An Advent Calendar with Patrick Comerford: 24, 23 December 2025

‘Snow had fallen, snow on snow … in the bleak midwinter’ … snow in Cloister Court, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, some years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are in the last days of Advent, and tomorrow is Christmas Eve. At noon each day this Advent, I am offering an image or two as part of my own ‘Advent Calendar’ for 2025, and an Advent or Christmas carol, hymn or song.

I have been involved all morning with Santa's visit to the Christmas Market in Stony Stratford. It is great fun, and I am thankful it is not snowing. But in this cold winter weather and this costume, it feels like the bleak mid-winter despite all the warm responses of children and adults alike. So, my images for my Advent Calendar at noon today are of snow some years ago in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, on a bleak mid-winter morning during a weekend when I had been invited to preach in the college chapel.

My choice of a carol or hymn today is ‘In the Bleak Mid-Winter,’ by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). For many it is closely associated with the Service of Nine Lessons with Carols, broadcast each Christmas Eve from the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge.

Christina Rossetti’s poem, ‘In the Bleak Mid-Winter,’ became popular among choirs after it was included it in the BBC broadcasts of the Service of Nine Lessons with Carols by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, using the 1911 setting by Harold Edwin Darke (1888-1976). He had once been the conductor of the choir, and his setting of the poem as a carol included his beautiful and delicate organ accompaniment.

But the tune most often associated with ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ is Cranham, composed in 1906 by Gustav Holst (1874-1934).

The poem had been published for the first time seven years earlier in Christina Rossetti’s Poetic Works, 10 years after her death. It was republished in 1906 The English Hymnal, edited by Percy Dearmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams, with Holst’s setting, and it quickly became a popular Christmas carol. Today ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ is one of the most popular and best-loved carols.

Christina Rossetti was part of the Victorian arts-and-crafts movement and the pre-Raphaelite movement. She was a leading advocate of women’s rights, a campaigner against slavery and war, and a prominent member of the Anglo-Catholic movement. She wrote ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ in 1872 in answer to a request from a magazine. But, like a lot of writers, she must have been frustrated that she never saw its publication.

So it took over 30 years, more than a generation, before this poem was first sung as a Christmas carol. Ever since then, though, it has been a firm Christmas favourite, and has been recorded by the King’s Singers, Julie Andrews, the Moody Blues, the Pet Shop Boys, James Taylor, Alison Crowe, Moya Brennan, Celtic Woman, Sarah McLachlan, Sarah Brightman and Loreena McKennitt.

But I still find this popularity surprising, because this is no popular, cosy, comfortable Christmas carol. Instead its images are harsh and bleak, and in the uncomfortable political climate in the world today tey are challenging and demanding once again.

‘In the bleak midwinter … snow had fallen, snow on snow’ … snow on Sidney Street, Cambridge, in front of the chapel of Sidney Sussex College (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In the bleak midwinter
frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron,
water like a stone:
snow had fallen, snow on snow,
snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter,
long ago.

Our God, heav’n cannot hold him,
nor earth sustain;
heav’n and earth shall flee away
when he comes to reign:
in the bleak midwinter
a stable place sufficed
the Lord God almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Enough for him, whom cherubim
worship night and day,
a breast full of milk
and a manger-ful of hay;
enough for him, whom angels
fall down before,
the ox and ass and camel
which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
cherubim and seraphim
thronged the air;
but his mother only,
in her maiden bliss,
worshipped the beloved
with a kiss.

What can I give him,
poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd,
I would bring a lamb;
if I were a wise man
I would do my part;
yet what I can I give him —
give my heart.

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 162, Tuesday 21 October 2025

‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit’ (Luke 12: 35) … in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Wine Office Court off Fleet Street, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar, and the week began with the Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity XVIII, 19 October 2025).

Before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, and for reflection, prayer and reading 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.

‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit … so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks’ (Luke 12: 35-36) … an open door in the church in Piskopianó in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Luke 12: 35-38 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 35 ‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; 36 be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. 37 Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. 38 If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.’

‘They may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks’ … Holman Hunt’s ‘The Light of the World’ in a side chapel in Keble College, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2014)

Today’s Reflection:

Have you ever been burgled?

It is a frightening and a traumatic experience for anyone who has suffered it.

It is one thing to come home from a day’s work, or from a holiday, to find your house has been broken into. It is another to wake up and realise that as you were sleeping a thief has broken into your home, and is downstairs or in the next room.

It happened to me once, in a house where I was living in south Dublin.

It was in the days long before mobile ’phones and cordless ’phones. I had been working late the night before and came downstairs to answer a mid-morning call.

Unknown to me, the thieves were in the next room, having already gone through the kitchen. They were in there, having made themselves something to drink, had cut the lead to the video recorder, and were squatting on the floor in the front room, armed with the ‘kitchen devil,’ straight from the cutlery drawer, sorting through my other possessions.

They must have remained very quiet. Instead of stealing anything, they stole out the back door before I had ever put down the ’phone or realised what had happened.

It is a frightening experience, and it made me extra vigilant: extra bolts and locks, rethinking the alarm system, and so on. The police knew who the ‘likely suspects’ were, but they could offer no guarantees that the house was never going to be broken into again … and again.

It is an experience that was also a reminder of my own vulnerability, and a reminder that what I own and possess is not really mine, and not mine for very long. Finding the ‘kitchen devil’ on the floor was also a sharp reminder, literally, that even my life is not mine for very long.

And so, the image of Christ we come across at the end of this Gospel reading, of a thief coming unexpectedly to break into my house, may not be a very comforting one for those of us brought up with the image of ‘Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild.’

And yet it is an image that has echoes in the poetry of some of the great mystical writers in Anglican history. It reminds me, for example, of the words of John Donne (Holy Sonnets XIV):

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

It is the passionate language of love, of passionate love. But then, of course, Christ demands our passion, our commitment, our love.

Christ’s call to us in this reading, the demands Christ is making on us in this reading, are not just addressed to the Disciples.

Christ is speaking to the disciples in particular, and teaching them about the kingdom (Luke 12: 1). But as he is speaking to them, someone in the crowd – like a heckler – interrupts and asks a question (see Luke 12: 13).

