, we hope to get a rebooked flight that gets us to Singapore some time tomorrow (Tuesday). But, as we wait for our flight in Amsterdam this morning, I am taking some quiet time to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘The people of Nineveh … repented at the proclamation of Jonah’ (Luke 11: 32) … a whale depicted in the Saint Brendan window in Saint Michael’s Church, Sneem, Co Kerry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 11: 29-32:

29 When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, ‘This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. 30 For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so the Son of Man will be to this generation. 31 The queen of the South will rise at the judgement with the people of this generation and condemn them, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here! 32 The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here!’

‘The people of Nineveh … repented at the proclamation of Jonah’ (Luke 11: 32) … a reconstruction of the gates of an Assyrian palace in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s reflection:

Signs are part of the humour throughout Monty Python’s Life of Brian, also known as Life of Brian, a controversial 1979 film by the Monty Python team, including Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin.

Scene 18, ‘The Holy Gourd of Jerusalem’, includes this dialogue:

FOLLOWERS: … Look! Ah! Oh! Oh!

ARTHUR: He has given us a sign!

FOLLOWER: Oh!

SHOE FOLLOWER: He has given us … His shoe!

ARTHUR: The shoe is the sign. Let us follow His example.

SPIKE: What?

ARTHUR: Let us, like Him, hold up one shoe and let the other be upon our foot, for this is His sign, that all who follow Him shall do likewise.

EDDIE: Yes.

SHOE FOLLOWER: No, no, no. The shoe is …

YOUTH: No.

SHOE FOLLOWER: … a sign that we must gather shoes together in abundance.

GIRL: Cast off …

SPIKE: Aye. What?

GIRL: … the shoes! Follow the Gourd!

SHOE FOLLOWER: No! Let us gather shoes together!

FRANK: Yes.

SHOE FOLLOWER: Let me!

ELSIE: Oh, get off!

YOUTH: No, no! It is a sign that, like Him, we must think not of the things of the body, but of the face and head!

SHOE FOLLOWER: Give me your shoe!

YOUTH: Get off!

GIRL: Follow the Gourd! The Holy Gourd of Jerusalem!

FOLLOWER: The Gourd!

HARRY: Hold up the sandal, as He has commanded us!

ARTHUR: It is a shoe! It is a shoe!

HARRY: It's a sandal!

ARTHUR: No, it isn't!

GIRL: Cast it away!

ARTHUR: Put it on!

YOUTH: And clear off!

How often do we pray unusual signs as indications of God’s blessing, favour, approval or intervention, or even God’s judgment?

In this morning’s Gospel reading, Jesus faces this sort of request too. with that in his own day. People wanted some spectacular sign from him to establish beyond doubt that he was who he said he was.

In today’s reading, Jesus addresses the crowds who gather around him as a wicked generation because they are asking for a sign. Today people can be very impressed by visionaries who claim to have visions that are denied to the rest of believers.

The church has traditionally been very wary of all such claims. In the Gospel reading Jesus accuses his contemporaries of failing to see what is there before them. They want signs and yet all they need already stands in front of them in the person of Jesus, someone greater than Solomon, greater than Jonah, greater than all the prophets and kings.

If the people of Nineveh responded to Jonah and if the Queen of the South responded to Solomon, how much more should Jesus’ contemporaries respond to him?

God has already given us all we need in and through the church, in Word, in Sacrament and in the community of believers. There we find the living word of God. There we find the Eucharist and the other sacraments. There we find Jesus present among us and within his followers.

In the Eucharist, Christ is present to us in the bread and the wine, saying, ‘This is my body … This is my blood’.

In coming to Christ in the Eucharist, we are coming to one who is greater than Jonah or Solomon. He is present to us in other ways also. We take his presence seriously by responding to his call and following in his way, as the people of Nineveh responded to Jonah’s call. And, in response to Christ’s presence, we are called to respond to his presence by living in as a sign of his presence in the world.

‘Hold up the sandal, as he has commanded us!’ (Monty Python, ‘The Life of Brian’) … sandals outside a shop in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 14 October 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is the ‘Mission hospitals in Malawi’. This theme was introduced yesterday with a programme update by Tamara Khisimisi, Project Co-ordinator, Anglican Council in Malawi.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 14 October 2024) invites us to pray:

Almighty God, thank you for the service of the doctors, nurses and everyone involved in the mission hospitals.

