Patrick Comerford
Next Sunday [17 March 2019] is the Second Sunday in Lent and Saint Patrick’s Day. The celebrations may mark a welcome break in Lent.
It is highly unlikely that any parish in these dioceses is going to mark next Sunday as the Second Sunday in Lent and not as Saint Patrick’s Day. This week’s posting is divided into two parts.
Part 1 seeks to provide appropriate preaching and liturgical resources for Saint Patrick’s Day; Part 2 seeks to provide appropriate preaching and liturgical resources for those using the options for the Second Sunday in Lent.
PART 1:
The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) are:
Readings: Tobit 13: 1b-7; Psalm 145: 1-13; II Corinthians 4: 1-12; John 4: 31-38.
There is a direct link to readings HERE.
Sermons:
1, A sermon preached in Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton, Co Limerick on Saint Patrick’s Day 2018 is HERE.
2, A sermon preached in Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton, Co Limerick, on Saint Patrick’s Day 2017 is HERE.
3, A sermon preached in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on Saint Patrick’s Day 2013 is HERE.
Thinking about Saint Patrick:
Four papers on Saint Patrick delivered at a Readers’ Retreat Day in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, Dublin, in March 2016 are available through these links:
1, Who is Saint Patrick?
2, Saint Patrick’s writings and his message
3, Celtic Spirituality, is there something there?
4, The Eucharist, with a short sermon.
John 4: 31-38 (NRSVA):
31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him [Jesus], ‘Rabbi, eat something.’ 32 But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ 33 So the disciples said to one another, ‘Surely no one has brought him something to eat?’ 34 Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35 Do you not say, “Four months more, then comes the harvest”? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36 The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.’
Liturgical Resources:
Liturgical Colour:
White (please note that Green is not the Liturgical Colour for Saint Patrick’s Day).
Penitential Kyries:
O taste and see that the Lord is good;
happy are those who trust in him.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
The Lord ransoms the live of his servants
and none who trust in him will be destroyed.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Come my children, listen to me:
I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Collect:
Almighty God,
in your providence you chose your servant Patrick
to be the apostle of the Irish people,
to bring those who were wandering in darkness and error
to the true light and knowledge of your Word:
Grant that walking in that light
we may come at last to the light of everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Introduction to the Peace:
Peace be to you, and peace to your house, and peace to all who are yours (I Samuel 25: 6).
Preface:
To this land you sent the glorious gospel
through the preaching of Patrick.
You caused it to grow and flourish in the life of your servant Patrick and in
the lives of men and women, filled with your Holy Spirit,
building up your Church to send forth the good news to other places:
Post Communion Prayer:
Hear us, most merciful God,
for that part of the Church
which through your servant Patrick you planted in our land;
that it may hold fast the faith entrusted to the saints
and in the end bear much fruit to eternal life:
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Blessing:
God, who in days of old gave to this land the benediction of his holy Church,
fill you with his grace to walk faithfully in the steps of the saints
and to bring forth fruit to his glory:
Suggested Hymns:
The hymns suggested for Saint Patrick’s Day, 17 March, in Sing to the Word (2000), edited by Bishop Edward Darling, include:
Tobit 13: 1b-7:
No suggested hymns.
Alternative, Deuteronomy 32: 1-9:
668, God is our fortress and our rock
539, Rejoice, O land, in God thy might
540, To thee, our God, we fly (verses 1-3, 7)
Psalm 145: 1-13
24, All creatures of our God and King
125, Hail to the Lord’s anointed
321, Holy, holy, holy! Lord God almighty
358, King of glory, King of peace
360, Let all the world in every corner sing
104, O for a thousand tongues to sing
365, Praise to the Lord, the almighty, the King of creation
368, Sing of the Lord’s goodness
73, The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended 374, When all thy mercies, O my God
492, Ye servants of God, your master proclaim
II Corinthians 4: 1-12:
52, Christ, whose glory fills the skies
613, Eternal light, shine in my heart
481, God is working his purpose out as year succeeds to year
324, God, whose almighty word
569, Hark, my soul, it is the Lord
96, Jesus is Lord! Creation’s voice proclaims it
195, Lord, the light of your love is shining
228, Meekness and majesty
341, Spirit divine, attend our prayers
John 4: 31-38:
305, O Breath of life, come sweeping through us
46, Tá an fómhar seo go haerach, céad buíochas le hÍosa
(The harvest is bright, all thanks be to Jesus)
141, These are the days of Elijah
Also suitable:
611, Christ be beside me
459, For all the saints who from their labours rest
461, For all thy saints, O Lord
460, For all your saints in glory, for all your saints at rest (verses 1, 2c and 3)
464, God, whose city’s sure foundation
322, I bind unto myself today
322, I bind unto myself today (vv. 1, 2, 8 & 9)
536, Lord, while for all the world we pray
471, Rejoice in God’s saints, today and all days
473, Síormholadh is glóir duit, a Athair shíorai
(All glory and praise to you, Father above)
PART 2:
The Second Sunday in Lent:
Next Sunday is also the Second Sunday in Lent. The readings in the Revised Common Lectionary for that Sunday are:
The Readings: Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3: 17 to 4: 1; Luke 13: 31-35.