The inner circle of the Disciples must have felt they were being broken into by those on the rims, those in the crowd of outsiders, the crowd or multitude following Christ but who were not among the Disciples.

So Christ’s demands are made not just of some inner circle, for some elite group within the Church, for those who are seen as pious and holy.

This is a demand he makes also to those on the margins, for the sake of those on the margins, that he makes on the whole Church for the sake of those on the margins.

We are to be ever vigilant that we do not keep those on the margins on the outside for too long. They may appear like thieves trying to break in. But when we welcome in those on the outside who we see as thieves, we may find we are welcoming Christ himself.

And in welcoming Christ himself, into our inner sanctum, we are making it a sign of the Kingdom. The Church needs to be a place not where we feel secure, but where the outsider feels welcome, where they can feast and taste what the Kingdom of God is like.

What is this Kingdom like?

Where is it?

When shall we find it?

In this Gospel reading, Christ tells the multitude – the multitude who are gathered just like the 5,000 who were gathered earlier on the hillside and fed with the multiplication of five loaves and two fish (Luke 9: 10-17) – that the kingdom is already given.

In the preceding verses, he says ‘it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom’ (Luke 12: 32), present tense. But the original Greek says ‘your Father was well pleased with you (or, took pleasure) to freely give the Kingdom to you’ (… ὅτι εὐδόκησεν ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν δοῦναι ὑμῖντὴν βασιλείαν).

God wanted to do something good for the ‘little flock’ (verse 32), and so freely gave them the kingdom – the reign of God – in which tables are open, status is upended, and all people are treated with dignity. In God’s Kingdom – on earth as it is in heaven – there is no scarcity, there are no class or gender barriers, there are no ‘insiders’ and no ‘outsiders.’

Christ compares that Kingdom of God with a wedding banquet.

When we go to a wedding, we have no control over what happens. In the first case, we have no control over who is getting married to whom. But, secondly, weddings break down all our petty snobberies and all our status-seeking.

Whatever we think of the choice of bride or groom, we have no say at all in who is going to be a new brother-in-law, a new mother-in-law, and even into the future, who is going to be a new cousin to our children’s children.

It’s enough to make you laugh.

Sarah laughed when she was told about her future family (see Genesis 18: 12). There is a hint of this story in the Letter to the Hebrews, where the writer reminds us of the faith of Abraham and Sarah (see Hebrews 11: 11, 13-16).

Despite our failings, the failings of society, the failings of politics, God’s promises of the Kingdom multiply beyond all our expectations, even beyond the expectations of modern Bible translators.

We cannot control this. Those who come into the banquet may appear to us like thieves and burglars, brazenly breaking into our own family home, into our own family.

But we may find that the thief is actually Christ trying to break into our hearts to let us know that the kingdom is already here.

The word for master here is actually κύριος (kyrios), Lord, the word used in the Greek Old Testament for the Lord God by Jews who found the use of the name of God offensive and blasphemous. But using the word master for κύριος hides away God’s work, confusing the Lord, the ‘Son of Man’ (ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ho yios tou anthropou), with the ‘master of the house,’ the householder (οἰκοδεσπότης, oikodespótēs).

Think of how the word κύριος (kyrios), Lord, was used by Abraham as he addresses the three visitors to Abraham and Sarah at the Oak of Mamre. The strangers become angels, and the angels come to represent the Triune God.

Had Abraham treated his visitors as thieves, where would we be today? Instead he sets a banquet before the Three, and finds not once but three times that he has an encounter with the living Lord (Genesis 18: 3, 13, 14), the Triune God, an encounter that leads Abraham and Sarah to a faith that ushers in the promises of the Kingdom.

The Lord who arrives for the banquet and stands knocking at the door (Luke 12: 36) in this Gospel reading is the same Christ who says: ‘Behold, I am standing at the door knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you and eat with you, and you with me’ (Revelation 3: 20).

He comes in ways we do not expect, and at ‘the unexpected hour,’ the time we ‘think nothing of’ (ἧ ὥρᾳ οὐ δοκεῖτε, he hora ou dokeite, Luke 12: 40) – ‘an hour that seems like nothing.’ He does not bother trying to tear down our puny defences. He sneaks around them instead.

Welcome to the banquet.

Welcome to the kingdom.

Allow the stranger among you, and the stranger within you, to open that door and discover that Christ is not a thief trying to steal what you have, but is the Lord who is trying to batter our hearts and tear down our old barriers so that we can all feast together at the new banquet:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
…
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

‘For you as yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend’ … a bust of John Donne at Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 21 October 2025):

The theme this week (19 to 25 October) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Advancing Theological Education for Young Women in Africa’ (pp 48-49). This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections from Esmeralda (Essie) Pato, Chair of the Communion-Wide Advisory Group for USPG; she is based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Tuesday 21 October 2025) invites us to pray:

Gracious God, we lift up the College of the Transfiguration, the Rector Dr Percy and all staff and students. May the college continue to be a place of learning, growth, and spiritual formation, where future leaders are nurtured in faith and service.

The Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
increase in us your gift of faith
that, forsaking what lies behind
and reaching out to that which is before,
we may run the way of your commandments
and win the crown of everlasting joy;
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:

We praise and thank you, O Christ, for this sacred feast:
for here we receive you,
here the memory of your passion is renewed,
here our minds are filled with grace,
and here a pledge of future glory is given,
when we shall feast at that table where you reign
with all your saints for ever.

Additional Collect:

God, our judge and saviour,
teach us to be open to your truth
and to trust in your love,
that we may live each day
with confidence in the salvation which is given
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

‘Be like those who are waiting for their master to return … so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks’ (Luke 12: 35-36) … the open West Door of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

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

Saint Edburg’s Church in Bicester stands on the site of an earlier Saxon church and a mediaeval priory

Saint Edburg’s Church, Bicester, is the oldest building in the Oxfordshire town (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Saint Edburg’s Church on Church Street is the 12th century parish church of Bicester in Oxfordshire. It is at the heart of Bicester’s mediaeval centre, and is the oldest and only Grade I listed building in the market town. The church also has important connections with the Gothic revival and the Pre-Raphaelites in the late 19th century.