The Collect:

God, the giver of life,
whose Holy Spirit wells up within your Church:
by the Spirit’s gifts equip us to live the gospel of Christ
and make us eager to do your will,
that we may share with the whole creation
the joys of eternal life;
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:

God our Father,
whose Son, the light unfailing,
has come from heaven to deliver the world
from the darkness of ignorance:
let these holy mysteries open the eyes of our understanding
that we may know the way of life,
and walk in it without stumbling;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

God, our light and our salvation:
illuminate our lives,
that we may see your goodness in the land of the living,
and looking on your beauty
may be changed into the likeness of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

‘The shoe is … a sign that we must gather shoes together in abundance’ (Monty Python, ‘The Life of Brian’) … collecting shoes in Carlow for Syrian refugee children (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

TS Eliot’s marriage in Hampstead and the ‘gloomy’ house ‘with long dark corridors’

The former Hampstead Register Office on Haverstock Hill where TS Eliot and Vivienne Haigh-Wood were married in 1915 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

Today marks the birthday of TS Eliot, who was born 136 years ago in St Louis, Missouri, on 26 September 1888. I was in Hampstead this week to discuss the launch of a book in London next week, and I found myself in an irresistible search for some of the connections in Hamstead with TS Eliot.

Thomas Stearns Eliot married Vivienne Haigh-Wood in Hampstead Register Office on 26 June 1915 and they lived for two years with her parents in Compayne Gardens in West Hampstead.

Three of us met earlier this week at Hampstead Underground station, which was built in 1907 and is the deepest station on the London Underground network, and had lunch around the corner in Flask Walk – a narrow pedestrianised Regency street with antique shops and cafés.

It had been many years since I had spent any time in Hampstead, which is known for its bohemian and literary connections and for what is sometimes labelled dismissively as ‘Hampstead Liberalism’. ‘Hampstead Liberals’ are supposed to be a Guardian-reading North London subspecies of ‘Champagne Socialists’. In its obituary of Peter Jay on Tuesday, the Guardian referred to him being ‘born into the Hampstead Labour aristocracy.’

Certainly, during the Brexit referendum in 2016, it is said 75% or more in Hampstead voted to remain in the EU, so that alliterations sometimes invite comparisons between Hampstead and Hartlepool and Hull, post-industrial northern ‘red wall’ towns that voted to leave and turned from Labour to the Conservatives.

Hampstead has its coffee shops, an eclectic mix of restaurants and bars, Georgian and Regency architecture, antique shops, niche furniture outlets, colourful cobbled side-streets and centuries-old churches.

Hampstead also has many literary associations, with numerous plaques to writers from Agatha Christie to Edith Sitwell. John Keats lived in a Regency Villa beside Hampstead Heath now known as Keats House, where it is said he wrote ‘Ode To a Nightingale’ in the garden. George Orwell worked at a second-hand bookshop in Hampstead called Booklovers’ Corner around 1935-1936. John Betjeman wrote with affection about North London and his childhood in Hampstead and his feelings of ‘being safe in a world of trains and buttered toast.’

Evelyn Underhill, one of only 18 modern women whose lives are commemorated in the Church of England Calendar of Holy Days, is buried in the Additional Burial Ground of Hampstead Parish Church. Penelope Fitzgerald, Booker Prize-winning novelist, poet, essayist and biographer, lived in Hampstead and is buried in the churchyard.

The house at 3 Compayne Gardens where TS Eliot and Vivienne Haigh-Wood lived after their marriage (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The poet Thomas Stearns Eliot, one of the greatest poets of the 20th century and a central figure in English literature, was married in Hampstead and lived in south Hampstead for about two years.

Eliot was born 136 years ago today, on 26 September 1888. He was a visiting student at Merton College, Oxford, when he met Vivienne Haigh-Wood, and they were married in Hampstead Registry office on Haverstock Hill with no formal announcement. They were both 26 and had known each other for just three months. The witnesses were Lucy Ely Thayer, a sister of the poet and publisher Scofield Thayer who introduced the couple, and Vivienne’s aunt, Lillia C Symes.

The couple moved in with her parents at 3 Compayne Gardens, an 1870s house in South Hampstead that Eliot found ‘rather gloomy, with long dark corridors.’ Her father, the artist Charles Haigh-Wood (1854-1927), inherited a property portfolio from his Irish-born mother Mary (Haigh) Wood, including the rental from a group of six houses on Haigh Terrace, between the Mariners’ Church and Upper George’s Street in Dún Laoghaire, and a seventh house on Upper George’s Street, on the corner with Haigh Terrace.

During Eliot’s two years in South Hampstead, The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock was published in Chicago in 1915, although Eliot had written it four years earlier in 1911.

The actor and writer Edward Petherbridge has produced a short film, While the Music Lasts, about Eliot’s time in South Hampstead during World War I. He claims that during those two years the seeds were sown of The Waste Land. It was later published in 1922 and is one of Eliot’s most seminal works, his eulogy to culture in a world he felt had forgotten its roots.