There is a direct link to the readings HERE.
Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18:
Did you ever look up on a clear, moonless night and ask how many stars you can see above?
When you look up into the night sky it stretches a pitch-black canvas washed with streaks and studs of brightness. We are surrounded by light that has travelled the expanse of the universe to reach our eyes. And it makes me feel tiny and enormous at one and the same time.
But how many stars do I actually see?
There is really no definitive answer to this question. No one has counted all the stars in the night sky, and astronomers use different numbers as theoretical estimates.
Considering all the stars visible in all directions around Earth, some estimates say there are between 5,000 and 10,000 visible stars. But that’s just the stars visible to the naked eye tonight.
But why limit it to my own failing short-sighted pair of eyes? Why should I simply marvel at the majesty and mystery of it all when I can do some calculations and think of how many stars are visible to God?
If we start with the galaxies, astronomers estimate there are around 170 billion galaxies in the observable universe, stretching out over a radius of some 45.7 billion light years.
Those galaxies vary in terms of the number of stars they contain. Some galaxies have more than a trillion stars. Some giant elliptical galaxies have 100 trillion stars. There are also tiny dwarf galaxies – tiny, of course, is a relative term here – some tiny dwarf galaxies that have significantly fewer stars.
On the other hand, the Milky Way, our little corner of the observable universe, has 400 billion stars alone.
So, if we multiply the estimated average number of stars in each galaxy by the number of galaxies in the observable universe – and carry the billion, &c – I get a rough estimate of all the stars I am capable of observing. And what I find is there is roughly a septillion stars in the observable universe. That brings us to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars (1024, or 1 followed by 24 zeros). Which is, well, put simply, an awesome lot of stars.
In this Old Testament reading, Abraham is worried about his survival, his future, and what is going to happen after he dies.
He has no children and he tries the old trusted ways of augury and divination … it seems strange or weird to us today, but this sort of thing was practised throughout the ancient civilisations in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, even in classical Greece and Rome.
Of course, Abraham’s fears are the fears of many in the Middle East today: who is going to inherit this land? Are those I see as out-siders threats, real or imagined, not only to my survival but threats to everything I hope for in the future?
My dreams are so precious to me that they are important.
I understand Abraham’s fears, at two levels:
1, I was a little older than some members of my peer group – family, friends and work colleagues – when I became a parent. I was in my late 30s. There are so many thoughts that those years of waiting can bring to mind that we could have a full counselling session here afterwards. They go as far as the meaning and purpose of life. But how do we treat childless couples, single parents, separated children, and others in Church? And are those fears and their insecurities reinforced when we organise ‘family services’ or talk about ‘family values.’
2, I have travelled throughout the Middle East at different times, as a journalist, on inter-faith projects, and so on. I know what doom Abraham imagines when he contemplates Eliezer of Damascus coming into everything he has worked for, and all he has made sacrifices for. But I also grasp the fear that strikes the descendants of Eliezer of Damascus when they hear that Abraham’s children are going to stake a claim to all the land ‘from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,’ from Egypt across to the borders of Iraq and Iran, from Cairo to Baghdad.
But Abram, who is later to become Abraham, is told not to fear. God says to him, ‘Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’
Today, the three great faiths that claim descent from Abraham, either genealogically or spiritually, are the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims, as well as many other smaller monotheistic faiths, such as the Samaritans, the Mandaeans, the Yezidis and the Druze.
You may not count some of those in. But once we start counting people out because of our limited vision, we forget the vast scope of God’s vision. God’s response to Abraham includes a hint that he cannot possibly count the stars by looking at them. A septillion stars may be there for me to see, but they are beyond my ability to count, beyond my imagination, beyond my comprehension.
Yet, God’s love knows no limits, knows no boundaries.
Thinking about the stars at night, the great tragedies in the world and the unbounded love of God, Dr Samuel Johnson once wrote:
‘The pensive man at one time walks ‘unseen’ to muse at midnight, and at another hears the sullen curfew. If the weather drives him home he sits in a room lighted only by ‘glowing embers’; or by a lonely lamp outwatches the North Star to discover the habitation of separate souls, and varies the shades of meditation by contemplating the magnificent or pathetick scenes of tragick and epick poetry.’
Psalm 27:
Sometimes, I find as I stand presiding at or celebrating the Holy Communion or the Eucharist that I am taken aback by intense feelings of the love of God.
This sometimes happens when I use the ‘Prayer of Humble Access’ at the fraction, when we are breaking the Bread of Communion at the invitation.
It is a prayer that has gone out of fashion in many parishes, but it is a reminder that we come to the Table or the Altar not because of our own goodness, not in spite of our own sinfulness, but because of the overflowing mercy and grace that God gives us freely and with unlimited bounty:
We do not presume to come to this your table,
merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness
but in your manifold and great mercies.