The church is dedicated to Saint Edburg of Bicester – also known as Eadburh or Eadburth – who was a seventh century nun and abbess. She remains something of a mystery, as there were several Saxon saints with the same name. It is most likely that Eadburh of Bicester was the daughter of King Penda of Mercia, who was pagan but had several children who were Christians.

Eadburg was born in Quarrendon in Buckinghamshire. Her sister was Edith (or Eadith), and together they founded an abbey near Aylesbury, where Eadburg probably became the abbess. She was also the aunt of Osgyth, and she trained her in the religious life. There are legends that claim that Edburgh and Edith found Osyth after she had drowned three days before and witnessed her return to life.

Eadburg may have lived at Adderbury, north Oxfordshire, which may have been named after her. She died ca 650. Saint Edburg’s burial place is unknown; her feast day is 18 July.

Saint Eadburg’s Church, Bicester, stands on the site of an earlier Saxon church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A simple Saxon church was built in Bicester in 850, and Saint Eadburg’s relics were moved there in 1182, when an Augustinian priory was founded by canons regular and dedicated to Saint Eadburgh and to the Virgin Mary.

Bicester Priory had a priory church, chapter house with cloisters, hospice, prior’s lodgings and a farmyard. The walled rectangular enclosure lay just south of the church, the gatehouse was on the site of ‘Chapter and Verse’ Guesthouse in Church Lane, and Saint Edburg’s House is built partly over the site of the priory church. This was linked by a cloister to a quadrangle with the refectory, kitchens, dormitory and prior’s lodging. The priory farm buildings lay in the area of the present church hall and had direct access to land in what is now the King’s End estate.

The Augustinian priory was endowed with extensive lands and buildings, although they appear to have been poorly managed and did not produce much income. The priory was dissolved in 1536 and there are few remaining visible signs of the priory today.

Many pilgrims visited Saint Edburg’s shrine and holy well in Bicester. During the Reformation, Sir Simon Harcourt, the Sheriff of Oxford, destroyed Bicester Priory church in 1536. But he saved Saint Edburg’s shrine and moved it to Saint Michael’s Church in Stanton Harcourt, west of Oxford, to use as an Easter sepulture. Other parts of the shrine were combined into a tomb in the Harcourt chapel. Attempts in the 1940s to return the shrine to Bicester were without success.

The High Altar, Chancel and East Window in Saint Edburg’s Church, Bicester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

There is no mention of a stone church on the site in the Domesday Book, but some sources suggest the triangular-headed arch in the north aisle was the doorway of this building. The remains of a zig-zag dripstone between the arches of the north aisle imply that this was the outside wall of the Norman church built by Gilbert Bassett, one of the earliest manorial lords of Market End manor, ca 1120. The great central arches that once supported a tower also belong to this period.

Saint Edburg’s is impressive inside, with a large nave and high oaken roof, and two long vistas: one towards the altar from the west end, and the other from the high altar steps, with the wide chancel arch framing the tall narrow arch that forms the internal east face of the tower.

By the 13th century, the church had been given to Bicester Priory. The priors appointed the vicars and they enlarged and improved the church over time.

The chancel was extended in the Early English period in the 13th century and the priest’s door was made in the south wall. Four arches were cut in the south wall of the nave and the south aisle was added. The fine arch between the south aisle and the Lady Chapel was built then, as was the south doorway.

The north chapel and the north aisle were built in the Decorated period in the 14th century, when three arches were cut in the north wall of the nave. The north chapel is now used as the choir vestry.

Inside Saint Edburg’s Church, Bicester, looking from the chancel towards the west end and the tower (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The church was given its present appearance in the Perpendicular Period in the 15th century. The central tower was taken down, its west arch was removed and the crossing was thrown into the nave. The nave was heightened, the clerestory was added and the nave was roofed with timbers supported on 12 stone corbels, carved heads of beasts and grotesques. The west tower was built with a splendid perpendicular arch opening into the nave. Parapets were added to the outside walls and the porch was built.

The north chapel once had an upper chamber, perhaps to house the sexton. It was used from the late 17th century as a school room for a grammar school founded by Samuel Blackwell, Vicar of Bicester in 1670-1691 and Dean of Bicester Deanery. His curate was White Kennett (1660-1728), later Bishop of Peterborough (1718-1728), and the author of a two-volume history of Bicester and the priory.

A great storm damaged the church in 1765. Lightning struck the tower, damaged the belfry and the bells, broke into the main body of the church, tore up part of the floor in the south aisle and smashed most of the lower windows. The church was left ‘full of smoke, accompanied with a suffocating sulphurous stench’. This explains why there is no remaining mediaeval stained glass in the church.

The north chapel once had an upper chamber and in now the choir vestry (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A print from 1849 shows the nave and aisles filled with boxed pews and a three-decker pulpit opposite the Grantham memorial. There were galleries across the west end and between the arches over both aisles.

This ‘chaos of uplifted boxes’ and the galleries were removed in a thorough restoration of the church in 1862-1863 by the Revd JW Watts, Vicar of Bicester in 1843-1881. The roofs, walls and the floor were repaired or renewed and pews were installed. The church was heated and gas lighting installed.

The restoration was carried out by the architect Charles Nightingale Beazley (1834-1897), in consultation with George Edmund Street, two leading architects in the Gothic Revival movement. They installed the existing window tracery and the stone and marble pulpit.

The Pre-Raphaelite window designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

A Morris & Co window in the Lady Chapel in memory of Sir Gregory and Lady Page-Turner and designed by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir Edward Burne-Jones. It depicts Faith (centre), Hope (left) and Love (right) trampling on the vices of unbelief (Faith), despair (Hope) and hate (Love).

A wooden screen leading in the vestry is painted with a design of flowers, birds and insects on a gilt background and is signed ‘HL Busby 1882’.

The high altar was given in 1910. It is made of oak and carved with the Lamb of God. The reredos also dates from this time.

The ‘priest’s door’ in the south wall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The interior was repainted, the church was rewired, and new lighting and audio-visual systems were installed in 2008. Later, the floor in the vestry was replaced in 2012. A new raised floor was installed at the west end in 2014, when the 13th century font was centrally positioned, along with its cover dating from 1757.