Petherbridge’s film features a portrait of Eliot and some London street scenes by another former resident of South Hampstead, photographer Bill Brandt, whose work offers documentary of 20th century British life. The film also refers to the life of Mina Loy, the woman known as the ‘forgotten Modernist’, who grew up in Compayne Gardens.

The marriage was difficult, and ended in separation in 1933. Eliot said later: ‘To her the marriage brought no happiness … to me it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land.’ Vivienne died in 1947, and the story of their tumultuous marriage is told in the film Tom and Viv (1994).

Three years after their separation and 20 years after he had lived at Compayne Gardens, Eliot recalled Hampstead as one the ‘gloomy hills of London’. In Burnt Norton (1936), he speaks of

… the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world.

Next year marks the 110th anniversary of Eliot’s marriage in Hampstead Register Office on 26 June 1915 and 60th anniversary of his death on 4 January 1965.

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2024: 135, Sunday 22 September 2024, Trinity XVII

‘Then he took a little child and put it among them’ (Mark 9: 36)’ … a stained-glass window in the north transept in Saint Mary’s Church, Youghal, Co Cork (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and today is the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVII, 22 September 2024). Later this morning, I hope to be present at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford.

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 reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

‘Then he took a little child and put it among them’ (Mark 9: 36) … a detail in the window in the Comberford Chapel in Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mark 9: 30-37 (NRSVA):

30 They went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; 31 for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, ‘The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.’ 32 But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

33 Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ 34 But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. 35 He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ 36 Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, 37 ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’

‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me’ (Mark 9: 37) … Children of the Kindertransport seen in Frank Meisler’s bronze sculpture at Liverpool Street Station in London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Reflection:

Sophie’s Choice is a disturbing American film (1982) based on a best-selling novel by William Styron (1979). Meryl Streep plays the title role of Sophie Zawistowski, a Polish immigrant who shares a boarding house in Brooklyn with Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline) and a young writer, Stingo (Peter MacNicol).

One evening, Stingo learns from Sophie that she was married, but her husband and her father were killed in a Nazi work camp, and that she was sent as a prisoner to Auschwitz with her two children.

When Sophie arrives at Auschwitz, a camp doctor forces her to choose which one of her two children would be gassed and which one he would send to the labour camp. To avoid having both children killed, she chooses to have her son Jan sent to the children’s camp, and her daughter Eva sent to her death. It is a heart-wrenching decision that leaves her in mourning and filled with a guilt that she never overcomes.

The name Sophie means wisdom, but the choice Sophie faces is not between what is wise and what is foolish, between good and evil, nor even between the lesser of two evils, but between evil and evil.

This morning’s lectionary readings introduce a number of similar themes, including comparisons between the Wisdom of God and a wise wife and mother, the choices we face between good and evil, and the innocence of children in the face of competition for power and status.

Ashort set of readings from the Book of Proverbs ends this morning where the book ends, with a poem that gives a detailed description of the roles and qualities of ‘a capable wife.’

Before this reading begins, we are told that the words in this closing section are ‘the words of King Lemuel. An oracle that his mother taught him’ (Proverbs 31: 1).

But who is the good wife?

A good wife is mentioned earlier in this book, and several of her qualities are those of Wisdom, Sophia (Σοφία). So, is the good wife Wisdom herself?

Then the psalm (Psalm 1) compares the ways of the wicked and the ways of the godly.

In the Epistle reading (James 3: 13 to 4: 3, 7-8a), Saint James reminds his readers of the qualities of wisdom. Godly wisdom is pure, peace-loving, merciful and bears good fruits, and seeks to make peace.

In the Gospel reading (Mark 9: 30-37), Christ tells the disciples he is going to be betrayed and killed, and that he will rise again.

They do not understand what he is saying – how could they, they cannot yet expect the Crucifixion and the Resurrection? Both these future events are beyond their understanding and they are afraid to ask Jesus what he is talking about, either because they do not want to show their ignorance or because they are afraid that they too may become innocent victims and suffer the consequences of being followers of Christ.

By the time they arrive in Capernaum, the disciples have been arguing over who among them is the greatest (verse 34). The disciples are shamed into silence when they realise Jesus overhears what they say. He chides them, telling them being a disciple is not about rank or power, position or prestige, but is about service. He tells them: ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all’ (verse 35).

To illustrate his point, he takes a little child and places him or her among them. The Greek word used here (παιδίον, paidíon) means a little child, but it could mean a young servant or even a child slave (verse 36).

He takes the child in his arms and says to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me’ (verse 37).