We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table.
But you art the same Lord,
whose nature is always to have mercy.
Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ,
and to drink his blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body,
and our souls washed through his most precious blood,
and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.
I can be taken aback and find myself conscious of the love of God as I came to those words: ‘We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table.’
On one occasions some years ago, what flashed across my mind was a video clip that has gone viral on YouTube and social media, of two small, frail abandoned children caught up in Syria’s bloody civil war, fending for themselves by picking up crumbs of bread from the street to eat.
These two homeless mites, who are braver than any groups fighting or waging war in Syria, tell the camera crew: ‘We go to sleep hungry, we wake up hungry.’
They have been separated from their parents. I have close links with the Anglican mission agency, USPG, which is working with the plight of Syrian refugees in Lesvos and Athens and other parts of Greece. The work of USPG in the midst of this tragedy and catastrophe is a living witness to words like those of the Psalmist: ‘Though my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up’ (Psalm 27: 13).
The 10-year-old girl said she was collecting bread crumbs off the street with her brother because their area of Damascus, al-Hajar, had been under siege for more than 15 months.
‘If we had food, you wouldn’t have seen us here.’
But their final message to the world that has abandoned them is: ‘May you be happy and blessed with what God has given you!’
Europe takes pity on children like this when we see them on YouTube or on the 9 o’clock news. But when they land on our shores in the Aegean Islands in Greece, or make their way up through central Europe, we deem them not worthy to gather up the crumbs under our table.
They arrive here, perhaps hoping like the Psalmist in Sunday’s readings believing that they ‘shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living’ (Psalm 27: 16). But God is the ‘same Lord, whose nature is always to have mercy.’
Luke 13: 31-35:
I have looked at this video clip again and again since then. And I think of the image of Christ in our Gospel reading on Sunday morning:
‘How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’ (Luke 13: 34)
The children of the world are the future of the world. It does not matter whose children they are. It does not matter how many of them there are: whether they are two children searching for crumbs that I am not worthy to gather up, or small enough to be gathered in by a loving parent, or are countless in numbers like the stars, they are all embraced in the love of the loving and living God. They are all heirs to God’s promises.
And how we respond to them, how I respond to them, shows them what I think, what we think, of God and how much we believe in his promise.
Luke 13: 31-35 (NRSVA):
31 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’ 32 He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33 Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem.” 34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35 See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”.’
Liturgical Resources:
Liturgical Colour: Violet
The canticle Gloria may be omitted in Lent.
Traditionally in Anglicanism, the doxology or Gloria at the end of Canticles and Psalms is also omitted during Lent.
Penitential Kyries:
In the wilderness we find your grace:
you love us with an everlasting love.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
There is none but you to uphold our cause;
our sin cries out and our guilt is great.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Heal us, O Lord, and we shall be healed;
Restore us and we shall know your joy.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
you show to those who are in error the light of your truth
that they may return to the way of righteousness:
Grant to all those who are admitted
into the fellowship of Christ’s religion,
that they may reject those things
that are contrary to their profession,
and follow all such things
as are agreeable to the same;
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lenten Collect:
Almighty and everlasting God,
you hate nothing that you have made
and forgive the sins of all those who are penitent:
Create and make in us new and contrite hearts
that we, worthily lamenting our sins
and acknowledging our wretchedness,
may receive from you, the God of all mercy,
perfect remission and forgiveness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The Lenten Collect should be said after the Collect of the day until Easter Eve.
Introduction to the Peace:
Being justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 5: 1, 2)
Preface:
Through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who was in every way tempted as we are yet did not sin;
by whose grace we are able to overcome all our temptations:
The Post-Communion Prayer:
Creator of heaven and earth,
we thank you for these holy mysteries
given us by our Lord Jesus Christ,
by which we receive your grace
and are assured of your love,
which is through him now and for ever.
Blessing:
Christ give you grace to grow in holiness,
to deny yourselves,
and to take up your cross and follow him:
Suggested Hymns:
The hymns suggested for the Second Sunday in Lent (Year C) in Sing to the Word (2000) edited by Bishop Edward Darling include:
Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18:
10, All my hope on God is founded
501, Christ is the world’s true light
383, Lord, be thy word my rule
595, Safe in the shadow of the Lord
545, Sing of Eve and sing of Adam
323, The God of Abraham praise
Psalm 27:
87, Christ is the world’s light, he and none other
501, Christ is the world’s true light
566, Fight the good fight with all thy might
431, Lord, enthroned in heavenly splendour
362, O God, beyond all praising
620, O Lord, hear my prayer
557, Rock of ages, cleft for me
20, The King of love my shepherd is
627, What a friend we have in Jesus
Philippians 3: 17 to 4: 1:
566, Fight the good fight with all thy might
468, How shall I sing that majesty
672, Light’s abode, celestial Salem
370, Stand up and bless the Lord
Luke 13: 31–35:
369, Songs of praise the angels sang
143, Waken, O sleeper, wake and rise
145, You servants of the Lord
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
Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.
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