Attention turned to the exterior in 2015, when a parapet wall on the south aisle roof was in danger of collapsing and was replaced. Other work on the south side involved replacing stone around some windows.

The nave floor was levelled in 2020, the Victorian pews were replaced with chairs and the nave became more accessible for people with mobility issues, giving them the opportunity to move around the church unhindered.

The church has a ring of 10 bells: eight were recast in 1913 and two were installed as a gift to celebrate the Millennium; there is also a Sanctus bell.

The Old Vicarage is probably the oldest house in Bicester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

There are memorials to local dignitaries, including the naval commander Sir Thomas Grantham, the Page-Turners of Ambrosden, and the Coker family, who were lords of the manor of King’s End from 1584 until the 1970s and lived in Bicester House.

Saint Edburg’s is a venue for concerts and exhibitions, keeping the church at the centre of community life in Bicester.

The Old Vicarage beside the church dates from the 16th century. It is a Grade II * listed building and is probably the oldest house in Bicester. The original house appears to have been L-shaped and of a ‘hall house’ design. It remained the vicarage until Canon William Henry Trebble retired in 1974.

The 19th century reredos above the High Altar (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Recent archaeological excavations at Procter’s Yard have identified the ecclesiastical enclosure boundary, and a large cemetery of Saxon graves suggesting a much larger churchyard has been excavated on the site of the car park of the Roman Catholic Church almost opposite Saint Edburg’s.

The recent Vicars of Bicester have included Michael Charles Scott-Joynt (1943-2014), who was in Bicester in 1975-1982 and later became Bishop of Stafford (1987-1985) in the Diocese of Lichfield and Bishop of Winchester (1995-2011).

Saint Edburg’s is part of the Bicester Area Team Ministry, and the Vicar of Bicester, the Revd Peter Wright, is also the Rector of the Bicester Benefice.

The Lady Chapel in Saint Edburg’s Church, Bicester (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

• The Sunday services include Sung Eucharist (first and third Sundays), ‘Café Church’ (second Sunday), and All-Age Holy Communion (fourth and fifth Sundays) at 10:30. In addition, there is a Book of Common Prayer Holy Communion every second Sunday of the month at 8 a.m. and mid-week Holy Communion every Wednesday at 10 am.

The war memorial cross near the west end of the church was erected in 1921 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2025: 93, Sunday 10 August 2025, Eighth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VIII)

‘Be like those who are waiting for their master to return … so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks’ (Luke 12: 35-36) … door knockers seen on the streets of Stony Stratford (Photographs: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and today is the Eighth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity VIII, 10 August 2025). Later this morning, I plan to be at the Parish Eucharist in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church in Stony Stratford. But, before the day 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.

‘They may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks’ … ‘The Light of the World’ by William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) in a side chapel in Keble College, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Luke 12: 32-40 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 32 ‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

35 ‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; 36 be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. 37 Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. 38 If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.

39 ‘But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. 40 You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.’

‘For you as yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend’ … a bust of John Donne at Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s reflection

Have you ever been burgled?

It is a frightening and a traumatic experience for anyone who has suffered it.

It is one thing to come home from a day’s work, or from a holiday, to find your house has been broken into. It is another to wake up and realise that as you were sleeping a thief has broken into your home, and is downstairs or in the next room.

It happened to me once, in a house in Dublin I was living in.

It was in the days before mobile ’phones, and even before cordless ’phones had become readily available. I had been working late the night before and came downstairs to answer a mid-morning call.

Unknown to me, the thieves were in the next room, having already gone through the kitchen. They were in there, having made themselves something to drink, had cut the lead to the video recorder, and were squatting on the floor, armed with the ‘kitchen devil,’ straight from the cutlery drawer, sifting through the other family possessions.

They must have remained very quiet. Instead of stealing these items, they stole out the back door before I ever put the ’phone down or realised what had happened.

It is a frightening experience, and it made me extra vigilant: extra bolts and locks, rethinking the alarm system, and so on. The police knew who the ‘likely suspects’ were, but they could offer no guarantees that the house was never going to be broken into again … and again.

It is an experience that was also a reminder of my own vulnerability, and a reminder that what I own and possess is not really mine, and not mine for very long. Finding the ‘kitchen devil’ on the floor was also a sharp, very sharp, reminder that even my life is not mine for very long.

And so, the image of Christ at the end of the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (Luke 12: 32-40), of a thief coming unexpectedly to break into my house, may not be a very comforting one for those of us brought up with the image of ‘Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild.’

And yet it is an image that has echoes in the poetry of some of the great mystical writers in Anglican history. It reminds me, for example, of the words of John Donne (Holy Sonnets XIV):

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

It is the passionate language of love, of passionate love. But then, of course, Christ demands our passion, our commitment, our love.

Christ’s call to us in this reading, the demands Christ is making on us in this reading, are not just addressed to the Disciples.

Christ is speaking to the disciples in particular, and teaching them about the kingdom (Luke 12: 1). But as he is speaking to them, someone in the crowd – like a heckler – interrupts and asks a question (see Luke 12: 13).

The inner circle of the Disciples must have felt they were being broken into by those on the rims, those in the crowd of outsiders, the crowd or multitude following Christ but who were not among the Disciples.

So Christ’s demands are made not just of some inner circle, for some elite group within the Church, for those who are seen as pious and holy.

This is a demand he makes also of those on the margins, for the sake of those on the margins, that he makes on the whole Church for the sake of those on the margins.

We are to be ever vigilant that we do not keep those on the margins on the outside for too long. They may appear like thieves trying to break in. But when we welcome in those on the outside who we see as thieves, we may find we are welcoming Christ himself.

And in welcoming Christ himself, into our inner sanctum, we are making it a sign of the Kingdom. The Church needs to be a place not where we feel secure, but where the outsider feels welcome, where they can feast and taste what the Kingdom of God is like.

What is this Kingdom like?

Where is it?

When shall we find it?

In this Gospel reading, Christ tells the multitude – the multitude who are gathered just like the 5,000 who were gathered earlier on the hillside and fed with the multiplication of five loaves and two fish (Luke 9: 10-17) – that the kingdom is already given.