We are not told whether this child is a boy or girl, free or slave, Jew or Samaritan, Greek or Roman, a street urchin or the child of one the Disciples.

Perhaps the Disciples never even noticed, because at that time a child was of no economic value and a burden on families until the child could earn his or her own way, or until the child had the potential of being the equivalent of a pension scheme for parents.

But when someone welcomed a child slave or servant sent on an errand or with a message, they welcomed or received the master. Jesus reminds the disciples that whoever receives the servant receives the master, whoever receives a child receives Christ, whoever receives Christ receives God the Father, who sent him.

How can we relate the first part of our Gospel reading (verses 30-32), when Jesus talks about his own impending betrayal, crucifixion and resurrection, with the second part of the Gospel reading (verses 33-37), when Jesus takes an innocent, small child and makes him or her an example of how we should behave with Kingdom values?

Sometimes, I fear, we make it too difficult to talk about the Crucifixion, and so we make it too difficult to talk about the Resurrection, unless we are talking about them in the context of Holy Week, Good Friday and Easter.

But sometimes too, I fear, we make it too easy to talk about children because we romanticise childhood in our comfortable settings. Quite often, even in stained-glass windows in our churches, we romanticise this little child, thinking of a well-dressed, well-fed, well-loved child from our own family or own parish.

Yet, it is a paradox that we also find it too difficult to talk about children because so often we have to turn away, mentally and emotionally, when we see the suffering of children in the world today.

All of us have been disturbed for some years now about the terrors that are rained down on children in the world today. I say ‘children’ and not ‘innocent children,’ because there is no such being as a guilty child – there are only innocent children.

And the suffering and plight of children is all the more distressing when it is caused by the calculations of adults who dismiss this suffering as merely collateral damage brought about by political decisions or by war.

For Christians, this distress must always be acute, must always demand our compassion, must always call for our response.

In Saint Matthew’s version of this story (Matthew 18: 1-14), Christ tells us: ‘Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven … it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost’ (verses 10-14).

It cannot matter to us what label is placed on these children:

● whether a suffering child in the Gaza Strip or a child taken hostage in an attack on a musical festival in Israel is a Jew, Christian or Muslim;

● whether the frightened refugee child crossing the Channel or the Mediterranean cramped into a tiny boat in the Mediterranean, is a Christian or a Muslim;

● whether the children targeted by Saudi fighter bombers in Yemen are Shia or Sunni, going to a school or a wedding;

● whether the sobbing and distressed child separated forcibly from his parents on the border between Texas and Mexico speaks Spanish or English;

● whether the homeless children who sleep in cramped hotel rooms with their mothers tonight, not knowing where they are going to sleep tomorrow night or still traumatised by a recent attack by far-right rioters, are the children of local people or immigrants.

It seems these are last in the world’s priorities today. Yet Christ says, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last … Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me’ (Mark 9: 35, 37).

‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me’ (Mark 9: 37) … ‘Spectral Child’ on Thomas Street, Limerick, by Dermot McConaghy (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 22 September 2024, Trinity XVII):

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 ‘Our God is Able.’ This theme is introduced today in reflections by the Revd Thanduxolo Noketshe, priest in charge at Saint Mary and Christ Church, Diocese of North East Caribbean and Aruba, Province of the West Indies:

In early 2021, my family and I moved from the Diocese of Port Elizabeth in South Africa to serve in St Kitts and Nevis as part of the USPG Exchanging Places Programme. The programme is a joint venture between USPG, the Diocese of North East Caribbean and Aruba (NECA) and the Diocese of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. I am grateful my time here has been extended for another three years so I continue my mission on the island.

I wanted to share a glimpse of what I have learnt during my journey.

Our God is able.

I have seen God working wonders in our lives and we are grateful for the great things he has done. We have seen him as a God who provides, heals and comforts. We do not know our future, but we know he will direct us to the right pathways. Therefore, the journey with God is a practical experience.

As we participate in his mission, God provides the people and resources for us to use in our earthly pilgrimage.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Sunday 22 September 2024, Trinity XVII) invites us to pray:

Use these hands to carry the burden.
Use this voice to carry your word.
Use these feet to walk in your footsteps.
Use this heart to transform the world.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
you have made us for yourself,
and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you:
pour your love into our hearts and draw us to yourself,
and so bring us at last to your heavenly city
where we shall see you face to face;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Lord, we pray that your grace
may always precede and follow us,
and make us continually to be given to all good works;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Gracious God,
you call us to fullness of life:
deliver us from unbelief
and banish our anxieties
with the liberating love of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me’ (Mark 9: 37) … a window in the chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield (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