The translation in the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) translations, says ‘it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom’ (Luke 12: 32), present tense. But the original Greek says ‘your Father was well pleased with you (or, took pleasure) to freely give the Kingdom to you’ (… ὅτι εὐδόκησεν ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν δοῦναι ὑμῖντὴν βασιλείαν).

God wanted to do something good for the ‘little flock’ (verse 32), and so freely gave them the kingdom – the reign of God – in which tables are open, status is upended, and all people are treated with dignity. In God’s Kingdom – on earth as it is in heaven – there is no scarcity, there are no class separation or gender barriers, there are no ‘insiders’ and no ‘outsiders.’

Christ compares that Kingdom of God with a wedding banquet.

When we go to a wedding, we have no control over what happens. In the first case, we have no control over who is getting married to whom. But, secondly, weddings break down all our petty snobberies and all our status-seeking.

Whatever we think of the choice of bride or groom, we have no say at all in who is going to be a new brother-in-law, a new mother-in-law, and even into the future, who is going to be a new cousin to our children’s children.

It’s enough to make you laugh.

Sarah laughed when she was told about her future family (see Genesis 18: 12). There is a hint of this story in the Epistle reading this morning, when the writer reminds us of the faith of Abraham and Sarah (see Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-16).

The first reading (Isaiah 1: 1, 10-20) reminds us that despite our failings, the failings of society, the failings of politics, God’s promises of the Kingdom multiply beyond all our expectations, even beyond the expectations of modern Bible translators.

We cannot control this. Those who come into the banquet may appear to us like thieves and burglars, brazenly breaking into our own family home, into our own family.

But we may find that the thief is actually Christ trying to break into our hearts to let us know that the kingdom is already here.

The word for master here is actually κύριος (kyrios), Lord, the word used in the Greek Old Testament for the Lord God by Jews who found the use of the name of God offensive and blasphemous. But using the word master for κύριος hides away God’s work, confusing the Lord, the ‘Son of Man’ (ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, ho yios tou anthropou), with the ‘master of the house,’ the householder (οἰκοδεσπότης, oikodespótēs).

Think of how the word κύριος (kyrios), Lord, was used by Abraham as he addresses the three visitors to Abraham and Sarah at the Oak of Mamre. The strangers become angels, and the angels come to represent the Triune God.

Had Abraham treated his visitors as thieves, where would we be today? Instead, he sets a banquet before the Three, and finds not once but three times that he has an encounter with the living Lord (Genesis 18: 3, 13, 14), the Triune God, an encounter that leads Abraham and Sarah to a faith that ushers in the promises of the Kingdom.

The Lord who arrives for the banquet and stands knocking at the door (Luke 12: 36) in this Gospel reading is the same Christ who says: ‘Behold, I am standing at the door knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come into you and eat with you, and you with me’ (Revelation 3: 20).

He comes in ways we do not expect, and at ‘the unexpected hour,’ the time we ‘think nothing of’ (ἧ ὥρᾳ οὐ δοκεῖτε, he hora ou dokeite, Luke 12: 40) – ‘an hour that seems like nothing’. He does not bother trying to tear down our puny defences. He sneaks around them instead.

Welcome to the banquet.

Welcome to the kingdom.

Allow the stranger among you, and the stranger within you, to open that door and discover that Christ is not a thief trying to steal what you have, but is the Lord who is trying to batter our hearts and tear down our old barriers so that we can all feast together at the new banquet:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
…
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit … so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks’ (Luke 12: 35-36) … prints of tradirional Cretan doors in a shop in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Sunday 10 August 2025, Trinity VIII):

The theme this week (10 to 16 August) in Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Serving God in the Gulf’ (pp 26-27). This theme is introduced today with reflections from Joyaline Rajamani, Administrator at the Church of the Epiphany, Doha, Anglican Church in Qatar:

In the heart of Doha, I have the privilege of serving as Administrator and Secretary to the Senior Priest at the Church of the Epiphany, The Anglican Church in Qatar. My role extends beyond managing schedules and logistics – it is a sacred calling to cultivate a space where faith flourishes, where a global community of believers stands as one family in Christ. Being a Christian here is a quiet yet profound pilgrimage, requiring patience, wisdom, and trust. Though a minority, we worship with dignity and respect, thanks to Qatar’s gracious provision of a safe space for religious practice.

The Religious Complex, fondly called ‘Church City,’ includes around 90 churches of various denominations from Greek Orthodox to Roman Catholic. It is a great symbol of coexistence. So too is the congregation at the Anglican Church of the Epiphany which represents around 57 different nationalities and has over 300 voting members who all worship and serve alongside one another in faith and peace.

‘Whom Shall I Send?’ is a course run by the Episcopal Province of Jerusalem and the Middle East with USPG’s support for youth across the Middle East. This time together stirred something deep within my spirit, calling me to pause and truly listen to God. When we sat under the tent of Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 17-21), I truly learned the grace of waiting. Theirs is a story of trust, hospitality, and unwavering faith in God’s promises. Hospitality is not merely an act but a spiritual discipline, one that has shaped my own faith journey and my administrative work at church.

The USPG prayer diary today (Sunday 10 August 2025, Trinity VIII) invites us to pray by reading and meditating on Luke 12: 32-40.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty Lord and everlasting God,
we beseech you to direct, sanctify and govern
both our hearts and bodies
in the ways of your laws
and the works of your commandments;
that through your most mighty protection, both here and ever,
we may be preserved in body and soul;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Strengthen for service, Lord,
the hands that have taken holy things;
may the ears which have heard your word
be deaf to clamour and dispute;
may the tongues which have sung your praise be free from deceit;
may the eyes which have seen the tokens of your love
shine with the light of hope;
and may the bodies which have been fed with your body
be refreshed with the fullness of your life;
glory to you for ever.

Additional Collect:

Lord God,
your Son left the riches of heaven
and became poor for our sake:
when we prosper save us from pride,
when we are needy save us from despair,
that we may trust in you alone;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

‘Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit … so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks’ (Luke 12: 35-36) … an old and long-locked door near the Fortezza in Rethymnon in Crete (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

‘Peel on the outside’ of the Town Hall and Peel everywhere on the streets of Tamworth

Tamworth ‘where the town hall is like an orange, it has Peel on the outside’ … Robert Peel’s statue outside Tamworth Town Hall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Staffordshire’s first poet laureate Mal Dewhirst, in his poem ‘We are Tamworth’, repeats a popular one-liner about Tamworth ‘where the town hall is like an orange, it has Peel on the outside.’

The bronze statue on a stone plinth by Matthew Noble shows Sir Robert Peel with a long cloak standing on a plinth with inscribed panels. Sir Robert Peel is to be found everywhere throughout Tamworth. He was the MP for Tamworth and twice Prime Minister, and he delivered his ‘Tamworth Manifesto’ from the window of the Town Hall in 1834.

But Peel is not only outside the town hall – his memory is etched throughout the town.

I was writing on Monday about how the former Peel School on Lichfield Street and how it seems to be undergoing restoration and spring clean. This was the second Peel School in Tamworth, replacing an earlier school on Church Street. It was replaced, in turn, in 1850 by a third version of the school designed for Sir Robert Peel by the architect Sydney Smirke.

A ‘Tamworth Pig’ with a police helmet beneath Peel’s statue at the Town Hall in Market Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

But other reminders of Peel on the streets of Tamworth include creative signs put in place by the Peel Society, and the names of pubs and hotels, along with memorial windows in Saint Editha’s Church.

A sculpture of a pig wearing a police helmet that is part of the street furniture in Tamworth stands beneath Peel’s statue in front of the Town Hall in Market Street.

It is known as the ‘Peel Pig’ and is part of a ‘Trotters Trail’ through the town, remembering both Sir Robert Peel and the town’s association with the Tamworth Pig. The trail was funded by an £8,000 grant from the Arts Council.

Two Tamworth pigs escaped from an abattoir in Wiltshire in 1998 and went on the run, earning them the nicknames ‘Butch Cassidy’ and ‘The Sundance Pig’. After their story was told in the national press, the Daily Mail bought the escaped pigs, reprieving them from slaughter in an animal sanctuary. The BBC dramatised the story in a film in 2004, The Legend of the Tamworth Two.

The Peel Pig was once decorated in purple and yellow – the Peel family colours – and it still wears a police helmet, a reminder of Peel’s role in establishing the Metropolitan Police.

The Sir Robert Peel on 13-15 Lower Gungate dates from the 17th or early 18th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Nearby, the Bow Street Runner on Market Street pub took its name from a police force that was a forerunner of Peel’s police. It was part of the Castle Hotel on the corner of Holloway and Market Street, but the pub and hotel closed suddenly when the owners Rest House Limited went into voluntary receivership at the end of January.

Yet another pub with Peel associations is the Sir Robert Peel on 13-15 Lower Gungate. This is a 17th or early 18th century Grade II listed building, with a large beer garden to the rear overlooked by Saint Editha’s Church. The garden’s ancient stone walls were once part of the mediaeval deanery of Saint Editha’s, a collegiate church that had its own dean and canons until the Reformation.

The Peel Aldergate and Christopher’s is a boutique hotel and restaurant in neighbouring Georgian town houses on Aldergate with 19 en-suite rooms, ranging from single right through to the bridal suite.

I was a guest there last year, speaking at the invitation of Tamworth and District Civic Society about the Wyatt architectural dynasty (11 April 2024).

The Peel Aldergate and Christopher’s … a boutique hotel and restaurant in Tamworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The Peel family is also commemorated in three windows in Saint Editha’s Church. The East Window by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris in Saint George’s Chapel, where I was speaking last week, is in memory of John Peel (1804-1872), Liberal MP for Tamworth in 1863-1868 and again in 1871-1872.

A window in the South Aisle depicting David, Rizpah and Solomon is in memory of William Yates Peel (1789-1858) and his wife Lady Jane Elizabeth Peel, who died in 1847. William Yates Peel was the second son of Sir Robert Peel and a younger brother of the Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. He was MP for Bossiney (1817-1818), Tamworth (1818-1830, 1835-1837, 1847), Yarmouth (1830-1831) and Cambridge University (1831-1832), and was a Lord of the Treasury under Wellington and under his brother Sir Robert Peel.

A memorial window by Henry Holiday in the north aisle is dedicated ‘To the Glory of God and in affectionate memory of the Hon Maurice Berkeley Peel, BA, MC, vicar of this parish 1915-1917, who when Chaplain to the Forces in France, was killed whilst tending the wounded, May 1917. This window is placed by his family and the parishioners of Tamworth.’

The Revd Maurice Peel (1873-1917) was the son of Viscount Peel, Speaker of the House of Commons. He was educated at Winchester and New College, Oxford, and was ordained in 1899. At the outbreak of World War I, he became a chaplain in France with the 7th Division, and was awarded the Military Cross (MC) in 1915. He was wounded in action but refused medical attention until all the other men had been looked after. He was sent home to England and took a year to recover, and in the course of that year was appointed Vicar of Tamworth.

He volunteered again in 1917, and was sent to his old battalion. He was killed by a sniper shortly on 14 May 1917 at Bullecourt, while going to rescue a wounded man. The senior chaplain, the Revd Eric Milner-White, later Dean of York, set out to discover how he had died and where he was buried.

The East Window in Saint George’s Chapel in Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth is by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, in memory of John Peel MP (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I was speaking in Saint Editha’s Church later in the evening at a Comberford family commemoration, and I reminded myself, as I visited Comberford and Comberford Hall that afternoon, of two Peel family connections with Comberford.

The loans secured against Comberford Hall and other estates by the Chichester family, who held the title of Marquis of Donegall, seem to have been transferred by the banker Henry Hoare to Sir Robert Peel (1750-1830), MP for Tamworth (1790-1818) and father of Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), who was Prime Minister (1834-1835, 1841-1846).

Robert Peel senior held the mortgages on a number of neighbouring estates in the Lichfield and Tamworth area, including some associated with families linked with the Comberford family over the generations, such as Dyott family estates in Freeford and Fulfen in Saint Michael’s Parish, Lichfield. He foreclosed the mortgages and sold the estates of Comberford and Wigginton to Richard Howard in 1809.

When James Comerford visited Comberford ca 1900-1902, William Felton Peel (1839-1907) was living at Comberford Hall, which was his family home from 1900 to 1903.

Visiting Comberford Hall last week … Sir Robert Peel (1750-1830) forclosed the mortgages on Comberford Hall in 1809 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

William Felton Peel, who was born in Tamworth on 13 February 1839, was a son of Captain Edmund Peel RN (1801-1871), and a great-grandson of William Peel (1745-1791), uncle of the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850). William Felton Peel worked as a cotton and foreign produce merchant in Alexandria and in Bombay, where five of his eight children were born between 1868 and 1874. He later returned to England, and was in business in Broughton, Salford, near Manchester, where the other three children were born between 1876 and 1879.

William Felton Peel lived at Comberford Hall until 1902, and in 1903 he moved with his family to Hawley Hill House, in Blackwater, Hawley, Hampshire. He died on 1 August 1907 following an accident while he was playing polo in Alexandria Egypt.

Not only is the town hall is like an orange because ‘it has Peel on the outside’, but reminders of Peel and his family can be found throughout the Tamworth area.

William Felton Peel was living at Comberford Hall until 1903, and was there when James Comerford visited a few years earlier (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Daily prayer in Lent 2025: 15, Wednesday 19 March 2025, Saint Joseph of Nazareth

Saint Joseph depicted in a stained-glass window in Saint Joseph’s Cathedral, Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

Lent began two weeks ago on Ash Wednesday (5 March 2025), and this week began with the Second Sunday in Lent (Lent II). Today, the Calendar of the Church celebrates Saint Joseph of Nazareth.

Later this evening, I hope to join the choir rehearsals in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

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

A statue of Saint Joseph in front of Saint Joseph’s Cathedral, Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Matthew 1: 18-25 (NRSVA):

18 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 20 But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ 22 All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

23 ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel’,

which means, ‘God is with us.’ 24 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, 25 but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

A window by Nathaniel Westlake (1833-1921) in Saint Mary and Saint Giles Church, Stony Stratford, inspired by ‘Christ in the House of His Parents’ by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir John Everett Millais (Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Today’s Reflection:

Saint Joseph often goes unnoticed in Ireland as people return work after the Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations and holiday weekend halfway through Lent.

We have very little information about Saint Joseph in the Gospels. He figures in the two Gospels with infancy narratives, Saint Matthew and Saint Luke, but even in those accounts, he never speaks. But he responds to God’s call – he is a man of action rather than words, a doer rather than a sayer.

He is described as a τέκτων (tekton), a word traditionally translated as ‘carpenter’, although the Greek word refers to someone who works in wood, iron or stone, including builders. Saint Joseph’s specific association with woodworking is a theme in Early Christian writings, and Justin Martyr, who died ca 165, wrote that Jesus made yokes and ploughs.

On the other hand, Geza Vermes says the terms ‘carpenter’ and ‘son of a carpenter’ are used in the Talmud for a very learned man, and he suggests that a description of Saint Joseph as naggar (‘a carpenter’) could indicate that he was considered wise and highly literate in the Torah.

Until about the 17th century, Saint Joseph is often depicted in art as a man of advanced years, with grey hair, usually bearded and balding, and occasionally frail. He is presented as a comparatively marginal figure alongside Mary and Jesus, often in the background except, perhaps, when he was leading them on the flight into Egypt. More recently, he has been portrayed as a younger or even youthful man, going about his work as a carpenter, or taking part in the daily life of his family.

This later emphasis is seen in ‘Christ in the House of His Parents’ (1849–1850), a painting by the Pre-Raphaelite artist, Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896), depicting the Holy Family in Saint Joseph’s carpentry workshop. The painting, now in the Tate Britain in London, was controversial when it was first exhibited, prompting many negative reviews, most notably one by Charles Dickens, who accused Millais of portraying Mary as an alcoholic who looks ‘so hideous in her ugliness that … she would stand out from the rest of the company as a Monster, in the vilest cabaret in France, or the lowest gin-shop in England.’

Critics also objected to the portrayal of Christ, one complaining that it was ‘painful’ to see ‘the youthful Saviour’ depicted as ‘a red-headed Jew boy.’ Dickens described him as a ‘wry-necked boy in a nightgown who seems to have received a poke playing in an adjacent gutter.’ Other critics suggested that the characters displayed signs of rickets and other disease associated with slum conditions.

But this painting brought attention to the previously obscure Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, influencd many artists, was replicated in stained-glass windows throughout these islands, and was a major contributor to the debate about Realism in the arts.

Today’s Gospel reading reminds us that Saint Joseph says ‘Yes’, even if he says it silently. He has no scripted lines, he has no dramatic parts or roles; indeed, he is mute. But he is obedient. And, like Joseph, his namesake in the Old Testament, he too is the dreamer of dreams and the doer of deeds.

Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary are engaged, but the marriage contract has not yet been signed, she has not yet entered into his house.

If the Mosaic law had been fully observed by Joseph, Mary could have faced ‘public disgrace,’ even been stoned to death.

Joseph is righteous and observes the Law. But he is also compassionate and plans to send her away quietly, without public shame.

The angel of the Lord tells Joseph of his role: through him, God’s promises will be fulfilled in the child to be born. And Joseph names the child Jesus.

The fear of sneers, of judgmental remarks and wagging fingers, must have been running through Joseph’s mind like a nightmare. Yet the angel in Joseph’s dream promises: ‘He will save his people from their sins.’

It is not a promise of immediate reward. Saint Joseph is not offered the promise that if he behaves like this he is going to earn some Brownie points towards the forgiveness of his own sins; that God will see him as a nice guy; or even that if he lives long enough, this child may grow up, be apprenticed to him, take over the family business, and act as a future pension plan.

Instead, the promised pay-off is for others as yet unknown. The forgiveness here is spoken of in apocalyptic terms. It is more than the self-acceptance offered in psychotherapy. Instead, it is the declaration of a new future. To be forgiven is to receive a future. Forgiveness breaks the simple link between cause and effect, action and reaction, failure and disaster, rebellion and recrimination.

This hope of all the ages, the beginning of the end of all the old tyrannies, the restoration of everything that is and will be, was always meant to take place in a virgin’s womb, in the manger, on the cross.

This is Lent – a a time of expectation, repentance and forgiveness. It is a time of preparation, anticipation and hope. It is a time for dreaming dreams, and putting behind us all our nightmares. The dream in this Gospel reading is the dream of Saint Joseph, not the Virgin Mary’s dream.

The Very Revd Samuel G Candler, Dean of Saint Philip’s Episcopal Cathedral in Atlanta, Georgia, suggested in a sermon many years ago: ‘We need sleep because we need to dream.’

Saint Joseph dreamed something wonderful. God would enter the world; God would be born to his new, young wife, Mary. But to believe this, Saint Joseph had to trust not only his dream, but to trust Mary, to trust the future child, to trust God.

Do you love the people you trust and trust the people you love?

To trust the Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph must have truly loved her. But trust in this predicament must have gone beyond trust. Joseph must have truly glimpsed what it is to trust God, to have hope in God, to love God, to have faith in God.

Saint Joseph dreams a dream not of his own salvation, but of the salvation of the world.

Do you trust that God is working through the people you love? Do you trust that God is working through people you find it difficult not to love but merely to like … working through God’s people for their salvation?

Saint Joseph has no speaking part; he just has a walk-on part in the Gospel story. But his actions, his obedience to God’s call, speak louder than words.

Yes, God appears over and over again, to men, women, to ‘all sorts and conditions of people.’

But do we trust them?

Can you have faith in someone else?

Can you believe their dreams?

Can you believe the dreams of those you love?

And dream their dreams too?

As Dean Candler urged in his sermon: ‘Believe in the dreams of the person you love.’

Saint Joseph depicted on the façade of Saint Joseph’s Church in Terenure, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Prayers (Wednesday 19 March 2025, Saint Joseph):

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 ‘Truth: The Path to Reconciliation’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with a programme update by Rachel Weller, Communications Officer, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Wednesday 19 March 2025, Saint Joseph) invites us to pray:

Heavenly Father, whose Son grew in wisdom and stature in the home of Joseph the carpenter of Nazareth and on the wood of the cross perfected the work of the world’s salvation: help us, strengthened by this sacrament of his passion, to count the wisdom of the world as foolishness, and to walk with him in simplicity and trust; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Collect:

God our Father,
who from the family of your servant David
raised up Joseph the carpenter
to be the guardian of your incarnate Son
and husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary:
give us grace to follow him
in faithful obedience to your commands;
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:

Heavenly Father,
whose Son grew in wisdom and stature in the home of Joseph the carpenter of Nazareth
and on the wood of the cross
perfected the work of the world’s salvation:
help us, strengthened by this sacrament of his passion,
to count the wisdom of the world as foolishness,
and to walk with him in simplicity and trust;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

A statue of Saint Joseph in the grounds of Saint Joseph’s Church, Singapore (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

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

Daily prayer in Lent 2025: 9, Thursday 13 March 2025

‘Knock, and the door will be opened for you’ (Matthew 7: 8) … a front door in Bore Street, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Lent began last week on Ash Wednesday, and this week began with the First Sunday in Lent (Lent I).

The Jewish holiday of Purim begins this evening (13 March) and ends at nightfall tomorrow (14 March). But more about that this evening, hopefully. Meanwhile this morning, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time 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.

‘Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?’ (Matthew 7: 9) … stones and rocks on Damai Beach, 35 km north of Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Matthew 7: 7-12 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 7 ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? 10 Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? 11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!’

‘Is there anyone among you who … if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake?’ (Matthew 7: 9-10) … fish in a shop in Ethnikis Antistaseos street in Rethymnon, Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Reflection:

The image in the Gospel reading at the Eucharist today (Matthew 7: 9) of the guest knocking on the door reminds me too of the image of Christ knocking at the door in the Book of Revelation: ‘Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door I will come in to him and will sup with him and he with me’ (Revelation 3: 20).

It is an image that has inspired The Light of the World, a painting in the chapel in Keble College, Oxford, by the Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), depicting Christ about to knock at an overgrown and long-unopened door. It is an image that has echoes too in the poetry of some of the great mystical writers in Anglican history, as in the words of John Donne (Holy Sonnets XIV):

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

It is the passionate language of love, of passionate love. But then, of course, Christ demands our passion, our commitment, our love.

Christ’s demands are made not just to some inner circle, for some elite group within the Church, for those who are seen as pious and holy. He calls on us to open our hearts, our doors, the doors of the church and the doors of society, to those on the margins, for the sake of those on the margins.

We are to be ever vigilant that we do not keep those on the margins on the outside for too long. When we welcome in those on the outside, we may find we are welcoming Christ himself.

Allow the stranger among you, and the stranger within you, to open that door and discover that it is Christ who is trying to batter our hearts and tear down our old barriers so that we can all feast together at the new banquet:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
…
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

‘Knock, and the door will be opened for you’ (Matthew 7: 7) … ‘The Light of the World’ by William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) in a side chapel in Keble College, Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Today’s Prayers (Thursday 13 March 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 ‘The Church and Unity.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday with reflections by the Right Revd Dr Royce M Victor, Bishop in the Diocese of Malabar, Church of South India.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 13 March 2025) invites us to pray:

We pray for our partner churches in South India – may their work and mission be blessed.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ fasted forty days in the wilderness,
and was tempted as we are, yet without sin:
give us grace to discipline ourselves in obedience to your Spirit;
and, as you know our weakness,
so may we know your power to save;
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 God,
you have renewed us with the living bread from heaven;
by it you nourish our faith,
increase our hope,
and strengthen our love:
teach us always to hunger for him who is the true and living bread,
and enable us to live by every word
that proceeds from out of your mouth;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Heavenly Father,
your Son battled with the powers of darkness,
and grew closer to you in the desert:
help us to use these days to grow in wisdom and prayer
that we may witness to your saving love
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection

Continued Tomorrow

Megillat Ester or Scroll of Esther, silver with coloured stones and gilded, dated Vienna 1844, in the Jewish Museum, Vienna … Purim begins this evening and continues until nightfall tomorrow (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